How to play
The rules. Do try to keep up.
Porkies is a bluffing game for 3 to 10 players, plus an audience. You'll want a phone each. A telly is optional.
Setting up
The host starts a room at playporkies.com/app or in the app and picks three things: the preset (who's in the room), the length, and a pack if they've made one. Everyone else joins with the room code, at playporkies.com, or by scanning the QR code. Anyone past the tenth seat joins the audience: their likes count, their votes don't score.
Three kinds of question
Fact bluff
A true fact comes up with a blank: Nearly every resident of Whittier, Alaska lives in ___
. Everyone writes a lie to fill it. If what you type is actually the real answer (or a close enough version of it), it comes back to you: write a lie. Then every lie goes up beside the truth, and everyone votes for the one they think is real. You can't vote for your own.
Truth About You
One player is the subject: Jack once got detention for ___
. Jack secretly writes the truth and a lie of his own. Everyone else writes a lie that sounds like Jack. Guess his real answer by accident and it comes back to you, even if Jack writes his after you: write a lie. Everyone except Jack votes. Jack's lie scores like any other lie, and gets its own moment at the reveal. His truth earns him nothing, so he never has to choose between being found out and being believed. Everyone gets a turn as the subject before anyone gets a second.
Guess Whose
Everyone answers the same question truthfully, for once: Worst job you've ever had?
. Each phone then gets everyone else's answers and puts a name to each. No lies in this one. It's still somehow the most revealing round.
Scoring
| What happened | Points |
|---|---|
| Your vote finds the truth | 1,000 |
| Each person your lie fools | 500 |
| Each correct match in Guess Whose | 500 |
| Each like on your lie (players or audience) | 50, up to 250 a question |
- The final question is worth three times the points. In a Long Night, the last question before half time is worth double. Likes are never multiplied.
- Two people write the same lie? It goes up as one card, and both of you score for everyone it fools.
- Not enough lies to make a decent ballot? The house adds a few of its own. If one fools you, nobody scores, and the host enjoys it immensely.
- Didn't write in time? No card, but you still vote. Didn't vote? Nothing for the truth, but your lie still scores.
The reveal
Lies are revealed one at a time, least fooled first. Each shows who fell for it, then whose it was, and the liar's pants catch fire. A lie that fooled nobody gets a short, pitying moment. The truth comes last, on a plain card with no flames.
| Heat | Fooled | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Smoulder | 1 | A small flame and a puff of smoke. |
| Burning | 2 to 3 | Two flames. The host starts to enjoy it. |
| Blaze | 4 to 5 | Three flames, and sparks rise off the card. |
| Inferno | Half the room or more | Full-screen fire. The round people talk about on the way home. |
At the end: the scoreboard, then two awards. Biggest Liar for fooling the most people across the game, and Lie Detector for finding the most truths. Ties are named as ties.
Lengths
| Length | Questions | Takes | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick | 5 | about 10 minutes | Four fact bluffs, then the final |
| Standard | 8 | about 20 minutes | Fact bluffs, two Truth About You, one Guess Whose, then the final |
| Long Night | 15 | about 40 minutes | Standard's first seven (the seventh at double points), seven more, then the final |
The final is always a fact bluff, picked from the most surprising facts in the bank. With only three players, Truth About You turns into a fact bluff, since two liars is a bit thin.
Presets and the word filter
The host picks a preset, and it sets both the questions you get and what the word filter lets through in what players type. Mates is the default. After Dark is only ever on when the host switches it on.
| Preset | Questions | Swearing | Slurs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kids | Family | Blocked | Blocked |
| Work | Family, plus work-safe Mates | Masked | Blocked |
| MatesDefault | Family and Mates | Allowed | Masked |
| After Dark | Family, Mates and After Dark | Allowed | Allowed |
Masked means the first letter and then stars, and the host's voice says “bleep”. Packs never put slurs in what they write, whatever the preset.
With a telly, or phones only
TV and phones
Open the room on a TV, laptop or tablet and it becomes the board: the question, the ballot, the reveal and the fire, plus a host who reads every lie aloud with a straight face. Phones do the writing and voting.
Phones only
No screen needed. Every phone shows the question and the ballot, and the reveal plays on every phone at the same moment, with the fire scaled down to fit. The host's voice only speaks when a telly is connected, so phones-only rooms are quiet ones.
Timers
About 45 seconds to write a fact bluff, a minute for the personal ones, and 20 seconds to vote. Writing and voting end the moment everyone's in, and the host can add 15 seconds when someone's still crafting a masterpiece.