Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread!  Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into.  Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.

Let’s talk party games today! Some of my earliest memories of playing board games involve my aunts breaking out a game or two after the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner is cleared away, or while winding down time until midnight on New Year’s Eve. We’d break the family up into teams sit around the table to play Trivial Pursuit (while my dad yelled out answers for both teams from the next room), or Taboo (while my dad enjoyed abusing his privileges with the buzzer), or Pictionary. There’s a perennial family story in which a very young CleverGuy was tasked with drawing the word “lumberjack” and for some reason interpreted that as a single dot on a page.

Nowadays, party games come in many different varieties. The purpose of most party games is to encourage social interaction. The best ones are easy to set up, have fairly simple rules, and allow for large groups of people to play together at the same time. According to BoardGameGeek.com, top party games include Codenames, Decrypto, Secret Hitler, and Just One.

What are your favorite games to play at a party with your friends or family? Do you have a traditional game that gets brought out at holiday gatherings?

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We’re taking a break from the game for the holidays (since Christmas and New Year’s Eves fall on our normal game night). See you in the 2023!