Otherfoot: Only Pen and Paper Required

November 12, 2015 8:06 AM

Otherfoot: Only Pen and Paper Required
I put together a website dedicated to my all-time favorite game, Otherfoot (mentioned previously in my 2006 FPP about ink-and-paper games). Otherfoot is a card game, played with a newly-created homemade deck every time. Gameplay is similar to Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity (pre-dating the latter), with key differences laid out in the FAQ (and reposted below). The game concept was developed by friends of my brother, and I've derived a lot of joy from playing Otherfoot with old and new friends for more than 10 years.

So why play Otherfoot instead of Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples? First of all, you should totally do whatever makes you happy! In case you’re curious, though, here are a few reasons some of us prefer Otherfoot to similar (but commercially produced) games:

• Similar to CAH or A2A, the fun in Otherfoot comes from human interaction and the unexpected pairings you come up with. But Otherfoot goes further by adding the creative element: anyone who’s played Otherfoot will tell you that winning the round isn’t nearly as satisfying as being the person who came up with the card that won.
• It’s a totally different game every time you play!
• Snapping together jokes from someone else’s prefab parts gets old after a while.
• You learn a lot more about your friends’ senses of humor playing Otherfoot as opposed to games where you’re playing with a preconstructed deck.
• Cards Against Humanity relies on the shock value of casual racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, et al. Not everybody wants to be a part of that. That doesn’t mean your Otherfoot cards have to be exclusively nice. You can literally write whatever you want. But you and your friends get to come up with your own boundaries and work from your own collective sense of humor; you don’t have to abide by some random person’s concept of “funny.”

BONUS: I also created a Twitter bot (using Cheap Bots Done Quick) that randomly generates & tweets Otherfoot pairs. (Some favorites: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)

Role: website creator, Twitter bot creator, prolific otherfoot player

posted by duffell (2 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher

Neat! I believe I will try to get the gang to play this at Thanksgiving.
posted by exogenous at 9:11 AM on November 24, 2015

Oh, man, I’m just seeing this now! My husband and I LOVE Other Foot and have introduced it to multiple groups of friends over the years.
posted by booksherpa at 11:30 AM on January 12, 2018