Hey and welcome to episode 124 of maple to meeple.
It is, growing the circle. Hosting board game events beyond
the player count as always, I'm PJ.
And today, I'm taking a little inspiration from our good
friend. The Greek philosopher Aristotle,
who said that man is by nature, a social animal, and everyone
who listens to this show, all of us in the Gaming Community, we
are all social animals and who best to talk about creating
events that are so social, there's so many people.
You can even host one board. Game is my good friend.
Jonathan Jonathan, how are you? Hey I'm doing great PJ, thanks
for having me on today, excited to be here.
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I really appreciated.
It's been a while since we've had a chat.
So I'm kind of excited about this topic.
We were talking a little bit before recording, and I was
like, I was not on the same page as you not.
That's why we had that five minutes before, right?
So not not surprising. For those of you listening, I
thought we were going to talk about party games.
That's not what we're talking about.
This is Jonathan's got an interesting story and I'm really
excited to hear about this. So the concept is hosting events
not a game night at six or seven players, right?
You want to do a bigger thing, right?
That's what we're going to talk correct.
Yes. So I love hosting people on
whether that's you know, dinner party or whatnot and then of
course I love board games. So Any chance that I can do to
like combine the two? It's great.
You know, I get to make some good food and have a lot of
people over play a lot of good games and oftentimes, you get
Beyond a player count that a typical box has.
So typical game night, we might have for 56 people, and I can
kind of grab any game behind me off the shelf and it just works.
It's within the player count. But when you start getting to,
you know, six plus people, you can play party games or you can
kind of focus in and try and do some of it.
And so, these events that I'm talking about, we just hosted a
board game Olympics, where we had a bunch of people over the
house always split into four teams and we competed against
each other for a trophies and points and gave up prizes at the
end. You know a lot of fun and then
you know we've done smaller things like a little unmatched
Tournament of hosted on the clock tower night.
So anything that's kind of what I'm talking about here when
we're talking about an event or a gaming event.
Beyond this player count, it's just on the box.
You need to kind of get Creative and think about how can I bring
all these people together, how can I get them to have fun?
How can I get them to play these games and have a good time?
Right? So, so, I that kind of reminds
me so Ralph Waldo Emerson, he said that the ornament of a
house or the friends that frequent it, right.
How good is that? So the friends that frequent
your home are the ornaments of your house and they want you to
tell me about your ornaments. Tell me about, tell me how many
people are at the, there's like three events that you want to
talk about specifically, you just mentioned them.
Yeah. How many people were at them and
where did they come from? Because they didn't all.
It's my understanding. They don't come from the same
Circle, tell me a little bit about.
How did that work? How did that work out?
Yeah, so I'm sure you've seen like a Hallmark movie where the
tree is beautiful. It's all the same ornaments or
whatnot. I grew up with ornaments all
over the tree. We had Star Wars in this
section. We had the nativity scene in the
middle. We had little snowman over here
and that's kind of what these gaming.
Vents are like we've got ornaments or friends from all
different walks of life. So the three events that I
mentioned like the clock tower night, you know, 10 12, people,
something like that, the unmatched tournament that we
held was right around the same number 10 or 12.
And then the biggest one that we just did was the board game
Olympics. Event.
We had 18 people over at our house from kind of four
different groups of the people that we myself and my wife knew
and some even friends of friends.
And they were just over at our house for like six hours and
played a bunch of games. So the way each of these events
has kind of worked. Like my personal game group is
not 18, 10 people or, you know, I've got four people that I play
games with but they also people that they played games with
right they have friends that are maybe interested in games and so
we just extend the invite to the people that we play games with.
So those four or five people and then they bring along their
spouse's and they bring along some friends of friends.
And so we've got like kind of my two game groups will say.
Coming to this event along with their spouses, their friends.
So now we've kind of got, you know, a couple mixtures coming
in and then on my wife's side, you know, her co-workers, come
their spouses, they bring some friends.
And so you've got this nice mix of my wife's friends and their
friends. And then my friends in their
friends, and a lot of these people have never met before.
So, when we get to these big gaming events, it's crucial to
kind of do a little icebreakers or something.
Fun to kind of kick things off and name, tags.
