The Good, The Bad & The Funny

The Good, The Bad & The Funny is an Apples-style party card game for a bunch of people. Players make compound words or phrases from a set of word cards to satisfy a mission. The dealer decides which of the submissions is Good, which is Bad, and which is Funny, and rewards the players appropriately (3, -2 and 5 points respectively). The first to 21 (or -10) wins.

There are three main differences between The Good, The Bad & The Funny and other Apples-style games:

The three main differences are:

1. Scoring. Apples games with strangers can be aggravating - will they choose the funny card or the clever one? Or the realistic one? Or just choose something terrible.

The dealer always has to choose The Good, The Bad & The Funny.

The Good is the best representation of the mission card. It’s worth three points because, while good, it’s boring and obvious. And you probably had the perfect card, so whatever.

The Bad is the worst submission that round. It’s worth negative two because I’m sick of players constantly ditching cards instead of actually thinking about a good answer. You’ll also notice that many of the players that think they are funny will end up with a lot of bad answers.

The Funny gets the biggest laugh. Subjective, of course, but it’s worth five points for entertaining the room.

The first to (or above) 21 points wins, unless there is a tie, in which case play continues as normal until a single player has the highest score.

There’s another small twist, which is that players can also win by scoring -10 points. This makes it a bit more fun to be chosen for that bad answer in round 1.

2. Players always play two cards. This is a game about compound words and phrases. Our lives are surrounded by such combinations - you’ll start to notice much more after reading this sentence. Creating compound words and phrases is a wonderful challenge - it forces players to think about the many ways that a word can be interpreted and manipulated by another word. And the essence of this game is a carefully created wordlist that is composed of the most commonly occurring bits from compound words and phrases in the English language, almost all of which are nouns.

There are a couple of key benefits to this approach. Most answers are not reliant on a shared understanding of pop. Many other Apples games assume a certain level of 21st Century culture familiarity while the word cards from The Good, The Bad & The Funny are timeless (the mission cards, however, do have a bit of pop-infusion). Answers won’t get stale, as the likelihood of a one playing the same combination twice within a play session or many, many play sessions is infinitely low. Even playing the same word card won’t have the same negative effect as in other games because it is about how two cards react together, not simply a funny reference. Even if the same two cards are played together, the order can be changed to dramatically alter the meaning.

The game is very replayable without the need for many, many expansions.

3. At any given time, three mission cards are face up. Dealers get to choose which mission they want to judge, which allows for another layer of strategy. Players can hold onto cards that match future possible missions (don’t you hate throwing out the perfect card right before getting the matching mission?).