5 Minute Time Waster

There comes a point when children are no longer enthralled with coloring cowboy hat-wear pizza slices and hamburgers with legs while waiting for an order to be filled at a restaurant.  Of course, that usually coincides with the acquisition of texting plans and iPods. But I always feel self-conscious if everyone at my table is texting to other people while sitting together.  I feel like we should be doing the family thing of sharing that time together.  But there are only so many conversations about Roger Waters (per my 13 year old daughter) and Pokemon (per my 12 year old son) that I can stand!

Enter Cthulhu!

Yes, we are some geeks (me, particularly).  This game only cost about five bucks and looks like this:

That is all that you need to play and it fits in a tiny ziplock that I keep in my purse.  We have pulled this out at restaurants and played games ranging from 3 minutes long to 5 minutes long.  The pieces are small and discrete so everyone in the place doesn't actually SEE how much of a geek you are. 

It's not one of those games you'd buy to play at home, but fun while you're waiting somewhere, or during lunch. All it requires is a surface big enough and flat enough to roll the die.  The object:  To send all your opponents into the depths of madness by stealing their 3 marbles or forcing them to lose their marbles to Cthulhu. Not very educational, but we do laugh a lot with it! (And while it is very small and discrete, we have gotten a strange look or two from a waitress.)

Steve Jackson is so cool! Planning on teaching my kids Munchkin next, since tabletop RPGs didn't appeal to them.