[Tim Gee]

What’s the best thing about games night? Having all your buddies over! What’s the worst part? The bombsite your house can be after. My idea is to gamify a games night and ‘socially engineer’ positive behaviours. The most delicious twist I can see happening is where friends are trying to outdo each other in social etiquette!

The Meta Party Game

Theme: Meta Party Game

Story: None

Mechanisms: Individual challenges

Win condition: Complete the greatest number of challenges by the end of game night.

Gameplay:

This is a meta party game where on arrival your guest for games night draw two goal cards. When they complete a goal card, they draw another one, so they always have two goals to work towards. These goals revolve around events that happen on game night. Players try to accomplish their goal while playing the main games of the evening.

Example goals:

Open the door for a new arrival; serve someone a drink; clear away dirty cups; pack up a game; make someone laugh; come second in a game.

The Meta Party Game is over when the last game for the night is packed away.

Variant: The Meta-Meta Party Game. A list of goals that
are available is displayed so players can try and stop others from completing
their goal by doing the task before them and therefore deny the opportunity for
them to do it

[Conor Reed]

This is certainly a unique idea. I’ve never played a meta party game but have seen “don’t get got” and it looks like fun. While not necessarily appearing to be a good game itself, this game could really improve the experience of a game night, especially for newcomers.

I know common courtesy cannot be taken for granted, but some of the really simple goals (like make someone laugh) could really easily occur naturally at a well mannered games night. I’d be interested to see goals in this that would also increase the engagement with games like “play the next game entirely in character” or “play a game in pairs”.

[John Armstrong]

What if there was a reward at the end?Person who accumulates the most cards gets to choose for the next game night:Main game to be played.Background music.Picks their player color for the night.The type of snack.
Etc.
Etc

[Tim Gee]

Great extra ideas. Thanks John

[Conor Reed]

I like that a lot! real world reward for real world niceness all bought about in a simple game concept!