Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity is the best thing to happen to camping trips and parties in years. Billed as a party game for horrible people, Cards Against Humanity is a card game with a difference that achieves surprising results and an unusual insight into the people you think you know.

Here's how it works: there is a pile of black question cards that form the setting for each round of the game. Everyone takes turns to read out a question card. All the players are dealt ten white answer cards and need to find the 'best' answer for the question from their cards. Sounds simple.

What makes a good answer? One that the question asker will find funny, clever or appealing in some way. After everyone has submitted their cards, the question asker reads out all the answers and chooses their favourite. Sometimes it's hard to pick over all the laughter. Others are a bit more obvious.

The trick is to appeal to each person's personality. What do they find funny? What will appeal to their (warped) sense of humour? What will they be offended by? And what will get the biggest reaction from around the table? The winner of each round keeps that black card and the overall winner is the person who has the most black cards at the end of the game. It gets harder as the game progresses and the 'good' white cards get used up.

Here are a few examples of 'winning' questions and answers from games we've played:

Q: What do bad children get for Christmas?
A: Dead parents.

Q: Te Papa is developing a new interactive exhibition on ________
A: Inappropriate yodelling.

Q: How did I lose my virginity?
A: The Italians! (Random, I know - but hysterically funny at the time.)

Now, we've brought Cards Against Humanity on camping trips, weekends away and to friends' parties. Until Christmas night, we hadn't played it with family. After a few drinks and a(nother) huge meal, the cards came out and the inhibitions were promptly dropped as we did our best to outdo each other. We certainly got a whole new look at the people we regularly face around the family dinner table.

Cards Against Humanity: despite protests, I've yet to meet someone who isn't horrible enough to play.