New Year's Eve: Cards Against Humanity

Every New Year's we get together at a friend's house, hang out by the grill outside and talk, game for a while and watch the ball drop.  For privacy reasons, I don't share names, but a big thanks to the long-time gamer group for inviting us back.  It's actually the second and third generation of the gaming group that started with D&D over 30 years ago.  They still have a regular D&D campaign most saturdays but I can't really commit to year-long adventures these days.  So when there's a chance to play one-off games, count me in.

By the time we got there, they were wrapping up a game of Apples to Apples.  But we all got to the table for a 2-hour stretch of Cards Against Humanity, my least favorite game in the world.  It's just stacks of cards saying unspeakable, gross, awkward things, but sure, when it comes up it's worth taking a deep breath and playing along.  There are a lot of laughs and groans, but also a quantity of mutual suffering.  You get to practice performance skills and the discipline of distancing yourself from the stuff coming out of your own mouth.  But the game itself is all about submitting cards and hoping yours gets picked -- so arbitrary -- and it's more of a "leave your pride at the door and just do it" endurance challenge than a game.  

The only play of mine that I can remember a day later was "I never understood [Scientology] until I encountered [an endless spray of diarrhea]."  But it was not a winner.

Sure, it's an experience making friends and moms say horrible things and look up the foulest expressions on google.  Because nobody should go through life not knowing the definitions of every perversion and bodily exudation.  Bleah.  

In the end, it was fun in its "special" way, more for the people around the table than the crap written on the cards.   It's just not a game I would ever vote to play.

And I think that's exactly what the designers were shooting for.