Before Board Games, Card Games, Tabletop Games, Video Games, and Web Games came along, people just had their own persons to play games with guests. These are known as Parlor Games. In the past, these were used in fiction for the same purpose as Board Games are these days. Nowadays, it's either a Discredited Trope used to show how boring or geeky the people playing are, or it's used as an actual Plot Device. They frequently involve Player Elimination and have No Unified Ruleset.

• Simon Says, a children's game where someone gives orders (usually silly things like "clap your hands" or "jump up and down"). Everyone playing has to follow the commands as long as they're preceded by "Simon says". So if "Simon says clap your hands" you have to clap, but just "clap your hands", you don't. You're out if you either follow the command without the "Simon says" or don't follow it when they do say it. One variation has Simon do an action in addition to saying one, but you must do what "Simon says". Usually, Simon will do and say the same thing, but it could lead to situations where "Simon says clap your hands" but he physically jumps up and down as a trick; the proper action is to clap your hands. Last of the group still in usually gets to be the next one to call out the orders. This game can be challenging enough that it can still be used legitimately in fiction.
• Twenty Questions, a game where, counting the first question (usually if it's animal, vegetable, or mineral), the players can ask no more than twenty questions to guess what the active player is thinking of, and all questions after the first must be the "yes or no" kind. Usually parodied now instead of played straight. Computers can play it quite well, e.g. 20Q and Akinator.
  • Who Am I? is an inverted variant where each player has a post-it note on their forehead and take turns to ask the other players questions to figure out what's written on it (normally a famous person's name). Often played straight and used for the silliness of everyone having post-its on their heads. The names on the notes will often reflect or contrast with the person they're given to.
• I Spy, a guessing game similar to but even more basic than Twenty Questions. The active player thinks of something within their line of sight and tells everyone else its color or first letter. They try to guess what it is. Only ever played by really bored characters.
• Musical Chairs, is usually just played in children's parties now. Someone sets up enough chairs for all but one of the players to sit on. They walk in a circle while some music is played for a short time. As soon as it stops, everyone tries to sit in a chair, often resulting in a Big Ball of Violence. The one who can't is out, and one chair is removed for the next round, until one chair is left, and the one sitting is the winner.
• Charades, nowadays the lowest of these games in fiction. Unless it takes place in the past, it rarely is portrayed for any reason other than to show what losers the players are. It is played by acting out the words the active player is thinking, puns and homophones allowed. The only other clue was to hold up a finger for each word in the answer, and fingers for which word is being played. Such improvised Hand Signals are sometimes used by a character to attempt to convey information which for whatever reason, such as being mute, they cannot simply say aloud.
  • Pictionary is Charades with drawings, where one partner must draw the clue instead of acting it out. This variant is more common in animation for obvious reasons. Sometimes the drawings aren't seen by the viewer.
• Blind Man's Bluff, is usually seen in portrayals of older times. One player is blindfolded, while the others hide. The blind man has to find the other players. This game is sometimes depicted as a flirtatious man looking for giggling young women in a parlor.
  • Marco Polo is a variation on Blind Man's Bluff, with three differences: a) It usually takes place in water, such as a pool. b) The hunter doesn't wear a blindfold, but rather just keep their eyes shut. c) Most importantly, the hunter can call out "Marco!" as often as they like, and if the hunted ones hear it then they must respond with "Polo!". It's pretty much a miniature version of submarine warfare, sonar and all.
• Truth or Dare is stereotypically most common at a slumber party, but can take place in other situations as well. The very point of this game is to elicit personal revelations if someone picks "Truth," or wacky hijinks if someone picks "Dare"; therefore, just by playing the game normally, it's quite likely that the events of the game will generate results interesting enough to be the plot of a story. Fan Fic writers know this very well, and Truth or Dare fics are practically a genre.
  • King's Game (王様ゲーム) is the Japanese equivalent, tending to involve larger amounts of alcohol. Players draw straws (usually disposable chopsticks) marked with either a number or "king". The king then reveals themselves, and (blindly) declares both a number and a command which the player holding that number must follow.
• I Never, also known as Never Have I Ever, is a similar game to Truth or Dare. Usually played more as a drinking game, although other forfeits are common. The premise is for one person to say something which (hopefully truthfully...or not, as the case may be) they have never done, and all the other players have to commit the forfeit if they have done that thing.
• Spin the Bottle and Ten Minutes in the Closet (or whatever variation) are the classic young-coed-teen-party games. In the first one, sit in a circle, take turns spinning a bottle and kiss the first member of the opposite sex (or not) it points to. In the second, pull names/number out of a hat to form couples and go into the closet for two minutes and... amuse yourselves in some fashion. This is often a way to trap/nudge a character into his/her First Kiss, to set up/exacerbate romantic jealousies or to contrast different levels of sexual activity among a bunch of kids of the same age. There will be much awkwardness, blushing and wiping of sweaty palms.
• Mafia divides the players into two teams. One team is initially much smaller than the other, but the composition of the teams is unknown to the members of the larger team. The game alternates between turns during which the larger team keep their eyes shut, allowing the smaller team to communicate in secrecy, and turns during which all players claim they belong to the larger team. The elimination of a player is debated every turn. Paper sheets or cards are often used to create the teams at the beginning and to "unmask" any player who was just eliminated. A referee is normally required. Furthermore, a single player of the larger team has a hidden turn of his own, during which he learns the true allegiance of another player. Additional roles and teams can be introduced, potentially leading to at least one Double Reverse Quadruple Agent. In fictional works, Ten Little Murder Victims will sometimes play this kind of game right before it becomes the plot.
  • Werewolf (1997), a variant of the game with a werewolf theme.
• Shiritori (しりとり) also known as Last Letter, First Letter, is a word game played by two or more people that challenges their vocabulary skills. Players take turns stating words beginning with the final syllable or letter of the previous word. Once a word has been used, it cannot be used a second time. Variants of the game expect players to limit their vocabulary to a specific category. This game is very popular in Japanese media (thus, we've listed it in Romanized form), which has no words beginning with the "N" syllable, so anyone who uses a word ending in "N" loses.
  • A similar vocabulary game, more popular in the anglophone world, is called Alphabet. In this game, players take turns stating words in alphabetical order ("apple," "board," "cart," etc.) until only one player remains.
  • The Minister's Cat is a version of Alphabet where the words are all adjectives, expressed as "The minister's cat is a [adjective] cat".
• Wink Murder (or Wink Killer or Assassin) has one secretly assigned player (the "killer") try to eliminate the other players by making eye contact and winking at them, while the other players try to determine who the killer is before being eliminated.
  • A variation called Fuse Murder has the players sit in a circle and hold hands. Only the secretly assigned killer can start a "fuse" by squeezing the hand of a neighbor multiple times. If a player's hand is squeezed multiple times, then the player must pass the fuse along by squeezing his/her other hand one less time. If a player's hand is squeezed once, then that player is eliminated.
• Dictum is a word game where players simultaneously try to guess the closest word in the dictionary that comes after a specified keyword. Words derived from the keyword are not allowed. For example, if the keyword is "work", then "worker" and "working" are not allowed. And while "worm" is close to (and after) "work", the word "world" is closer.

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