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Played Taboo with my friends
Like the title says, I played Taboo with my friends yesterday. It's decently fun, but every time I play it, the thing that sticks with me is how shocked I am that some players don't know what certain things are or how bad they are at thinking on their feet. On the plus side, it's also a chance for people who you'd unfairly judged to make a good impression.
What are some other games that have consequences like these that you haven't heard people discuss before?
Cards Against Humanity can be a great way to get people to put their guards down. I’ve played it with coworkers and (while I wouldn’t recommend this as it is very explicitly NSFW) it helped break the ice and reveal more of the true people behind the “professional colleague” mask I was used to seeing. But again be careful with this one, even outside of work settings it can backfire if a player is more on the conservative side and feels really uncomfortable with it. I’d still say the game is successful at illuminating that aspect of someone that might not otherwise be apparent, but it can also cause them to feel alienated or resentful if everyone else is getting into it.
Apples to Apples is definitely a "dumbed-down" version of CAH, but it's along the same lines (and iirc came out quite a while before CAH).
Also, for my family... "Cards Christians Like" is a pretty legit option that mimics CAH just a little less sinful by their standards. But hey, I never thought I'd see my family loosen up and be amused by "my youth pastor's skinny jeans" or "Jesus' temple whip". It's a step up from Apples, but still not CAH level.
I wanna throw in that I really like Say Anything. It's basically what it says, CAH type game etc but instead of picking from cards you write your own answers to a question.
But it isn't just a "try to say the funniest random thing" game, because you're specifically trying to answer based on the reader of the question and what they think/like. Once everyone has answered, the reader secretly chooses their favourite. Then everyone bets on what they think the reader chose, and everyone scores or not based on the outcome. I find the betting adds a nice layer of strategy. More than just the reader choosing "I think this is funniest" alone.
The humour also doesn't feel forced like it can sometimes be with pre written cards. The funny moments come from you and how well you know each other. You have to actually think. You can keep it family friendly or let it get wild if that's what you're all into.
I will admit it's not for everyone and it fills a slightly different role. Sometimes you want a more casual game where you don't need to think and just choose cards. And games like CAH remove a layer of accountability you don't get when you literally write the answer from unlimited options. But I still find it can be a great choice and overall prefer it myself.
I played a game called Dixit this year with colleagues. I think it's pretty similar to what you describe with Taboo in terms of finding out new things about people based on their answers etc. in Dixit, I find it really interesting to try to get into the clue givers head to try to predict their card. It's one of those games that is more fun with people you know better though and it's a bit difficult to explain the rules initially until you've done a round or two.
Dixit can be infuriating with people who think very differently though! I have friends who seem to go out of their way to overthink things.
You might also enjoy Mysterium, which is an asymmetric Dixit-like (Dixit meets Cluedo I guess?) in which a "ghost" gives clues to detectives through image cards.
Mysterium is one of my favourite board games of all time. We have Dixit too, and you can just swap the cards over. Dixit-with-Mysterium cards is dreamier, and Mysterium-with-Dixit cards is funnier. I guess you could shuffle them together too if you wanted.
They are both fairly infuriating when your so-called friends can't figure out you meant the RED SQUARE YOU IDIOTS, NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HAMMER!
Bohnanza, Catan, and other games that require semi-co-op gameplay or establishing your own trade decisions. My friends seem to agree that I'm an agreeable, pleasant person until I play anything of the like, in which I turn into a cutthroat, calculating lizard.
Or at least, that's what my wife says to get everyone believing she's a trustworthy partner right before she flips something on the table to reveal she's a step ahead of everyone else...
Tri-Bond was an interesting option uh, about 20 years ago (I presume when it first came out). Some friends and I visited another friend living on a boat. We had Taboo but were getting too noisy and some folks in the marina complained. So we went down inside and played Tri-Bond. Turns out, it was a sleeper hit, and we were all amazed we came up with some amazing "guesses". Sadly, I have only played once since, and it definitely takes some thinking minds, but fortunately I guess we were all on our game that night.
Codenames is similar! You have 25 cards with random words on them faceup on the table, and the goal is to get your partner to guess which ones are your team's words without making them guess the other team's words, irrelevant words, or the insta-lose word. You give them one-word clues to direct them toward the correct words, and obviously you're not allowed to just say the word you're thinking of. The trick is coming up with clues that refer to multiple cards - they can guess as many times per turn as you tell them. You want to try to give the most versatile clues possible because you need your team to get all your words before the other team.
So for example, I might see that I need my partner to guess the following words:
Possible good clues might be "animal, 2" (meaning your partner gets two guesses to find two words associated with "animal"), "city, 2", "drink, 2", etc. If you and your partner are really on the same wavelength you might get risky and say something like "Moscow, 4" (referring to "mule", "vodka", "Paris", and "Washington"), but generally the more out there your clues are, the more you risk your partner guessing a wrong word. There could be other capital cities in the list of words, there could be other things that relate to Moscow, or maybe they just don't think to interpret the same clue in two different ways to get both "Moscow mule" and "capital cities".
It's really fun, me and three friends who live nowhere near each other play it online regularly. We hop in Discord and go to horsepaste.com (no idea why it's called that haha). You can play for free with no account. Just a light little app that runs in the browser. There's originally a physical version you can purchase as well for playing in-person.
If you want to try it and need another person, I'd be happy to play with you! Regardless, enjoy.
You might like Puns of Anarchy. There are topic cards, and you put one out in front of each player so everyone can see. These might be something like "pregnancy" or "buying a house". Then everyone draws a few of the other cards, which contain pop culture references. You use a dry erase marker to modify the text on your card to make a pun related to one of the topics, then put the card in a pile by the topic. When every topic has four cards (or when people are "done"), people take turns reading the puns for their topic and they pick their favorite.
The fun of this game is that the rules don't really matter. You're encouraged not to keep score. If you don't have card you can work with, you just trade then in. There is the brief "that was my card" victory surge, but beyond that it is just silly fun. Because there are no teams and no points it's very casual.
My sister makes her own add-on cards which adds a fun layer to it.
Very Special Games has another one called Ransom Notes which has a similar "rules don't matter" vibe. There is a topic and you use magnetic word tiles to compose a response to it (like a random note). It tends to be quieter and more introspective as people work on their poems/stories. This is one that also benefits a lot from adding a bunch more magnetic words, like from refrigerator poetry sets.
I love games like that. They are especially fun to play in person but remotely also works pretty well. I've been hooked on Jackbox games for a long time.
(Shameless plug incoming).
I've been building https://gametje.com to capture those same fun moments. I have a drawing game similar to skribbl but then you have two people drawing at the same time. It's really amusing to see both drawings coming to life simultaneously and the different ways people think. The site also has 4 other games in the same simple to play vein. The UI could use some work but I think it's still pretty fun. I'm still actively developing it on a weekly basis so more games to come eventually 🙂
It also seems remiss not to mention Gartic Phone here too! It basically weaponizes the stuff that makes you lose at a game like taboo or skribbl.io and turns that into the main source of fun.