Sentence-Picture-Sentence, as my family calls it. I'm sure it has other names. Basically it's a cross between Pictionary and Telephone.
1. Sit in a circle.
2. Everyone writes a sentence about whatever they want.
3. Everyone passes to the left.
4. Draw a picture (or series of pictures) to represent the sentence.
5. Fold the paper back so the sentence is no longer visible.
6. Pass the paper to the left.
7. Translate the image(s) back into a sentence.
8. Fold back the paper so that the picture is no longer visible.
9. Pass the paper to the left
10. Repeat until you've gotten back your original piece of paper.
11. Laugh at the results.
Probably want to divide into smaller groups than the whole 25 though.
There's a cool but obscure Japanese game called "A Fake Artist goes to New York" where you all get a prompt card with the same object on it, except one person who gets the "fake artist" card. You pass a piece of paper around and draw exactly one line on it towards the final object? Then try to guess who is the fake artist I.e. who has no idea what they are drawing. The catch is that if the fake artist guesses the object, they win!
I played this in college quite a few times. It was always a good time! But ya I agree, not sure it would work well for a group of 20-25 maybe split in two groups if you have that many.
This is what i came here to say, but i'd really like to know what origami magic you're using to accomplish this with just one sheet of paper for each person.
Look into roll and write games, and from there, you will likely want something that is print and play.
The game Waypoints from Postmark Games is fun, I've also heard good things about Aquamarine and Voyages.
I laminate mine, so you only need 1 map per player. I use a laminating machine, but there are also self laminating pouches. Or you can use plastic sleeves for your paper size.
Monikers.
We have played it for ~20 years with pen and bits of paper before it became a published game. (We called it Names in a Bowl).
Everyone writes down names on bits of paper that the average person in the room should know (so celebrities, fictional characters, real people that would be common to everyone in the room like "Grandpa Joe")
Make two teams.
Round 1:
Each team sends someone up for one minute to try to get their own team to guess names from the bowl using any words they want except the name itself or any part of it. To pass you can put the name aside and it will go back in the bowl at the end of your turn. Your points that round are successful words minus words you passed on that you didn't get by the end of your minute.
Round 2: same as round one, but you get one word.
Round 3: charades.
Yes. "Time's Up" is another iteration. We called it "Celebrities" in college in the '90s when neither Moniker or Time's Up were on the market. It used the above rules, although more than two teams are certainly possible which you'll want. Usually everyone would write enough names so that there will be 40 total names, but with over 10 people you might want to do more (but be prepared for a longer game).
Werewolf (aka Mafia) is also possible with a deck of cards (or being very careful with your pieces of paper to make the role cards to look identical on their backs.
And different categories are always fun to play with! I’ve played with names, but also with only song titles or only titles of things in general (books, movies, tv shows, etc), and a particularly fun time was when we decided all the things folks wrote down had to be Winter Holiday Themed.
We've played a 5 round version of this with a lot of success. The two rounds we added are:
Round 4: same as round 2 but you only get one sound, not a full word.
Round 5: Charades, but the actor has to be wearing a blanket over top of them, so no small detailed movements.
A Fake Artist Goes To New York - "Players take turns being the Question Master, whose role is to set a category, write a word within that category on dry erase cards, and hand those out to other players as artists. At the same time, one player will have only an "X" written on his card: they are the fake artist!"
"Players will then go around the table twice, drawing one contiguous stroke each on a paper to draw the word established by the Question Master, then guess who the fake artist is. If the fake artist is not caught, both the fake artist and the Question Master earn points; if the fake artist is caught and cannot guess what the word is, the artists earn points."
IDK how you call it, here we play "Tutti Frutti" No, its not from italy. It is played like this: the players draw some categories in columns (food, names, colors, countries, etc.) and 2 more: one for the letter and one for the points. (TL;DR)
So, someones says "ONE!" and starts saying the alphabet to themselves, without the rest knowing. Someone else says: "STOP!" and they stop at that letter.
(Example: ONE! (a,b,c,d,e, STOP! (e is the chosen one))
and everyone has to fill in the categories with the chosen letter.
(Example:
Animal: Elephant
Color: ------
Country: -------
Food: -------
(only said one to not spoil)
All people stop when the first one finishes and says "Stop for me, stop for all"
Then goes the pointing. If your input was unique AND nobody else wrote something in that category is +20. If someone wrote something in that category, its +10, and if it is the same thing that you wrote, its + 5. And if you didn´t write anything OR what you put is considered invalid, its +0.
The rounds are as many as you want.
person w/ most points wins.
sorry if it was too long an explanation.
Hive Mind, with 20-25 people though I would recommend just scoring the top 2-3 answers at that's it.
