*This is old. If you all know it, I’m sorry. I like it and thought I’d share. Might be a nice thing to do during the holidays.
It works best with a room full of people, so invite all your friends, uncles and aunties and various homeless people for Christmas. :D*
Announce something like: “Hey guys, you know Joe [or Joanne, or whomever] and me know each-other for so long, we found out we can read each-other’s mind. That’s right, we have telepathic powers. What, You don’t believe me? We’ll show you”.
Ask your audience to mutualy pick one object out of the room, while you are out of the room and can’t hear them [and make sure you can’t. Go upstairs, or outside, if needed
When they’ve agreed on an object, you’ll be called back in.
Joe [or Joanne, or whomever] says something like: “Are you ready, dear?”
He then points to [for example] a shot glass and asks: “Is this the object we picked?”
You say: “No”.
Joe points to [eg] a plant saying: “Is this it?”
You say: “No”
Joe, pointing to TV: “This?”
You: “Nope”
Joe, pointing to book: “This”?
You: “Nope”
Joe, pointing to coaster: “This”?
You: “YES!”
The audience, - who indeed picked the coaster - , will start saying things like: “We saw you and Joe whispering to each-other” or: “You said ‘nope’ instead of ‘no’”, or Joe said ‘this’ instead of ‘is this it’”, or: “It’s the fifth question”.
You say: “Oh yeah? ” and then do the same routine: You leave the room, audience picks an object.
Joe, pointing to plastic cat: “This?”
You: “No”
Joe, pointing to shoe: “This”?
You: “No.
Joe, pointing to clock: “This?”
You: “YES!”
Audience…, guessing. You do it again or leave them wondering. I’ll give the solution in a spoiler box, just in case you want to guess
Solution: [spoiler]
Joe [or Joanne], ofcourse, is your accomplice. Or merely another person who knows this game.
The object after Joe points to a black object is the correct one.
In my examples, a black book and a black shoe.
Make it as elaborate or short as you want. Do it 15 times or just once. Depends on the audience as well. [/spoiler]
I hope my explaining isn’t very bad [the language, you know] and I hope you let me know if, or when you do this, how it went.
The correct item will be the object pointed to AFTER a black object. So the accomplice may point to a black book before the CORRECT object, a black shoe.
You got it, LifeOnWry. Do you know the game? Did you guess?
Kythereia, monica and fetus have fun. Like I said: Make it as mysterious sounding as you want . You and Joe stare in each-other’s eyes for some time - finding the telepathy, put your special ‘black magic’ cloak on, Put your hands to your temples, etc. Just make sure you don’t close your eyes.
hehehe. That’s mean.
I forgot to ask: Dopers, where you come from, do you play games [I don’t mean computer games] when having friends over? Card games, drinking games, board games, even charades?
I’m in Michigan, and have always played games at gatherings. Growing up, it was cards, cards and more cards at every family event, euchre and pinochle being the most common. Card games are still popular, and poker has sorta replaced pinochle in popularity, but board games are more inclusive for large groups.
Some of my girlfriends and I have even instituted a monthly girls night just to play games, the kids are fed and shunted downstairs to a basement playroom, the husbands/boyfriends are left at home and we play board games for hours.
matt_mcl, I’m ashamed to say I’ve never played D&D, but a friend of mine does and he says it’s cool. Killed any dragons lately?
Queen Tonya, I wish I were anywhere near Michigan. What kind of board games do you play?
We know Clue, Trivial pursuit, Monopoly, Pictionary and various Dutch games. I especially like the silly games, you know, the ones that make you look like a complete fool, but make you enjoy your evening. Do you play ‘Truth or Dare’? How about ‘playing’ the Ouja board? Or dice throwing in order to do a ‘special’ assignment?
I come from a HUGE game-playing family. Card games, word games, board games, you name it. When we’d be sitting in restaurants waiting for our food we’d play Ghost or I Spy. My grandfather is the world’s biggest sore loser, so we never learned to “play fair” - every game we played was cutthroat competition. Makes for some wild family gatherings, lemme tell you. Also, there’s a large number of practical jokers in the family, as well as a slew of Gong Show-caliber talents - jugglers, magicians, comedians, and “musicians” (my sister is awesome at the Hawaiian Nose Harp.) Mom jokes that she gave birth to all the entertainment she’ll ever need.
Now my immediate family and friends play the same games plus the new ones, too - Balderdash and Taboo and the like. And I have a friend who develops games, so occasionally I get to be a beta-test player for him. He’s working on a very cool, very simple tabletop game right now inspired by Medieval Times-style jousting. When it comes out, I’ll tell y’all more about it - he’s in development negotiations, so everything is very hush-hush for a bit longer.
My family has played Trivial Pursuit at every family gathering since it first came out.
Now that I’ve grown up and become a gamer geek, I’m doing my darndest to encourage family game play by giving good games to families with kids. Last year, for example, I gave Gamewright’sLandlock, which is a great game that kids love, but which has good strategic depth for grown-ups, so it’s not boring to play. This year everybody (including me ) got Snap! (also by Gamewright) for the same reason.
I also got Seasons for a couple of families with older children who I know like Rummy-style games. And I got a copy for me too, naturally.
Nice one, gum! I’ll keep it in mind, it might come in handy during the holidays.
I’ll trade you a few similar games for it. Both can be done by a group without any props.
