A Fake Artist in New York

Players

For 4 - ~10 players.

Tools

At least one pen or pencil
A sticky note or paper scrap for each player
A piece of paper for drawing

Each round, everyone is working together on a group drawing. One artist does not know the topic of the drawing, but is trying to fake that they know it. All of the other artists want to keep the topic a secret from them.

Setup

The round starts by picking a commissioner; everyone else is an artist. Each artist needs one small scrap of paper, like a notecard or sticky note.

The commissioner picks a secret topic of the drawing. They don’t tell anyone, but write the secret topic on each of the artists’ scraps of paper except for one. On one of the scraps, they write “fake”.

The scraps with the secret topic and “fake” are randomly shuffled and passed out to all of the artists. Whichever artist gets “fake” is now the fake artist for the round.

Artists should keep their topic scraps hidden! They don’t want the fake artist to see the topic.

Gameplay

Now it’s drawing time! Get out a blank piece of paper and a pencil or pen. All artists (including the fake) now take turns drawing a single line on the paper. A single line can be curvy or straight or cross itself and start anywhere, it just can’t involve picking up and putting down the pencil.

Once each artist has drawn one line, go around the circle again. Each artist will finish two lines in total.

The goal is not to finish the drawing! It’s just to prove to everyone that you know the topic.

Voting

Once each artist has drawn two lines, a minute or two of silent analysis is allowed. Feel free to ask and discuss who drew what line, but no other discussion can happen. The point of the game is to communicate through the drawing.

At the end of the discussion, every artist is going to vote for who was the fake. The commissioner will hold the vote by counting to three and each person points at who they think the fake artist is.

If a real artist gets the most votes, the fake artist wins! If the fake artist gets the most votes, they can defend themselves; if they can say the secret topic by this point, then they still win! If the fake artist gets the most votes, but doesn’t know the secret topic, everyone else wins.

Variations

Give each person a different colored pencil to make it easy to see what they drew.
Instead of writing “fake” on one slip, write a different topic; have everyone guess who had the different topic and the topic the other side had.
Play a version without drawing: instead take turns asking someone a question about the shared topic and listen to their answer.

Games!