With All Due Contempt
What Is With All Due Contempt?
This is not shouting. This is not cruelty.
This is a tournament of tactful annihilation—where sharp tongues dress themselves in poetry, and every insult must be clever enough to be clapped for.
Players compete to deliver the most devastating, intelligent, and stylish insults—aimed at each other, ideas, and designated targets. Every blow must be wrapped in charm, dipped in irony, and flung with precision.
To win is to wound with taste. To lose is to wish you’d said it first.
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Objective
Score points by crafting the most cutting and artful insults across multiple rounds. You win a round by delivering a line that’s too good to ignore—so clever, funny, or poetic that even your opponent must bow their head (preferably while bleeding metaphorically).
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Setup
• 2 or more players
• A timer (or someone with a theatrical voice and a disdainful glare)
• A rotating Judge per round (or vote if all players wish to be equally judgmental)
• A collection of targets to insult: people, abstract concepts, everyday objects, or ideas.
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Game Structure
Each round features three turns per player. On each turn, players deliver one insult aimed at the round’s assigned target.
There are three round formats:
1. Duel Mode (Player vs. Player)
Players insult each other directly. Sharp. Personal. Poised.
2. Target Mode
All players insult the same idea, object, or concept. Best insult wins.
3. Chaos Mode
Each player is assigned a different target. The round becomes a carousel of beautiful destruction.
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Targets May Include:
• Time
• Nostalgia
• Hope
• Your opponent’s haircut (past or present)
• “The good old days”
• Your own dignity
• A banana with a superiority complex
• That guy who claps when the plane lands
• The phrase “no offense”
• Gravity
Each insult must land. It must be intentional.
And above all, it must be memorable.
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Scoring System
Each round, players or the Judge award insults based on their effectiveness.
Point Scale (Per Insult):
• 0 points – Miss. Forgettable, cruel without wit, or lazy.
• 1 point – Smirk. Solid line, got a reaction.
• 2 points – Wince. Clever burn. Lingered in the room like perfume made of shame.
• 3 points – Kill. Laughter, applause, stunned silence. The line people quote later.
Optional: Add a +1 bonus for:
• Best use of metaphor
• Backhanded phrasing (“Was that a compliment?”)
• Poetic insult that no one saw coming
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Sample Insults
• “Your memory is like a plastic bag in the wind: fragile, noisy, and frequently empty.”
• “Hope, as a concept, peaked in kindergarten and has been underperforming ever since.”
• “You give off the energy of someone who quotes philosophers… but mispronounces all their names.”
• “Nostalgia is just historical fiction you wrote yourself—and somehow it still got bad reviews.”
• “You wear confidence like a toddler wears a superhero cape: proud, loud, and upside-down.”
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Advanced Modes
Reverse Roast
Players must insult themselves—still aiming to outshine their opponents. Brutal self-awareness encouraged.
Polite Brutality
All insults must be delivered as if giving a formal compliment. (“Truly impressive how you remain so consistently underwhelming.”)
Tag Team Scorn
Two teams. Insults must weave into each other—either amplifying or contradicting the partner. Coordination is key. Chaos is inevitable.
Mirror Mode
You must insult your opponent using their own last insult as inspiration. Verbal judo.
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Winning the Game
You may:
• Play to a fixed number of points (e.g., first to 15)
• Eliminate players each round (last one standing wins)
• Play for pure glory and quote-recording
Victory Condition: When the final insult is delivered and no one else dares speak after.
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Final Word
With All Due Contempt is not for the mean-spirited.
It’s for the artfully brutal. The rhetorically dangerous.
Those who wield words like daggers—but monogrammed and dipped in ink.
So raise your glass.
Unsheath your sarcasm.
And remember:
The sharpest insult… is the one they admire while it’s still bleeding.
Invented by:
Keaffa Moon & Danu Marche
Boner And Biscuits LLC, copyright 1993
