Christmas Day game?

[pompomcat]

Hello all. DH and I (mid thirties) are spending Christmas with my parents this year. We will be joined by Dad's sister and her DP and their three teens (15,17,18) as well as my brother and his GF (early thirties). So 11 of us in total.

I've included the numbers and ages as I'd like to ask you for ideas for a game to play after Christmas lunch? We usually do something similar to this www.whiteelephantrules.com after we've eaten but would like to do something else as well :) happy to buy a boxed game if people can recommend something that's any good (no to Cards Against Humanity for obvious reasons, and suspect that both Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit would result in bloodshed so best avoided!)

We really enjoyed the now that’s what I call music game last year..
it helps that we are music fans but it incorporates a quiz with charades and some other daft stuff to do.

Lots of inexpensive games in the supermarket Christmas gift section.

Werewolves (a.k.a. Mafia) is a possibility with that number and age range, though it works best if someone in the group can spin a bit of a yarn to create the right atmosphere and level of tension. You can buy a boxed version, but we’ve always made do with scraps of paper with ‘werewolf’, ‘villager’ etc. written on them.

The other parkour game we play as a family is ‘French Toast’ - it’s basically twenty questions, except the first question is always “Are you French toast”, to which the answer has to be given in the form “No, but like French toast I am...”. You have to come up with some connection to the thing you are not until somebody else guesses.

Parlour game. I don’t recommend doing parkour after Christmas dinner, especially if drink has been taken...

Stop the Bus!
Just pens and paper, easy to play

Family fortunes! Brilliant fun and you'll have the perfect number of participants.

I love Spyfall as a parlour game, but it does need some way to coordinate it, we do it with phones. You all need a smartphone/tablet which can access the internet and then you pick one of these websites to send everyone to and start a room with a password etc.

spyfall.adrianocola.com/
spyfall.crabhat.com/

I prefer the first site but the second one has a link to the rules. Or just watch a video of someone playing it on Youtube to get the idea.

Stop the Bus! Just pens and paper, easy to play smile

Stop the bus is black jack or 21?

No I think they mean this one. I know this as categories, though, or Land/Stadt/Fluss (German title - Country/City/River)

www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/stop-bus-0

For that Stop The Bus game as well for more fun you do it with small teams and have them compete against each other - an answer another team also gave is worth 1 point, whereas a unique answer is worth two.

Codenames is available in Tesco and Waterstones and is good fun - played in two teams, linking words together.

I have high hopes of this Christmas bingo game. It looks af if it will be good fun to play after Christmas dinner. It just consists of a few sheets of paper and card, but OK as it only cost £3.99.

This year we have a lot for Boxing Day so along with the usual Trivial Pursuit have bought Cards Against Humanity and Secret Hitler, plus a silly charades game where everyone does it at once!

Oh and Exploding Kittens is loads of fun too!

We love “the name game” - that’s what we call it- we’ve been playing it 20+ years- No idea if it has an actual name...
Everyone gets 5/6 bits of paper. Write the name of a famous person on each one. Try to make some quite obscure. Put all names in bowl, folded so can’t see them.
Pair up. One member of the pair takes name from bowl and has one minute to get their partner to guess who it is. Do as many names as poss in one minute. Play passes to next pair and keeps going round circle so everyone gets a turn and after all names done winning pair is one with most names.
If you don’t know who the person is you have a go at describing the name like eg “first name is the same as mums next door neighbour” etc etc.
my brother used to put in obscure footballers only he and Dad knew - Alexi Michaelachenko (with apols for spelling) was a favourite 😂
It’s really simple to set up, only one and paper required but lots of fun, especially if you have some competitive family members!!😬😀🎄

*pen and paper

Last New Year we ended up playing Heads Up as DD had the app on her phone. It was good fun

Last year I remember reading about a game a mumsnetter played (perhaps made up herself) where she'd wrap up lots of random presents. Then everyone had to choose one, then someone might swap with you until the end when you got to open them. I really want to try this this year but can't remember all the information. Can anyone help??

We like 'The Logo Game' and 'Best of British'. Good for all ages and simple to play, even after a few drinks.

Linkee is a good general knowledge quiz if you are looking to buy a boxed game...

We are trying Cameron this year

@ShadowWeaver We've played something like that. I buy lots of small things, some good and lots that are bad (mostly from pound shop).
Wrap them all and place in a box or sack. Everyone takes their turn throwing a dice. If you get a six you get to pick a gift and have to open it immediately. If you throw a one you can steal a gift off of someone else.
This continues until all presents are unwrapped and you then keep what gifts you have left at the end.
It's a brilliant laugh that all ages can play together. And there's usually something that everyone wants so gets passed around lots.
I got the idea from Mumsnet years ago and have played it every year since.

snozzlemaid yes that's it, but I think you didn't unwrap them until the end so you didn't know what you were swapping for. Thank you

Pictionary always fun.

ShadowWeaver, that sounds like the German game of "Krabbelsack" which is usually used as an alternative to Secret Santa.

There are various rule sets, one is similar to how snozzlemaid described it, I'm trying to find some others. I've not played it with a dice but I've played it with slips of paper. (Aha, I've found it - the English translation is Dirty Santa, and you can find various rulesets by searching "Dirty Santa game")

We've also done some times a "Schrottwitteln" which is a similar thing, except you bring a random item from your house you no longer want. Not actual rubbish, but the kind of thing you'd donate to the school raffle or jumble sale because it's not to your taste but someone might like it. You can also bring silly/joke/novelty items which will get a laugh instead. We did this one with a dice and various rules - 1 means you can steal, 6 means unwrap, 2-4 were various instructions based on passing the present to your left or right etc.