Last week, we lost power. The last time we lost power, it didn’t come back on for three days, so I ran out for sandwich supplies, jugs of water, and a game. Knowing nothing about it besides what it said on the box, I grabbed Happy Salmon, which is made by the same people who made Exploding Kittens.
Great pick. It cost about $12 and it’s just a deck of cards. You can play with as few as three people, but it’s more fun with more (as many as eight); and you can play with people who are as young as six or even younger, and they don’t have to be literate.
The deck gets divided up so everyone has a small stack of cards. The object of the game is to be the first one to get rid of your cards. You do this by flipping over one, announcing what’s on it, finding someone else who has the same card, and both doing the action that’s on the card. Then you can both discard your cards.
Everyone is flipping cards and announcing their cards loudly and simultaneously, so it’s silly and chaotic, like a fun version of the trading floor on the New York Stock Exchange.
The actions are “high five” (self-explanatory), “fish bump” (do a fist bump), “happy salmon” (smack together your forearms twice), and “switch it up (which you signal by swirling your finger high in the air, and act out by switching places).
So yes, you do have to get up to play this game. I was a little sad to learn this, hoping I could sit on my bum while I played; but the other thing about this game is that a round takes about two minutes or less to play. So you can go back to sitting down pretty soon.
There is the tiniest bit of potential strategy, in that, if you don’t find a match right away, you can either hang on to your card and keep trying, or discard it for a new one, which means you may miss your chance to match with someone else. But it’s super fast-paced, so if you chose wrong, you quickly get swept past your mistake.
The whole thing is very jolly and ridiculous, and it’s also very easy for adults to even things up by making sure they don’t keep matching with the same kid. I’m not saying it’s impossible for a kid to lose badly and get their feelings hurt, but if that does happen, you can just play another quick round, and someone else will probably win. Damien and I played it with the little girls and genuinely had fun doing it.
It is more fun with more than three people, but you can adapt it so it makes sense for three people to play; and you can also play a silent version, which we haven’t tried yet, but which sounds entertaining.
Enthusiastically endorsed. A truly family-friendly game designed to be played by people of all ages and/or a people of assorted ages, that just about anyone can learn instantly, and that doesn’t have a lot of pieces to lose. It would make a great cheerer-upper if people are gloomy, or an ice breaker at a party of shy folks. The actions are silly but not humiliating. It really strikes the perfect balance of simplicity and entertainment value.
The cards come in a box the size of a small, thick book. The cards are smaller than standard playing cards and are laminated and seem reasonably durable.
You know those memes where people’s heads are melting, turning into horrible, bloated balloons, or otherwise undergoing some kind of excruciating suffering because they have to listen to someone read the rules of a new board game?
This is me. I’m too old and dumb and my neurons are all completely busy trying to remember where I put my pants. I don’t want to learn a new game!
So I was very skeptical about Forbidden Island. There seemed to be a LOT of rules and exceptions and actions and sub-actions and choices for each turn, and I could feel my head start to puff up by page two. But a promise is a promise, so I forged ahead.
Glad I did! It’s a neat little game, and once you go a few rounds, it really does make sense. I would have made a few small stylistic changes to make it feel a little more coherent, but the structure is solid and all action and variety fall into place quickly. I played with kids aged 11 and 8 who had played once before, and it was well within their grasp. The game took about half an hour. It combines chance and strategy, but you’re supposed to confer and collaborate with your team members, and the tension comes from trying to escape in time, rather than beat each other.
You’re a team trying to rescue all four elemental treasures off a mysterious island and flee before it sinks into the sea. At each turn, you move around to different spots, or sometimes move others around, trying to collect treasure or achieve various goals. You also have to turn over cards that make sections of the island fall into the sea; but you also have the chance to shore them up, sometimes (but if they sink too often, they’re gone for good). Each player has a slightly different set of skills, which encourages you to work together and forge a plan that uses everyone’s skills and the fruits of everyone’s luck. You also occasionally draw a card that makes you ratchet up the speed at which the water rises. You can control how hard the game is by starting out at various levels, but it will get harder as it goes. I can imagine lots of variety in different games, depending on luck and on who’s playing.
