Andy

In talking with my friend tonight, he tells me about one of the most hilarious drinking games. "It's called 'Andy', and it can only be played when I'm around, but I can't know that it's being played."

People who are familiar with Andy know his mannerisms and know his subjects of interest. If he wants to bring up an example of a point he is trying to make, or is he wants to bring up a subject similar to the one being discussed, there is a pool of subjects he will pull from. Each person playing the game picks one category (e.g. comic books/Batman, anime, science fiction/star wars), and every time Andy makes a reference in somebody's category, they drink.

In order to keep the game pure, Andy can't know when it's going on. This adds to the hilarity when everybody starts laughing or one person groans and Andy has no idea why. Of course, that also makes it incredibly difficult to get a game started.

But the idea got me thinking. We all have a game like this named after ourselves. No matter how broad or diverse our areas of knowledge are, there are certain things we really like. There are certain subjects that mean a lot to us, and they are the ones that we usually refer to. When it comes to explaining things, we see the world through certain lenses, and they are the subjects we know the most about (hence our propensity for referring to them to explain).

So what are the subjects in your game? What about your friends? What about your characters? How many subjects does everybody have? If it's less than 3, you may have stale characters/friends and you may want to reconsider them.