Name tags are very important. These, these larger things so
name. That's kind of what is ornaments
look like. Yeah.
Yeah, you know named tags. So I don't want to, I don't want
to Discount the two smaller events but we really dove into
it. So I want to, I want to explore
this. This Olympics, just with these
people, from these groups, from different different backgrounds,
different different Avenues of your and your wife's life.
How was it? How was it?
Introducing everyone together and I don't mean like formal
introduction. But just like this is not,
everyone was a gamer talk to me about like the what's the first
hour look? Yeah, yeah.
So I spent a lot of time planning this event on that I
previously hosted. The two other events that I've
talked about and some other smaller stuff.
And one thing that you learn about hosting anything is, it's
never going to go perfectly. How you plan it and as Gamers,
you know, when you host a game night, you really want to play a
game that works well for players, and then somebody drops
out. And now you're kind of a creek
without a paddle, and now you've got a switch games or figure out
something. And so there's some of the
things that I learned from the previous events that I'd hosted.
And so, I knew this one I did like so much maths.
So many like I said, scribbles on papers and these games are
good for these player counts. And if we have 16 people come,
it's like the perfect number because then you have 14 four
and tables with four players and it just it just all works.
That's not what happened. We had, you know, 18 people
uneven teams, we had people coming late, leaving early and
so I kind of had to make sure the games we played.
And the things we picked were able to adjust player.
On the Fly and make that all work, but to get back to your
question about, hey, what are that first hour look?
Like, I actually have a couple things from that event because
it was kind of recent and I'll show him here.
So the thing that I'm holding up first is this board game
Olympics schedule that we printed off and we hung it up.
So it's got, you know, kind of a timetable of everything that's
going to happen from people arriving to the games and that
we're going to play and it's even got a QR code at the bottom
with like the how to play links in case people hadn't played the
game. Before I spent a lot of good
good chunk of time on this, but the very first thing we did.
I knew people were gonna all show up at 2:00 when you know,
the event started. So right, the as people showed
up, we filled a baby bottle with dice and it was just a guess,
you know, as you come in right. Your name on a name tag, put
that on because we're gonna need that, you know, all these people
from all over the place. So gotta have your name tag and
then once you've done that, take a guess.
At the, the dice throw something down.
Throw a number down. How many are in that bottle?
Just something fun to kick things off.
And then it was just a little bit of small talk.
We were just hanging out chatting, kind of introducing
the groups, no, perfect fashion. All my wife's friend showed up
right on time and only one of mine did the rest of them were
all late? So you know, he's hanging out
there with, you know, bunch of people in the medical field and
I'm like, don't worry like the rest of people are coming or
more in line with us. You Yeah, what?
So, you know, kind of kind of a nice flow there and then as
people all got there, we got the name tags on.
I actually created a PowerPoint that I had projected up on the
TV with, you know, kind of Welcome to the board game
Olympics. I had one friend like this was a
friend of a friend that came and he was worried when he got the
invite from our friend Luis like am I able to go to this thing?
Like, how much do I have to pay at the door?
Is it a Convention Center? Because I threw together a
little graphic and stuff. And I guess it looked a little
too official but really it was just, you know, excuse to have
people over at the house playing games and having a good time.
So, I mean, everybody's there, I'm already intimidated
PowerPoints QR codes, like you were family.
I do what I can, you know, I tried to tried to think of
everything I could to like streamline the process and even
still like that list that I showed earlier the second half
of it, kind of all got scrapped. We had to make some adjustments,
nearly in just how things go. But yeah, once we were once
everybody was there had the name tags on, I threw up a PowerPoint
with a bar graph that went across the screen.
And it said, you know, we're going to split into teams based
on how much of a gamer So it was like beginner on one side
Advanced on the other and then I populated this graph with images
that you may or may not recognize being in the hobby.
So most of us in the hobby are going to recognize every image
on the screen. You know, the one side, the
beginner side, it was, you know, Monopoly Uno, you know, as you
kind of went across, it was contained Carcassonne.
And then, as you kept going, then you had like the board game
geek logo. You have Rod Smith, you got some
more heavy, heavy stuff here. And so I had everybody line up
it just in our living room. This was just at our house, so
lined up in her living room along that graph of sorts.
