August 2009

  • Free Party Games, Part 6: Bodily Contact!

    By sarajean on 8/30/09 11:06pm
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    We’ve don some nearly-free drinking games, getting-to-know-you games, and basic obnoxious games. Now it’s time to get dirty with some bodily-contact games!

    Okay, so we won’t really be getting that dirty; you’ll get to keep your clothes on, after all. But if you want to take your party up a notch and make everybody giggle, here are some drink-free games that are bound to get you cracking up.

    The Sucking Face Game: Take a post-it note (or something similar) and line up everybody boy-girl-boy-girl (or randomly to make it interesting!). The first person has to suck the post-it note, open-mouthed, to his or her face, and pass it to the next person using only both their mouths!

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  • Free Party Games, Part 5: Getting to Know You

    By sarajean on 8/15/09 1:21pm
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    When you have a group of people who don’t know each other assembled for an event—a birthday party, a family reunion, your uncle Larry’s bris—things can seem rather awkward at first. Nobody knows each other, people are wondering if they can legally ask someone out—or do so without crossing bloodlines—and it’s like a seventh-grade dance.

    You don’t want to resort to name tags because, let’s face it, they don’t help because when you look down at Barbara’s name you think she thinks you’re looking at her boobs. And maybe you are—and why shouldn’t you be? There’s a big sign with her name on them! How can you not stare at that?

    There are easier ways of making people get to know one another. Here are some free (or nearly-so) games geared at doing the thing Julie Andrews was so good at doing—getting to know you.

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  • RPG: Systems vs. Story

    By msarko on 8/9/09 10:59pm
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    I've written a lot already about tabletop games, both of the board and roleplaying varieties, but I'm still something of a newcomer to the scene. As such, I struggle with a lot of elements that long-time players have taken for granted. I didn't start playing these games until my mid-20's, so I don't have any nostalgia factor for any of these systems and settings. Rather, I mostly just take each game at face value. No matter what I've played, there seems to be an issue with balancing the fictional "flavor" of the games and the systems by which they are played.

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  • Board Game Review: Prince of the City

    By msarko on 8/7/09 3:07am
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    Last week I wrote about White Wolf's World of Darkness line of roleplaying games, so I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about one of their simpler properties, a board game called Prince of the City. Released in 2006 as a less involved supplement to the RPG Vampire: The Requiem, this board game is relatively easy to grasp for first-timers but has a lot of room for strategy in the case of long-time players.



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