Truth or Dare at a family get-together, with questions everyone can answer

The family version is a different game

Truth or Dare with friends is about secrets. Truth or Dare with family cannot be, because the audience includes your mother, and nobody at that table wants to learn anything new about anyone's love life. What a family has instead is decades of stories that only half the room has heard. The cousins have never heard how your parents met. The grandparents have never heard what actually happened on the school trip. That is the material.

So the rule that makes it work is simple: a truth is about the past, and a dare is about right now. Truths ask for a story — the first film, the worst punishment, the trip that went wrong. Dares ask for something silly in the room, over in a minute, that a nine-year-old and a seventy-year-old can both do. Played that way, the youngest and oldest people in the room end up asking each other the best questions of the night.

House rules for a room with every age in it

Say once, at the start, that anyone can pass. Do not attach a forfeit to it, and do not let anyone ask why. A pass is how a teenager gets out of a question in front of their parents without a scene, and how an elder declines something they would rather not revisit. If passing is free, people take the brave option far more often.

Leave out the four topics Indian family gatherings already ask about too often: marks, marriage, salary and weight. Every cousin at the table has answered all four at least twice that evening. A game that asks them again is just the gathering with a timer.

Let the elders swap a dare for a song. A grandparent who will not do an impression will very often sing a verse of something from 1965, and the room will remember that longer than any dare. And mix the pairs on purpose: the game is at its best when the kids ask the grandparents, and worst when parents ask their own children, which is just a normal conversation that has gone badly.

Truths for parents and grandparents (asked by the kids)

What was the first film you saw in a cinema, and who did you go with? What did you eat at the interval? What was the punishment you got most often at school, and did you deserve it? Who was your favourite film star when you were sixteen — and is there a photo?

What did you want to be before you became what you are? What was the first thing you ever bought with your own money? Which of your children was the naughtiest, and what is the one story that proves it? Which festival from your childhood do you miss, and what was different about it then?

What is one thing your parents never found out? Which recipe do you refuse to teach anyone, and why? What song would you have wanted at your own wedding if anyone had asked you? What is the most trouble you ever got into on a family trip? Who in this room is most like you were at their age?

These work because the answer is always a story, never a yes or no. If a grandparent answers in one word, ask "and then what happened?" — that is usually where the real answer starts.

Truths for the cousins and kids (asked by the elders)

Which rule in this house have you broken without anyone knowing? Which relative's cooking would you pick for your last meal — and you must name them out loud? What do you actually do on your phone for three hours? Which cousin would you call if you were in trouble at two in the morning?

Which gift from someone in this room did you pretend to like? What is a word your parents say that you secretly find funny? If you could swap places with one adult here for a day, who would it be and what would you do first? What was the last excuse you used to get out of a family function? (The family function you are at right now does not count, apparently.)

Which teacher would you most like to see play this game? What is the most recent thing you searched for that you are willing to say out loud? What is one thing the grown-ups here get completely wrong about your generation?

Dares that need no props and end in the room

Do your best impression of the relative on your left; they score it out of ten. Name ten relatives on your mother's side in thirty seconds. Explain how to make chai, in one minute, to someone who has never seen a kitchen. Sing the first line of a song from the year you were born and let the room name the film.

Present the best dish on the table as if it were a television advert. Read out the news of what happened at dinner tonight in a newsreader's voice. Teach the room one word in a language only you speak at home. Do the dance step you were made to perform at every function as a child. Make the youngest person in the room laugh within thirty seconds without touching them.

Recreate an old family photo with whoever is sitting nearest, from memory. Walk across the room like you are arriving at a wedding two hours late. Give a ninety-second tour of the house as an estate agent who is trying a bit too hard.

None of these involve phones, messages, food dares or anyone's body, and all of them finish in a minute. That is the line for a family dare: if it could still be a problem tomorrow, it is not a family dare.

Playing it with one phone or a phone each

You can play all of this from a list read aloud, but somebody ends up as the question-master and does not get to play. Truth or Dare on PartyDen takes that job: it picks whose turn it is, gives them fifteen seconds to choose and a minute to answer or do it, and a skip scores nothing and costs nothing. Its Desi Family pack is written for exactly this room, and the host can swap any card that does not fit with one tap. You can also type your own family's questions in before you start, one per line, with "Dare:" in front of the dares — which is the place for the in-jokes no pack could know. A television can show the card to the whole room while everyone plays on their phones.

When the room wants something with less spotlight, Who Knows Best? has a Family & birthdays pack: one person answers a question about themselves in secret and everyone else guesses. Would You Rather has its own Desi Family pack and lets the whole room vote at once, and Dumb Charades is the loud ending every family already knows. For a grown-up crowd without the elders, read Truth or Dare for adults; for a longer printed list, there are more truth or dare questions here.