Cards Against Tolkien
 

Many of you will be familiar with Cards Against Humanity, a party game for horrible people as they call it. The idea is very simple - check it out on the website if you don't know the game.

The cool thing about Cards Against Humanity is that you can create your custom set for free. There already exists a Tolkien version, Cards Against Arda, but while it's got some good ones, I'm not necessarily very interested in fandom jokes. So I'm looking at you, dear Downers. Can we make a CAH version that's true to canon and Tolkien's spirit (perhaps with a Barrow-Downs reference or two thrown in for flavour)? :smokin:

Let's keep in mind that although the original Cards Against Humanity is as family-unfriendly as it gets, the Downs is not, so let's not go very far beyond Shagrat or Teleporno. (Far be it from me to refuse your cards, but just, you know, not to get you showered in modly wrath.)

Some suggestions for black cards:

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called ______.
Many that live deserve ______. Can you give it to them?
"Do not pursue him! He will not return to this land. Far off yet is his doom, and not by _____ will he fall."
What did Galadriel give Aragorn?
The worst thing about the films is their treatment of...
Old Tom Bombadil is ______!

Some suggestions for white cards:

Shagrat. (duh...)
Teleporno. (...now that I mentioned them.)
The Fellowship.
Seven stars and seven stones and one white tree.
Peter Jackson's fanfiction.
The Fall of Númenor.
Going now with Éomer in the van.
The end of all things.
Saruman of Many Colours.
Tom bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!
Elves at Helm's Deep.
The Professor rolling in his grave.
Allegory in Tolkien.

Feel free to share your ideas, and we can create our own custom deck to play at moots and gatherings! :Merisu:

EDIT:
A note on the format - a good white card should...

1. be a verb/phrase in the -ing form.
2. be a noun/phrase/name; if an article is necessary, include it.
3. have a subject that agrees with the number of most verbs in the black cards (in most cases, I'd say singular).

A good black card should...

1. work with a verb/phrase in the -ing form.
2. work with a noun/phrase/name, potentially preceded by an article.
3. not have an article before the blank (to avoid conflict with the white card).
4. have a verb that agrees with the number of most subjects in the white cards (in most cases, I'd say singular).

If you're not sure, try playing your cards together in your head and see if the black+white combinations make sense.

I've got some ideas! :D

Black Cards...

- "If you say that again I shall get angry. Then you shall see _____."
- "Turin faced tragedy yet again when he encountered _____."
- "After Beren and Luthien stole a Silmaril, Morgoth replaced it in his crown with ____."
- "Short cuts make delays but inns make _________ !"
- "Tolkien actually based ____ on ____."
- "Christopher Tolkien always lived in the shadow of his father's ____."


White Cards...

- Gandalf the Gray uncloaked!
- Sauron, ironically, wetting himself as Numenor sinks.
- Fat Hobbits!
- A large patch in the hollow of your left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell.
- One of those other Inklings nobody's ever heard of.
- Charles Williams letting everyone know that he wrote a book, too!
- Blowing the Horn of Gondor.

Exactly what we need!

And more of those black cards that have two or three empty spaces in them...

Like:

________, who was the fattest of the ___________.

If ___________ gets __________ then ___________ will fall. (fail?)

___________ was only saved by __________.


Or something along the lines.

I'm pretty sure we can come up with a nice "deck" of cards...

Just a few off the top of my head
 

Black cards
-"But unless you've got ___ for ___, you've taken the wrong way"
-"Sing hey! for ___ at close of day"
-"His ___ was long, his ___ was keen, his shining ___ afar was seen"
-"He named the nameless ___ and ___"
-"The one resides in ___ of ___, the other in the purposed domination of ____"
-The liveliest Inklings meetings always involved ___
-Tolkien always maintained an abiding interest in ___
-"___ drove them on. Darkness took them"


White cards

-The staffs of the five wizards
-The bubbling of Shelob in her misery
-The contents of Gollum's pockets
-The Doom of Mandos [as an aside, I thought 'the doom of Nandos' is a good phrase to describe a bad evening out in an indifferent chain restaurant]
-The horns of Ulmo
-Mrs Artaxerxes
-The Cottage of Lost Play
-Tevildo's feline minions
-Beorhtnoth's head
-Fat Bombur, who was fat
-Bagginshield artwork

Aww this is brilliant. :D

A note on the format (I'll edit to the opening post) - a good white card should...

