[Valentine]

I'm looking for suggestions on the best games to play with friends and I've got a specific metric for it.

For the past few years I've not had the latest console and haven't been interested in buying it due to the main videogames my friends play.

They tend to play games with high stimulation:low communication ratio, meaning that it demands most attention on the activity, whilst also decreasing communication between each person about topics other than the activity you're currently doing.

To give an example: playing Halo online team deathmatch requires such a high level of attention that you're rarely talking about anything other than what's happening in the game itself.

Similarly I analyse dates this way:

- Going to the cinema is high stimulation:low communication ratio so it's not a great first date as you're barely focused on each other
- Talking on a bench in a park is low stimulation:high communication ratio as you're mainly focused on each other
- Going to a music festival is medium stimulation:medium communication ratio, as you've got quite a stimulating environment but you're talking about both the current activity and other things

Back to the point:

Most games have a high stimulation:low communication ratio and it's not ideal for me because:
1) I want to put the focus on catching up with friends rather than focusing on playing a game
2) Also I feel that highly stimulating games makes time fly and it feels like a waste of time

The new thread tabletop RPGs is a cool idea but requires too long playtime and seems a bit too high stim/low comm for my liking, but non-RPG tabletop games could be a good idea.

I've mainly only played poker and a few other card games with friends, but I was thinking of loading a tablet with a bunch of virtual board games like Monopoly and Risk.

Anybody got any recommendations for board games, tabletop games or just any good medium stimulation:medium communication ratio games?

[Suits]

Try Euro-style board games.

[The Beast1]

Are we talking board or video games?

Board game wise, i'm quite fond of Catan and the add ons for it. It's a fiesty game and especially is a great game to drink to.

Video games, anything that are small mini games are good. Geometry Wars and and the Katamari games are good for girls with poor hand eye coordination. I've always enjoyed playing these on mute during parties.

[NilNisiOptimum]

I recommend Settlers of Catan with the one caveat that my circle of friends has renamed the game Divorces of Catan due due how competitive we tend to get with it. It it's your criteria in that there's a trading mechanic to the game, but enough time between turns to get a drink or heckle someone's questionable move.

[redbeard]

Mario Party 3

[Mage]

Good old Monopoly - maybe a little too boring but as low intensity as it gets. A source of some good joke cracking.

Card games - there is a lot of variation of them, games that are not played with money are typical social games. In Russia and Eastern Europe everybody knows the game "durak" it's fun and social non gambling game. i don't suggest gambling games they can lead to debt and debt can lead to lost friendships.

There is a game series called Alias (always a perfect gift) that is a social game where players must draw cards and perform random tasks written on them.

Settlers of Catan is a bit higher in intensity then Monopoly IMHO

You can also make games yourself. Actually before commercialization people used to make up games up all the time, step out of the box and crate your own social games - these are simple games I have often made myself for parties and dates:

1. One player is shown a card with some word written on it and must show to other players without speaking just using gestures. The one who guesses can get a point or some prize like candy. This is best on parties where you are host and must entertain guests because the guy who comes up with words cannot play.

2. The game played in Inglorious Baterds movie - each player writes a name of a famous fictional or real person on a card and attaches it to the back/forehead to a player sitting next to him. Everybody sees who others are but they don't know who they are and must ask questions witch can be answered with a yes or no to learn who they are. if you can get a yes for an answer you ask another queastion if a no - the next player asks for himself, who guesses last must pay for the meal or entertain others in some previously decided way.

3. With a girl put some sexual tasks on cards and draw them at random - unlimited possibilities.

4. Mafia vs parliament of Mafia vs government - duckduckgo it.

5. The murderer game - assign one player as a murderer covertly. Players walk around looking each other in the eye. The murderer kills with a double blink. The victim must fall after three steps and steps out of game. The rest must guess who the murderer is and execute the one found guilty - he/she then steps out of game. if they guess wrong the game continues to next round. This game requires people to walk so many would be inert to do this - warm up the group with a more sedimentary game first and later if you can get the group to play this one - women will love you for it.

There is are thousands more games that can be played socially with little or no materials - like sheets of paper to make cards/ tickets.

The game of being a social event leader where you engage a group and make them play a fun game where they can show emotions and socialize and feel like caeless children again is very powerful type of game. If you become good at this and make women have fun and laugh while playing these games - you can have your pick after that.

[The Catalyst]

I recommend you go to a board game forum like boardgamegeek or r/boardgames and find the party game(or a few) you like the most.

I recommend Dixit(game where you take turns describing a picture, everyone else tries to pick a picture from their hand that matches the description. The original player wants at least one person, but not everyone to guess their picture, the others want to guess the picture but also have their picture guessed). Codenames is also very popular as of late. They are very casual and much more fun than something like Monopoly or Risk.

I don't know how you would define "medium stimulation" but if you find Suits' recommendation of Euro style boardgames actually medium stimulation(I suspect if you're not into games, even simple Euro style boardgames might seem *high* stimulation) then I would second his recommendation, those kinds of boardgames are very fun and engaging, but not burning you out like tabletop RPGs. That being said... most movies in cinemas I find are lower stimulation than Euro style boardgames, and I actually get bored of movies.

[D.C. Eagle]

My friends and I have always turned to two different games. We either play Golden Eye on the Wii or the Risk board game. Risk is the more competitive for us, especially when it comes down to breaking alliances. You can get a cheap copy of the game from Target or Walmart that comes in a nice wooden carrying case. We take it with us on every road trip, camping trip and everybody has a copy at their house.

