Codenames

Also, I'd be worried I'd get-

Like, the fun ones, like Dobble and, like, f- and, like, Codenames and-

But what if I get too competitive or something [laughs] and just become weird? I have to be careful with stuff like this 'cause I become weird quite quickly.

[laughs]

What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful game.

Now, we also played a game of Codenames.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Good old Codenames.

Critical Role Adventure.

The new one.

These really cute, adorable cartoon drawings of different axolotls of different personalities.

And you are given a card, kind of like in Codenames, that secretly says that you are one of those axolotls.

And the other players at the table draw cards that have questions on them, and they ask you those questions.

And you have to answer as that axolotl, and then the other players try to guess which one you are.

8.

And then lastly, Codenames Critical Role Adventures, 8.5.

This is one of the coolest versions of Codenames.

I don't know anything about Critical Role, but I do know about D&D and role-playing and stuff.

And so I thought that that came through.

The adventure is fine.

The story is well-written.

But just the powers that you get in a game of Codenames.

And then your Blood Rage and things like Lost Ruins of Arnak or Seti, things like that are extra large.

And then I considered things like Codenames and like King Domino and stuff like that as medium.

And then like under that to be small.

So I think a little bit closer to what Keith was thinking too.

Yeah.

Party games are also good about that because there's many party games, like the most well-known, like Codenames and Just One.

Games where you're basically associating words with things and trying to have other people find out those things.

Sometimes you realize how different we are, like how could that person think about that movie and use that word to describe it when I've never thought about that movie in that way.

Our friends became the group.

Every Thursday, regardless of deadlines, we hosted board game night, Scattergories, Codenames, a rotating stable of grand designs and low-stakes mockery.

Nick was magnetic in groups, the sort who made deadpan faces appear outrageous, whose puns came with hand-illustrated scorecards.

We had a tradition of doodling jokes from each round directly on the cards.

The grief had leveled out into something denser, quietly exhausting.

I revisited the shelf by the window, where the game night boxes were still stacked.

Codenames, Dixit, the old Scattergories deck, each box dinged at the corners, dense with memories both clean and now, irrevocably, complicated.

I almost reached to pack them up for donation, but let my hand fall instead.

He's barely touched his beer, is fidgeting with his phone, turning its screen down on the table, picking it up, then setting it aside again.

We're in the middle of Codenames and Sophie, slender, with a chaotic mop of sun-bleached curls and those wide, dark-set eyes always skimming the room, leans over her cards, grinning.

Come on, Mark, don't overthink it.

Classic Mark, trying to game the system.