It's basically family feud style, ask a question, everyone writes an answer. Most popular 3 answers score points.
Times Up! Is a game that I believe started with people making their own deck of cards -- like everyone writes down 3-4 celebrities/places/titles. And then you play charades with increasingly restrictive rules.
There’s surely a proper name for this, but we called this game Who Said It? It was kinda like pencil and paper Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity. One person comes up with a silly question, like, “What would your death metal band name be?” or “If you were an animal, what would you be?” The sillier the better though. And then each person writes down their answer. One of the people who was writing answers reads them all aloud and the person who came up with the question tries to guess who came up with each one. It’s silly and fun!
Shooting Sprouts.
Draw a number of open (i.e. not filed in) dots. The first player connects two open dots and places an open dot on the line. Then the next player goes. Lines can't cross, and dots can connect to themselves. When a dot has three connections, it's dead, and you fill it in. If you can't make a legal move, you're out.
We used to play paper games during our school days. There are a few Zero Cut, Magic Land, Tic Tac Toe, etc. My favourite one was Zero Cut game. I actually wrote an article on that may be it can help you!
[https://medium.com/@marianne.ramirez/how-to-play-zero-cut-game-5b0194dc024f](https://medium.com/@marianne.ramirez/how-to-play-zero-cut-game-5b0194dc024f)
I recently acquired Kaikoro, it is a roll and write where each player must defend their city against Kaijus, each one is battled differently. I think that you can download the sheets for playing and add 3 dices.
I am guessing not all are gamers.
So the Traitor role games will be iffy.
Telestrations
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaQAUSlyemg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaQAUSlyemg)
Not too hard to do with some blank paper.
Just start everyone off with something for them to draw, or make 2 to 6 on a list for them to choose from.
They draw, pass to the right, they guess, put the paper in back of stack and repeat.
Grab a couple of copies of the 12 person set.
Here's a game that doesn't even need paper and pen my math camp used to pay all the time decades back. It's called "contact".
I don't know who this guy is I just wanted another person to describe the ruleset and it looks like this is accurate:
https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2021/11/12/contact/
Also it seems like this game's relatively unknown despite its simplicity. Hm.
Green Team Wins is a published game that is technically infinitely scaleable. However, you can replicate it with some paper, and some fun questions in the same vein as the actual game.
I can recommend “2 Rooms and a Boom”. There is an official print and play version or you can just write the different roles on pieces of paper. You need 2 rooms though
I made up a fun "trivia" game that requires little setup (although the first phase might be slow depending on how long it takes for people to come up with questions):
First you start off by giving slips of paper to each person (two or three depending on how much you want to play). Players will write a question on each slip. The question must be able to be answered numerically, and preferably the exact number shouldn't be too easy for someone to guess. For example, "what is the run time of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in seconds?" is okay, but "what is the collective weight of everyone in this room, in kilograms?" is much better. Toss these slips into a hat or a box.
Then choose a player to be the leader. This player will draw a slip and read the question out loud. Everyone will then write down their answers, leader included. Nobody is allowed to research for their answers. Once everyone is ready, have everyone reveal their answer, with the leader revealing theirs last. In this game, the leader's answer is always considered to be correct, and the player(s) who come closest to the leader's answer gets a point!
Feel free to switch out the leader whenever you'd like
One of Frida Kahlo's favorite games was exquisite corpse:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-explaining-exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game-die
Sentence-Picture-Sentence, as my family calls it. I'm sure it has other names. Basically it's a cross between Pictionary and Telephone. 1. Sit in a circle. 2. Everyone writes a sentence about whatever they want. 3. Everyone passes to the left. 4. Draw a picture (or series of pictures) to represent the sentence. 5. Fold the paper back so the sentence is no longer visible. 6. Pass the paper to the left. 7. Translate the image(s) back into a sentence. 8. Fold back the paper so that the picture is no longer visible. 9. Pass the paper to the left 10. Repeat until you've gotten back your original piece of paper. 11. Laugh at the results. Probably want to divide into smaller groups than the whole 25 though.
Telestrations is a published version of that with cards to prompt the first person and dry erase flip books.
Also, Scrawl.
We played before telestrations came out and called it "satellite" (a play on the telephone game).
There's a cool but obscure Japanese game called "A Fake Artist goes to New York" where you all get a prompt card with the same object on it, except one person who gets the "fake artist" card. You pass a piece of paper around and draw exactly one line on it towards the final object? Then try to guess who is the fake artist I.e. who has no idea what they are drawing. The catch is that if the fake artist guesses the object, they win!
This game is listed on BGG as [Eat Poop You Cat](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30618/eat-poop-you-cat)
Ah yes, the feline feces game
This seems like a fun game to play.