[ball dont lie]

(12-26-2016 12:36 PM)Suits Wrote:  

Try Euro-style board games.

Seconded.

Try the game Village or Castles of Burgandy. Not difficult to learn, but are fun to play with some strategy, but not so difficult that you cant chat while you play. I own both and have given them both as gifts to people. No one has ever disliked them.

[Fender_Bender]

Ticket to Ride board game is pretty good, fairly easy to pickup and learn and leaves a lot of opportunity for train jokes /puns for shittalking. Many different versions but the original (USA map) is definitely more directly competitive than the Europe one which has more room to build your routes so conflict isn't as common.

[RIslander]

Board Game: Ticket to Ride. Its less intense then Settlers of Catan. Its a map of the USA and 15 or so cities are labeled. Draw cards that tell you which cities to connect with railroads. Try to predict your friends card and dick em over by laying track in their way. Most fun board game I've played.

[John Michael Kane]

I'll throw a vote behind Settlers of Catan, and also Dominion. Both of these have a fairly steep learning curve, but once someone grasps it, the games can be fairly challenging when two or more evenly matched players.

[RoastBeefCurtains4Me]

(12-26-2016 05:01 PM)D.C. Eagle Wrote:  

My friends and I have always turned to two different games. We either play Golden Eye on the Wii or the Risk board game. Risk is the more competitive for us, especially when it comes down to breaking alliances. You can get a cheap copy of the game from Target or Walmart that comes in a nice wooden carrying case. We take it with us on every road trip, camping trip and everybody has a copy at their house.

Risk is a lot of fun, but games can run 12 hours play time. Also, some players get knocked out early. Finally, the knock down drag out battles at the end of the game with huge numbers of armies aren't much fun for the losing players. It's stressful to spend 12 hours building your armies and defenses, then have the ground to dust in a final, brutal slugfest.

I like Settlers of Cataan a lot. It can be played in 60 to 90 minutes, so even if you lose, its easy to feel light hearted about it. I'd like to try other board games along the same lines.

[tarquin]

Spin the bottle. Could result in more than medium stimulation.

On a serious note, try the board game idea. There are a few which are cooperative rather than competitive and that may help out.

[mickeyd]

chinese checkers.

or you could try some variations of pokers, there are many.

[weambulance]

Farkle, Aggravation, Sorry, and Yahtzee are the non-card tabletop games my family usually plays. There's competition and it's fun (more or less), but there's not much strategy so it doesn't require a lot of focus, allowing discussion. Farkle and Yahtzee can be annoyingly loud though, depending on the table surface and the dice cup used.

Scrabble is a possibility, I suppose. We also used to play Trivial Pursuit a lot, but it seems to me most discussion is going to be about the game there. Same deal with Mindtrap and similar riddle/puzzle-based games, and of course the questions in those games only work once so there's not much replayability.

Card games, even simple ones, usually require too much focus on the game for what you're looking for, I think.

[dasher]

Could give bomberman a try. Not too high octane, and has a lot of downtime anyway since players get eliminated during each round.

I think it's on the e-shop of all the consoles (even older ones like 360 or ps3) or you could emulate it for PC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xef0tkXmSp4

Mario Party, if you have any nintendo console is pretty good as well. If you're not familiar with it basically there are two 'phases' to the game that regularly alternate, a 'board game' type phase where players roll dice and choose where to move on the game board, then after each player has had their turn, a short mini-game is played.

[YoungBlade]

Good thread man. One good, stimulating game I got for my birthday last year is Champions of Midgard. Gets a bit complicated, but once you know it, you get exactly one hour of complete, stimulating gameplay that still allows for people to still catch up.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1722...ns-midgard

[Valentine]

Great suggestions guys, thanks.

I'm looking for around max 3 hours length per game, sounds like Risk is a bad choice then.

I'd also prefer virtual board games rather than physical as I'm a big minimalist. Luckily it seems some of the games mentioned like Catan and Ticket to Ride are available as Android apps. Found apps for Carcassonne and Pandemic which look intriguing also.

[Suits]

Both Carcassonne and Pandemic are highly recommended. In fact, I just put in an order for multiple copies of each.

[NilNisiOptimum]

Ticket To Ride also leads to small children wrecking the game yelling "choo choo!". Which is adorable.

[BortimusPrime]

Lords of Waterdeep, 7 Wonders, Agricola, Caverna, and Power Grid are all in the time frame you're looking for.

Of course there are more fun games like Through the Ages or Twilight Imperium 3, but they run long and you need the right kind of friends to put up with them.

The main problem with board games is that despite having a good talking/stimulation balance, playing repeatedly with the same group tends to somewhat uncomfortably clarify the IQ hierarchy of the group. One really smart person in the group can end up winning so often that everyone else loses interest in gaming.

One solution is to play games that are essentially random instead of deterministic on strategy, but that tends to become boring once you realize that you're only winning by virtue of luck.

[sterling_archer]

I played yesterday game Mage mentioned in the post above that was played in Inglorious Basterds movie. We glued cards to our foreheads and guessed. Combine that with alcohol and good company and have fun.

[Kona]

You could get an old version of tiger woods golf.

Only one person is active at a time. You can pick out of a decent amount of golfers, and some are women. I think it allows for up to six people to play eachother.

Aloha!

[Mr. Accuride]

For four people, any of the classic card games (Bridge/Hearts/Spades/Euchre/Canasta et al.), Dominoes, or Mahjong. All of them are great conversation games. Some of them can be extended to more people.

Tiddlywinks

Chouettes - any number of players is fine, though if you play for money then it might devolve into fights