These seven games use your family’s own stories as the playing pieces. Each one lists how many people it suits, how long it takes and what to bring. Pick two or three; a reunion also needs time for people simply to catch up.
| Game | Players | Time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baby photo match | 8 to 50 | 20 minutes, mostly unattended | Arrival |
| Guess the owner | 8 to 40 | 30 minutes | Mixed ages |
| Family trivia | 6 to 60, in teams | 30 minutes | After a meal |
| Whose recipe? | Any size | During the potluck | Food-centered reunions |
| Story scavenger hunt | 10 or more | 30 to 45 minutes | Kids and teens with older relatives |
| Two truths and a lie, family edition | 4 to 15 | 20 to 30 minutes | A seated group |
| What happened next? | 5 to 30 | 15 minutes per story | Evening, around a table or fire |
1. Baby photo match
You need: a baby or childhood photo from each person who wants to play, collected ahead by text or email; a printer; tape; numbered cards; answer slips.
How to play: Print the photos, number them and put them on a wall near the entrance. As people arrive, they write down which relative they think each number is. Reveal the answers after the meal. The person with the most right wins.
The story part: When you reveal each photo, ask its owner, or their parent, where it was taken and what was going on.
2. Guess the owner
You need: each player brings one object with a story behind it, such as a medal, a ticket stub, a kitchen tool or a toy; masking tape and a marker for numbering; answer slips.
How to play: Objects go on a table with a number, and nobody says whose is whose. Players write down a guess for each one. Then go through them in order: the owner stands up, says what it is and tells its story in a minute or two.
Tip: Ask people to bring something they are happy to have handled. Keep fragile or valuable items in the owner’s hands.
3. Family trivia
You need: 15 to 20 questions written ahead, paper and pens for each team.
Before the reunion: Call two or three older relatives and ask for facts nobody else may know. Which city did Grandpa’s family live in first? What was the name of the dog on the farm? Who drove the green station wagon? Write them as questions with one clear answer.
How to play: Split into teams that mix generations, so grandchildren need their grandparents to score. Read each question aloud, give a minute to write an answer, then reveal it. Let the person the fact came from tell the story behind the answer.
4. Whose recipe?
You need: a numbered card beside each potluck dish, answer slips.
How to play: Cooks drop off their dish without saying it’s theirs. Guests guess who made what. At dessert, each cook claims their dish and says where the recipe came from and who taught them.
The story part: Write down any recipe that turns out to have come from a great-grandmother or a neighbor decades ago, and ask the cook whether you can copy it.
5. Story scavenger hunt
You need: a printed sheet of 10 to 15 clues per team, pens.
How to play: Clues lead to people and stories, not objects. For example:
- Find someone who has lived in three different states.
- Find out who in the family once met someone famous.
- Find the person who knows how Grandma and Grandpa met, and write down where it happened.
- Find someone who remembers the family’s first TV.
Teams of two or three, mixing an older and younger player, track down the answers by asking around and write the storyteller’s name next to each clue. First team back with a full sheet wins.
Tip: Pair someone who moves easily with anyone who’d rather stay seated, so the hunt can come to them.
6. Two truths and a lie, family edition
You need: nothing.
How to play: Each player tells three short stories about themselves: two true, one invented. The rest of the group votes on the lie. In a family version, the true stories should be ones most relatives haven’t heard, which is harder than it sounds. Our two truths and a lie page has more ways to play.
7. What happened next?
You need: one storyteller who knows a family story with a good turn in it.
How to play: The storyteller tells the first half of a true family story and stops at the turning point: the car broke down in the desert, the wedding cake fell, the letter arrived. Everyone else guesses what happened next, and the best or funniest guess gets a point. Then the storyteller finishes it.
Tip: Agree on the story with the storyteller first, so nothing is told that someone in the room would rather keep private.
Running the games
Give one person the job of keeping time and moving people along. Anyone can sit a game out. Games 2 and 7 are where the best stories come out; if one runs long, thank the storyteller and ask whether you can hear the rest later, one to one.
If you want to record stories, ask each person first and tell them who will hear the recording. A sign at the door is not the same as asking. The voice-note guide covers recording on a phone.
For quieter ways to collect stories, such as a photograph table or paired conversations between generations, and for organizing what you collect afterward, see our family reunion storytelling guide.
For a small gathering
With fewer than ten people, skip the teams. Guess the owner and What happened next? both work around one table, and together they fill an hour.