Some Blog Site

This is a guide for how to play the game The Chameleon. This game is simple in concept but after playing it I found that it is difficult to play, in that it’s quite nuanced and you need the whole group of people to have the same level of nuance. You can certainly play regardless, but to play correctly takes some practice. Without that, you can still play and it might be funnier than normal, which might be what you’re looking for. There’s a difference between playing a game right and having fun with it. This game isn’t easy to play right but it is easy to have fun with, if any of that made sense.

1. How do I win?
By blending in well with the others.

2. How do I blend in?
By being able to guess the secret word that everyone but you knows.

3. How does everyone else know the secret word if it is secret?
At the beginning of the round, cards are dealt face down so that everyone gets one card. The front of the card has the secret decoder key, except one card. If you get the one blank card then you are the chameleon. Everyone else gets matching decoder keys so they all know to find the word.

4. How do they find the word?
There is one card that goes face up in the middle of the table and that is the word card. There are different word cards, and it lists the theme and then a bunch of words related to that theme. The secret word is one of those words, and the decoder key tells everyone which specific word it is. Your job as chameleon is to guess which word on your turn it is based on the vague clues that everyone else is giving, and you do that by giving your own vague clue so that no one else would know you’re the chameleon.

5. How do I guess the word if I happen to be the first person to give a clue but I’m the chameleon that round?
That’s a tough one – you’ll just have to guess well and give a clue that’s vague enough to cover some of the bases but not so vague that people know that you don’t know the word. At the end of the round people will vote for who they think the chameleon is, but there’s usually a lot of chatter before that and you’ll get a feeling for how well (or how poorly) you’ve done.

We played it and everyone seemed to have fun, even though my poker face is so bad that people knew I was the chameleon as soon as I was dealt my card.

There, now go play The Chameleon.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.