It is a beautiful game. The island is made up of an array of little cardboard cards printed with brightly-colored vignettes, each with a dramatic name, and when the different locations fall into the sea, you flip the cards over to see the same scene depicted in an eerie blue.
The treasures are little figurines made of heavy plastic, and are appealing and will seem worth collecting to kids.
The whole thing fits nicely into a medium-sized tin box that will fit on a bookshelf.
I would have come up with some term a little more evocative than “actions” for the three things you can do on each turn; and I would have chosen something more romantic than a helicopter pad for the only possible escape route. But these aren’t deal breakers; they just disrupt the mood a bit.
But I definitely recommend this game for kids who are ready to play something a little more complicated than the same old games that take you around and around the board, or require you to act viciously toward each other. It requires strategy, but only a little bit, and stronger players who have better ideas can guide the more confused players whose head blew up like balloons when the rules were being read (so it would work well for people of different ages to play together, as long as they don’t hate each other). It’s compelling but not nail-biting, and it will capture the imagination of visually creative players. You do need to be able to read, but not a lot. It says it’s for ages ten and up; but as I said, my smart eight-year-old did fine with it.
It’s also reasonably priced! Some games are insanely expensive, but this one is listed at about $20 right now. This game apparently has some expansion packs, and also a follow-up game called Forbidden Desert.
Remember the sweet pretend games we used to play when we were kids? Remember baby dolls, and house, and school, and When Will My Husband Return From The War, and Tie Those Ropes Up Tighter, She’s Trying To Get Away?
No? Well, maybe you don’t want to let your kids play with mine, then.
Let me back up.
Maybe you remember when Barbie dolls were the toy that bad parents let their kids play with. I definitely do. Lipsticked, high-heeled Barbie, with her extreme bodily proportions and her cheap, trampy attire, was the wicked, modernist plaything that trained little girls in the ways of eating disorders and prostitution, according to the paranoid lore of the time.
I’m not really sure if my mother believed this, or if she only thought it might possibly be true; or possibly she just didn’t have the budget to buy us Barbies; but we definitely didn’t have any Barbies when I was growing up. And then when I grew up and had my own first several kids, who were all girls, I kept Barbies out of the house, because I was nervous about what would influence their ideas of the world and themselves.
The “Barbie is the devil” argument is extreme, but there’s some truth in it. Kids do internalize what they see, and if they’re constantly told that beauty looks like an impossibly tall, spindly waif who’s 90 percent hair and eyelashes, it certainly could contribute to feelings of inadequacy, and the desire to be thinner.
But it’s harder to make that argument against Barbie today, when today’s Barbies look downright wholesome compared to the vicious faces on so many of the other doll lines out there, which I can only describe as baby sex demons.
Barbie’s expression is a bit vacuous and her legs are still too damn long, but other than that, it’s hard to object. Even the clothes are made better than they used to be; and my kids would just as soon make their own doll gowns out of tissues and duct tape anyway. Anyway, one way or the other, we got worn down, and found less and less energy for worrying about certain things, and now we have eight daughters and something like 700 Barbies.
And this particular doll company really has been doing good things in the field of inclusiveness. Rather than denying the charge that kids are learning from their dolls, they’re embracing it, and a few years ago began producing a line of stylish dolls that sport prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs, hearing aids, and braces, and have bald heads or uneven skin tone, or otherwise appear in ways that would have scared me off when I was a kid, whether I saw these things on a doll or on a person — largely because I just didn’t have much exposure to it.
Kids learn to emotionally manage ideas through play, and playing with dolls who look different from them helps them become comfortable with people who look different from them. At least that’s the idea.
But the Mattel company has larger claims than that. They funded a study that says that doll play in general (not just dolls with disabilities or body differences) builds empathy (or at least, more empathy than playing games on a tablet). And this, too, seems like common sense to me.
In the study, they found that, when children spend time playing with dolls, together and singly, it activates regions of the brain associated with social activity, with behavioral control, and processing rewarding events.
The researchers concluded that pretend play — at least, more so than tablet play — supports social processing and empathic reasoning. Even when kids played with dolls solo, rather than with other children, it “allows the rehearsal of social interactions and social perspective taking [and] provides a unique outlet for practicing social and empathic skills.” In other words, playing with dolls teaches kids how to act with each other.