And then I had bags with different colored meeples in
them, and so then I just handed a bag as I went down the line.
And so the first four people all pulled from the same bag.
Pulling different teams and then the next four pulling different
teams. And so what happened is, All
these people got divvied up into teams that were roughly evil
skill level or roughly evil board game proficiency.
Like, over all the beginners weren't accidentally on one
team. All the advanced people born
accidentally on one team and I did have some friends that were
like, hey, I really want to be on a team with the people I
know. And so we kind of rigged the
bags a little bit there, but the team's pretty much ended fairly
evenly. The final scores were all pretty
close. So I was pretty proud of proud
of that but once we got through The teaming part, you know, the
teams everybody came up with a fancy name for the team, just
something fun and Goofy. We had like, you know, the four
horsemen and, you know, GOP and it just all kinds of wacky
stuff. And then at this point, we've
kind of done a little bit of small talk.
We've, you know, split into teams, teams are starting to
know each other, but we're still mixing those four different
groups. And so the very first thing that
we did was we did a giant team versus Team game of monikers.
So the reason I chose monikers is you can play it infinite
player, count. You can just adjust the rules a
little bit there because typically it's a one team versus
one team. We ended up having all four
teams playing in the same game. So we just minimize the time
that you have to give clues that way every teams involved.
And if you've never played monikers before, the reason I
chose this game, is it shares a lot of sim 30s to games that we
grew up playing as children. So like a lot of people are
going to recognize straight that's part of monikers.
They're going to recognize Fishbowl or celebrity.
Those are some other names of a very similar games.
And if you've never heard of any of those, the rules are super
simple. You pull a card.
You give a clue and you're trying to get your team to guess
as many of those Clues correctly as you can.
And what makes this such a good game for this is I came up with
an acronym before this for a game that you want to have one
of these events. And the acronym, I came up with
was filled, you want it to be familiar.
You want it to be easy to learn. You want it to encourage
interaction and you want it to have laughs.
So feel familiar, easy to learn, encourage interaction and then
laughs and monikers. I think did that we had people
giving all kinds of goofy Clues. The teams are laughing their
bonding. And so after we got through that
now, the team's kind of know each other, they're feeling
good. They know people on the other
teams, they've seen them gift Clues.
They've seen how they laugh, how they just goof around and have a
good time. And so from there then we split
off into some of the more like serious games.
We ended up having four tables going throughout the house of a
different games and you give it up with your team and said, hey
I want to go play the classic game of Ticket to Ride.
Hand know that one, I'm going to be good at that.
I want to play like the wacky game of cosmic encounters.
I'm gonna go do that and then you sent somebody off and Then
from there, the rest of the night just rolled on, we had
make your own pizzas. We had a kahoot trivia night, so
it was a lot of fun. But that, that Foundation of
introducing everyone and having like a little icebreaker game of
sorts was was key. That is that is incredible.
So that's feel. That it's feel.
I love that familiar. Yeah.
Easy encourage encouraging player, interaction and laughs.
Wow! Yep.
That's really great. We definitely need to pass that
on to everyone. That's a great way to think
about structuring event with a large group of friends and I kid
you not you really segue this beautifully you said with this
beautiful. So Maya Angelou Maya Angelou.
Once said that, people will forget what you say but they
rarely will forget how you make them feel Oh yeah, I was really
thinking about that in the context of this episode.
It's like, you know, one of the things that I think about when I
have people over either for a game night or a family over for
the weekend to to spend the weekend with us is I want them
to feel comfortable. I want them to feel at ease and
I want them to feel good when they walk out the door and have
fond memories. Even if they don't remember
word, I said, which let's be honest.
Everyone listens to this podcast, you don't remember
anything, I say, but I think you'll probably have some sense
of how this podcast makes you feel.
So, thank you. And that was a lot.
Now, to be fair, you had 18 people in your home, which, yep,
that that kind of, that would never happen in my home.
My wife would never go for that many people, but that's that is
that is, that is absolutely crazy.
So, so what about after? Okay, so you get four tables,
you had four different games going on.
I'm assuming there was like a next or A final stage.
I'm interested in some of the games.
Yeah. You had playing and I'm really
interested in some of the people who were not gamers.
