Paper-and-Pencil

Scattergories

"The Game of Scattergories," published in 1988 by Milton Bradley, is a great game for any group to play. In the game each player fills out a category list 'with answers that begin with the same letter.' If no other player matches your answers, you score points. The game is played in rounds. After 3 rounds a winner is declared, and a new game can be begun.

Similar to:

Facts in Five

Boggle

'Boggle is a timed word game in which players have 3 minutes to find as many connected words as possible from the face up letters resting in a 16 cube grid. When the timer runs out, players compare their lists of words and remove any words found by multiple players. Points are then awarded for remaining words, depending on how many letters are in the word. (In the original Boggle, all words must contain 3 or more letters to score points.)

An example grid given in the French Canadian rules (of Deluxe Boggle) holds an amazing 459 words!

A number of variants have been produced by Parker Brothers over time, including Big Boggle (which uses a 5×5 grid of letters and forces players to search for longer words).

Boggle is a word dice game.

Game of Things...

Things... is a party game where everyone writes a response to a particular prompt, such as "Things... you shouldn't put in your mouth," and the players then try to guess which player wrote which response.

A reader is chosen. This reader reads aloud a Topic Card. The players all write a response, fold up the slip of paper and turn it in to the reader, who reads them aloud once and then a second time. The player to the left of the reader has to guess who wrote which response. This is all done from memory, without benefit of taking notes or having the responses read again. If the guesser is correct, he or she continues guessing until incorrect, at which time the player to his/her left tries guessing. Players whose responses were correctly identified are eliminated and cannot make guesses. The round ends when one player has not been matched to a response.

1 point is awarded for each correct guess. 6 points are awarded to the person who successfully avoided detection. The job of reader passes to the left. When everyone has been reader once, the game ends. High score wins.

Nuns on the Run

From BoardgameNews.com:

Fréderic Moyersoen presents a new take on the us-versus-them genre with Nuns on the Run, published by Mayfair Games. Most of the players are novices who are eager to secretly explore the grand abbey at night in order to fulfill their “secret wish.” They sneak through corridors searching for keys and treasures. (What treasures could a novice be searching for? Forbidden cookies? A soft mattress? Or narcotics? Or a book of witchcraft?)

While sneaking through the abbey, they must remain watchful for the abbess or prioress who are on patrol to ensure that pure novices remain that way. These characters are controlled by other players who want to nab the novices before they can make it back into bed.

Nuns on the Run is a like a reverse of Scotland Yard. Players play either as a novice, or as the Abbess or Prioress. The Novices move in secret and avoid being seen or heard by the Abbess or Prioress. The goal is to make it to the location on the board where the novice can get her "secret wish" and return to their room without being detected. All of the novices move in secret by marking their movement and locations on hidden sheets. The Abbess and Prioress move on regulated paths around the board, but can diverge and chase down novices that they see or hear. The player or players who complete their secret wishes and return to their rooms win, or the Abbess and Prioress win if they catch a certain number of novices.