Loaded Questions is a Board Game that is Far from Boring

I asked for Loaded Questions for my birthday because the concept sounded cool. However, once I got it I hesitated playing it. The rules seemed complex and I was afraid it would be boring. I finally broke it out and found that with only a few tweaks my family had a lot of fun playing this game.

The Purpose
The purpose of the game is to move around a board from square to square until you get to the end. You get to move on the basis of whether or not you correctly guessed “who said what” to answer the questions. The question categories are: Hypotheticals, Anything Goes, No-Brainers and Personals. This will make more sense if you read through my first rule set below! There was some debate over what the official rules were actually saying which is why we made some changes.

Vivasuzi’s 3 Loaded Questions Rule Sets
Fast…
For those with a limited amount of time to play (around 30min-1 hour) this version will speed it up!
1. Roll dice to determine who goes first; Give each player a paper and pencil. Each player writes their name on top of the paper.
2. First player rolls and moves. First player picks a card and reads the question that coordinates to the color square he/she is on. Example Purple (Anything Goes) Question: “What do you consider to be the most volatile country in the world today”
3. All players secretly write down their answers and pass them to the reader (the person next to the first player)
4. The reader than reads all the answers out loud
5. First player has to guess and match each of the answers to each of the players
6. Once first player has matched ALL answers to a person, reader reveals which answers were correct
7. First player moves 1 space for each correct answer
8. Play continues as the next person rolls the dice and the first player becomes the “Reader”
9. To speed up the game, a player will roll the dice BEFORE EVERY Turn.
10. When someone reaches the final square, they win – it’s over!

Slow…
For those with all the time in the world!
Slow play is the exact same as steps 1-8 above and changes are as follows.
9. To slow down the game, players will never roll the dice after the initial “starting” roll. They will only be able to move when they successful match answers to people.
10. When someone reaches the final square they will not win UNTIL they have successfully matched all answers to all players (ie if there are 5 players they need to match all 5 correctly) before they are the winner. They will pull a new question each time their turn comes around until they can accomplish this.

Couples…
This can be the same as Fast Play or Slow Play depending on how long you want to play. The difference here is that the game is only made for 3-6 players, but if you have more than 6 you can partner up. Now let’s say you have 12 players, 6 females and 6 males. You would go the first 6 turns having the females ask and answer questions, than the next 6 turns their male partners could ask and answer questions. Of course it doesn’t have to be groups of male/female – that just seemed the best way to explain! This way you can get everyone involved and no one has to sit out.

Sample Questions
We have a lot of fun as a family because it’s funny to see what people will actually write in response to these questions and even funnier to see how WRONG you could be at matching people to their answers. The game rules specify that you should try not to be too obvious but you also cannot lie. For example, if the question asked something like “Who’s the prettiest girl you know” and you wrote down the name of your wife, it might be really obvious you wrote it. Instead you could answer “my spouse” and that way it could easily apply to anyone at the table. So BE HONEST, but DON’T BE OBVIOUS.

Questions have no right or wrong answer as it is all based on what you think! Here are some example questions:

Hypotheticals…
These are “what if” questions and are perhaps the hardest b/c they are not based on any facts.
Q: If you were on a professional sports team, what number would you wear on your uniform.
Q: If you were on a deserted island, what two books would you want with you?

Anything Goes…
These are really anything goes! They are pretty random.
Q: What is life’s greatest mystery?
Q: What one class do you regret not taking?
Q: What would you like your famous last words to be?

No-Brainers…
These are supposed to be easy stuff, that your close family should be able to figure out, but they usually can’t.
Q: What is your favorite video game?
Q: Who is your most admired athlete of all-time?
Q: What is your favorite event in the summer Olympics?

Personals…
These are things that you might not even want to know about your friends and family, but if they are honest it’s fun to find out!
Q: What fad did you pick up that you are most embarrassed about?
Q: What body part aches you most right now?
Q: Approx how many times do you look in the mirror each day?