And I believe it. Really, I do. I just wonder where my particular kids fit in.
My kids never once, to my knowledge, acted out a happy domestic scene. If there was a mother with some children, she was always dashing around looking for someone to take the little brats off her hands so she could go out partying with her boyfriend, the crazed leader of a Mexican drug cartel.
Sometimes the father was involved, but he was usually a mute and grief-stricken warrior dealing with the affects of having been betrayed by his own men in the war. Or sometimes the children themselves would be wicked, and would invite each other over for picnics, only to lure their innocent playmates onto what turned out to be sacrificial altars, where they were quickly tied up and disemboweled, their squeaky cries rising up into the night air, their blood running in rivers as a libation for the hungry gods.
Who wants to come study my children? Who wants to figure out what, exactly they are learning with this rehearsal of social interactions? I’m having a hard time classifying it as “practicing empathetic skills” when the end result is that the Midge doll has been snatched bald after a particularly vicious cat fight with Anna of Arendelle, who is meaner than she looks, especially when someone gets between her and her man. And never mind that her man is Luke Skywalker, who is once again naked. Oh Luke.
I don’t know, maybe they really are learning empathy through this kind of play. Maybe if it weren’t for doll play, they’d be even less empathetic than they are now. Maybe the bitter feud that’s been raging between Ariel the mermaid and Princess Organa is all that’s been standing between my daughters and world domination. One never knows.
The moral of this story is, you can worry all you want about what’s going to happen to your kids; and you can do all the studies you like about what’s going to happen to your kids. But in the end, all children are a little bit insane, and many children are almost completely insane.
The things kids do when they’re in a lab and someone is listening in with a microphone and a clipboard is one thing; the things they do when they’re alone in their bedroom with a teeming host of plastic dolls, a head full of nonsense, and no rules whatsoever . . . well, that’s another story entirely. There’s probably nothing you can do about it, so you might as well enjoy the ride.
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Very simple concept. Someone reads a prompt from a card, and everyone (including the reader) has to pick words from their collection of word magnets to express what is on the card. Then everyone reads their entry aloud.
I dearly wish I had taken more pictures, but here are two entries for the prompt “Summarize the Star Wars movies:”
and
I mean . . . yup, that’s Star Wars!
Once everyone has read their entry, a judge for the round is randomly chosen, and he decides whose entry is funniest and best, and that person wins the round. Everyone replenishes their word magnets and they play another round. Whoever wins five rounds wins the game.
What I liked about the game:
It’s simple and flexible. Very much designed to be played by a bunch of people who are laughing and shouting and possibly drinking, and who aren’t going to get hung up on counting or nitpicking or other minutiae; but it could also easily be played by a more sober, thoughtful crowd. The play moves along quickly, and there are lots of ways to adapt it. It’s a game that’s designed to be flexible.
The magnets seem reasonably sturdy, and the little metal boards on which you arrange your thoughts are pleasing. They are like miniature baking sheets and I just liked them. You can also add in your own collection of word magnets, if you happen to have some. The whole game comes compactly stored in a small, deep box.
Every round was amusing, and some were hilarious. Some of the answers were downright brilliant, and it was so entertaining to see different players’ personalities expressed in their answers as they read out them out. Delivery also played an important part in how the responses were received.
The game is structured so there’s not one person who’s “it” and has to sit out the fun. They also stipulated that whoever is judge of the round may chose his own answer as the winner, but it had better be awfully good; and the other players can unanimously overrule him, if necessary. Some of the funniest answers were just a word or two.
Overall, it’s very obvious that they tested this game thoroughly with lots of players, and crafted it well for real people to play. They even thought of details like reminding you to stick your word magnets to the side of the tray without a lip, so it will be easier to scrape them off into the pot when the round is over.
What I didn’t like:
The suggested time limit of 90 seconds per round is too dang short! We ended up just giving everyone as much time as they needed to come up with an answer. And by “everyone” I mean “me,” because I am old and have lost my brain sparkle. Although I think I wasn’t giving myself enough magnets. Here is what the recommended number of magnets for a round looks like (“three pinches,” or about 75 magnets):
There are also some prefixes and suffixes in the mix, that didn’t happen to make it into this collection.
