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What games are good for playing in a bar?


  2. Somewhat resilient to spilled beer



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34 Answers

Bananagrams is an obvious choice. Each person plays scrabble on their own without a board. The goal is to use up all your tiles before the other people do. It's extremely portable, and very quick to play. There's also nothing that can get ruined from a spilled drink. Banangrams


A less well-known choice is Spot It! It looks like a children's game, but it's an all ages game. Just a deck of circular cards. Also extremely portable in its protective tin. Each card has a variety of symbols on it. Every card in the deck has exactly one symbol matching with every other card in the deck. There are a variety of different games you can play with this deck of cards. Our favorite is the bomb mode, and we modified it to make our own mode, two-fisted bomb mode. You don't even need a table to play this game, you can play standing up. Play is also extremely fast. You can get an entire round in while waiting for the bartender to make your drink, depending on the mode you have selected.

Spot It!

Spot It!

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Paper Football (Canadian-style): You get three downs to pitch a paper football from one side of a table to the other. Spectators can run a drinking pool; whenever the score includes your number, you must drink.

Zoom Schwartz Figliano: Use specific terms and actions to pass the game from player to player; foulers drink.

One Thousand Blank White Cards: A DIY nomic card game; use the back of business cards, or scraps of paper to play. Include drinking if you want.

Forum Games: For example, "my cookie"

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If you wish to interest those around you and provoke interaction, Icehouse Zen is an excellent choice.

It's sufficiently open to new players mid-game that anyone can join in and is nice and easy to explain. We have ended up with several fellow drinkers joining us for a game, which is a lovely pub experience.

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I'd highly recommend Zombie Dice, by Steve Jackson Games. It does have custom dice, which if you're not careful can go wandering, but if you've got a table, it's great. It's also good because games are so short, if someone else arrives, they're not stuck watching from the side for too long. Add a little alcohol and "Braaaaaaaains", and you're in for a great game.

SJ Games also make Cthulhu dice, but I've had less success with that: it takes some time to figure out what the symbols on the dice mean, especially if you're not familiar with the Call of Cthulhu rpgs.

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protected by user1873 Nov 7 '12 at 11:02

