The Cthulhu Mythos is turned into a game of dice in Steve Jackson's Cthulhu Dice. The demonically beating heart of the game is a large, beautiful, and gem-like 12-sided die covered in Cthulhu-related runes. Each rune has a different effect in making one person or another go insane (or taking some of their insanity away from them). Players take turns choosing someone to curse and then casting the die against them. Every player has a stash of Sanity Tokens (little glass disks), a.k.a. "marbles," and when you've lost all of your marbles, you go insane. But this is a game from the world of H.P. Lovecraft, so you're still not out of the game. Insane players continue to play just to try and drive other players mad. The goal of the game is to be the last sane Cthulhu Cultist standing. If everyone goes rubber room bonkers, Cthulhu wins.
Cthulhu Dice is very easy to learn and especially fun to play in situations where you want the social interaction of gaming, but don't want to play a long game, or you don't want to be tremendously engaged in the game you're playing. People always talk about "beer and pretzels" games, well this is a game you could actually play in a boisterous bar or as a sort of palate cleaner between main attraction games at a gaming night.
Cthulhu Dice
Steve Jackson Games
Ages 10 and up, 2-6 players