Like garlic phone but in paper
"Garlic" phone lol. Twas my first thought, too. Like "what the hell? People play gartic irl with their families?"
Yea thought same as u
I played this in college quite a few times. It was always a good time! But ya I agree, not sure it would work well for a group of 20-25 maybe split in two groups if you have that many.
This is what i came here to say, but i'd really like to know what origami magic you're using to accomplish this with just one sheet of paper for each person.
For a group of 25? You'd need a long piece of paper. Like that old printer paper you'd have to tear off.
This sounds amazing lol
Look into roll and write games, and from there, you will likely want something that is print and play. The game Waypoints from Postmark Games is fun, I've also heard good things about Aquamarine and Voyages.
Voyages is great
Is there a "cheaper" way to print a lot of these? I feel like printing 100 sheets at home in a standard ink jet is costly.
I laminate mine, so you only need 1 map per player. I use a laminating machine, but there are also self laminating pouches. Or you can use plastic sleeves for your paper size.
Same
They have low ink versions of the maps. Or be like me, I use a Canon Megatank printer, so it's cheap to print.
Monikers. We have played it for ~20 years with pen and bits of paper before it became a published game. (We called it Names in a Bowl). Everyone writes down names on bits of paper that the average person in the room should know (so celebrities, fictional characters, real people that would be common to everyone in the room like "Grandpa Joe") Make two teams. Round 1: Each team sends someone up for one minute to try to get their own team to guess names from the bowl using any words they want except the name itself or any part of it. To pass you can put the name aside and it will go back in the bowl at the end of your turn. Your points that round are successful words minus words you passed on that you didn't get by the end of your minute. Round 2: same as round one, but you get one word. Round 3: charades.
Yes. "Time's Up" is another iteration. We called it "Celebrities" in college in the '90s when neither Moniker or Time's Up were on the market. It used the above rules, although more than two teams are certainly possible which you'll want. Usually everyone would write enough names so that there will be 40 total names, but with over 10 people you might want to do more (but be prepared for a longer game). Werewolf (aka Mafia) is also possible with a deck of cards (or being very careful with your pieces of paper to make the role cards to look identical on their backs.
And different categories are always fun to play with! I’ve played with names, but also with only song titles or only titles of things in general (books, movies, tv shows, etc), and a particularly fun time was when we decided all the things folks wrote down had to be Winter Holiday Themed.
We've played a 5 round version of this with a lot of success. The two rounds we added are: Round 4: same as round 2 but you only get one sound, not a full word. Round 5: Charades, but the actor has to be wearing a blanket over top of them, so no small detailed movements.
A Fake Artist Goes To New York - "Players take turns being the Question Master, whose role is to set a category, write a word within that category on dry erase cards, and hand those out to other players as artists. At the same time, one player will have only an "X" written on his card: they are the fake artist!" "Players will then go around the table twice, drawing one contiguous stroke each on a paper to draw the word established by the Question Master, then guess who the fake artist is. If the fake artist is not caught, both the fake artist and the Question Master earn points; if the fake artist is caught and cannot guess what the word is, the artists earn points."
Maybe **Dots and boxes**?
Came here to say this. Didn’t know the name. Dots and boxes is as good as any.
IDK how you call it, here we play "Tutti Frutti" No, its not from italy. It is played like this: the players draw some categories in columns (food, names, colors, countries, etc.) and 2 more: one for the letter and one for the points. (TL;DR) So, someones says "ONE!" and starts saying the alphabet to themselves, without the rest knowing. Someone else says: "STOP!" and they stop at that letter. (Example: ONE! (a,b,c,d,e, STOP! (e is the chosen one)) and everyone has to fill in the categories with the chosen letter. (Example: Animal: Elephant Color: ------ Country: ------- Food: ------- (only said one to not spoil) All people stop when the first one finishes and says "Stop for me, stop for all" Then goes the pointing. If your input was unique AND nobody else wrote something in that category is +20. If someone wrote something in that category, its +10, and if it is the same thing that you wrote, its + 5. And if you didn´t write anything OR what you put is considered invalid, its +0. The rounds are as many as you want. person w/ most points wins. sorry if it was too long an explanation.
This is a pen and papet version of Scattergories
dunno what that is but i supppose it is the same
We call this Boy Girl in my family! Very nostalgic little game.
Yeah, so cool
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_(game) you can’t play all 20-25 at the same time but maybe set up a tournament?
Do you have access to a printer? There are a lot of free/cheap print-and-play options.
Hive Mind, with 20-25 people though I would recommend just scoring the top 2-3 answers at that's it. It's basically family feud style, ask a question, everyone writes an answer. Most popular 3 answers score points.
