hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2146.txt

Episode: 2146
Title: HPR2146: Cards Against Humanity Tabletop Game
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2146/hpr2146.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 14:54:38

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This is HPR episode 2,146 entitled, Cardinal Against Humanity Tabletop Game.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 21 minutes long.
The summary is, Klaatu Reviews Cardinal Against Humanity.
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You're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Klaatu and this is part X of my Tabletop Gaming Series.
This episode I would like pretty much to review a little card game called Cards Against Humanity.
You've probably heard about Cards Against Humanity.
It's designed to be funny, quote, an offensive quote, and off-color sort of way.
The title of the game hints at that.
It's a pun, crimes against humanity, cards against humanity, and it's not really understating it.
It really is kind of a game designed to be indiscreet.
Now I don't usually get offended.
Like the term offended does not really apply to me usually.
I don't know if it was just because I grew up as a friend to many metalheads
and it just caught me kind of conditioned to tasteless humor or what it is,
but I just, maybe it was being bullied so much, you know, I just kind of developed a thick skin.
I don't know whatever the reason, you know, offensive humor.
It doesn't always appeal to me, but it also doesn't.
It very, very rarely makes me feel indignant or uncomfortable.
So the appeal of this game for me was actually not the humor aspect.
It was the fact that it was sort of the first officially designated creative commons licensed tabletop game that I had encountered.
Now, since that time, because cards against humanity for me was kind of the gateway drug to tabletop gaming, which is kind of weird.
But yeah, I mean, honestly, that's kind of like what got me started.
I mean, yeah, I had experience with tabletop games, like proper tabletop gaming as a kid,
but only on the periphery, because I was never allowed to actually play Dungeons & Dragons specifically.
But all my friends played Dungeons & Dragons.
So I would hang out as they built their characters and, you know, they would play small games over the lunch breaks at school.
So I was around it, but never really got involved.
And cards against humanity was given to me as a gift.
And that's what kind of sort of signaled for whatever reason that was like what I needed to be aware that,
oh, it's okay, I can play games on the tabletop.
So that's kind of what cards against humanity is for me.
And since discovering it, I've discovered other, you know, that there's a whole world out there of creative commons, style gaming.
Certainly as far back as I think 2000 and let's arbitrarily say six.
It's probably even farther back than that.
But there was this thing that Wizards of the Coast came out with called the Open Game License OGL.
And it is an open, essentially an open culture free culture license for analog games.
And I don't know if it predates creative commons, but it's early.
It's definitely an early iteration of these things.
So yeah, it's not, you know, it's cards against humanity being a creative commons is not the is not exactly the revolutionary thing that I that I thought it was when I first encountered the game.
Because I just didn't know enough, but it's still cool and it still appeals to me.
So, so yeah, cards against humanity has an appeal for me mainly for the open culture aspect.
Now, again, since encountering or since playing cards against humanity, I have learned about other sort of like earlier versions of it as well.
So even even its game, its central mechanic, which I thought was was was exciting and new turns out to also have been done before with a game called apples to apples.
So basically everything that I loved about it, you know, the more I learned about gaming, analog gaming, the less I, or the more I realized that that everything I loved about cards against humanity was was actually not actually unique to it.
So it's a really great game like it's a fun game for leisurely gameplay, you know, it's it's a fantastic outlet, I think it gives people permission to be kind of rude and to explore the the wicked side of their sense of humor.
You know, it's okay if you would never tell a tasteless joke in real life because you have to make a tasteless joke in cards against humanity.
It's because you're making the joke as a as part of the game, you're not really making the joke yourself, you know what I mean?
It's like one of those veiled kind of like, oh, I'm not saying, I'm not saying this, this, this, I'm just saying that that's what I would say if I was in a situation where tastelessness was acceptable.
Not everyone sees it that way.
Some people, you know, I mean, there are different levels of there are different thresholds here for sure.
And that's something that you you should probably go ahead and learn early on when talking about cards against humanity.
It's one of those card games that that people, I'm not going to say people tend to love it or hate it because of again, I've kind of learned that that's actually not true either.
