Sometimes, board games are a really great way to connect with other people and get to know them. That’s Dope is one of these types of games; one that prioritises conversation and uses cards to connect with the other people that you are playing with.
The concept itself is simple. All of the players get two cards; Nope and Dope. In the middle of the table, there are tons and tons of cards, in individual topics. You can see the topics listed at the top of the card. I do like that there are topics, because you can easily remove a topic that you don’t think would be good for your group of friends. For example, if dating isn’t something you want to discuss with your cousins, you can just remove that entire topic.
We shuffled up all of the topics in That’s Dope and just started playing! The food topic was my personal favorite. The rounds work with one person reading off the top card of the deck. It might say stuff like “a hotdog with no toppings” or more controversial things like “knowing the password to your partner’s phone”. Everyone else secretly picks if they think that is Dope or Nope, then puts the card face down. The person who reads guesses how many Nopes and Dopes there are, then everyone flips. If they were right, they get the topic card.
After each round, we ended up chatting about the topic and why people picked what we picked. That’s Dope has a great way of starting conversations, with people defending their opinions and trying to explain their own thinking process. Everything does feel light hearted and fun – and there were several times when I felt people would pick one way, and they picked another. I quite like how black and white the game is – there is no “I don’t mind” option, so everyone is forced to have a strong opinion. There are also a couple of extra, different rule sets included, this includes one where they advise that you simply chat out the topic as an ice breaker task.
You can purchase That’s Dope on Amazon.
