Every year my family picks a "theme" and everyone brings a gift from that theme and we all trade, which works pretty well and this game we are doing card and board games, and since I'm "the gamer" of the family, they have asked for a list of good games under $50 that they might pick from.
What are some good games under $50 that normies would enjoy?
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Love Letter.
A couple sets of Magic duel decks
Ticket to Ride is great fun, Betrayal at the House on the Hill is also fantastic
Katan is nice, ticket to ride, Machiavelli, Carcassonne
Seconding Betrayal. Ticket to Ride is approaching Monopoly levels of not fun.
If your family can handle PVP:
- Secret Hitler
- Sheriff of Nottingham
- Betrayal at House on the Hill *
- Spyfall
If co-op or non-hostile is better, maybe:
- Pandemic *
- Forbidden Island (easier than Pandemic)
- Mysterium *
Other:
- Dixit
- Codenames (technically team v team)
- Snake Oil
- Superfight
- Red Flags (possibly off-color)
(Snake Oil, Superfight, and Red Flags share similar mechanics, so I recommend picking up the one that seems most interesting to your family and getting the others later if they enjoy the style.)
I've marked those that I feel may be more difficult with a *.
You may also consider the Jackbox Partypack games for PC. My personal favorite of the four packs is 3, but they all have at least one interesting game. You just need one copy of the game and everyone else will need access to a cellphone, tablet, or PC browser.
Easy mode:
- Sushi go
- Dixit
- King of tokyo
- Once upon a time
- Stone age
- Munchkin
Hard mode:
These are cooperative games in wich all win or none wins but if they can handle monopoly and dont kill each other thers no problem:
- Forbidden Island
- Forbidden desert
- Dead of winter
- Ghost stories
- Pandemic
Search games in kickstarter, they have a lot of confy games there.
Or you can make your own game in thegamecrafter.com
Jericho, is that you?
To add to this list:
One Night Ultimate Werewolf (even has a mobile app for ease of use at the table)
Red Scare (hilarious fun to accuse everyone else of being a communist)
don't do this user
Another vote for Betrayal at House on the Hill. I would say Zombicide too but that's a lot more than 50 freedom dollars. Munchkin is good if you have a family who can take a bit of shit throwing, when i play it with my group of friends one refuses to play because of the "arguing" and the other can't believe i treat my wife with the same contempt as the rest of the table. Also the humour is mostly referencing D&D so it might be lost on people who don't Veeky Forums
sounds like a fun tradition though OP, my families tradition is misery and drama.
Some of you guys need to remember that if the family are people who don't play a lot of games, some of the suggestions that you're offering are going to be too advanced for them to pick up easily. (I am horrified at the idea of suggesting Zombicide or Ghost Stories to normies, even if they're great games.)
My family doesn't tend to play games. I got Fortune and Glory for Christmas one year and thought they might have fun. It's actually fairly easy to play. But it requires a large space, more than 10 minutes of set-up, and someone willing to run the rules. In the end, I elected to just play referee and run the game and just tell people when it was their turn and what their options were, because everything was so intimidating for them, they seemed to refuse to believe they could understand the rules.
When I brought out Dixit and Forbidden Island, it was much less intimidating to them and they had fun. Their favorite game to play before those was Apples to Apples (which is like Cards Against Humanity for the more PG crowd), so I'll probably pick up Snake Oil or Superfight this Christmas.
Settlers of Catan is great, games are usually done in under 30min and everyone usually has tons of fun.
If you want someting nice and entry-level, I'd recommend Guillotine. My board game club would play it as a warm-up when we just got there and were getting other games set up.
the Timeline card games are pretty fun and pretty normie, lots of subjects too.
it has a board game too i know nothing about.
might be good?
You can get better recs in /bgg/ but imo normies don't want to play some unknown game. They want to play something that they can brag about playing to their friends which is why something like Cards Against Humanity is popular. Catan and Ticket to Ride are now part of the social zeitgeist so they are also good recs.
There are some pretty good and pretty bad recs in this thread so I probably recommend taking it to the board game general but the rule of thumb is "if it's popular, it's a good rec" because it doesn't matter how shitty it plays, it's about whether or not they can say they've played it
Resistance or Avalon (depending if you prefer sci-fi or fantasy) are very normie friendly. Moved into halls recently with some decidedly "non-board game" people, but after a round of Avalon they immediately wanted to go again.
Dominion is alright and fairly simple.
My family really enjoys Bang! The Dice Game
Thirding Betrayal. My sixty-year-old father got into it recently and absolutely fucking adores it. Goes over really well even with non-board game people because the theme is really accessible, the basic rules are simple, and it goes differently every time you play (for the first thirty times at least).
Holiday Munchkin
Also, I really want to try out Game of Phones.
My adult nongamer friends always like Red Dragon Inn, but it might not be suitable for kids.
Seconding this, I've just bought it since it usually goes well in a larger group
I'll second Snake Oil. Its really good, however it does require a little more improv and acting than other games like it. Games like Cards Against Humanity or Choking Hazard just require you to play cards for a laugh but in Snake Oil YOU have to make the gag work. So its not for everyone.
I don't really like Super Fight. You're basically asked to say "who would win in a fight" but the modifiers on the fight are so zany and random that every round starts to feel similar. Its always one [QUIRKY THING] with [QUIRKY WEAPON] fighting another and the group I played with just got bored.
In my family we play or used to play Munchkin, Dixit, Alias, Clue and Saboteur.
Sorry, but your opinion is shit. "Normies" want to play games that are fun.
>Munchkin
The only fun you could possibly get from that is arguing over the terrible written rules for 2 hours.
People seem to think that exploding kittens is a normie game but my parents, gf, and normie friends all hate it. Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone who actually likes it.
I think everything I've got has been said, but going purely off personal experience I'd go with Love Letter, Mafia, Pandemic, Secret Hitler, Cards Against Humanity, Forbidden Island, Munchkin, and Flame War.
Oddly enough, Zombicide seems to be a hit with my normies even though it's pretty intensive. I haven't met a woman who likes it though so maybe not.
>Zombicide
Well, I'm a ladyface. To be fair, I haven't played it, but I've seen a few LPs of it and liked it enough to buy it on Tabletop Simulator, so there's that?
I'm gonna go with something out of the left field and say Bohnanza. That thing has grabbed the attention of so many people into gaming to a point I don't quite understand how.
If you think there are games that are fun, as opposed to games that are inherently "unfun," then it is you whose opinion is shit
Sushi GO! is an easy game to pick up and learn. Main mechanic to that is card drafting. Also good for family play because it's not too competitive/back-stabby like a game of Risk or something.
Third opinion; if you are a human who has an opinion - your opinion is shit
Fiasco
And where did I imply that, I wonder? However, there actually are. I mean, people have different tastes, but there always are things that more people enjoy and there are things that few people enjoy.