Total Madness Rules

What you need

3–8 players and a TV or big screen (Total Madness is an original HostBox game — not affiliated with or endorsed by Cards Against Humanity or Mad Libs, though the fill-in-the-blank judging format will feel familiar). Or skip straight to it and try Total Madness for free in your browser — the TV shows the black card and answers, your phone holds your hand.

The cards

Black cards carry a sentence with 1, 2, or 3 blanks (some are straightforward fill-ins, others ask you to pick a couple of cards to build a phrase). White cards are the answers you play into those blanks. Everyone holds 7 white cards at a time, refilled to 7 after every round.

Taking a round

1. One player is the dealer this round — their black card appears on the TV for everyone to see.
2. Every other player picks white cards from their hand to fill the blank(s) and submits — answers land face-down on the TV and are completely anonymous, even to the dealer.
3. The dealer taps each face-down answer to flip it. The blank fills in on the TV as each one is revealed, and the dealer reads the whole card out loud.
4. Once every answer is revealed, the dealer picks their favorite. Whoever submitted it scores a point — their identity is only revealed at that moment.
5. The deal passes to the next player and a new black card comes up.

Scoring & game length

1. The dealer's pick scores the submitter exactly one point; nobody else scores that round.
2. Quick games run until everyone has dealt exactly 3 times — highest score wins (ties share the win). First to 5 and First to 7 instead race to that many points.

Three decks

Family keeps everything clean and all-ages — it's the only deck free rooms can use. PG-13 adds cheekier, embarrassing-situation humor. Mature is full adult content and requires the host to confirm an 18+ warning before it's enabled. PG-13 and Mature are Premium features and stack on top of Family (a Mature game can still deal a Family card).

The disputes every table argues about

Can the dealer answer their own black card? No — the dealer only judges that round; they get a turn to answer once the deal comes back around to someone else.

Is it really anonymous? Yes — even the server doesn't reveal who submitted which answer until the dealer actually picks a winner.

What if the dealer disconnects? The host can pass the deal to the next player; everyone's submitted cards go back to their hands and the same black card is re-dealt.