Reading with Friends

Last night I got together with my gf, Faunabay, and two other friends barely starting tarot. We had a bunch of different decks out and everyone picked their favorite and least favorite cards out of a couple different decks.
Then each person explained why they liked/disliked the cards and we all discussed that, and then tried to figure out the opposite of the card (what's the positive message about the least favorite, and what could be negative about the favorite)
The results with the 2 newbies were uncanny. Fit their life situations amazingly perfectly. Almost scarily so. Especially the 13 year old daughter. In 2 different decks she picked the 9 of Swords (worry), and other cards related to protection and defending herself. Her mom also had some amazingly accurate picks as far as situation plus exactly what to do about them.
Does anyone every do any kind of free form sort of group reading/discussions? These were really interesting.
Consciously picking cards face up, purely based on the pictures alone was pretty amazing. We all actually got some neat stuff based on doing just that. I think the key was not to let knowledge of meanings get in the way.
The oracles used were neat because you didn't have an inital set of meanings to ignore (sort of like the newbie tarot readers. Both Faunabay & my gf picked a card in the Spirit of the Wheel deck that went with their birth moon unknowingly. Kind of interesting.