After playing (and greatly enjoying) Werewolf a few times, it occurred to me that despite my bookshelf full of Designer Games, I know very few parlor games such as Charades and the like. So I recently picked up a tiny book called "After Dinner Games". The book is only slightly larger than a deck of cards, but contains over 30 games that you can play with little more that a pencil, some paper and a group of willing (and perhaps slightly inebriated) friends.
The games are divided into four sections, in increasing degrees of outlandishness: Table Games, Lively Games, Riotous Games and Late Night Games. The first section, Table Games, covers the more serene activities, which generally involve no physical activity and require very little chutzpa on the part of the players. Lively Games are also primarily games to be played around the dining room table, but many now require poker faces and quick wits. So while Table Games describes the rather sedate game "Forbidden Letter" (in which players try and answer questions without using, say, the letter "m"), Lively Games outlines "Odds on Favorites" (which I learned as "Indian Head Poker") in which everyone takes random card from a deck and (sight unseen) puts it face outward on their own forehead, then bet that their card is the highest ranked (all the while trying to bully others -- include the guy holding an ace or king -- into thinking that their card isn't worth squat).
Once you reach Riotous Games, you may be required to abandon your dinner chair. This chapter contains the rules to Charades, as well as a few others that involve movement and activity. And Late Night Games are ones you'll only want to attempt after the second bottle of wine, games such as "Squeak Piggy Squeak" in which players sit on one another's laps and imitate swine.
None of these games are new; in fact, even though the book has a copyright date of 1996, I think I had come across all of these games at some point or another even before I hit college. Even so, the collected games are quite good, and it's handy to have them all in one volume. It's a testament to the quality of the games that many of them are predecessors to various commercial games: "Word Bluff" became "Balderdash", "Guggenheim" is an ancestor to "Scattergories", "Quick on the Draw" is similar to "Pictionary", a forerunner to "Twister" is in there and the book even contains the rules to Yatzee.
About a third of the games are, frankly, unplayable - which is to say that you could, hypothetically, play them, but you never would. Most of these are the "adults-only" games which may have seemed wild when they were invented 100 years ago, but now just seem silly, politically incorrect and/or dumb. How often would you realistically propose to play a game in which everyone has a balloon tied to their ankle and tries to pop everyone else's with a rolled up newspaper? Ironically, the supposedly "risqué" pastimes described in "Late Night Games" would be best suited for the birthday parties of eight-year-olds (and, indeed, I passed an orange to a partner using only my chin and chest at more than one childhood jamboree).
So: After Dinner Games, while containing nothing new, does at least put the rules to a reasonable assortment of enjoyable games in a single book. And its small size will allow you to stick it in a coat pocket before heading to your next social event. Heck, bring along some balloons and rolled up newspapers and you'll be a one-man party machine!
After Dinner Games