Some people truly, especially the experienced gamers, they truly neither love nor hate it.
They recognize that as what it is, which is like just a flavor of a known mechanic.
So what is the game mechanic and card cards against humanity?
Well, it's stupidly simple. One player draws a card and reads the question on the card or the phrase on the card allowed.
And they are usually designed to be a pretty good setup for some kind of witty response.
And then the other players around the table choose a card from their hand, which of course have some kind of response.
And it's usually something vulgar or crass or just really silly.
And they place their responses face down towards the person who read the first card.
And that person picks up each response once all the responses are in, picks them up and reads them allowed in the context of the original statement.
And you end up getting funny, funny things.
It's pretty simple. It's kind of like madlibs almost.
It's just kind of like, here's a phrase, and I want you to fill in this blank with something silly and people do.
And then you read them and they make people laugh.
And the main thing about that is that there's no, like in terms of gaming mechanics, there's not really...
It's one of the simpler ideas, really.
It's completely subjective. Everyone gets a turn at being the game master.
And everyone has a turn at being sort of the player who has to submit something for approval.
So it's quite even, you know, it's a very balanced gameplay at the same time as it is being completely subjective and unbalanced.
Because I mean, if you just, if you happen to have the quirkiest sense of humor at the table, no one thinks you're funny.
Unless you start to adjust your gameplay, you're going to lose.
And even if you try to adjust your gameplay, you may still lose because, you know, people with quirky senses of humor.
I count myself in this group.
Yeah, it's hard to fake it, you know, it's hard to like...
I mean, you can try, you know, especially if you know the person.
Like when I'm playing cards against humanity with my girlfriend, I tend to be able to direct my answers to her sensibilities,
because I know her quite well.
And in larger groups, like eight people, some of whom I don't even know, you do start to pick up on the humor as you play.
You know, and you kind of think, well, I think that person likes this kind of joke.
And so you start to fake it.
Whether that works or not kind of depends on a lot of different things.
And it always, of course, depends on other people's responses.
And on your hand.
I mean, sometimes you just don't have a good response.
And that's too bad.
cards against humanity scales fairly well.
I've played it with two people, four people.
And I want to say probably the maximum has been about ten people.
With two players, you don't actually play with two.
And I talked about this in my tabletop gaming episode, where I was just talking about how great analog programming is.
You actually play with three.
The third player becomes is you call him Rando Calarysian, according to the rule book.
And that player, that invisible ghost player just deals things randomly at random, just random responses.
It's it's quite, quite funny.
Obviously the invisible player is never the judge, but always submits answers.
Um, the there's a slight issue with scalability in that if if you have a very large group like ten people and above.
You're essentially hearing the same joke ten times with a different punchline each time.
And I don't care how funny these things are after the sixth or eighth re iteration of a joke with a different punchline.
It starts to blend and blur together.
And you know, it can be funny, but I mean, after a while, you're just like, all right, I think I'm done with this joke.
Like I believe that I have heard all possible funny responses to this joke at this point.
So I think that something that I would probably do if I was playing with certainly with ten people, sometimes with eight people, is pair people up.
You know, like if it's a bunch of couples at a party or something, then then maybe, you know, couple couple people up so that that responses are are lessened, you know, or fewer.
That's just an idea. I've not actually tried it. It's just something that I have noticed in larger groups.
It tends to become a little bit repetitive.
Other problems with the game are obviously that it's offensive, apparently. Again, I don't really find that myself, but supposedly it's ruined friendships.
I find that unfathomable, but people have said that it has just completely spoiled, you know, like people are unable to separate sort of like,
oh, we're being rude here. You know, we're pretending to be rude rather than actually being rude.
You know, some people can't, I guess, separate those two concepts, which is fair, you know, like it's certainly are youable that if you're acting rude
and you're acting, you know, you're telling off-taste, off-colored jokes in bad taste, then even if you're saying, oh, I'm only doing it because it's a card game.
There's always that sort of question of, well, did you have to be that off-color though? I mean, I know you had to do it because the card game only presented you with these five answers, but I mean, my gosh, that was going too far.