The major quibble I had was that they were trying a little too hard to steer you toward a naughty game experience (and yes, it does say it’s for ages 17+.) We didn’t come across any really R-rated words (I think we found “boob,” “genital,” “panties,” and “bitchy” and a few others at that level), but there were a lot of words like “secrete” and “bedroom” and “flesh” which are not inherently sexy, but it felt like the word selection overall was weighted in that direction.
Regular readers will know I don’t have a problem with racy humor! There was just a slightly forced, smirky feel to it, and I wish they had just chosen more neutral words, and let the double entendres arise more naturally, because they’re funnier that way. I like deciding when I want to make a dirty joke, rather than getting buffaloed into it because we’re at a party and that’s how you have to act. Possibly I am overstating this issue, because I am a mom who was playing a game with several teenage daughters, and I may have been on high alert.
A few of the cards pretty explicit (“Walk us through the masturbation process,” for instance, and “Ask your boss for a promotion in exchange for sexual favors”). It’s easy enough to just toss any cards and magnets you don’t want in your game (the FAQs say about 15-30% of the cards are not PG), but it’s something to know about ahead of time, depending on who’s going to play.
Here’s a selection of cards I drew randomly, to give you an idea of what kind of prompts you might encounter:
So you can see it’s kind of edgy, but by no means always sexy.
In general:
We played with kids ages 12 and up (younger than the suggested age). In theory, you could play with younger kids, but even though the play is simple, it can be surprisingly mentally taxing (unless some inspiration jumps out at you), and I don’t think younger kids would have understood the point, or had fun with it.
It comes with six little trays for words, and says it’s for 3-6 players. I suppose you could play with more people, and just find something else to stick the magnets to, but it might get cumbersome if you add too many players.
Overall, a clever, funny, successfully-conceived game, and we laughed a lot, and we played a full game in under an hour. We’ll definitely be playing again. It has lots and lots of cards, so you won’t be repeating phrases anytime soon; and there are enough magnets that you should keep coming up with fresh combinations. I anticipate expansion packs.
This Christmas vacation, all 10 of my kids were are under one roof! I don’t know how many more times this is likely to happen; but while it lasts, we’re going to enjoy it. One thing we like doing is playing games — video games, certainly, and board games, sometimes. But my favorites are the ones we can play without any equipment except our own goofy brains. Here are some of them:
STINKY PINKIES
A rhyming riddle game that you can play at all different levels, with kids who just barely know how to rhyme, to people with complex and mysterious brains. My seven-year-old loves to play this in the car. One person thinks of two words that rhyme and have the same number of syllables, and supplies hints, and everyone else has to guess. Whoever guesses correctly first gets to think of the next riddle. If the words have two syllables each, you say you have a stinky pinky. If they have three syllables each, it’s a stinkity pinkity. Four syllables, a stink-inkity pink-inkity; and so one. One syllable word pairs are a stink pink, of course.
A simple example: A stink pink that’s a container for an orange animal with a big tail. The answer is: Fox box.
A more complicated one: What’s a wild, irresponsible string of pearls? Answer: a reckless necklace. I asked my son this one, and he guessed “unruly jewelry,” which doesn’t scan right, but is pretty good! I also gave him the hint of something that fastens pants and goes upside down, with “zipper flipper” in mind, but he guessed “suspender up-ender.”
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
Charades mashed up with ‘The Office’ can entertain the whole families for hours.
This one involves getting out of your chair, unfortunately. It’s good for ages 6 to adult, and it’s very easy to drop in and out of, and is very entertaining to watch other people play.
The set-up: one person is the boss, one person is the employee who is late for work, and one person is the co-worker. The boss faces the employee, and the co-worker stands behind the boss, so the employee can see him, but the boss cannot.
The boss barks at the employee, “Why were you late?” The employee starts to make his excuses — but he has to describe what the co-worker is miming. Remember, the boss can’t see him.
So the co-worker is marching, dancing, swatting imaginary flies, being strangled, fighting invisible gorillas, etc., and the employee is narrating it.
