I was hoping someone would finally point out that CAH is super boring and not really a game, not that it is offensive on purpose. The name of the game suggest a lowbrow level of humor to begin with, and most of the people I have seen obsess over it are less looking for an excuse to be offensive and more really, painfully unfunny. I’d rather play a competitive and engaging game and make jokes over it.
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I have a friend who teaches Sociology and Women’s Studies in university and she goes into public venues, plays this game and uses it as a tool to teach people about social issues. She’s very witty and well informed so it usually ends up being an informative and fun night for everyone.
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Really, I thought he was saying “I like rape jokes, but am annoyed that nobody but my bros laugh.”
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Is this maybe not about the game itself at all, but instead the birth of the Board Game Hipster? “Oh, you have Cards Against Humanity, you’re not a real gamer, I see. sips PBR”
Maybe the objection isn’t the game, but that it brings ‘the wrong kind of people’ to the hobby? Or that they approach the hallowed halls of gaming in the incorrect manner? (As the comments on the review’s site seem to suggest)
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Most of those “awesome” table top games table-top gamers tend to talk about are one or more of:
a lot of work
really boring
offering no challenge
overly competitive
extremely asocial or even antisocial
require a significant time commitment
In other words, these awesome table-top games are absolute shit at fulfilling the desires and constraints of people who might want to play a game.
So what “awesome table top games” are there that are:
Actually Social, challenging while allowing everyone a chance to win, allow you to quickly start and stop playing not just on a group level but an individual one, where people can step in and out whenever, whose express purpose is to make people laugh and enjoy themselves
This is the group CAH is king of and Apples To Apples used to completely dominate, and it’s pretty obvious why.
So tell me, since you know of so many awesome table top games, what are the superior alternatives? Because I’d certainly like to try them!
Personally, my groups tend to prefer BWC, but let’s be honest - that game has a lot more set up time! It’s not for everyone.
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“It’s a bad game, stop enjoying it. It’s not funny, stop laughing. You’re all playing games wrong, and it gets me so mad to see so many people playing games wrong gosh darnit. >:|”
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Well I’d disagree with your assessment for starters, ‘really boring’, ‘offering no challenge’, ‘extremely asocial or even antisocial’? I mean really, are you serious with that lot?
But you’re free to play what you like, if you enjoy it then have at it, I was just confused because it looks quite empty as a game. Like Ad Libs.
But a more direct replacement for CAH, I’d suggest something like Telling Lies (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9499/telling-lies) - very funny, good in a group, no set up time and it doesn’t even need to use naughty words to be fun.
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It’s aboot effics in geim shurnalism.
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I think a lot of people are missing the point of this post. Its not that the game is offensive. Frankly I find its biggest offense is that there’s no creativity involved and the outcomes aren’t really funny. The problem being addressed here is that it allows people to be offensive without it “being their fault”. “All my other cards were worse” & “its all I had to play” are very commons things said in a CAH game. “Don’t blame me, its not my fault”.
Compare that with Apples to Apples (a game I much prefer). You can easily be just as offensive except that its on you if you are. It means you chose to say that “wrong things” with other options available (you could have been silly or non-sensical). And its also on the person choosing the card they like. They have to live with having chosen “Boy Scouts” as the answer to “Desirable” (actual cards played at an actual game).
Now you might be thinking “well either one is just a card game, hardly enough weight to be offensive”. You’d be wrong. We once played AtA, and I kept getting the chance at using super unflattering to women answers. Answers I thought would be funny because A. I’m a woman (“oh she played that card!”) and B. Everyone there (that I knew) was really feminist so it felt safe to mock myself (easier to do when you’re certain no one there wants you in the kitchen making babies or whatever).
But my cards (and those like it) never got chosen when they would have normally because one woman was sooooo offended by them. In that women are above reproach sort of way (a view I myself find offensive). She guffawed at anything like that and made everyone uncomfortable. She actually glared at my husband once when it seemed like he’d pick a card like that and told him “he’d better not”. She was unhappy (to put it mildly) when she discovered that I was playing some of those cards.
The reason for this story is that she certainly left thinking “I don’t like that woman” because she didn’t like what I played. I left not liking her either because I found her to be offensively closed minded to any comedy that might apply to her. To quote Trey Parker and Matt Stone, either everything’s ok, or nothing is. To quote me, it you can’t make fun of yourself, shut the hell up.
Now two women who might see each other at parties deciding they don’t like each other is a mild consequence to be sure. But it is a consequence. And depending on the group you’re in, the line could be in a different spot. And it can sometimes spur debate and real conversation. Or upset people, bring up sensitivities, who knows. But in that version of the game you own what you say. CAH you don’t. That’s the problem.