• be a verb/phrase in the -ing form.
• be a noun/phrase/name; if an article is necessary, include it.
• have a subject that agrees with the number of most verbs in the black cards (in most cases, I'd say singular).

black card should...

1. work with a verb/phrase in the -ing form.
2. work with a noun/phrase/name, potentially preceded by an article.
3. not have an article before the blank (to avoid conflict with the white card).
4. have a verb that agrees with the number of most subjects in the white cards (in most cases, I'd say singular).

If you're not sure, try playing your cards together in your head and see if the black+white combinations make sense.

Black cards:

You give _______ to me freely
Balrogs don't have _________!
Not many people know, but Bandobras Took also invented _______
If people valued ______ and ______ over _______, it would be a merrier world.



White cards:
Nine square meals a day
One gross
Trampling your enemy's blood into the dirt
Being Good Morninged
Selling buttons at the door
Three rings for the elven kings under the sky
Seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone
Nine for mortal men doomed to die
One for the dark lord on his dark throne
A lord of the Noldor whose name begins with 'F'
Giggling helplessly at the mention of Finarfin and Teleporno
Swaggering it like a cock-o-whoop
Hearing "Not Allowed" much oftener
A Hobbit Sheriff
Bill Ferny
Fatty Bolger
The Sackville-Bagginses
Silver spoons
Sharkey's End

I've got more of this
 

Black cards
-On silver necklaces they strung ___
-"That looks like ___ o'me nuncle Tim,
As should be a-lyin' in ___"
-The Lord of the Rings is primarily about ___
-Tolkien and Lewis never resolved their arguments about ___
-"You have looked in that accursed ___"
-There was nothing now to be done but to tighten ___ about ___
-Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, ___ has come
-strength that would have nourished the life of many has gone forth into ___
-___ yesterday, ___ today and blimey, if it don't look like ___ again tomorrer
-I heard that one of them has ____
- Five feet high the ___ and three ___
-The doom lies in ___, not in ____
- We only wish to catch ___ so juicy sweet

White cards
- The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
- Boromir the Disco King
- The brood of Ungoliant
- Cheating at the riddle game
- Thranduil's party elk
- Celebrían's poisoned wound
- The Black Sword of Túrin
- The cats of Queen Berúthiel
- Morgoth's ring
- The Long Defeat
- A brace of young coneys
- Sacrifice in the Temple of Sauron

Black Cards:

In a hole in the ground there lived _______.
For I am Saruman the wise, Saruman Ring Maker, Saruman of _______.
In a Newly discovered letter, Tolkien admits that _____ was really just ____.
Under certain moons, the runes on Thorin's map said ______.
Feanor first envisioned the Silmarils being in the shape of ______.

White cards:

Pigging out on Lembas bread.
The tongues of men.
The Sackville-Bagginses Suspicious Silver Spoon Shop.
Tom Bombadil's Funky Fresh Rhymes
Goldberry's special brand of earplugs.
Radagast the Brown in a pork pie hat.

So kind of like Apples to Apples, but with fill-in-the-blank?

Do NOT. use that acronym ever again. Ever since grade 11 biology, these letters stand for Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.

Always this. It can even be used without a black card. :DThese are superb!!! :D

Yes, and without a shred of Apples to Apples' innocence. Once you go there, you can never go back.

I'm sure the creators of Cards Against Humanity would just be pleased about this. ;)

Some more...

White cards:
The Secret Fire.
Yellow cream and honeycomb.
Passing beneath the Argonath.
Hunting Petty-dwarves for sport.
The Nauglamír.
An elf surfing on a shield.
Figwit.
Shooting the Black Arrow with a ballista.
Fifty Shades of Gandalf the Grey.
A Hobbit hole.
Keeping it secret and safe.
Coming precisely when you mean to.
A prop for old age.
Sleeping in your armour.
The Stone of Erech.
Being blindfolded by Haldir.
Shadowfax showing you the meaning of haste.
A Ring of fire.
Giving only with one hand.
Sharing the load.

Black cards:
Where there's ______, there's a way.
A staff in the hand of a wizard may be more than ______.
"I am _____, Sam."

White cards:
Frodo's finger
Shelob's lair
Lazy Lob and Crazy Cob
Fifteen birds in five fir trees
AZOG
Barrel-rider

Was just skimming a passage and came across this marvel of a black card:

"I sent my son forth, unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril, and here he lies with _____."

