Topic: Game night
Topic Author
I am planning a game night for my residents. It is an A community with a huge clubroom with pool tables three TV's with game system and a couple of game tables. Are there certain games that were a bigger success with your residents? Did you have competitions and give small prizes? What made your night a success.
Posted 9 years 2 months ago
Kimberly, it completely depends on your resident base, as far as what board games / card games to try out. There are games that are more social oriented that are not really based on skill, such as
Apples to Apples
and
Cards Against Humanity
(although that one can be very un-PC, so beware). I don't know a whole bunch of other options on that front, because I don't do a lot of those.
On the flip side, there is a BIG trend of strategy board games. Essentially, imagine the people who like RISK and you get the basic idea of the user demographic, but now there are a TON of new games that range in skill level. A really, really good game on this front is Settlers of Catan . It is not too complicated so anyone can jump in and feel like they are not too far behind within a game. You can also get expansion sets to increase the number of people who can play per set. Even within the strategic game group, not everybody likes games that are competitive, however, so cooperative games like Pandemic might be good. In fact, that might be really good to help people get to know each other and work together towards a common goal (of eradicating a virus).
Another category of games are the fun and whimsical games that may or may not have strategy, but they are a little more silly. Saboteur , where people try to dig to treasure, and Munchkin are two games on this front.
The most important part of all of this, in my opinion, is having someone who has played it before and 1) Can explain the instructions, and 2) Explain them in a way that is easily understandable. The biggest reason people hesitate playing a board game is that even the simplest games can seem overwhelming at the beginning with the rules. So it is important to think about how to explain it in a way that doesn't put people off. You might want to consider announcing the game earlier in the week and linking to an instruction play-through video on YouTube. If a few people watch that, they can help explain things as they go along.
I have not tested any of these out in a community game night setting, however, so I can't say for sure whether any of these will be perfect!
I hope that helps!
On the flip side, there is a BIG trend of strategy board games. Essentially, imagine the people who like RISK and you get the basic idea of the user demographic, but now there are a TON of new games that range in skill level. A really, really good game on this front is Settlers of Catan . It is not too complicated so anyone can jump in and feel like they are not too far behind within a game. You can also get expansion sets to increase the number of people who can play per set. Even within the strategic game group, not everybody likes games that are competitive, however, so cooperative games like Pandemic might be good. In fact, that might be really good to help people get to know each other and work together towards a common goal (of eradicating a virus).
Another category of games are the fun and whimsical games that may or may not have strategy, but they are a little more silly. Saboteur , where people try to dig to treasure, and Munchkin are two games on this front.
The most important part of all of this, in my opinion, is having someone who has played it before and 1) Can explain the instructions, and 2) Explain them in a way that is easily understandable. The biggest reason people hesitate playing a board game is that even the simplest games can seem overwhelming at the beginning with the rules. So it is important to think about how to explain it in a way that doesn't put people off. You might want to consider announcing the game earlier in the week and linking to an instruction play-through video on YouTube. If a few people watch that, they can help explain things as they go along.
I have not tested any of these out in a community game night setting, however, so I can't say for sure whether any of these will be perfect!
I hope that helps!
Posted 9 years 2 months ago