Cards Against Inanity Version 1.0 2017 Viral Virtue, Inc. CardsAgainstInanity.com The one game you can never win but have to play anyway. in ane /iˈnān/ adjective: silly; stupid. Cards Against Inanity consists of two decks of playing cards. The white cards contain Sane Questions. The black cars contain Inane Questions. There are many games you can play with these cards. The download comes with instructions for two of them called Who in the World is Mycroft Holmes and Inane Eights. Cards Against Inanity is Copyrighted by 2017 by Viral Virtue, Inc. You may use Cards Against Inanity for free under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means that you can use, remix, and share this work in the same way as we do as long as you give us credit, do not make money on, and you further license it under the same terms we license it to you. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Cards Against Inanity was created by Brooke Allen (http://brookeallen.com) inspired by The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell, founder of Schell Games.
How to Make Your Own Cards Against Inanity Card Decks 1. Download this PDF and take it to your local Staples and have it printed. (You could take it to any print shop but we re plugging Staples hoping they will give us some money for mentioning them.) 2. Tell them you want it printed on 80 pound card stock or heavier. The people at Staples will try to sell you 80 pounds of paper but don t fall for it. (Hey, Staples, if you start sending some dough our way, we ll take out that last bit.) 3. Some playing cards use color so ask for color printing. You might want to make sure you only print pages 3 through 10 because you do not need the instructions printed on heavy card stock. Because there are only 8 cards you might want to print 5 or 10 decks for your friends while you are there anyway. 4. Cut the cards using a large kitchen knife. You could use scissors or a paper cutter but we couldn t find the right clip art so you must use a knife. The more precisely you trim the cards, the more you ll wish you could just order a deck from us. 5. We recommend that you put your cards in a bag and store them in a freezer to preserve freshness. If someone finds your cards in the freezer they might say, What an inane place to store cards! If this happens, we recommend you just stare at them until they get the joke. Cards Against Inanity is in no way related to Cards Against Humanity. There are many differences between us, not the least of which is that CAH is inane whereas CAI is against inanity.
Who in the World is Mycroft Holmes Players: 3-7, Age: 10+ Background: Everyone knows that Sherlock Holmes is the world s greatest consulting detective and master of disguise, but few know that his smarter older brother, Mycroft Holmes, is a master of impersonation. Mycroft has an uncanny ability to research a famous person who you and I might know and answer virtually any question as if he were that person. Objective: You and your friends take turns playing Mycroft by impersonating a famous person or character, living or dead, real or fictional. When you ply Mycroft you will answer questions from the Sane Deck in a way that slowly reveals the identity of the person you are impersonating. Your goal is to get one (and only one) of the other players to guess your identity. Rules: The oldest player goes first as Mycroft. Play continues clockwise. Think of someone to impersonate. When it is your turn to be Mycroft imagine a real or fictional, living or dead person whom you know well and think all the other players have at least heard of. If you have time to prepare you might read up on a famous person so that you can give accurate answers rather than guesses. Setup. Use only the Sane Deck. Begin by removing the Ace of Hearts and all of the Wildcards. Keep the Ace for yourself and give one Wildcard to each of the other players. Deal. Deal each player 5 cards from the remaining 53 cards. Place the extra cards in the center to be used as a draw pile. Asking Questions. The other players each choose one card from their hand and pass it to you for an answer. Answering Questions. Read all of the questions out loud and then decide which ones you want to answer and in what order. Respond to the questions as you think your character would. If you think your character would lie, then tell a lie. If you think your character would get angry at the question,
then fake anger. However, if you don t know enough about your character to answer then say, I don t know enough about my character to answer that. Clarifying questions later. After each card is answered, it is left face up on the table in front of you so that everyone can remember what questions have been asked. At any point any player can ask you to clarify a previously answered question although you have no obligation to do so. You may also add to an answer even if not asked. Guessing Your Identity. If one of the other players is very sure that they know who you are impersonating then they say Got it. Then every player (not just the player who said Got It ) writes their best guess on a piece of paper and passes them face down, to you. You read these guesses without revealing them to anyone else. If one or more people guess your identity then the round is over. Score the round as described below. Additional Rounds. If nobody guesses who you are then play continues without revealing what false guesses were made. After each question is answered, all of the other players draw a replacement card and you repeat for another round. Once the draw pile has been exhausted then people play cards from their own hand. Using Wildcards. After two rounds have been played using the standard questions, players can use a Wildcard instead of one of the standard questions. In the third and fourth rounds it costs a point to play a Wildcard. From the fifth round onward it costs nothing to use a Wildcard. The person playing a wildcard writes their own question on a piece of paper and passes it to Mycroft. Questions should be worded as the character would ask themselves. For example, don t write, Are you living or dead? but rather, Am I living or dead? Giving Up. If everyone gives up then nobody scores any points and the player to the left becomes Mycroft for the next round. Scoring. If at least one player figures out who you are then then everyone gets one point, including you. In addition to that one point everyone receives, each person who identified you correctly gets another point.