Then the boss, at any point he wants to, whips his head around to and yells at the co-worker, “What are you doing?” And the co-worker has to instantly come up with a plausible, office-appropriate explanation for whatever he was caught doing. If he was acting out “killing a bear with my teeth,” for instance, he might say, “Oh, I was just eating one of these crullers. Thanks for the crullers, boss!”
If the boss likes the excuse, he says, “Okay,” and the game resumes. But if he doesn’t, he says, “You’re fired!” and the next person gets to be the co-worker
FICTIONARY
Okay, just for this one, you do need some equipment, but I had to include it because I love it so. You will need a thick dictionary and a bunch of paper and pens. It’s best for players at least 8 years old and up, and you need at least four players to make it fun. More is better.
The person who’s “it” finds a word that no one is familiar with, and he writes down the real definition. Everyone else writes down a fake definition. The person who is “it” reads them all out loud, and everyone but “it” has to guess which one is real.
Then “it” reveals the true definition. You get a point if you guess the real one, if someone votes for your fake one, or if you’re “it” and no one guesses the real one. Everyone gets a turn being “it” to complete one round of play.
Proper nouns, foreign language words, acronyms, and abbreviations are out. Spell and pronounce the word for everyone, and say what part of speech it is. If you’re “it,” you can simplify the real definition a bit, as long as you don’t significantly change it. Read all the definitions over silently to make sure you understand and can pronounce everything before reading them aloud. Be sure to shuffle them before reading aloud, so there are no clues about who wrote what.
You can’t vote for your own definition. The person who’s “it” does not vote. If there is one person who is head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to guessing, that person can vote last, so as not to influence the others.
The brilliance of this game is the psychology that goes into it. You have to use your knowledge of the people involved, not just your knowledge of language. And there’s always that one person who doesn’t care about the score and just wants to mess with people.
GHOST
A spelling game, but it’s more fun than it sounds, and also involves more psychology than you’d think. A group of people spells a word out loud together, one letter at a time. The goal is to draw the word out as long as possible without being the one who says the last letter. So the person who starts will say, for instance, “R.” Then the next person will add the next letter — say, “E.” Then the next person will say “S.”
The hard part is, you have to supply a letter that doesn’t spell an entire word; but you have to have a real word in mind, that you’re working on spelling. The idea is to force someone else into ending the word. So if I am thinking of the word “restaurant,” and I supply the “T” when it’s my turn, then the round is over, because I’ve spelled “rest.”
But if someone supplies a letter that doesn’t spell a word — say “A” — and you can’t figure out what word they could possibly be working on (“‘Resa?’ What word starts with ‘resa?’” you’re thinking, because you keep thinking about “reservation,” but of course the word is “resale,” silly) you may challenge that person to reveal what the heck kind of ridiculous word they’re thinking of.
If they’re bluffing and it’s not a word, but they’re just trying to make it difficult for the next person with the letter they’ve chosen, then they’re out; but if they’re actually spelling a word, then they win.
GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!
This is a game that only works if no one announces that you’re playing it. It replicates the experience of being a member of the secret service whose job it is to protect the president. I know you guys have a prime minister or whatever, but work with me, here. One person begins by holding two fingers up against his ear as if listening intently to some intel coming through an earpiece.
If you notice someone is doing this, you will realize that the game is in session, and you must silently begin to also hold up two fingers against your ear. One by one, everyone in the room begins to realize what is happening, and stifles giggles while exchanging significant looks. When there is only one clueless person remaining who hasn’t noticed what is going on, then that is the president, and everyone else can simultaneously shriek, “GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!” and tackle that person to the floor.
It’s so much fun, and hardly anyone ever dies of terror. Note: Husbands generally don’t care for this game, so act accordingly.
IN THE MANNER OF THE ADVERB
One person thinks of an adverb, and everyone else has to guess what it is, by watching him do things in the manner of that adverb.
