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Favorite Games at Holiday Parties?

Posted by Cliff on from the simply-having-a-wonderful-christmas-time dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "Somehow, I got volunteered to take care of activities for the adults at my company's holiday party. For those of you who actually go to parties, what games have you played that were a lot of fun both for the geek and just the average person?"

2 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Mafia!!! by jatbrowne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The greatest party game in the world... I'm sure everyone has one tho... It involves logic and psychological games and I think it is great for geeks.

    It works best with more than 5 people people - so lets say you have 8. Take 8 slips of paper, write the letter "M" on three of them and "C" on five. The "M"s are mafia and the "C"s are citizens.

    Then, on instruction (choose a games-master for this), everyone closes their eyes and when the games-master says "mafia open your eyes", the mafia do just that and see eachother. Everyone then closes their eyes, and then everyone opens their eyes at the same time. The object of this is that the mafia know who is a citizen and who is not, and that the citizens have no idea and consequently live in fear.

    Then the game begins. People talk and interrogate eachother until someone announces they beleive that someone else is mafia. They can then call a vote to "kill-off" that person, and if the vote is carried he/she is out of the game and they have to reveal whether or not they were mafia. The object of the game for the mafia is to kill all the citizens, and for the citizens it is to stay alive until all the mafia are dead.

    Give it a go - it really works. Lots of tension builds up and all sorts of weird mind-games happen....

    1. Re:Mafia!!! by HoldmyCauls · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A French student taught a bunch of us a similar game, but we call it "werewolf".

      Take a standard poker deck, pull out a Joker, a Jack and a Queen, and numbered cards for the remaining players.

      The person who gets the Joker is the werewolf, The Jack is the Fortune Teller, and the Queen is the little girl.

      Everyone falls asleep (closes their eyes). The Fortune Teller wakes up, and can see one of the other players' cards. He then falls asleep again. The Werewolf wakes up, and the little girl can if she wants, but can choose not to be seen by the werewolf instead. The Werewolf then kills a villager by selecting his card and it is turned over.

      The dead are not allowed to speak (though they will, of course, be slack about it so long as they don't give everything away). The Werewolf and the little girl fall asleep again, and the town wakes up to see who's dead.

      The villagers then arbitrate and then vote on who dies, and if the Werewolf is not chosen, another round ensues.

      Variations I learned as he taught us and we played:

      Cupid: usually the King of Hearts, he can select any two people to be in love. If one of the lovers dies, the other does as well, whether by the Werewolf or the villagers.

      The Witch: (I forget which card) can choose to kill or revive anyone during her part of the night.

      Two Werewolves.

      Of course, you can't bring up a new topic without a Google:
      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF -8&oe=UTF -8&q=Werewolf+card+game&btnG=Google+Search

      --
      Emacs: for people who just never know when to :q!