You (Mycroft) get an additional point for each person who guesses incorrectly. In this way your score is maximized if one, and only one, player identifies you. The person who said, Got it also receives an additional point for each other player who guesses incorrectly. An example The players are Mycroft (you), Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice. In the 3rd round Carol uses a Wildcard to ask a question. In the 5th round Ted says, Got It. Ted and Alice are the only ones who guess correctly. Bob gets only the one point that everyone gets. Carol gets zero points (the one point everyone gets minus the point for using a Wildcard). Ted gets four points (the one point everyone gets, one point for guessing correctly, and another two points because Bob and Carol guess wrong). Alice gets two points (the one everyone gets plus one for getting it right). Mycroft (you) get three points (the one everyone gets plus two more because Bob and Carol guess wrong). If Ted had guessed incorrectly then he would have received zero points (the one everyone gets minus the one point penalty for saying Got it and yet getting it wrong). If Ted had used a Wildcard, said Got It and guessed wrong then his score would be negative one point (the one point everyone gets minus one each for using a Wildcard and guessing wrong). Strategy. Mycroft maximizes his score if only one person guesses his identity correctly and therefore should reveal his identity slowly and not give clues that it obvious who he is impersonating. The other players maximize their score by being the first to say got it and actually getting it. Because there is a penalty for being that person you should be fairly confident that you know the person s identity, otherwise it might be better to let someone else say got it.
Insane Eights Players: 3-7, Age: 10+ Setup: Remove the Jokers and shuffle both the white Sane and black Inane decks together. Deal: Eight cards are dealt to each player. The remaining cards of the deck are placed face down at the center of the table. The top card is then turned face up to start a discard pile. Players discard by matching the rank or suit of the top card of the discard pile, starting with the player to the left of the dealer. The 8 is special in that you can always play an 8 no matter what card is on top of the pile. If a player is unable to match the rank or suit of the top card of the discard pile and does not have an 8, then he or she draws up to three cards from the stockpile until playable card is drawn. It three cards are drawn without a playable card then the player passes. When a player plays an 8, they must declare the suit that the next player is to play; that player must then follow the named suit or play another 8. As an example: Once 6 is played the next player: 1. 2. 3. 4. can play any of the other 6s can play any of the clubs can play any 8 (then must declare a different suit) can draw from the stockpile until willing and able to play one of the above The game ends as soon as one player discards their last card. All the players who still have cards calculate points in their hands as follows: Ace through 10 count 1 through 10 points respectively. Jack, Queen, and King all count 10 points. An 8 counts 50 points. The first person to go out collects points from both the white and black cards from all the other players. The other players also get points for the white cards in their individual hand but not from the black cards. For example, if Bob goes out and Carol has 22 white and 9 black points while Ted has 12 white and no black points then Bob gets 43 points, Carol gets 22, and Ted gets 12 points. That is why it is important to get rid of your black cards before your white ones. For two players the game ends when someone reaches 150 points, or 200 for 3 player, 300 for 4 players, 350 for 5 players, 450 for 6 players and 500 for 7 or 8 players. This game is a mod of Crazy Eights. Make up your own rules and have fun. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crazy_eights. In addition to this game, you can make up your own modifications of standard card games whether you use the questions on the cards or not.