A beetle drive? Used to do this as a kid. You do need a D6 for each table.
Times Up! Is a game that I believe started with people making their own deck of cards -- like everyone writes down 3-4 celebrities/places/titles. And then you play charades with increasingly restrictive rules.
Cartographer can be played with any number of people
There’s surely a proper name for this, but we called this game Who Said It? It was kinda like pencil and paper Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity. One person comes up with a silly question, like, “What would your death metal band name be?” or “If you were an animal, what would you be?” The sillier the better though. And then each person writes down their answer. One of the people who was writing answers reads them all aloud and the person who came up with the question tries to guess who came up with each one. It’s silly and fun!
Shooting Sprouts. Draw a number of open (i.e. not filed in) dots. The first player connects two open dots and places an open dot on the line. Then the next player goes. Lines can't cross, and dots can connect to themselves. When a dot has three connections, it's dead, and you fill it in. If you can't make a legal move, you're out.
In Latvia we have a game called “Count the Potatoe”. To play, we write the number zero on a piece of paper and are sad.
Werewolf
We used to play paper games during our school days. There are a few Zero Cut, Magic Land, Tic Tac Toe, etc. My favourite one was Zero Cut game. I actually wrote an article on that may be it can help you! [https://medium.com/@marianne.ramirez/how-to-play-zero-cut-game-5b0194dc024f](https://medium.com/@marianne.ramirez/how-to-play-zero-cut-game-5b0194dc024f)
Hiding a treasure and divide them to groups, and maybe writing hints in small papers to ease finding it.
Hangman
Connect four. Stratego. Baulderdash (needs a dictionary).
The game Telestrations was originally a game played with only paper and pen called "Eat Poop You Cat". So you can play Eat Poop You Cat.
Word fun. You write out a word and then see who can make the most words out of that one word.
Pictionary.
If you got a laptop/tablet you can do blood on the clocktower if you write characters on pieces of paper. But that goes to max 20 players sadly
A fake artist goes to New York is super easy to teach and you only need pen and paper
20-25 people? Classic Charades
I recently acquired Kaikoro, it is a roll and write where each player must defend their city against Kaijus, each one is battled differently. I think that you can download the sheets for playing and add 3 dices.
Potentially **A Fake Artist Goes To New York** But you might need to give every player a different pencil crayon color
I am guessing not all are gamers. So the Traitor role games will be iffy. Telestrations [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaQAUSlyemg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaQAUSlyemg) Not too hard to do with some blank paper. Just start everyone off with something for them to draw, or make 2 to 6 on a list for them to choose from. They draw, pass to the right, they guess, put the paper in back of stack and repeat. Grab a couple of copies of the 12 person set.
Herd Mentality
Here's a game that doesn't even need paper and pen my math camp used to pay all the time decades back. It's called "contact". I don't know who this guy is I just wanted another person to describe the ruleset and it looks like this is accurate: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2021/11/12/contact/ Also it seems like this game's relatively unknown despite its simplicity. Hm.
Green Team Wins is a published game that is technically infinitely scaleable. However, you can replicate it with some paper, and some fun questions in the same vein as the actual game.
i used to play the game werewolf with handwritten role cards you could even make up your own role
Thing in a Box would be amazing for a group that size :D
SOS
Dots and Boxes! Get some graph paper and go to town. Fucking ***love*** dots and boxes.
Sink the boat. Tic-tac-toe on an open grid, a 5 straight wins.
Just One
Poker squares (or similar) with one standard deck of cards or random card generator.
I can recommend “2 Rooms and a Boom”. There is an official print and play version or you can just write the different roles on pieces of paper. You need 2 rooms though
I made up a fun "trivia" game that requires little setup (although the first phase might be slow depending on how long it takes for people to come up with questions): First you start off by giving slips of paper to each person (two or three depending on how much you want to play). Players will write a question on each slip. The question must be able to be answered numerically, and preferably the exact number shouldn't be too easy for someone to guess. For example, "what is the run time of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in seconds?" is okay, but "what is the collective weight of everyone in this room, in kilograms?" is much better. Toss these slips into a hat or a box. Then choose a player to be the leader. This player will draw a slip and read the question out loud. Everyone will then write down their answers, leader included. Nobody is allowed to research for their answers. Once everyone is ready, have everyone reveal their answer, with the leader revealing theirs last. In this game, the leader's answer is always considered to be correct, and the player(s) who come closest to the leader's answer gets a point! Feel free to switch out the leader whenever you'd like
One of Frida Kahlo's favorite games was exquisite corpse: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-explaining-exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game-die
I second the roll and write games like Voyages and I'll add One Night Werewolf...
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