Monikers • 2015
A party game played over three rounds with the same set of name cards. In round one, you can say anything you want to get your team to guess the name (like Taboo without restrictions). In round two, you can only say one word. In round three, you can only act it out silently. The key mechanic: you use the same cards all three rounds. So by round three, your team has heard every name at least once. The game shifts from "describe a thing you might not know" to "act out a shared inside joke that only exists because of the last 15 minutes". Round three is where the game peaks. Someone mimes three seconds of something incomprehensible, and their team yells the answer instantly because of a joke from round one. The table is in hysterics. It works because the group has built a private vocabulary over the course of the game. Before playing, everyone drafts the card pool. Each player gets dealt cards and keeps the ones they like, discarding the rest. This means nobody gets stuck with a name they've never heard of — which is a small design choice that fixes a major problem with similar games. Plays 4-16+ in teams. The more people, the louder it gets. There's no upper limit if you're happy splitting into larger teams. It works well as an evening centrepiece — games run 30-45 minutes and usually get an immediate "again".
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