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Cool Thing of the Day: Parlor Games

by Alexa on December 16, 2009

Lets play charades!

I love this time of year! As the holidays approach and the weather grows colder, we’re all spending more time inside with family and friends. One of my family’s traditions is to play parlor games, or games that don’t require any special boards and gamepieces. For a proper parlor game, all you’ll need is some paper and and something to write with.

Here are my favorite games and instructions for how to play them. So gather your family and have fun!

Charades

In charades, players have to guess the title of a movie, book, or TV show based the actions of one of the other players.

Break your group into two even teams. Each player writes down the titles of at least one book, movie, and TV show. Put the slips of a paper into a bag or hat. Be sure to keep the different teams’ slips separate.

The first person from the first team pulls a slip from the other team’s bag and then tries to get her team to guess the title based on actions alone. No speaking aloud!

To begin with, signal the type of work your team will be guessing. Outlining a box with your fingers means it is a TV show, pretending to crank an old-fashioned camera means it is a movie, and opening your palms like a book…well you can guess what that is. You can also hold up your fingers to show how many words are in the title. Then to indicate which word in the title you are acting out, hold up that number of fingers.

For example, if I were doing Pride and Prejudice, I would first open my hands like a book and then show three fingers. If I was then going to act out “pride” I would hold up one finger to indicate it’s the first word.

Each player gets one minute to act out their title. Teams get a point for each correctly guessed title.

There are more standardized actions listed here.

Mafia

In mafia (also called werewolf or assassain) the group is divided into townspeople and mafia. The goal of the townspeople is to rid the town of the mafia and the goal of the mafia is to outnumber the townspeople.

To begin, choose a narrator to sit out the round. The rest of the players than choose slips of paper marked with either an “M” or a “T”. When deciding how many slips to make for each letter keep in mind that there should be two townspeople for every mafioso. This means if you have six players there should be four slips with a “T” and two with an “M”.

Gameplay alternates between “night” and “day” with the narrator announcing it. At night, everyone closes their eyes. Then all the mafia member open their eyes and silently indicate who they want to kill. Once they have decided they make sure the narrator knows, and close their eyes.

The narrator then announces it’s day and all the players open their eyes. The narrator reveals who has been eliminated. Next, all the players vote on who they think is a member of the mafia in order to remove them from town. Players who are up for banishment plead their cases, but in the end, one person must be forced out. It’s then night again.

The cycle repeats until one side has won–either there are more mafia members than townspeople or all the mafia members have been banished.

This game is best for groups with more than five people.

Fictionary

Are you good at bluffing? Are you creative? Than you will probably like fictionary. In this game, players must make up definitions for obscure words and then try to guess the real definition.

One player picks a word from the dictionary. After making sure that no one knows the real definition, all the other players write down a fake definition on a slip of paper. The person who picked the word writes down the real definition. That person takes all the slips and reads them aloud in any order. Finally, the players vote on which definition they think is true. You win if you can trick everyone into voting for your definition, or if you guess the correct definition.

The Minister’s Cat

This game doesn’t even require pen or paper, so it’s great for road trips.

The first player describes the minister’s cat using an adjective beginning with the letter A: “The minister’s cat is an agile cat.” The next player must pick a different adjective also beginning with the letter “A”. The round ends when everyone has given an A-adjective. The next round is the letter B, and play continues until you reach the end of the alphabet. You lose a round if you can’t think of an adjective for that letter.

A more difficult version of the game really tests your memory. In this version the first player names an a A-adjective, the second player repeats the A word and names a B-adjective, the third player repeats A, B, and adds a C-adjective. So the fifth player might say, “The minister’s cat is an agile, bright, colorful, daring, excited cat.” Players lose when they forget an adjective.

For all of these games, the most important thing to remember is that you’re playing for fun. Don’t let the game get too serious or a desire to win get in the way of enjoying time with your friends and family.