Game-A-Week #32 J’Accuse

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the wedding reception of some close friends. During that time, a group of us stumbled across a copy of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Inside the old wooden box, there were a ton of questions each written on a card the size of an apples to apples card. After reading a few and having a chuckle about how outdated they were, we naturally gravitated towards turning it into a game.

We had a few rounds of playtesting and eventually landed on a format that was some-what amusing: use the cards as accusatory, or defensive, statements towards other players. For example, if you had the card “At times I feel like smashing things” you would then use that as a base to accuse another player for some transgression “At times I feel like smashing things, RYAN!” The accused would then be able to respond with an inventory card they were holding adding “, ok?!” to the end of it.

Example of gameplay:

Arnie has the cards “I have had very peculiar and strange experiences”, and “I have had periods of days, weeks, or months when I couldn’t take care of things because I couldn’t ‘get going'”.
Ryan has the cards “At times I feel like smashing things” and “My sex life is satisfactory”

Ryan decides to accuse Arnie and says “My sex life is satisfactory, ARNIE!”

Arnie then decides to defend this out-of context association with “I have had periods of days, weeks, or months when I couldn’t take care of things because I couldn’t ‘get going’, OK!?”

The round then ends and a winner is chosen by the number of laughs they received.

The game felt very much like “whose line is it anyway” and provided a good amount of entertainment. Will we play it again? Probably not, but it was good at the time.