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This review is the epitome of complaining that people are having badwrongfun, as they say in RPG circles. As often as crass things come up, cutting “dark truth” stuff comes up. “Limited replayablility” is a pretty legit complaint about it, though. Playing with different people opens it up a bit, but the cards can get played out over time.
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Okay, try to disagree with my assessment more precisely please?
Games tend to be built for purposes - this is ok. No game is going to be all things to all people in all situations. A game being “asocial or even antisocial” is not necessarily bad. Chess is an extremely asocial game: it is a game that can be played nearly as enjoyably against a computer as a real person, and that’s okay! It’s a game about challenge and strategy and thinking ahead and a bunch of things that aren’t socializing, and sometimes I want those things, but if my goal is to have fun with a group of friends, I’m probably not going to be pulling out the chess board.
Other games are specifically built not to be challenging, and this too is okay! Sometimes a little mindless fun is what people want, and a game of Yahtzee is exactly the thing to hit the spot. These games in many ways are essentially “something to do” and be social over - the game version of a knitting group.
Personally, I prefer intentionally social games. I like CAH, I like Mafia, I like Coup and Bullshit and Stratego and stuff like that. where the game is actively about the other people you’re playing with. Telling Lies might be one of those.
Ultimately though, since the original “Truth or Dare”, surpassing taboos has always been a fun part of these games, and Telling Lies seems like it breaches taboos of its own, just different ones than CAH. Not everyone likes games about deception (although I do, personally).
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I was under the impression that Cards Against Humanity is a party game. You play it with friends while slightly tipsy or in that heady feeling of social interaction with close friends that feels about the same as tipsy, have a chuckle and move on. If you are playing it seriously, you are doing it somewhat wrong (though that’s just my personal opinion, which can be wrong)
If there are rape-jokes or something that are offensive, it’s not the cards that are making the joke, it’s the person who is playing it with you. Right there at the table. Within an arm’s reach. So you can slap the back of their head for making a bad joke. Or pour your glass of chosen beverage over their head.
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But this is the problem I have with it - scripted non sequiturs just aren’t funny. Monty python did it well because they were basically geniuses, and it was new at the time. It hasn’t been funny since.
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You then go on to describe how varied games can be, so it looks like you answered your own question? Games are anything and everything, I thought it was an absurd list because it all it did was describe games you didn’t like, not games in general.
I also didn’t say there was anything wrong with games about taboos or deception., I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be arguing about to be honest - sorry for sharing my opinion on the game!
Edited to add:
This is a good regular column on one of my favourite sites: Cardboard Children | Rock Paper Shotgun
It’s a PC gaming site but the column is for boardgames, tends to be a lot of variety in there and I haven’t played many of the titles, but if you’re genuinely starved for good games it’s a reasonable place to start.
This is a great example of “taking offense on principle.” It’s basically a way for people with a weak argument to take control of the dialog. http://scripting.com/2015/04/03/offenseOnPrinciple.html
If you don’t like the game, don’t play it. But don’t assume that because you don’t like it, you also have a right to ruin it for other people. Clearly you like to be offended on principle.
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If you don’t like the assessment, don’t read it and comment on it, you have no right to ruin it for other people. Clearly you like to be offended on principle.
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Person who gets jokes?
There you are mistaken. You don’t get to post an opinion piece with open comments allowed and then throw rocks at people for disagreeing. If you can’t stand the heat…
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Fair point, I just couldn’t resist 
I’d actually have supported your argument due to the articles title alone. They could have presented their opinion in a way that made it less demeaning to the players of the game - which I gather is the focus for the hostility in this thread. It’s a shame because some good points were raised.
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Wow, a lot of replies here.
Cards against humanity loses its charm if you play it too often. It is, fundamentally, a bit of a gimmick.
That isn’t to say it’s not a complex game, because it is.
You have to go off what you know about a person to see what they are going to go for, humor-wise. The smarter people I know will frequently go for a well-played, “Classist Undertones”. The less classy folks will obviously go for anything Poop, or Hitler.
There’s a lot of middle ground there, and people can be hard to predict sometimes. Especially if you are playing with people you don’t know very well, it becomes a game of trying to “read” the person based on very limited interactions, what they say, what cards they play, what they laugh at, and even how they speak.
Not to mention, there’s a strategy to identifying your ‘Loser’ cards and burning them off at the right time. I always play based off my impression of if something is “Good, but not Great” or less then it is a ‘Loser’. I usually win, too.
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