For instance, say I’m thinking about “bitterly.” The other shout, “Make some biscuits in the manner of the adverb!” so you commence muttering resentfully about the stupid butter not being cold enough, and how everybody else has a pastry blender, but you have to get along with two pathetic butter knives, and how you certainly hope they appreciate how much trouble you went to, but it doesn’t seem likely, and so on. And they shout out words like “Resentfully?” or “Angrily?” until someone guesses it. This is a good game for finding out whether or not your kids really know what an adverb is, or how biscuits are made.
JEBRAHAMADIAH AND BALTHAZAR (also called “Master and Servant”)
Another role-playing/narrative game, but you can sit down for this one. I am not sure why my kids call this one “Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar,”except that (a) it has something to do with the Jeb! flyers we kept getting in the mail when Jeb Bush was running for president, and (b) they are weirdos.
One person gives orders, the other person explains why he can’t carry them out. The answer has to be part of a consistent narrative — you can’t just make up a new excuse for each command.
Here is an abbreviated example. The longer you can draw it out, the funnier it gets:
Jebrahamadiah! Go get me a glass of water. I would, but I just broke the last glass.
Then go get me a cup of water. I would, but when I broke the glass, I cut my finger, and I can’t use my hand.
Well, use your other hand. I would, but when I was searching for a Band-aid for my one hand, I slammed the medicine chest door on my finger, and now both hands are useless.
Then call an ambulance. I can’t, because, if you’ll recall, my hands don’t work.
Then use the speaker phone. I would, but when I slammed the medicine chest door, some nail polish remover fell on my phone and now the speaker doesn’t work.
Then just shout out the window for help. I would, but the neighbors saw me wrecking my phone, and he’s a big jerk, and laughed so hard that he drove off the road and now he’s in a coma.
Well, shout out the other window on the other side of the house. I would, but when the other neighbor drove off the road, he knocked a utility pole down, and a live wire landed on the house on the other side and now it’s on fire, so I don’t want to bother them.
Well . . . okay, fine, I’ll get my own water.
SHATNER!
This one can be played all day long, while cooking, while setting the table, during the meal, and so on, until you put your foot down and tell them to knock it off or you’re going to strangle somebody.
THE RULES: Life goes on as normal, until someone shouts, “Shatner!” — and then everyone has to do what they’re doing as William Shatner.
I actually stink at this game, but my kids are horrifyingly good at it.
8a. Companion game: DUCHOVNY
The opposite of Shatner. You respond in such an understated way that people have to fight the urge to check your vital signs.
PLURALIZE
You sing a song, except everyone in it becomes two people. Thus, Moana’s cri de couer:
We are some girls who love our islands
We are some girls who love the sea
It calls us
We are the daughters of the village chiefs
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call us
We’ve delivered us to where we are
We have journeyed farther
We are everything we’ve learned and more
Still it calls us
And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside us
It’s like the tide; always falling and rising
We will carry you here in our hearts you’ll remind us
That come what may
We know the way
We are Moanas!
GREG
This one benefits more than others from either having a few glasses of wine in you, or being eleven years old (I cannot recommend both).
THE RULES: You sing songs, but instead of “I,” “me,” or “mine,” you say “Greg.”
There’s “With or Without Greg” by U2; “Amazing Grace” (How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like Greg); and who can forget that sentimental ballad from The Music Man, “Till There Was Greg.”
Extra points if someone in the house is actually named Greg.
I’m delighted to announce that the makers of The Catholic Card Game asked for my collaboration, and you can now order the official NFP Expansion Pack of 54 new cards, including an untold but filthy number of the jokes my husband and I came up with while two sheets to the wind.
The Catholic Card Game is a simple party game along the lines of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, where you must use the hand you’re dealt to finish the sentence. I’ve played the unexpanded version with my kids a few times and they not only enjoyed themselves, they admitted they enjoyed themselves, so that’s pretty hot stuff right there.
The NFP Expansion Pack is not for kids, though. I mean the NFP game is not for kids. If you intend to include kids when you’re playing with NFP– I mean, NFP is just about expanding your– you know what, just buy the game. It’s fun, and we all know you have no other plans for the evening, ha ha ha *sob*.
They also just came out with The Consecrated Expansion, written by nuns and priests, and you can get a discount if you buy both packs.
In conclusion: I have a weird life, but I’m not complaining.
