Wacky ways to play well-known games?
November 27, 2018 4:08 PM Subscribe
The dating/gaming activities mentioned in this post sound like SO much fun! Where can I find more? What are your favorites spins on old classics?
The post mentions "Fiction Scrabble" in which you only play fake words and must pronounce it and explain what it means. The second example is a type of Connect Four in which the line of pieces may wrap around the board to the other side. These sound more creative than any date I've ever been on. I ask this because I, too am looking for a new spin on the dating/night-life scene. What are your own inventions?
The post mentions "Fiction Scrabble" in which you only play fake words and must pronounce it and explain what it means. The second example is a type of Connect Four in which the line of pieces may wrap around the board to the other side. These sound more creative than any date I've ever been on. I ask this because I, too am looking for a new spin on the dating/night-life scene. What are your own inventions?
Monopoly has several add-ons you can buy that change the rules of the game. Those are fun and easy to get into.
Chess has many, many variants.
One of my favorites is, you say, every piece is drunk, and after every move, they have to stop and ask for directions. This means you can't move the same piece twice in a row.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:42 PM on November 27, 2018
Chess has many, many variants.
One of my favorites is, you say, every piece is drunk, and after every move, they have to stop and ask for directions. This means you can't move the same piece twice in a row.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:42 PM on November 27, 2018
I think the term you're looking for is board game remix or board game mashup. There are I think other terms for it when people do this.
Wired article on a "kit" someone was publishing for doing this to popular games (the kit is super expensive now)
posted by twoplussix at 4:43 PM on November 27, 2018
Wired article on a "kit" someone was publishing for doing this to popular games (the kit is super expensive now)
posted by twoplussix at 4:43 PM on November 27, 2018
What I've long called abstract 20 questions, abstract charades, and abstract pictionary, for lack of better names, are delightful in the right company. We usually forbid objects, people, characters, and titled works of art as prompts. To draw a pencil sketch that your team will identify as "stoicism" or "practical effects" is an interesting test of how well you know what your partners know. (In the wrong company, it's a disaster that makes people feel bad.)
posted by eotvos at 3:24 AM on November 28, 2018
posted by eotvos at 3:24 AM on November 28, 2018
Oh man, over Thanksgiving my 8yo got a chess/checkers set with a tic-tac-toe board printed on the back, and promptly invented Chess-Tac-Toe.
Rules: You play with chess pieces on the tic-tac-toe board (but all pieces move the same way, so it doesn't actually matter what you use).
The goal is to get 3 of your color in a row. On your turn you may either place a new piece, or move one of your existing pieces one square forward, backward, left, or right to capture an opponent's piece. No diagonal moves, and you can only move to capture a piece.
It's actually really fun! It makes tic-tac-toe a way more strategic and interesting game (but is still relatively short).
posted by telepanda at 7:13 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Rules: You play with chess pieces on the tic-tac-toe board (but all pieces move the same way, so it doesn't actually matter what you use).
The goal is to get 3 of your color in a row. On your turn you may either place a new piece, or move one of your existing pieces one square forward, backward, left, or right to capture an opponent's piece. No diagonal moves, and you can only move to capture a piece.
It's actually really fun! It makes tic-tac-toe a way more strategic and interesting game (but is still relatively short).
posted by telepanda at 7:13 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Meta Tic-Tac-Toe! Every square of a tic-tac-toe grid is itself another tic-tac-toe grid, and where you go determines where your opponent can go next. The additional rules aren’t hard to grasp (I’ve played it with 6-year-olds) and it introduces a surprising amount of strategic complexity and balancing of goals—trying to win your own small grid versus sending your opponent to a grid where they can’t do as much harm. Totally engrossing. Until the very end, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen next.
posted by miles per flower at 9:48 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by miles per flower at 9:48 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Crazy eights has so many variations we have to verify rules before starting to play. Are we using aces to change directions, jacks to skip a turn, can you stack cards (play all fours in one go), can you stack pick up twos on the queen of spades, are we playing countdown or just a single hand? How many decks are we using?
posted by five_cents at 5:48 PM on November 28, 2018
posted by five_cents at 5:48 PM on November 28, 2018
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I play a game that I call “Rabbit Pussy” which is like Pictionary. You take any existing game that has cards with nouns and/or adjectives on it - a lot of games have these, see Taboo, Outburst, Apples to Apples and In a Pickle for example. If you have adjectives in your set, make a pile for nouns and another for adjectives.
Then you draw two cards - one from each pile if you have adjectives, otherwise two nouns, and secretly draw what your two cards say. Your opponent(s) do the same. When time is up (?) you pass your two cards to the next person and they secretly draw what the cards say in their own way. When everyone has drawn every set, you shuffle the drawings and everyone tries to figure out what the other person was drawing (so this works in groups of 4, when everyone has drawn the same 4 things, or you could do multiple rounds before sharing).
It got its name because one person drew a wimpy rabbit and the other drew a rabbit in a revealing pose.
posted by OrangeVelour at 4:38 PM on November 27, 2018 [6 favorites]