How did they take to the event? I'm so I'm really interested in
how they felt like to be honest. Yeah.
I also this is a board game podcast, so let's talk about the
games that were played. Yeah, tell me a little bit more
about the progression of the night.
Some of the games that hit the table and some of the feelings
people shared. Yeah.
So I'll hit the feelings part. First, we'll jump to the end I
guess of the night. We got great feedback on the
event. People like this was a lot of
fun, way more fun than what I was expecting.
Oh, hey, that I'll take it, you know, I'm glad they were enticed
enough for curious enough to come over, even though they
thought it was gonna be a, you know, mediocre time and then it
would be in a great time. So I'll take that every time.
A lot of them were like, hey, this is gonna be an annual
thing, right? Yep.
Well, we'll do it again next year.
It'll be every year. This was just our trial run.
So, overall like great feedback. And I mentioned the one friend
earlier who, Thought the it was like an official convention and
pay a store and like an official like nope, it was just a casual
thing, we're just having fun. He had a great time and then to
kind of segue back to more of the the games that we played and
the non-gamers versus Gamers. However, everybody how everyone
fell. So on the one end of the
spectrum, I've got one friend who is Super competitive plays,
lots of heavy games all the time.
So he's playing with serta's, he's playing, you know, War of
the ring top-notch, you know, if it's not like a four out of, you
know, six out of five on BGG on the complexity, he's not
touching it, kind of a thing. I mean, he plays lighter games
too, but I said on one end, we've got him on the other end.
We've got people who, you know, we've had maybe had over and
we've played just something like something quick, you know, after
after dinner. So on the one end, the friend
who was kind of heavy was like, man, I was hoping this would go
longer, like, I wanted to be a longer of it.
You know, we were there for six hours, but he was like, I wanted
to play three, four more games, and wanted to hit some more of
those heavy ones and so kind of segues us into the games that we
played. I had the the day split into
medium, long games and then short games, right?
And so we ended up playing short games and medium games.
We did not get our second like long game in that I, that I had
planned, we had From the schedule, just due to timing
stuff. But for each of these things,
since I had four tables was going and since I had all these
groups of people, Gamers non-gamers, the games that I
picked all kind of fall into the medium or light category,
they're all games that could be finished in like 45 to 60
Minutes, quick to teach the rules videos that I found.
And if I'm teaching the game, like, it can be taught in less
than 10 minutes, right? And it's, you know, easy enough
to learn. So, for each of these things, we
had four categories since we had the four tables, one was classic
games. And so, the classic game that we
had for our first like, longer game, the medium long games was
Ticket to Ride. That's a, that's a people, I
think that the people who played that they ended up finishing
first because all four, then new Ticket to Ride the new out of
play it. They had never like they didn't
need touch the rules over video. They just jumped right in.
We had the games all set up and ready to go.
So oh I mean they were they were done and then they were just
walking around like kind of checking out the other games
that were going on as they kind of wrap up and we had snacks,
and you were hanging out, just chatting.
So we have the classic game tickets arrived, okay, we had a
strategic game. Of Cyclades that was our more
heavy game for the day. That's kind of a jump from
Ticket to Ride. Yeah, yes.
So it's a big jump and then the other two games that I'll
mention fall within that like in between those two.
Okay. I knew I was having Gamers come
so I wanted to have a heavier game but still something that's
accessible. And then I wanted to have the
rest of our Medium to easier games that people can just pick
up. And so those other two games
that we had within that section, were Cosmic Encounter which fell
into our chaotic game of the day and then because it's just a
wacky, super fun game. It is you're just it's it's war
in space, but then there's all these aliens that just break
every rule that exists and everything that game rule every
single rule. Yeah.
I like teach it and players like yeah.
Okay. I understand, you know, just
like War when we played in Elementary School, you flip over
the card. Highest number wins, easy peasy.
And then I'm like, boom, then you'll get this alien that
breaks every rule that we just talked about and their eyes,
just, whoa. So, you know, it's fun and then
the last game that we had in that first section was flam
Rouge which is a racing, a cycle in game.
It's Similar to heat pedal to the metal.
I think it's either by the same designer, at least.
Cheers. A lot of similarities but it's
cycling themed and that kind of fell into the all-around
category. So I had a classic a strategic
chaotic and then a, just an all-around good game that I just
like to throw in. That's a good.
