Grandma’s Drinking Game

What is Grandma’s Drinking Game?

Grandma’s Drinking Game is one game in the “If I were a Litch Man” collection by Lucian Kahn. It is an improv game where players play through a deck of scenes in a random order. After every scene the prompter writes another verse in the family drinking song. There is a family of reoccurring characters, at least one is usually in every scene. About halfway through each scene players sing the drinking song and their character’s emotions are shifted when the scene picks up again, the required emotional shifts add a lot of melodrama.

Some beautiful things about Grandma’s Drinking Game

I enjoyed how even a seemingly random set up scenes built on each other. It reminds me of where I heard about the 2013 (?) Ducktales. The characters are very strongly defined but you don’t necessarily realize it until going back and re-watching. The game strongly pushes characters in certain directions which define them and gets them in messy situations. The random order of scenes makes the story a little different each time because you pull ideas from previous scenes and try to form a continuous narrative in your drinking song.

Experience in Play

I have to say I think the other players were a lot better at writing lyrics than me, it’s something I would like to practice (one was a professional writer though). We also had limited time so only played about half the prompts. The game doesn’t have a specific end game ritual so it worked out fine just to choose a end spot we were comfortable with. Normally you play though all the cards and then the story is over.