The Psychiatrist’s game. The one who is “it”, is the “psychiatrist” and has to withdraw for a while to a place where he can’t hear the group. The game-leader explains to the group that they’re all suposed to play mental patients suffering from the same exact mental illness. When the “psychiatrist” returns, he has to diagnose the problem by asking any memebr of the group any question (questions like “what is wrong with you” are of course not allowed).
The group can come up with any mental ilness they can think off, but has to stay in character, the group judging any answers given. A nice starter is the “ilness” where all “mental patients” give the answer to the *preceding * question.
**“Psychiatrist”: ** “How are you today?”
**“Patient”: ** (gives random first answer): “Elephants”. Psychiatrist : Can you understand me? Patient: Very well, thank you. Psychiatrist: “Why are you saying that?” Patient: “I’m a bit deaf”.
Etcetera. Great fun and bonding for the whole group. The game requires a "psychatrist’ who is a good sport, though.
My family are game types, so we usually end up playing something on family occassions. Cards are the usual choice, although word games are also common. Mrs B’s family isn’t into it much, although she sometimes has a game afternoon with her sisters, and Yahtzee is a cottage tradition.
A group of friends and I have been getting together every week for almost 30 years to socialize and play games. We have played over 300 different games over the years, including D&D (beginning in 76 with the first edition rules) and Dictionary (lots of fun with a variety of dictionaries, some almost a century old). Mostly board/card games and some miniatures games (western gunfight, wargame battles, SF starship battles, etc.).
Fun family word games are Ghost (player one anounces a letter, player two announces second letter, and so on; the letters have to spell a valid word, and cannot be the last letter of a valid word of 4 or more letters; the player who completes a valid word is a G, then an H, and so on until one player ends up as a GHOST and loses), and Geography (player one names a geographical location, such as a country, city, lake, etc., then player two has to name a place starting with the last letter of the previous place; place names can’t be reused; good luck avoiding the Alaska Alabama America Australia “A” loops).
Our gaming group has had a lot of fun with “German” games over the past couple of years. These originate in Europe and are oriented towards both family-type gaming and competitive gamers, with relatively simple rules but allowing for complex strategies. Examples are the Settlers of Catan games, TransAmerica and other Rio Grande games, and many others.
Clue and Pictionary make an occasional appearance, Monopoly just…well, monopolizes the entire evening, if you can even finish it in one night. Trivial Pursuit winds up making most of the gang feel stupid, so we stick to the simpler ones.
Balderdash is great fun, doesn’t get much cooler than winning on your bullshit skills. Cranium is the newest, and good for mixed groups since it has aspects of trivia, charades, kareoke, spelling, pictionary, etc. Then of course there are any number of silly drinking games, but my crowd has mostly outgrown that age.
Truth or Dare and Ouja boards are usually stuff the kids do, like at slumber parties or summer camp. I’ve never heard of using dice that way, all the dice games I can think of are games of chance or counting, similar to card games.
Hey! Thanks guys. It’s nice to see other game-addicts.
LifeOnWry, I’m so jealous of your family. Your Grandfather sounds a riot. I’m curious about your friend’s new game. What on earth is a Hawaïan nose harp, though?
Podkayne, thanks for the links. Now I know what to ask from Santa.
Oh, and Trivial Pursuit? That’s a game which get’s real hard when you have the Dutch version and you have to translate the questions to your American friends.
I can remember a question : Which musical intrument is considered the most romantic? and we all went: “The violin”. Americans thought it was the Saxophone. Different tastes, huh.
Maastricht, have fun. Lemme know how it worked out.
That phychiatrist game? You pick a thing like arachna-phobia, or split-personality, or something? Sounds pretty fun.
I knew about the hand thing. Isn’t there also something like being able to lift a chair, with a person sitting on it, by two people, just with their fore-fingers?
I can’t remember how it was done.
** Bookkeeper**, thank you for the links as well.
GHOST and Geography sound like great fun. Though I stink at geography.
Queen Tonya, It’s freeking cold here, too.
I know about Monopoly being long. Too long, sometimes.
So…Balderdash is the same as Dictionary? Thanks again, all.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I really encourage you to check out Cranium. It’s a board game that combines many of the best elements of different games and works so well for group play. For instance, I can’t draw to save my life so I suck at Pictionary, Cranium has a drawing category but I can simply shift those cards to my teammates, see? Or, you know how there’s always one or two folks that simply refuse to make fools of themselves doing charades or singing out loud? Well, there are categories for those talents as well, and they can make the non-drawing ones like me do them.
We like how it changes up constantly and never gets boring, do check it out. Link
Scattergories is simple and fun, a timed game where each round the players fill out a list of categories like “common boys name” “biblical location” “type of spice” using whichever letter was rolled on the die. The trick becomes remembering “Cecil” instead of “Christopher” since no points are awarded for doubled answers. Converts fairly well to team play for a larger group, as well.
What if they believe that there is actual black magic involved, snap into angry and fearful peasant mode, and decide to burn you and your accomplice at the stake? Huh? What then, smartass? What then?
Yeah, I vaguely remember something like that. Wasn’t it done by (amateur) hypnotizers? Does any Doper know how that game worked?
I do know it’s possible to lift a person (say a normal ten-year old) with just your breath. Here’s how it works: spread out a garbagebag on a table, the open end hanging over the table. Place a flat surface (a large book, a tray) on the bag and let the child sit on it. Gather the open end of the bag into a mouthpiece, and gently blow (no strong lungs are required) untill the child feels it’s lifted!!
My science teacher used this one as a demonstration of how airpressure magnifies itself in all directions. Still, it makes a fun party gimmick.
[/spoiler]