How to Make a Custom Taboo Word Pack

A custom pack is a list of words sorted into difficulty tiers: easy, medium, hard and insane. The game deals words from your tiers onto the board, and each word scores the usual points for its tier.

• Packs belong to a signed-in account. You create and edit them from the profile menu.
• A pack has no field for taboo words. As with every pack on Taboo Party, the describer must avoid the words on the board.
• With Plus, creating and saving packs is free. Without it, a pack costs coins, starting at 150 coins for up to 200 words.
• The host can choose a custom pack while its owner is in the room. Custom packs are for casual games and can't be used in ranked games.
• Pack names and words pass through the same content filter as chat.

The best custom packs have a clear theme that everyone playing shares. A theme makes the game feel personal, and it gives describers a common set of references to draw on.

• An office pack: tools, rooms and rituals everyone knows, such as the stapler, the standup, the coffee machine and the fire drill.
• A friend-group pack: places you go, games you play, food you order and the nicknames everyone is happy to hear.
• A family reunion pack: dishes, relatives' hometowns, family holidays and the things grandparents always say.
• A classroom pack: the key terms from one topic, such as a science unit or a novel the class is reading.

Mix in some general words if your theme is narrow. A board of ten very similar words gets repetitive, and general words keep newer members of the group in the game.

A good Taboo word is one that most players know and that can be described in several ways. Test each word by trying to think of three different clues for it.

• Prefer nouns and common actions. Abstract words and adjectives are harder to describe, so save them for the hard and insane tiers.
• Avoid words that only one person understands. An inside joke between two friends will stall the whole table.
• Avoid near-duplicates such as "sun" and "sunflower". If both land on one board, describing one makes it easy to say the other.
• Keep words short. Each word can be up to 50 characters, but long phrases are slow to type and easy to misspell.
• Use one spelling consistently, because the game checks guesses against the spelling you entered.

If you also want printed cards for a game in person, add taboo words to each word as you plan. Taboo Party does not use them, but writing them helps you check that each word can still be described.

Choose the words a describer would reach for first: the category, the main use, the most common synonym and an obvious part of the word.

If you cannot write two clues that avoid the taboo words, drop one taboo word or drop the card. A card nobody can describe is not hard, it is broken.

Sort each word into a tier by how quickly an average player in your group would guess it. Easy words take one or two clues, medium words need a few, and hard words need real creativity.

• Every tier you include needs at least 10 words. You can leave a tier out entirely.
• The built-in packs deal roughly 35% easy, 40% medium and 25% hard words over a game, which is a sensible shape for your own pack.
• Use the insane tier sparingly, for words your group will remember as a challenge.
• Each turn deals ten words, and two teams playing the default 12 rounds take 24 turns. A smaller pack suits a game with fewer rounds.

Your pack also needs a word limit, chosen from 200, 400, 600, 800 or 1,000 words, or a custom size above that. The total must be at least half the limit, so a 200-word pack needs at least 100 words.

1. Sign in, open your profile menu and choose Custom Word Packs.
2. Press Create New Pack. The button shows the starting price, or Free if you have Plus.
3. Type a Pack Name of up to 40 characters.
4. Pick a Word Limit Choice that fits your list.
5. Choose Paste JSON and paste your words, or Upload File to load a .json file.
6. Check the word counts and any errors under the box, then press Create Pack.

The words go in as JSON, with one list per tier, like this: { "easy": ["Stapler", "Coffee"], "medium": ["Standup"], "hard": ["Deadline"] }. A real pack needs at least 10 words in each tier it uses.

If you keep your list in a spreadsheet, put each tier in its own column. Then copy each column into the matching list, with quotes around every word and commas between them.

1. Create a casual room, or join one where the host will pick your pack.
2. Open Word pack in the lobby. Your pack appears under Custom with its owner and word count.
3. Choose it, set the rounds and turn time, and start the game.

A custom pack can only be chosen while its owner is in the room, so make sure the owner joins before the host sets up the game. Any player's pack works, so a friend can bring their pack to your room.

After each game, note the words that nobody could describe and the ones that were guessed instantly. Move them to a harder or easier tier, or replace them.

Open the pack again and press Sync Changes to save your edits. Renaming is free, while changing the words costs a 50-coin editing fee unless you have Plus. Packs made free with Plus lock if Plus ends, until you renew or unlock them with coins.