Mine are Knocklebones, cockroach poker and zombie dice. Maybe Stratego.
But I want something new. Something that I can play with my larp group.
Here’s a couple of quick games that I like:
- Coup - Bluffing game where you try to assassinate other players’ political allies
- Dungeon Mayhem - You’re a party fighting to the death over the treasure at the end of a quest
- Red7 - Play a card according to the rules, change the rules if you can’t play, and go out if you can’t do either of those
Oh man, I bought red 7 some years ago. We played it once and I loved it but my friends didn’t. So we never played it again :(
Skull
Skull is great
Bonus points for being able to play with coasters on a bar, or with a standard deck of guards wherever. That way you don’t have to actually have brought the game to play it, but that art is indeed gorgeous
If your not worried about losing your friends after the game I can recommend Intrigue.
Azul
I like Sushi Go (specifically Sushi Go Party for variety), Hanabi, and King of Tokyo.
“Pirate dice”, aka liar’s dice. I love bluffing games and it goes quick.
Quiddler. The rules are very simple to learn (it’s rummy meets Scrabble), and you can set a # of cards to go to as a way of defining the length. But even going to 10 (the official end) doesn’t take too long.
For a ~30 min game, I like:
- Race to the raft for coop
- Race for the galaxy for competitive
For a super short filler game I like Love letter, I see that one has been mentioned a few times already!
Was reading up on Race to the Raft just a few minutes ago. Didn’t realize that it plays so quick, that’s great to hear!
It does for us! I see that it says 40-60 min on bgg, so it may be different for others. We are usually quite slow though, probably due to analysis paralysis which is not really an issue in this game in my experience.
Love letter is amazing! One of my fav games of all time
I enjoy Guillotine.
For short group games, some of our favorites are:
- Codenames (~15min)
- The Resistance: Avalon (similar to Secret Hitler; ~30min, unless you’re really argumentative)
- Love Letter (~20min)
- More recently, Captain Sonar (45-60min).
And honestly, we’ve had a surprising amount of fun with Liar’s Dice too (a.k.a. Bluff/Perudo/Dudo; 15-30min)
Idk if codenames is that short for me. It depends on how experienced the “code masters” are
Download the app and play with timed turns.
We’re still playing Boonanza, after many years. Just doesn’t get old.
Cryptid and Secret Hitler usually go pretty fast for our group, and they’re loads of fun
Fun, raucous and short. Captain Carcass (under the sea push-your-luck or Diamant (Cave explore push-your-luck).
Support votes for the ones already mentioned, Love Letter( or Lovecraft Letter) and Skull.
Tsuro is always our go-to short game for when folks are getting to game night and getting into the mood. We also like to play Uno at the end of the night when our brains are fried or Jackbox.
I love small, short games, too many favorites to choose from! So instead of all of those I will mention Khôra which is not small but every time we play it surprises me how quickly it goes. The box says 75 minutes but it’s more like 25 or maybe even less.
A) 6 Nimmt. scales relatively well with a sweet spot at 4 and 6 players. Takes about 20-40min to play a complete game.
B) One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The first two sets and maybe the bonus roles have lasted us hundreds of iterations. I think it’s superior at 5, but other groups like it from 5-8p. Total round/game length is about 10min (almost regardless of player count).
C) For Sale. Skip the expansion, the base game is one of our better higher count options. Total game length is maybe 20min since the second half of the game is simultaneous action selection.ONUW in particular should go over really well with a LARP group. I do recommend doing index card type role cheatsheets and laminating them. I used to have one that fit in the box but I’ve lost the photoshop file I made it in… If you get more than about 12 people, then Two Rooms & A Boom works as well and has a ~20min running time. It needs a lot of players though.
Let’s see.
- Regicide
- Forbidden Island
- Forbidden Desert
- Carcassone
- Roll for the Galaxy
- Ticket to Ride
- Skull
- Azul
- Splendor
