Introduction to Cards Against Humanity
Cards Against Humanity is a judging card game created in 2011 by 8 Highland Park High School alumni (Josh Dillon, Daniel Dranove, and 6 others) as a more risqué mod on the popular judging game Apples to Apples. Taking a similar format of one player taking on the role of a judge for each round and choosing the best answer card to a prompt card, Cards Against Humanity turns up the heat with both prompts and answers that toe the line of appropriate and politically correct, leading to the age restriction of 17+. From personal experience, however, I might argue this game would generate just as much fun for a group of friends ages 13+, as long as they understood the historical and pop culture references.
Breaking Down the Gameplay
As aforementioned, Cards Against Humanity has similar game mechanics to Apples to Apples. Players are given a quirky, fill-in-the-blank prompt to spark creativity when choosing how to answer the prompt in the funniest way, which creates the fun of expression as players are able to showcase their own personal brand of humor. Then, players get to read through everyone’s choices of cards for the prompt and laugh together over the funniest ways to fill-in-the-blank, creating a sense of bonding and fellowship amongst the group. However, where Cards Against Humanity diverges from Apples to Apples in its darker style of humor in the prompts and answer cards. While Apples to Apples orients towards more family-friendly fun, Cards Against Humanity is targeted more towards young adult friend groups who can delight together in the twisted card selections of each player. Players who engage in the game must cast aside any notions of getting offended and embrace risky feeling of playing what would usually be an offensive card, causing an adrenaline rush that leads to a feeling of satisfaction when the group laughs at your card. This adrenaline rush to the high of satisfaction from having your joke understood and accepted by the group makes Cards Against Humanity succeed at the fun of expression even more than Apples to Apples.
This fun of expression is furthered by the mechanic of the rotating role of being “judge”. Just as every player gets to express their personal brand of humor through choosing their choice of funny card, the judge also gets to express their sense of humor through their choice of the winning card. The feeling of expression is reinforced by being able to gift the prompt card to the player that aligned best with the judge’s sense of humor. Each player gets a chance to be a judge and multiple chances to be a card chooser, maximizing the fun of expression on both sides.
Reflection on the Gameplay
Overall, I enjoyed playing Cards Against Humanity and the adrenaline rush of seeing others’ reactions to my card choices. My team bonded over the prompt+answer combos that collectively made us belly-laugh and felt a sense of fellowship from the shared experience of choosing risqué cards.
My attempt at the game, however, was a bit of a fail. In the beginning, I was dealt a lot some oddly specific cards that I had trouble fitting into the prompts. For example, I had one about a “pangender octopus roaming the galaxy in search of love”. While this card was definitely out there, it wasn’t particularly funny to me or my teammates. Thus, for many of my cards, I would just try to get rid of them to try to get better cards that better fit my brand of humor. But, due to the luck of the draw and my seeming lack of luck tonight, I kept getting cards that I didn’t know what to do with. And by the end of the game, I was the only player that didn’t have any prompts that I’d won.
Humor in general is something that is a difficult thing to tackle–dark humor especially. If I could change the game, however, I would have reduced the number of answer cards and repeatedly playtested each answer card to see which ones feel most funny and useable. I would likely eliminate the oddly specific but not quite humorous cards and keep the ones that seem to be the most universally funny (or as universal as a game like CAH can get). Overall, I think the fun of expression would be even further maximized by a more selective pool of answer cards.
