Clue: You have a favorite TV detective and are prepared to defend your choice with specific supporting details.
Catan: You enjoy asking whether anyone would trade wood for some sheep. Who cares if you’ve asked it for the tenth time tonight and your resource management strategy is completely unsustainable?
Ticket to Ride: You insist on describing yourself as a cool, chill, go-with-the-flow person, but all your friends have seen your competitive side, even those who weren’t there for the table-flipping incident of ’19.
Charades: You’ve never been to a game night before, but you have seen one on TV.
Jenga: You have a steady hand, an indomitable spirit, and an extra set in the car in case the host’s labradoodle runs off with fallen blocks again.
Uno: One of your friends is mad at you.
Risk: Most of your friends are mad at you.
Game of Thrones Risk: All of your friends are mad at you.
Life: You’re resentful that, despite having done everything you were supposed to, you do not have a career, a house, or a dated car full of pink and blue pegs.
Cards Against Humanity: You’re feeling better about game night since realizing that party games and drinking games totally count. Unfortunately, you only have the original Cards Against Humanity and none of the expansions, so your friends already know all the jokes, but whatever. You’re here for the drinks.
Apples to Apples: No one brought Cards Against Humanity, and you’ll take what you can get.
Carcassonne: You’ll take any opportunity to say the word “meeples.”
Cranium: You were really into art in high school and haven’t been able to do much of it in years, what with your corporate job slowly creeping into all your available time, your anxious pug mix needing constant validation and snuggling, and all these game nights to attend. Every once in a while, though, you think about giving it another shot, and you can’t help but be inspired when you’re handed a lump of clay, a tiny pencil, and an impromptu creative challenge.
Chess: You don’t really get, or care to get, game night.
Betrayal at the House on the Hill: Your original suggestion of shaking things up and doing a ghost tour instead of having a game night yet again was unceremoniously shot down. You hope you get to be the traitor this time.
Trivial Pursuit: In an attempt to relive the high of taking your team to victory at the The Office pub trivia night two Thursdays ago, you raided your parents’ game cabinet and didn’t realize their copy was from the ’80s. Your strategy of answering “Madonna” for every question isn’t working as well as hoped.
Scrabble: You were an English major.
Sorry!: You have revenge in your heart.
Everdell: Your friends instituted a ban on long war or strategy games after the time two of them ended up stranded at your apartment for three days in a snowstorm, during which you played exactly one game of Twilight Imperium. They left hungry, demoralized, and vaguely concerned about the unchecked spread of capitalism by human-sized space cats. You’re hoping the adorable woodland creatures will help you sneak this one past them.
Werewolf (a.k.a. Mafia): You relish in unleashing chaos upon a relatively tame gathering.
Heads Up!: You forgot to bring a game.
Pandemic: You’ve been trying to get your friends to play again since those disquieting summer 2020 Zoom game nights and have finally broken them down with the argument that “it would be nice to play a collaborative game, so everyone can be a winner,” that “it’s empowering to feel a sense of control over a random, uncontrollable event,” and that you even “brought the good expansion,” but you’ve failed to mention that you brought the expansion with the hardest-to-beat diseases. You have a dark sense of humor.
Monopoly: You’re no longer welcome at game night.