:eek::D:Merisu:

In the Black Cards the stars shall die:

The little known 10th name of Aragorn was a result of _________.
Do not be eager to deal out _______ in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see ________.
Almost felt that you liked ________! That is uncommonly kind of you.
In Peter Jackson's latest Tolkien adaptation, he dedicated a three hour subplot to ______
*Gondor doesn't have _______. Gondor doesn't need _________ (Same card)
*Boil 'em, Mash 'em, Stick 'em in _______
(Boil _______, Mash _________, stick _________ in a stew?)
*"Speak, __________, and enter"
One of Led Zeppelin's lesser known songs includes a verse referencing ______
The biggest changes The Beatles would have made to their LotR movie would have been to cut out __________ and to feature _________ more heavily.


Behold the White Cards:

The Weakness of Men
The Hardiness of Dwarves
The Sta-Puft Marshmallow Orc
Scattering Barrow-treasures
The color of Legolas's hair
Blowing the Horn of Buckland
Blowing the Horn of Helm
The Pyre of Denethor
An Unexpected Party
A Long-Expected Party
The Voice of Saruman
The Voice of Pitchwife
Finding a Hobbit's foot-hair in your Lembas
Pipeweed
A Ranger who knows something of these matters
A Ranger who knows nothing of these matters
A Ranger who comes infrequently to Imladris, always smelling suspiciously of Athelas
A Conspiracy!!!
A Knife in the Dark
The Council of Elrond
A Journey in the Dark
Lothlorien
The Mirror of Galadriel
A Shortcut
Mushrooms
Meela's all-consuming love for Denethor
Eyeliner fit for a Balrog
The Eye of Sauron
The Towers of the Teeth
Not passing
Slinker and Stinker
PO-TA-TOES
Not finding a prize in your cake
Eavesdropping
Sleeping on the East side of a Barrow
A Tom-Fool of a Took
A Hobbit walking party
Rope
Letting the guide go first while you have one
Hobbit gossip
One of the finest detachable party hoods
A Led Zeppelin song
A beam of light that pierces the darkness
Mothrandir
Stars
A biker gang of Wights called the Wheel-Barrows
Ah! The spear in my heart!
One of the Newly Deceased
A Pile o' Bones
A Haunting Spirit
A Ghost Prince of Cardolan
An Animated Skeleton
A Shade of Carn Dum
The Scouring of the Shire
A hasty Ent
An Entwife
The Brown Lands
: Merisu :
Various artifacts made from Ent-wood
An epic quest
Lots of walking
One of those filthy Tarks
One of the good guys who has pale skin and grey eyes
A very large pair of boots
A Mithril bikini



*These cards don't work with all other cards, if you can think of a better wording for them go for it

A black card I want both in our paper CAH set and in a Tolkien version....

One does not simply ___________.

Just spicing this up by Aganzir...

Where there's ______, there's _______.

They're taking the ______ to ________!

To paraphrase Mrs. Eulalie Mackenchnie Shinn evaluating
The Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam to Marian the Librarian
...This is a smutty thread! :p

I did think about this but don't necessarily think it's better. In my opinion it will result in overly complicated sentences, most of which will be a bit of a letdown. What do you others think?

And here I thought we were doing our best to be good! :Merisu:

Not trying particularly hard, but making a token effort at least. More so than the real Cards Against Humanity anyway, bless its obscene little heart.

Here are are some more ideas, although some of them might be a bit obscure. Nobody minds that do they? Yes? Tough.

Black cards
- Then Fëanor rose, and lifting up ___ before Manwë he ___
-Only once before have I seen ___ from afar in waking life
- ...as huge aloft like mace he hurled ___
- "But are none yet nigh us that knew of yore
That mighty ___, mark of ___"
You have nice ___ for a thief and a liar
You can hear ___ through ___ twanging
"We found ___ at the Mitre" JRRT
A Tolkien family holiday was never complete without ___
Its ___ stretched out like ___

White cards
-The colour of Legolas' hare
-Morgoth's mighty mace
-Elven hair clippings
-A careless semantic oversight
-Balrog-winging
- Gandalf's very secret diary
- Carved in the living rock
- Aredhel the bad girl
-Blaming Guinevere for everything
- Many mighty lays of men
-An evil fay in beastlike shape
-If you know what I mean
-A feast of Real Tail
- Breaking the North Pole
- Waking Durin's Bane
- A dragon in which the old fire is hot enough
- The springle-ring