So some people just cannot get over it. And aside from that, even saying, okay, well, I'm in good company, or I shouldn't say I'm in good company, I'm in bad company, I'm in company that I'm familiar with.
I know that it's, you know, quote, safe to propose that we play this game, but the fact of the game is that it's a single mechanic.
A single mechanic game, a question is posed, answers are provided, the winners declared, and it just goes on like that until everyone gets tired of playing.
I mean, really, there's like, there's no end, like there's no goal. It's, it is, it is just constant, constantly the same mechanic over and over again.
So that's, that's a problem. And I guess the other problem is to some degree, this is a problem. Some degree, it's not, but I mean, there, there's a limited set of cards.
I mean, it comes with a huge number of cards. Like, if you buy the box, it's, it's a big, for a card game. It's a big box. It's got lots of answers.
But after a couple of times of playing, you do, at least with, you know, if you're just playing with your own box set, you start to, you start to pick up on, on answers, eventually, you know, you start to hear the same answers.
And somehow, even though they're paired with completely different answers, it becomes a little bit, you know, it's like a running gag that gets a little bit tired, you know, you can only hear.
Some pop culture reference so many times to any number of set of questions, and it just stops becoming funny. It's like, yeah, you've made that joke in a way already.
So that's vaguely an issue, and sort of related to that, I guess, would be that, that some pop culture references just don't last that long.
Or they're lost on you. Like, for me, especially, I'm, I'm really bad pop culture references, because if it's not on the internet, and by internet, I mean, you know, like Web 1.5, not, not this new Web 2.0 stuff.
Like, it's got to be on the internet that I'm on, then I'm not even aware of it.
And, and, you know, it's difficult to, to find that amusing when, when people are laughing at some person that you don't even know exists much less what they're infamous for that week.
So, yeah, that's, that's, that's a mild danger, I guess.
So, all of this is kind of rendered pointless, because you can, it's part of the game, part of the, part of the spirit of the game, and the creative comments side of this game is that you're supposed to make up your own answers as well.
Certainly, with the pop culture references, you could just take a sharpie and scratch out the name of the person that you don't recognize and just write in your own answer.
I mean, try seriously, try, take, take the card that says like, I don't know, Kanye West or whatever, scratch out that name and write system D on the card.
It's like, you'll be the, the hit of the geek party. It, it'll be hilarious every single time and probably more often than what the alternative would have been.
So, that's the beauty of the game. And, and as I've said, I think in previous episodes, there are sets of cards that you can purchase and they're just blank, you know, there's, they're, their card stock cut in the correct size.
And, and that's it. And there are also expansion packs, you know, from cards against humanity and from other, other people who have decided to, you know, give this ago, expansion packs with, with additional answers and stuff like that.
I mean, there's all kinds of different options here and being creative comments, you don't even have to do any of those things. You can just go out to the store and get some card stock, cut it into the correct, roughly the correct size and use them as your own, as your own deck.
So, there's the, the potential for, for, for modification is, is huge. You can do whatever you want and it helps because it's such a simple mechanic. I mean, all you're, you're doing one of two things.
You're either writing down potential responses or you're writing down wacky questions that are a good setup for funny responses.
And I think that the power of the game is kind of that. And before I knew that there were other options, like less quote unquote offensive options, that was kind of, again, the thing that really appealed to me about the game was the idea that you could make your own version of it and that it was okay for you to do that.
That's, I think, the one of the most powerful things about this game is the way that encourages you to kind of kind of come up with your own version of it. That's really cool.
So, cards against humanity. Be careful with it. Don't, don't propose to play it with people. You don't know are open to it.
You can't really trust me on this one. You can get yourself into trouble for proposing a game of cards against humanity with someone who is not okay with cards against humanity.
You know, a good thing would do to maybe, you know, just say, hey, you guys want to play cards against apples to apples, you know, just depending on like their facial expression, just kind of feel it out.
Yeah, either way, it's a fun game. You should try it or not if you don't like it. Don't try it. But it is a fun game. And, and it's creative commons. So if you don't try it, make your own.
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