This weekend I’m going on a 13-hour train trip (Sydney to Byron Bay!) with two friends, and we’re all trying to think of ways to make the long journey more fun. I thought I might try to come up with a list of questions we can ask each other, and figured this was the perfect place to ask for help. Can anyone think of any?
Some obvious ones to start:
[ul][li]Top ten desert island albums[/li][li]Eight famous people, living or from history, to have at a dinner party[/li][li]Top five celebrities you would want to shag if you were gay/straight (select whichever you’re not, as appropriate)[/li][li]Top five people we know you would want to shag if you were gay/straight[/li][li]Five songs to play at your funeral (thanks Café Society!)[/li][li]Most embarassing moment of your life[/ul][/li]What else?
(Risque questions are fine – we all know each other well and are definitely not shy).
You could play an extended game of Room 101 . Before you set off, each player makes a secret list of, say, six things they would like to be wiped from existence, never to be seen or heard of again. These ‘things’ can be people, places, trends, fashions, styles of music, certain foods, institutions, professions, aspects of technology… literally, anything you want to nominate. Players take it in turns to nominate something from their list to be banished to Room 101 forever. One player is the Keeper of Room 101 and gets to decide whether the nomination has merit or not.
The player can argue his or her case, the Keeper gets to play ‘devil’s advocate’ and question the reasoning, and everyone else is free to weigh in with opinions, either supporting the nomination or saying why it should be rejected. The Keeper’s decision is final and binding, and you really need someone to play this role with a degree of impartial fairness for the game to work.
A player gets one point for each successful nomination. The aim of the game is to get more points than anyone else. A very important additional rule is this: the order of play is decided randomly at the start. if anyone mentions one of your nominations before you do, you lose that item from your list and you can’t replace it, thus you have fewer chances to win. This places the onus on each player, when devising their original list of six items, to come up with items that (a) are very likely to successfully get banished to Room 101, yet (b) no-one else will think of. The difficulty of thinking up such items gives the game its richness. Remember, people can take days preparing their list if you announce the game sufficiently far in advance.
It fits the OP in the sense that playing the game is equivalent to asking lots of very diverse questions about pet likes and dislikes, favourites and least favourites and so on.
The card game Mao is fascinatingly addictive, and allows each (winning) player to assert his/her personality over the game and change its workings and thus is great for small groups of close friends. The most important rule is that you’re not supposed to be told the rules, so to keep with the spirit of the thing you may wish to learn the game by playing it instead of reading the Wikipedia article. If push comes to shove, however, having one Chairman (you) will be good enough.
Might I just suggest picking your favorite SDMB forum (for the types of questions you like most) and browsing through it for things that would fit your group.
There’s the game of "Marry, Fck, or Kill." You name three people that you all know (celebrities, political figures, colleagues, whatever) and each of you has to decide which one you’d marry, which one you’d fck, and which one you’d kill.
So, for example…
George W. Bush
Russell Crowe
Gene Simmons
I’d like to kill Gene Simmons, and I think I’d like to f*ck Russell Crowe, but that means I’d have to marry George Bush. Yuck!
You get the picture. Save this one for when you’re too tired to do anything that requires great depth of thought.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I especially like the “Room 101” game.
I sat down and tried to come up with a whole heap myself. This is what I got:
Top 5 albums to have sex to?
What would be your Australian Idol audition song?
Describe your first snog
5 favourite cities?
5 favourite sitcom theme songs?
5 favourite Beatles songs?
5 favourite Beatles wives?
Last movie that made you cry?
Old Kylie, Indie Kylie or New Kylie? (This one may only make sense to Aussies, Brits and gay men everywhere.)
5 favourite lines in a song?
Favourite joke?
Do you believe in destiny?
Did the members of the Breakfast Club ever speak to each other again?
If you got your hands on a time machine, would you go to the future or the past? How far?
5 favourite words?
If you could swap places with someone for a day a la “Freaky Friday”, who would it be?
5 favourite music videos?
Oprah: For or against?
Which Muppet do you most identify with?
If you were an animal instead of a person, what would you be?
If you could build a house anywhere in the world, with a view of anything you want, what would we see out your window?
What did you think of “Titanic”?
You’re on the lam and need to change your name. What do you pick?
What was the first album you ever bought?
Top 5 songs guaranteed to get you on the dance floor?
What was your best subject at school?
Love is a battlefield: true or false?
Do you have any recurring dreams?
Assuming it was essential to the plot and all done in very good taste, would you appear naked in a movie?
5 favourite novels?
Your house is burning down. What one item do you grab as you run out the door?
A genie grants you one wish, on the condition it must be selfish (no wishing for world peace etc). What do you ask for?
If this train got lost in the Mountains and we crashed and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, not sure when we were ever to be rescued, which fellow passengers would you eat first?
If you could buy a pocket lie detector that would beep audibly every time someone told a lie, would you use it?
What was the best day of your life?
If there was a way for you to no longer require sleep, would you choose to give it up?
If you were an X-Men, what new power would be yours?
What is the best gift someone ever gave you?
You’re getting a tattoo in a minute. What is it?
If you could alter one part of your physical appearance, what would it be?
What will the title of your autobiography be?
What is the square root of 576?
What is the best song released so far this year?
Best invention of the 21st century?
If you could go back and change one specific incident in your life, what would it be?
Do you fold or scrunch your toilet paper?
Most embarassing moment?
Favourite chick-flick?
Favourite Far Side cartoon?
If you could have stopped ageing at any one point in your life, when would it be?
If you had to be blind or deaf, which would it be?
What does the concept of “evil” mean to you?
Any artist of your choice covers any song of your choice – what’s it to be? (Top 5)
5 favourite song intros?
5 favourite guitar solos?
What is the last thing you regret buying?
You win a million dollars, but have to give it all away to charity. Who gets it?
5 favourite chocolate bars?
If aliens abducted you and offered you the choice of a trip to their home planet (a three hundred year round trip) or getting off the space ship and going home with no evidence of their existence, which would you choose?
I know of two good car games that we’ve played on long trips. Don’t know the real names of them.
First…
One person says the name of someone famous. Like George Bush, then the next person has to think of a name such that the first name starts with the same letter as the last name of the person before them. So the next person could say Bob Hope, then the next person Harry Potter, etc. If you can say a name that has the same first and last initial, then the rotation reverses the other way, (Parker Posey). You can catch someone with a double if they aren’t paying attention. If you can’t think of one in time you’re out. Names have to be famous enough for most everyone to have heard of it.
Second… (I think we called GHOST)
First person says any letter (say, h), next person says a letter that along with (H) could be the beginning of a word (y). Next person continues with p, next with o (so now we have “hypo”. Play continues like that. The object is to be able to continue adding letters without actually making a word. If you make a word you get a point/letter until you have 5 at which time you’re out(GHOST, like HORSE in basketball). Also if at any time, another contestant doesn’t think you’re letter combination can actually make a word they can challenge you (HYPOB). If you can’t make a word you get another point. If you can then the challenger gets a point. Play until one person is left.
There’s a game called Big Liar. It’s usually a drinking game, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be played for tokens or quarters.
Basically, you tell two stories, one the truth and the other a complete fabrication. Others have to guess which is which, with a penalty for guessing wrong.