Conversation games

Conversation games are games that require only conversational ability. Conversation games owe their popularity to their ability to be played almost anywhere with almost anyone and for their ability to generate conversation. Their popularity has gained in part due to the Hip Hip Culture and TV shows like Wild 'N Out and Yo Momma.

• The Dozens – A popular game originating from Hip-hop culture where players verbally spar in an attempt to entertainingly insult one another. Related to your mom.

• I Have Never game – A popular drinking game among university students in which a person makes a statement in the form of "I have never X". All people who have done X must then drink. Often people try to craft questions in order to find out interesting information about others.

• Twenty Questions – A 2 player game where one person has a noun in mind and the other player is allowed to ask 20 yes/no questions to try to guess the noun.

• Two Truths and a Lie - The player in the hotseat makes three statements about their life or experiences, two of which are true and one is false. The other players must interrogate them for further details about the three statements; the hotseated player must tell the truth in connection with the two true statements, but may lie to conceal the falsity of the untrue statement. Other players have to guess which is the lie.

• Walrus – A game in which players go back and forth stating nouns that "beat" their opponent's nouns eventually resulting in ridiculous arguments over whether a noun, in fact, beats another noun, e.g., whether Jack Bauer beats Chuck Norris. Also known as existential rock paper scissors.

• What Are They Thinking? – A game played in a public place where one player points to another in the room and asks the other player to describe what they are thinking, how are they feeling, etc. Players may also ask where they work, if they are happy, as well as any other questions.

• Would you rather… – A game in which one player poses two scenarios, both equally revolting and dreadful, to another player who must then chose in which scenario they would rather find themselves. The challenge of the game is to not only come up with the horrific scenarios but find the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario and make a judgment call on which seems like the lesser of two horrors. A notably extreme example of this is You Must Choose, a website that poses user-submitted challenges with two options and counts the number of selections for each.

• "Verbal tennis" - A game in which each player must respond with a question. Statements are out, repetition and rhetoric are not allowed. It was played by the title characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In the film version, it was played in a tennis court.^[1][2].

• "Essence" - A game in which one member of the group thinks of a mutual friend of all the group members and answers questions about that friend's essence until the group is able to guess what mutual friend the judge is thinking of. Examples of questions include: "What color are they?" "What decade are they?" "What stuffed animal would they be?" and "What kind of pornographic material are they?" The judge must answer whatever questions posed to them by the group no matter how creative, unusual, or existential they may be.

• "Marry Shag Kill" (aka "Chuck F**k or Marry") - A game in which players list a group of three people and others must decide which of the group they would Shag (have sex with) chuck (disregard completely) or marry (enter into a marriage with). The people listed are often celebrities or people that everyone in the group knows. Humorous situations often arise when all three listed potential people are considered by the group to be completely undesirable and all must debate on their relative merits and which one would be the best choice for each category.

References

1. ^ Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric, "Rules of play." MIT Press, 2003.Page 318. ISBN 0-262-24045-9, 9780262240451. Retrieved May 1, 2009
2. ^ [1] Johnston, Ian, Malaspina University -College, Nanaimon BC, LBST 402, April 10, 1997. Lecture on Stoppard, "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead." Retrieved May 1, 2009

See also

• Drinking games
• Pub games
• Party games