Dinner parties are versatile and unique. You can make formal invitations and invite twenty people, or keep things small and intimate with your closest friends. Dinner itself can be a no-frills laid-back barbecue or a more gourmet three or four course meal. All these details tell a lot about the type of host you are (or want to be). For some of us (including me) it's fun to put our personal touches through the organization of it all. But, today I'm wondering what do you do after the dinner party? After the ice cream is scooped and the soufflés are poked, do you have some house games that you go to? I'll share our house favorites, but I'd love to hear yours, too.
An evening with dinner and games works best for us with a small group of people, about six to eight total. Sometimes these get-togethers are organized around an occasion, sometimes they're impromptu and casual with just a few snacks (and cookies). Our two house favorites are Guesstures and our modified version of Pictionary.
Guesstures is easy to setup and always a lot of fun with our group of friends. We have the digital version that you literally just set out on the table and start. If you're not familiar with Guesstures, it's basically like charades with a timer — your goal is to get your team to guess as many words/phrases in 30 seconds. I'm known for over-thinking the clues and doing the non-obvious, i.e. not your best partner.
The other game we play I am better at: Pictionary. Unlike the traditional game, at our house we toss aside the board and game pieces and just take out the clue cards. We then break out a large dry erase board with markers. It basically Win-Lose-Draw with Pictionary cards.
If you're interested, here's how we play it...
- Start by dividing everyone up into two teams (a numbers in a box system works well). Everyone gets a turn to draw, and only the members of your team get a chance to guess.
- The drawer picks a Pictionary card and trys to draw as many clues from the card as they can with the timer. Each clue is worth one point, and the hardest clue (denoted by green) is worth two points.
- When the time is up, if a clue isn't guessed, the other team gets a chance to steal the points for that clue. For a steal, the other team confers with each other and takes one guess - a final answer, if you will.
- After one person on a team draws, another person from the other team draws and things proceed like this until one team gets twenty points - the winner.
- Try it out and let me know what you think.
Game nights are great for close friends and new friends you're just getting to know. They're also a great excuse for planning a fun dinner full of recipes you want to try. You could even course it out—appetizers, game, dinner, game, dessert, game!
Do you have game evenings after dinner? What are some of your house favorites?
Related: Hosting Game Night? A Roundup of Snack Recipes
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My husband and I are avid board game fans, and we always have something new. The Resistance has been very popular, as well as Ticket to Ride. I enjoy Castle Panic as its a cooperative.
Heh, the gaming is usually the purpose of the evening, and the dinner is secondary, amongst my group of friends - not that I don't go out of my way to make something tasty when people come to our place! Ticket to Ride is good for a quick game; Settlers of Catan is classic; and Pandemic or Red November come out for long, extended and occasionally frustrating cooperative games.
I love Bang!, Mafia, and a game called bucket (involving writing famous names on slips of paper and then guessing them over three rounds of increasing difficulty)
I also enjoy Pass the Bomb, Scattergories, and Lost Cities. I had a lot of fun playing Agricola at a friend's house, but haven't played it more than that one time.
We love Catch Phrase and The Game of Things!!
Ooo! All great ones.
We went on a streak of playing Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico with a few friends. We played Bang! a few times as well, forgot about that one.
I'll have to look into some of the other suggestions.
Settlers of Catan, Scrabble, and Catchphrase are our favorites. We don't own it, but we WILL be purchasing Cards Against Humanity for some totally inappropriate fun - played that once with a friend and nearly died laughing.
I hear Quelf is silly and tons of fun, too. :)
@asmallcontempt: Cards Against Humanity is available as a Creative Commons download if you can't wait to order. About $15 at Staples and a couple of hours of cutting and you're ready to be inappropriate at any time.
Family dinners tend to adjourn to the mahjong table, though we have also played some Wii rockband (Beatles edition) to great success. Friend dinners tend to go towards Taboo, in which you get your team to guess the word on the card without using any of the 5 taboo words also listed on the card. To really mix things up, we'll switch to French (Canadian edition) and everyone stumbling in a second or third language.
We like board games and are all for games if that is made clear beforehand but we've been out a few times and after dinner people pull out Apples to Apples or the like and my husband gives me the "get me the hell out of here!" look!
A very vintage edition of Go to the Head of the Class is our house standard, especially because we tend to mostly invite over teachers and administrators (my wife is a teacher). The questions are goofy enough that it's fun even for the people who aren't playing (that's usually me).
As far as cooperative games go, Flash Point is a favorite, although your guests have to be willing to learn the rules (you pick it up pretty quick, but it seems like a lot at first).
Apples to Apples is totally non-competitive and a great ice-breaker. We love it!
Cards Against Humanity is soooo wrong. :) I LOVE IT!!!!
Also, Balderdash, Moods, and Munchkin.
I looked up Castle Panic and the five or six cards I saw pictured were all male oriented -- of knights. Are there any female oriented cards, or other piaying pieces, in this game?
A favorite that is so easy to learn and so much fun is Incan Gold. Everyone who has played it loves it.
My boyfriend and all his friends are big board game people, so evenings in groups are usually planned around playing games, dining is secondary.
If there's a huge group, Bohnanza is a fun one.
Dominion and Lord of the Rings are always popular; Amun-Re is one they've played a bunch recently, as well as Bios Megafauna.
I like Agricola (without the expansion pack), because you know, farming and feeding your little people.
anything except apples to apples is ok with me
Settlers of Catan, Clue and Taboo. Sometimes Scrabble.
Like a few of the posters above we often plan our nights around the games and ask each guest to bring one to play. At the moment our favourites are Bananagrams, a great scrabble-like word game and Jungle Speed, which is a very fun and hectic card game. We also invented a game we called ERS or extremely ridiculous snap which is a combination of the rules of snap and the rules of strip jack naked. My friends are so competitive and violent we ever had to introduce a blood rule!
I also tend to have people over for the purpose of playing games and typically it just happens to be dinner time.
We play a lot of the ones listed as well of Dominion, which is one of my favorites and 7 wonders, one of my husband's favorites.
For those of you who like strategy games check out the youtube show tabletop: http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/ It has introduced me to a whole bunch of games that I have gotten addicted to.
@Ninion - The cards in castle panic are really just one use "pawns" that you use to kill goblins and trolls and such. I never really noticed when I play whether they are male, female or whatever. It really doesn't affect gameplay at all as all the cards are just pawns and you play as yourself.
I'm going to go against the grain here and say video games and not the casual Wii party games. I'm talking old school - Intellivision, Atari 2600 and NES.
"Left, Right, Center" with a group of people playing with dollar bills is always fun. It's totally up to chance, the drama is fun, and somebody leaves with a wad of dollars. The pot gets especially big if nobody wins and the only way to access it is to play another game!
Nothing. After the dinner is over we either continue having a conversation over drinks in the living room like civilized people, or it's late and guests leave. If I had to play something it would be Scrabble but seriously I've never been at a dinner party where people offered or asked to play games after dinner was over.
Sometimes nothing, but "The Game of Things" is awesome for adults!! Similar to Apples to Apples, but much better!!! You'll be laughing the whole night!
LRC, Scattergories, The Game of Things, Catchphrase and SceneIt! movie trivia for Xbox. Pretty much anything where you can play with close friends or people you're just getting to know. Anything that players won't take too seriously. My husband's family loves playing poker, but I find it gets too competitive and they always want to keep the game going even after it loses its "fun" to me.
If it's just my husband and I, it's usually Scrabble. We are a bit competitive, and have kept a running Wins/Losses score since we moved in together. I'm up in the series overall, but only by one game.
Settlers of Catan!