h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Off the top of my head, two other games from Whose Line Is It Anyway occur to me that can be played by the average schmoe without any amazing aptitude:

Standing, Sitting, Lying Down
This game involves three contestants. They are given a situation by the audience, and proceed to act out that scene. The caveat is that at all times, one contestant must be standing, one must be sitting, and one must be lying down. If the sitting contestant arises, the standing one must sit. If the prostrate contestant stands up, the standing contestant must throw himself to the floor or couch. This game is funny even if the participants are really bad at improv.

Whose Line
For this game, any number of contestants are given a scene to act out. Prior to starting, the contestants are given folded slips of paper on which audience members have written random statements. At arbitrary points during the improv, contestants remove a slip from their pocket and deliver that line. Contestants are then responsible for making that statement make sense in the context of the scene.

Those are two very good suggestions.

Some more:

Scenes From a Hat: A hat is filled with slips of paper with ideas from the audience such as "National landmarks you will never see". The gamemaster picks one at random and the people say and/or act out their idea as soon as they get it. When they run out of ideas another slip is picked out at random.


I don't remember the name of the other one, but the rules basically go as follows: Three people play. Two people are given two lines each and that is the only things they may say during the game. The third person can say anything and is therefore mainly in charge of any story direction. A situation that they are to be placed in is taken from an audience member and they act from there.

That's Two-Line Vocabulary.

Unfortunately, all the good games not yet mentioned require music or props (Hoedown, Props, Hats, Song Styles, Infomercial, among others), so they're not very good for home play. Unless you have lots of random stuff lying around or someone who can play piano.