I had four of my close friends play Cruel 2B Kind. My friends are exceedingly competitive people, so I made a mod to the game to accommodate their desire to exercise supremacy over each other; this helped make the game more fun for such a small and contentious group. Instead of using the grouping system of the original, I used a tournament bracket system where two players would face off against each other and the two winners would subsequently face off; then the winner of that would be assigned a point. The first to 5 would win the overall game.
It’s safe to say the game was never awkward but there was a progression in the creativity of our answers. For example, at first, players used pretty standard “intriguing things” – e.g. “I like your shoes” or “never noticed that mole.” Further into the game, players would say things like “if you were a cat I’d call you Garfield” or “You are the culmination of the romance of four grandparents.” For another example, at first made-up holidays were things like “Happy Gristmas” or “Happy Manukkah”… simple variations of real holidays. Further into the game the holidays got more creative, my favorite one being “Merry McRib Awareness Month.” Because of the increasing creativity of the answers, I introduced a second mod to encourage this and make the game more exciting. I got rid of the “A beats C, C beats B, B beats A” mechanic and instead picked a winner based off the creativity and humor of the made-up statement. This change made my friends want to play the game longer since laughing at each other’s ingenuity seemed like the biggest draw for them. I would categorize this as the Fellowship, Challenge, Discovery, and Expression types of fun.
Here is a picture of my friends playing about midway through the session…