That's a good group of games, considering you had 18 people
from heavy gamer to, I've never played anything beyond Monopoly
since I was a kid. Yeah, really.
That's a great. That's a great round of games.
Well, done you. Thank you.
I was yeah. All the games that I tried to
pick, I tried to pick with that, in mind, that range of.
I want something that if you've never played a game before, you
can be like, that looks cool. I'm gonna try that and it's easy
enough for them to pick up and then Like I want to have the
people who have played bunch of games, still be interested in
even if they get sent to the, you know, one of the easier game
tables. Yeah, and so I tried to it's,
you know, fine line to balance. But I think we did a good job
and I mean everybody liked it so, you know, got good feedback
so we'll take it and then I guess to to kind of jump and
give you a little snippet of those, same four categories but
for the shorter games that we played, our classic short game
was a carcassone, so another classic.
Yeah, our more strategic game was Captain flip.
So yeah, super super quick game that you can play.
It's still light very light compared to our last strategic
game of Cyclades but compared to these quicker games.
It gives you the most to think about you pulled the tile out
which side to I play. So Carson for our classic, it
was Captain flip for our Dream. Yeah.
And then so for the chaotic game we had cheating Moth.
I don't know if you played that one or but that one.
Yeah. Yeah, get a lot of good laughs
out of that one. And then the last the just kind
of all around game was Game of flip 7, you know?
Yeah, another. It's just always a hit.
So kind of all the games that I tried to pick.
Are those ones that Or just gonna work all the time kind of
a thing across all levels of Gamers.
And we had that to give you I guess, two bits of feedback that
we got girl. Who played flip 7 with us, had
never played it before. She's definitely on the lower
end of things. She previously played I think
Ticket to Ride in the first round because she knew that
game. She had played it before.
Sure. She loved flip 7.
Yeah, her team ended up winning. So she got a copy.
That was one of the prizes was a couple of seven.
Yeah, but she was gonna go out and get it after that.
Like, she didn't, she enjoyed it?
She went home, played with her husband and stuff and then on
the other side, like, The people who played it's like ladies
never played before and loved it.
They were like we want to play this again.
So like let us know when we can have you over when we can come
back over and we can actually play it right?
And sit down. So we had Good feedback, I guess
on, on both ends, people who had, wow, choosing games, they
had never played before and just trying something out those fun.
So you brought you brought heavy Gamers to non-gamers and and
build community. And man, that's a great story.
I think your story just kind of culminates everything I've been
trying to talk about for the past.
What? Four or five weeks.
I think you just you did it. you know, here I am talking about
it, you're over there just doing it like I'm trying, I'm trying
that's, that's incredible. Look, hey real quick.
So let's contextualize some of this for for our listeners,
right? You and your wife just relocated
to Denver. Is it has it been a year now?
It's it'll be a year at the end of the month.
So okay, so you have eighteen people over at the house.
All this this well-organized beautiful story that you just
explained to us all these people came over.
You've obviously plugged into a community of Gamers you move.
So you say Louis now you're in Denver you've been there less
than a year you're connected with Gamers you brought
non-gamers over and you're building a community all in of
yourself. I think that is probably the
most remarkable part of this entire story, and it's worth my
listeners knowing that you've been doing this.
Under those circumstances. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, let's probably one of the one of the biggest concerns.
My wife had for the move is How are we going to find friends?
How are we going to meet people? And knowing the community?
The way that I do I actually wasn't worried.
I knew I was like I can go to game nights at our local game
store. I can meet people that way, you
know, we're gonna get involved in our church, we'll meet people
that way. Maybe you're neighbors, maybe
not, I don't know. And so the group that, you know,
we kind of met and build over these this past year.
That was at this event was a mixture of all those things.
So it was some my wife's co-workers, so they were
awesome. Moving from all over all parts
of the country didn't know anybody like having a lot of
people in the same boat that helped a ton.
So all of her friends kind of they were all looking for
Community too and they found it with each other and then they
just happened to meet my wife. Who is married to me whose
married all these games. So they got got a looped in that
way. Yeah.
And then, in terms of the, the kind of gamer friends that I met
I, It's got a funny story so one of them, I met just through.
