Can anyone suggest any really fun board game (or game) to play with a large group of family/ family friends...?

the board game "life" is great for kids and adults, but i would suggest doing charades gets people thinking and having fun.

Are you sure you WANT to have a roomful of rowdy, excited and laughing adults? That can get scary sometimes! There are always the old standbys of "Pictionary", "Taboo" or "Scattergories", stuff like that. Obviously played with teams. You didn't say how many people there are, but some form of Trival Pursuit might be fun if you don't have too many people for it. I'd just recommend the board game itself though, I wouldn't recommend these video trivia games where you have to turn on the TV and DVD player. To me, either you play a game or you watch TV, but don't do both at the same time. Well, you did say a large group, so Trivial Pursuit might not work, unless everyone is OK with teams on that one as well. And try to get a version that everyone (or almost everyone) can agree on.

dememtostie already suggested some great ones, and the greatest source for these questions (http:/www.geekdo.com). I'll add other ones I've found work great with a large crowd. Category 5 (also known as Slide 5 these days) is a great game for up to 10 players. You can learn it in a minute or two, and it's just hilarious. Plus, it only costs $5. Wits & Wagers is an excellent trivia/betting game, that can sit up to 32 players! So for large gatherings, you simply can't go wrong with this one. Incan Gold is another good game, for up to 8 people. A little bit more "serious" than the previous suggestions, but still a great game, easy to learn, and full of fun moments.

We (family of 6 adult-aged kids and maybe 3 older grand-kids) like playing Risk. Animation is ensured as we fight over who's attacking who and who is in alliance(s). A game like "He Said She Said" or along the lines of "Guys vs Dolls" is pretty fun for the adults (especially couples that have imbibed a bit). If the crowd has a mix of young and old then try "Trivial Pursuit". Yeah, it's a bit out of current rage status but I've found the young teens become astounded at how much Papa actually knows. (LOL). PS: study the answers and wow your 13 year old? How about "Pass the Ace" (cards) only use a shooter as the Ace that must be consumed then the loser(s) make the next shooter... Then move on to "Twister"... hilarious:)

apples to apples is an excellent choice. outburst is good too.

monopoly twister cards

try scrabble. =)

There are a lot of great party games that can be played with large groups of people. Apples to Apples and Pictionary are always fun in my opinion, regardless of the group. Time's Up! Is a great party game too, it's a game where you give clues to a set of words on cards and each round though you use the same cards you have to use fewer and fewer clues to get people to guess them. Wits and Wagers looks like a really fun game. It's a trivia game where you don't have to know the right answer, you just have to get close. Attribute is a good kind of advanced version of Apples to Apples. In AtA you have both the adjective cards and the noun cards to match up, in Attribute you only have the adjective cards and have to think of a category each round. The twist is that some players are trying to match the word and the category and some are trying to come up with the opposite. It's kind of hard to explain in a single sentence, but it's very fun. Werewolf, or Mafia, or Werewolves of Millers Hollow, or any of the other many names for it is a very fun party game that can be played with either a deck of cards or the special deck that you can buy that has the fancier names. Wait. Let me start over. OK, so I played this as "Mafia" with a deck of cards. There are special decks out there with various werewolf based titles that all share the same concept, some of them have special cards with special powers, some have really nice art, all have the same game play mechanic. Everyone gets a card, this card tells them their role. Most players are going to be villagers, but there are also "Mafia/Werewolf" cards and an "Informant" card. The goals of the game are: The villagers want to kill the members of the Mafia, the Mafia wants to kill everyone else but remain alive. The Informant knows who the Mafia members are, the Mafia members know who each other are, but not who the Informant is. Every round the members of the village are going to decide to kill one player in the hopes of knocking off one of the members of the Mafia, then the Mafia gets to kill one player as the rest of the players "sleep", this goes on until only Mafia members or Villagers remain. It's really fun and can get really engrossing if you are all trying to make stands about whether or not certain members of the Village are actually Mafia, pointing out who was killed overnight and how they were really vocal about killing certain players. It's a great game, even for a giant group of people numbering in the 18-25 players range, though by that point you might want to break off into smaller groups.

Hybrid Telephone/Pictionary I like playing this with a stack of stick notes equal to the number of player. The player you passed to can see the picture move it to the bottom of the stack and draw or write. I also recommend a minute timer then a mandatory pass. It doesn't necessarily have to be a phrase. Make sure the group number is odd or end the game a person early. Have the originator of the stack present their stack when they get it back.