Complicated Chinese Whispers

Equipment: a pen each, lots of paper (bigger Post It Notes work great)
Stolen from: One of Kat Day's parties.

There's no winner in this game, it's just funny to see the results at the end! Could be used to illustrate how gossip twists the truth or something, in the same way regular Chinese Whispers can.

If there's 8 people in the group, give everyone 8 pieces of paper each; if there's 12 people in the group, give everyone 12 pieces of paper each, etc etc. Everybody starts by numbering their pieces of paper in the corner of each sheet and arranging them in order, one on top of the other. Secrecy is important in this game; group members shouldn't be able to see what other group members are writing or drawing! The game is a lot easier if everybody is sitting roughly in a circle.

Everybody starts by drawing a picture on their first piece of paper; it can be of of anything, detailed or not so detailed. Once everybody has drawn their picture, they keep it on top of the pile and pass their entire wodge of paper round to the person on their left.

Once everybody has a new wodge of paper, they look at the picture on paper #1 and write a description of it on paper#2 using only words, no pictures. Once everyone has done this (you might want to set a 1 or 2min time limit if it's taking a long time), they put paper#1 to the bottom of the pile and keep paper#2 at the top and pass their wodge around to the left again. The next person (without cheating and looking at anything at the bottom of the pile!) uses the written description to draw a picture of what it describes, the next person writes a description of the new picture etc etc until the wodges get round to their original owner. Then they can look at how their original picture has been interpreted and twisted by everyone else and have a good laugh.

Make sure people know it's not a competition to keep it as accurate as possible, it's just supposed to be fun! I've tried this game with 11-14s and they lost interest pretty quickly, but older youth and young adults usually really enjoy it.