Ideally you would hope all players would answer the same way – that way there is no guessing as everyone said the same thing. For example if the question asked for a number and everyone answered “3”, then you got really lucky and got to move 5 spaces without even having to guess!

In the end you can learn a lot of stuff you never knew about your friends and family! Even if you used all the cards, it is possible to still play with the same family members BECAUSE they could write different answers this time. It’s possible to still be honest and have a different answer than the first time. If you use all the cards the challenge will be trying to trick each other by changing your answers creatively. Of course, you could also create your OWN questions and add your own fun to the game.

For Who
I think this game is more suited towards adults b/c kids may get frustrated that they cannot guess the adult answers. Kids playing with other kids should be ok, but otherwise it should be all adults. Just imagine this question: “If you had to cover your bedroom with wallpaper displaying someone’s face, who would it be?” For that my mom answered Elvis, of course. Now I know this because I’ve been hearing about Elvis from her for 25 years, but a younger kid may not even know who Elvis is and may be frustrated trying to match the answers to the person.

This game is best suited for family or close close friends because if you have only family then they should know more about each other (or at least they think they do). However with a bunch of random friends it may get to the point where you are always just guessing because you don’t really know everyone at the table.

Finally, the game is trying to say that it levels the playing field by making “all things equal” as in no matter how smart you are you are all equal in this game! This is why my two reasons above make sense. If you want all things to be equal you shouldn’t have a 8 year old kid playing with 5 adults who know each other well because they would not be on an equal playing field. The same goes with the strangers or the not-so-close friends.

My Response to Negative Reviews
When I see a few negative reviews on a product I love, I like to see what they are complaining about and respond. So here goes!

Negative Review says: Perhaps if the questions were more interesting….or even more risque, this game would have some sort of entertainment value

I really don’t find the questions boring as we laughed quite a bit! And I’m glad they are not “risque” as it is meant to be a family game and if my grandpa is going to play I don’t need risque questions.

Negative Review says: This sort of question (about changing appearance) puts the guesser in the awkward position of having to name, possibly incorrectly, who they think in the room would change their hair first, or their weight first, etc etc.

I actually found this just made it more fun. One question was “who at the table snores the loudest” and I even said “This could cause some trouble!” but it was all in fun. The truth is, it’s the players that make it awkward not the questions. It’s not like they are asking for you to say mean and awful things to people, and it usually is still worth a laugh or two!

Negative Review says: It got to confusing, because we weren’t sure of who was asking what and who was supposed to collect the cards

This review basically complained about their being too many rules. I actually think this game has LESS rules than most games, it’s only a small 8×11 paper written on both sides. I do agree the rules were confusing and I think most board gamers know that you just edit them to please your party (as I did above) I hope my rules help solve some confusion!

Negative Review says: To maximize your fun, throw away the board. Then throw away the die and the rules. All you should have left is the deck of question cards, the pad of answer sheets, and the pencils….. Plus, when you play without the board, you aren’t limited to six players, and you can quit whenever you want–you never have to worry about who’s winning, also making for a more laid-back game.

Although I do agree that you could play without the board, I would not have fun if there was no “winning” b/c well we are pretty competitive and someone’s gotta win! Even if you say you’re not using the board, you know someone is over there making a note of how many questions everyone got right because there’s always someone that wants the bragging rights. So I keep the board to track who’s winning. If you really don’t care who’s winning, then I guess throw it away!

That seems to be the only negative comments about this game overall – so I still say it is a very good game.

Conclusion
There are a few special squares that change the rules around, but we ignore those most of the time because it makes it more complicated. Maybe once your family is real comfortable with the game you can start using those special squares! We have used them, but avoid them most of the time.

I hope you use my variations of the rules in order to make the game go as smoothly as possible. If you run out of questions, I considered writing my own set of questions or having everyone at the party write their own questions and put them in a bowl. That would be fun too. They sell a booster pack of more questions and paper so you probably will never run out. Enjoy!!