As for us, we’re doing surprisingly well as we head into another of who-knows-how-many-weeks of being stuck at home together. I feel like our family has spent the past 20 years training for an extended period of social distancing such as this.
Working from home, buying in bulk, going long periods without seeing friends, and living our lives with a constant sense of impending doom? These are already our routine, so the past several weeks have just been an intensification of our normal lives, plus the luxury of not having to drive kids into town and back eleven times a day. I told my therapist (via hygienic telemedicine video chat, of course) that we’re actually kind of living my ideal life, minus the obligatory medical panic.
As you Australians head into your enforced staycations, allow me to share some of the things our family is enjoying or planning to enjoy as we find ourselves alone together:
JEBRAHAMADIAH AND BALTHAZAR (also called “Master and Servant”)
Another role-playing/narrative game, but you can sit down for this one. I am not sure why my kids call this one “Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar,”except that (a) it has something to do with the Jeb! flyers we kept getting in the mail when Jeb Bush was running for president, and (b) they are weirdos.
One person gives orders, the other person explains why he can’t carry them out. The answer has to be part of a consistent narrative — you can’t just make up a new excuse for each command.
Here is an abbreviated example. The longer you can draw it out, the funnier it gets:
Jebrahamadiah! Go get me a glass of water. I would, but I just broke the last glass.
Then go get me a cup of water. I would, but when I broke the glass, I cut my finger, and I can’t use my hand.
Well, use your other hand. I would, but when I was searching for a Band-aid for my one hand, I slammed the medicine chest door on my finger, and now both hands are useless.
Then call an ambulance. I can’t, because, if you’ll recall, my hands don’t work.
Then use the speaker phone. I would, but when I slammed the medicine chest door, some nail polish remover fell on my phone and now the speaker doesn’t work.
Then just shout out the window for help. I would, but the neighbors saw me wrecking my phone, and he’s a big jerk, and laughed so hard that he drove off the road and now he’s in a coma.
Well, shout out the other window on the other side of the house. I would, but when the other neighbor drove off the road, he knocked a utility pole down, and a live wire landed on the house on the other side and now it’s on fire, so I don’t want to bother them.
Well . . . okay, fine, I’ll get my own water.
Here’s an excellent game for family night, especially if you have older kids home for Christmas: Fictionary. It’s the basis for the boxed game “Balderdash,” but simpler, and the only equipment you need is a large dictionary, paper, and something to write with for each player. It’s best for players at least 8 years old and up, and you need at least four players to make it fun. More is better.
BASIC RULES: The person who’s “it” finds a word that no one is familiar with, and he writes down the real definition. Everyone else writes down a fake definition. The person who is “it” reads them all out loud, and everyone but “it” has to guess which one is real.
Then “it” reveals the true definition. You get a point if you guess the real one, if someone votes for your fake one, or if you’re “it” and no one guesses the real one. Everyone gets a turn being “it” to complete one round of play.
Details: Proper nouns, foreign language words, acronyms, and abbreviations are out. Spell and pronounce the word for everyone, and say what part of speech it is.
If you’re “it,” you can simplify the real definition a bit, as long as you don’t significantly change it. Read all the definitions over silently to make sure you understand and can pronounce everything before reading them aloud. Be sure to shuffle them before reading aloud, so there are no clues about who wrote what.
You can’t vote for your own definition. The person who’s “it” does not vote. If there is one person who is head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to guessing, that person can vote last, so as not to influence the others.
The brilliance of this game is the psychology that goes into it. You have to use your knowledge of the people involved, not just your knowledge of language. And there’s always that one person who doesn’t care about the score and just wants to mess with people.
