Pen & Paper Party Games for Adults

When you host your next adults-only game night, there's no need to spend big bucks on expensive and convoluted games. Many fun activities can be played with supplies found around your home, such as pads and pens. Get guests in the "write" frame of mind right as they walk in the door and begin competing.

Many adults at your party may be familiar with the game of chance called Bingo, which involves lining up numbers from 72 balls to win prizes or money. A version of this style of bingo, called ice breaker bingo, people bingo, or signature scavenger hunt, is an ideal party game that requires only a pen and paper. Players are given bingo cards featuring phrases, such as "Has five cats," "Speaks Swahili" and "Has been in a hot air balloon," instead of numbers. To play the game, partygoers must find someone to "sign" the boxes on their cards, with players only allowed to sign one box per card. The idea is to encourage guests to learn interesting things about each other quickly and without too much pressure. This getting-to-know-you game gets people talking to each other and paves the way for conversation later in the party.

Party guests who have turned on the television in the past few years will be familiar with crime scene drawings, the sketched outline of a body on the floor after it has been removed from the crime scene. Create your own crime scene poses with a roll of brown craft paper and a pen by having guests pair up and create poses. Tape the paper to the floor and have one person lie down as a "crime victim." Ask the other person to trace them lightly and gently along their shape, creating the crime scene drawing. Have partners trade places to create a pose for each person. Offer a prize for the funniest and scariest poses. For additional material options, use black paper and a white gel pen.

Pictionary has long been a staple of the board game category. The game involves teams of players attempting to sketch words provided by the game as the team moves around a game board to get to the "home base." While the categories on the Pictionary cards are fairly common, such as person, place, object, action or animal, you can tweak the game for an adult audience. Scrap the idea of the game board entirely and just concentrate on having players draw shapes for their teammates to guess at. Make cards ahead of time (a typical Pictionary card has five word options to sketch, one from each category) using adult-friendly topics such as sexual positions, lingerie styles, body parts or sexy song lyrics. To play, you just need a large pad of paper (such as the kind you'd find to go with an easel) and a pen with lots of ink.