[Salad bowl image from fir0002 / flagstaffotos.com.au, under a CC BY-NA 3.0 license.]

At a party, or hanging out with some friends or strangers, and not sure what to do or how to get to know each other? Try a social game! The ones here fall loosely into a couple categories: improv, communication, affinity, and inference.

Don’t get me started – improv

The simplest of improv games. Possibly, it will get you comfortable generating and discussing opinions, but even if it doesn’t or you’re already comfortable with that, it’s a bunch of fun.

The game goes in a circle. Person A comes up with a topic, and tells it to Person B. Someone starts a 3-minute timer. Person B energetically rants about the topic for 3 minutes. At the end of the 3 minutes, Person B writes a new topic for Person C, and the game proceeds.

The purpose of the game is to rant, not to necessarily say things you agree with or even think are factually correct – trying to come up with a coherent critique on the spot is fun, but something like Cecil Palmer’s thoughts on the existence of mountains is also a great outcome.

Some notes: People’s tolerance for ranting about things they actually care about, or are close to, vary in a party context, so let people veto suggestions. There is no “losing”, there’s just continuing to rant until the timer is up.

Salad Bowl – improv / communication

A slightly more complicated improv game.

Start by separating your group of 5-12 people into two teams. Everybody gets 6 pieces of paper (more or less depending on how long you want the game to be), writes a word or short phrase on it, folds it, and puts it into a bowl. The bowl is shuffled.

For each round, take 30 seconds per person. One person draws a sheet from the bowl, and tries to get others on their team to guess the word. If their team gets the word, the person puts the sheet aside and draws another. At the end of 30 seconds, hand the bowl to the next person on the opposing team.

With an odd number of players, one person doesn’t get assigned to a team – on their turns, everybody gets to guess. The sheet of paper goes to whichever team guesses the correct answer.

At the end of each round, tally and write down how many sheets of paper each team has won. Put the papers back in the bowl, and move on to the next rounds.

Remember, the rounds go in order!

Round 1: Taboo. You can say any words except for the one (or ones) written on the card, or versions of them. (E.G., if the card says “dank memes”, then “rare Pepes” or “cats from the internet with words on them” is fine, but “meme”, “memes”, “memetic”, or “memery” are not.)

Round 2: Charades. Act out the word.

Round 3: One word. You can say exactly one word (that’s not the word or a version of the word on the card) to get your teammates to guess what’s on the card.

Round 4: Pose. Say “close” when your turn starts. Everybody on your team closes their eyes. Strike a pose that represents your word or phrase. Say “open”. Hold the pose, and your teammates guess based on the pose.

Post-it Pictionary – communication

For n people (where n = 4-10), give everyone a pile of n post-it notes. Everybody writes a sentence or phrase on the bottom post-it note. Then they pass it to the right.

The next round of people look at the bottom note, then, on the post-it above it, draw a picture to represent the sentence. Then they pass it to the write.

The next round of people look at only the most recent note, then write the phrase they think is described by the image.

Continue passing stacks, alternating looking at the most recent note and drawing a picture or writing a sentence. Once the note reaches its original owner, go around and show off what happened to your note.

Hot Seat – affinity

Do you want to know a group of people way, way better? This game is the fine craft nitro porter to “Truth or Dare”’s 6-pack of Budweiser. I think it came from the Authentic Relating community.

Find a smallish group of people among whom there’s a decent amount of trust. Put everyone in a circle somewhere where other people won’t wander in (e.g., if you’re in a party, walk to a park or find a room and close the door.) Start a timer. (5 minutes is good, make it more or less depending on the size of the group and how long you want to spend playing.) Everybody asks any question they want to the person “in the hot seat”, who answers. This person is allowed to skip questions. At the end of the timer, go to the next person.

Variations:

• If the person in the hot seat doesn’t want to answer a question, they cede their turn to the next person.
• At the start of their turn, the person says a number from 1-5 designating the amount of invasiveness of the questions they want. (In my experience, question-askers aren’t very good at translating a number into a nuanced level of invasiveness, but your group may be different.)
• The version described under “Hot Seat” in this PDF.

Some notes: The people I play this with call it “intimacy hacking”. For the game to go successfully, I think the people asking questions do have to be ready to ask personal questions, but to try not to hurt the person in the hot seat. It actually gets easier to play around people you don’t know very well.

If the person in the seat clearly stands out in some way from the other people playing (gender, background, appearance, whatever), you might still ask about that, but tread carefully and don’t only ask questions about that. Try not to use the game to hit on people or ask a lot of prurient questions only to people you’re into. Having a facilitator who can police questions if needed is good if you’re not all very comfortable with each other. Be sure that everybody knows what they’re getting into, and with whom, before you start and it becomes harder to duck out.

Aside from that, ask questions you’re curious about, questions that’ll help you know them better, or questions that are fun to answer. This game is easier to play than it sounds, and kind of magical when it goes well.

Chill Seat – affinity

Less replay value than Hot Seat, but still a lovely time.

Everybody goes around the circle, and gives a compliment to the person in the Chill Seat. Then go on to the next person.

Variations: We played a version at a going-away party, where everyone said nice things about the people who were leaving. It was adorable.

Ring of Fire – affinity

Conceptually similar to Hot Seat.

Go around the circle. The first person asks a question, and in turn, everyone else in  the circle answers – ending in the person who asked the question. Then the next person goes.

Some notes: This game tends to be easier to play than Hot Seat, but can still be intense. People have different tolerances of getting into long personal stories during the game – I find it kind of frustrating, some people think it adds a lot of value and enjoyment. If your group decide to stop playing, make sure to wait until everyone’s answered the current question.

“Why these and not those” games – inference

Good for trying some group problem solving. Described better by my friend here.

Flying Circus – inference

Like a chump, I’m writing this without having tried it myself. That said, I imagine an interesting group game is getting a hold of one of the Flying Circus of Physics (With Answers) books, or questions from it online, and trying to answer one of the questions in it as a group.

Remember some strategies for group problem-solving: make sure you understand the problem before proposing solutions, try coming up with several hypotheses, try coming up with experiments or observations that would disprove your hypotheses. Don’t look up information, but think of related phenomena you’re familiar with, and see if your theory works with them.

Probably works best for groups who are interested in physical phenomena, but for which no member is already especially knowledgeable.

Other games

Improv: List of improv games

Communication: Mad Libs, Telephone

Affinity: Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever

Inference: 20 Questions, lateral thinking puzzles, Who Am I

Other classes of social games: Storytelling games, strategy games