Here’s some examples from last night:
Smilax: The real definition turned out to be:
-A kind of oak or bindweed
Fakes:
-A state of disquiet, nervousness
-A smiling climax
-A substrate of xylem in some ferns
-A type of mountain sheep bred in Algeria
-A kind of soap commonly used up until the 19th century, when industrialized factories rendered it obsolete [this one was a joke, as the smarty pants who wrote it thought the pun on “rendered” was too good to pass up]
-wiggly worm
Purdah
The real definition:
-In India, a curtain used to screen women from men and strangers
Fake definitions:
-Disgrace
-Keeping from one another
-A type of ink used commonly in newsprint
-a fog, especially one though to carry illness
-Scottish term for spitting noises
-A very purdy thing
Drogue
Real definition:
-A cone-shaped device towed behind an aircraft as a target
Fakes:
-A unit of measurement equal to two miles
-Boring, dull
-Dreaded, a tyrant
-The feeling of morning dew
-Swamp, marsh, Elijah
At one point, the person who was “it” had to drag one of the less scholarly players into the other room to find out what was meant by “MARGOLD GROWING PLAL.”
As you read this, we’re on our second day of camping. One game we’re bringing with us (because we camp in yurts. Yurt with tables. Daily life is rustic enough without getting tents involved, thanks) is Mysterium (Amazon Associates link), which my 15-year-old son got for his birthday.
But first: It’s Amazon Prime Day! If you’re scooping up some deals on Amazon today or any day, please please consider using my link! (My link is also always at the top of my home page, and on my Facebook page.) I make a commission from sales made through my link, and this makes up a significant part of my family’s income.
I also earn a bounty if you sign up for Amazon Prime. You can get a free 30-day trial, which gives you access to free, fast shipping on many items, special prices on many items (especially today!), free streaming of many excellent (and many terrible) movies and shows, free music streaming and photo storage, free Kindle books, savings on subscriptions, and a ton of other stuff — pretty much everything you could possibly need in life except for love, sex, God, and gin. And warm bread.
It’s a little pricey, but tons of fun, beautifully designed, and sturdy. It’s sort of like Clue, in that you have to make educated guesses about murder suspects, the crime scene, and the weapon — except in Mysterium, you’re helping the dead victim remember who his murderer is. You get clues from a ghost, who can’t remember much about his own murder, and who can only communicate with you for a short time (there is a sand timer involved, and each round moves a clock ahead an hour until your time is up).
The ghost (who sets the game up ahead of time, and who controls the play, sort of like a dungeonmaster) can’t speak except in knocks, so he deals out “vision cards” to the players, who act as mediums, cooperating to solve the mystery.
The catch is, these vision cards are deliberately baffling and subjective, and the players must use their imagination and intuition to figure out which information is important and which is just atmospheric red herrings.
They can also agree or disagree (using “clairvoyance tokens”) with the other players’ guesses, and they advance in play if they agree with guesses that turn out correct.
It’s a cooperative game, all-win or all-lose.
If all the mediums correctly guess the correct suspects, location, and weapon before time runs out, they all advance to the climactic final round. If not, the ghost despairs and fades away without revealing the final clues to his murder.
The game itself is gorgeous, very artfully crafted with clever and entertaining details. (These rather blurry photos don’t convey all the detail and vividness of the actual game components, which are printed on thick, glossy board.)
The pawns are crystal balls, and the play surface, a spectral mansion, is constructed in bits as the play proceeds. A skilled “ghost” can add to the thrills and suspense by hamming it up and adding drama and tension to the play
(for instance, by cawing eerily as he removes the cardboard crows that perch on the wall to signify vision cards that must be discarded).
Since the vision cards are intentionally dreamlike and subjective, you can replay the game many times in different ways
(and, of course, there are expansion packs). You can even download an app which plays unnerving background music to the game, to increase the sense of urgency and unease.
(For the nervous parent: The game deals with ghosts and creepy things, but it’s not occult or demonic, just spooky. Sensitive children might be frightened by the spookiness, but it doesn’t actually show gore or death. It’s more like Edward Gorey meets surrealism.)
You can play with two to seven players. We played last night with two adults and kids ages 16, 15, 12, 10, and 8. You could easily allow a younger child to play as your partner and help you figure out visions — which might even be actually helpful, since overthinking can be an impediment.
The game took about an hour from start to finish, including setup time. It would make a good party game, because players can get the hang of it pretty quickly, as long as one person is already familiar with the rules and is motivated to do the prep work as the ghost. I, frankly, would not be able to juggle enough ideas at one time to be an effective ghost, but some of my kids are great in this role.
And now another reminder that today is Amazon Prime Day.Do use my link! Thanks so much!
