GAMES : Players Giving the Liveliest Parties Win

Quick. Name a party game.

You said charades, right? Even though you really, really hate charades.

Well, don’t worry. Maralys Wills is here to save you. She’s no great fan of charades either. She has compiled alternatives that she has used to entertain guests over the years.

Wills, a Santa Ana novelist who has a degree in psychology from UCLA, fell into the habit years ago of collecting party games from a broad variety of sources, from her game-loving mother to her college psychology experiments. She jotted many of them down verbatim and modified others, and “after a while I found myself with this enormous drawer full of games,” Wills said.

That drawer has been distilled into a soft-cover book called “Fun Games for Great Parties” (Price Stern Sloan; $8.95), a 173-page collection of party diversions grouped into seven categories: mixers and starters, psychological/philosophical games, imagination games, brain games, action games/relays, theme games and miscellaneous games.

The games range from the mentally challenging to the just plain silly, but they all have one aim, Wills said: to allow the people at the party to get to know one another better, and preferably with as little urging or mediation as possible from the host.

That’s the trick, she said. While micromanagement on the part of the host can be death to any party--thrusting a game of charades into the mix after a couple of fairly sedentary hours can be fatal--a true sense of equal participation can elevate a gathering into the party hall of fame.

“I never push or shove people around at a party,” Wills said. “I don’t believe in it. The best thing is to turn the direction of things over to your guests, to let them feel like they’re running the party. The more you get people communicating and revealing themselves, the more fun it is.”

All this doesn’t come effortlessly. Good games, Wills said, sometimes can require as much preparation as good party food. A stage must be set. “Amnesia,” for instance, requires the host to pin a name tag on the back of every guest as he or she arrives at the door. On each tag is the name of a famous person.

“It is then explained, by instruction sheets or a poster, that the guest has amnesia and is to find out who he or she is by asking questions of the other guests,” Wills writes. “Each guest is allowed to ask only two questions of any one person.

“The point of limiting the questions is to force people to circulate.”

Things can get a lot more kinetic. “Silverware Symphony,” for instance, requires a table full of silverware, glasses and such on which to beat out cacophonous rhythms to a pre-selected song.

In most of the games in the book, the age of the participants is not nearly as important as the size of the group, Wills said.

“I’ve found that generational gaps don’t seem to make a difference at all,” she said. On the other hand, a game designed for a few participants can be a disaster if tried by a back yard full of revelers, and vice versa. So the book also includes hints on how to prepare, introduce and tailor the games to size and situation.

And if some of the games seem ambitious or even a little outrageous, Wills encourages courage and the proper party spirit. And she offers a promise: These games work.

“We’ve given thousands of really wonderful parties,” she said, “and we’ve never really had a bust.”