He put a message in our friendly local game stores, Discord
group. Hey, does anybody anybody want
to play war of the ring with me? I was like, I just played it.
Recently with one of these other friends that I'll mention it's a
great game. I loved it.
Yeah, I'd love to play. So he invites me over.
We play games and his basement and it was great.
It was fantastic. And now he's, he's a good
friend, he came over, we played multiple other times, my wife
was not happy. That I was meeting a random guy
that I met online and a basement and but, you know, everybody
that I met through the hobby, they're all great people.
Every single one of them. Yeah.
And so That was kind of one part of this community that I found
was just through our friendly local game store.
They had a Discord group. I joined it was trying to get
involved. That way somebody was looking
for a friend to play with and I was also looking so I said,
yeah, count me in and then on the other side, so you probably
know a maple Mike from Canada's on Instagram.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah, I met him at Gen Con in person a couple years back.
Previously, we had known each other just on Instagram.
Anyway, he introduced me to some friends.
We've stayed for friends, play Virtual game nights and whatnot.
So this past Gen Con. This past August, I got there,
you know, the day before, picking up our badges, we're
just hanging out. And so I meet up with meeple
Mike and his friend John and they had a third friend there
and we got together played a game of Arts before the
convention started and then this friend posted a picture of the
game. I posted the same picture and
just randomly this third friend of me and John reached out to me
on Instagram and was like, hey I saw you were, you know, I forget
the guys name a horrible with, right?
So that's why you have his name tags.
Yep. But so he reached out to me and
was like, Hey, I also live in Denver and you should come over
for a clock tower night. We hosted him every month.
I was like, fantastic. I used to clock tower all the
time when I was in Saint, Louis. And that's a harder Community to
find it. Just, I don't know.
You've got a fine people who really organized that and so I
went over to this guy's house when I got back.
From from Gen Con. Through a friend of a friend of
a friend thing, you know, this whole little chain and went over
there and there was another couple who had just moved to
Denver looking for friends. And we swap numbers, hit it off,
liked a lot of the same games and then I started playing games
with him a lot and then all of a sudden he introduced me to this
other guy that he met through a little online, Facebook group or
something. And now we've been getting
together to play games and so we moved across the country, didn't
know anybody and then through just Word of Mouth through the
community Through, you know, circumstances and whatnot.
Find all these people and they were already connected with some
people and so You just kind of start networking from there and
then the circle grows and then it all comes together and that's
that's exactly what happened. That is a, that is a great love
letter to our our Hobby and our community.
Yeah, that's that's it. I mean that's why we do this
because, you know, you know, let's talk about, let's talk a
clock tower, a little bit. I know you host.
Yeah, occasionally you enjoy clock tower.
It's and we've talked about it, it's not one of my favorite
games because I don't tend to gravitate towards the social
deduction aspect of it. But so, what is the largest
Clock Tower Group? You've managed to host since you
moved in the largest one of hosted, it Denver is just 10
people. The largest one hosting angel,
Yeah. Yeah, it was I mean it was still
and it was a good chunk of those same people who were at the
board game Olympics, event, a few other, you know, plus or
minus a couple right kind of that same, same four pots, kind
of melting melting together for that for me.
Clock Tower is I'll say like the perfect social deduction game
because it has those social elements but really it's just a
puzzle. And so when you're playing games
with people who don't know each other, it's a game that forces
you to talk to other people. And so, if we jump back to that
little field, Acronym that I came up with familiar.
Okay? People have heard of social
deduction games before. Maybe they've played secret
Hitler or one night werewolf, maybe they've played Mafia, you
know, campfire growing up, something like that.
So they probably got some sense of of that being easy, to learn
Clock Tower is, is a lot when it comes to a game with all the
different roles. But at its core, and when I
teach it, and we kind of teaches the game goes, and I say, hey,
just focus on your role. That's the only one you need to
know. And then, as you talk to people,
then you can be, like they said, they're the mayor.
Okay, what is that role? And you can just slowly build
from there. And then, since it's a game that
has a Storyteller, typically, that's me when I'm doing these,
like, First Time games of it, I always encourage them to come
and talk to me. And I'll kind of modify, you
know, monitor the situation. If I see somebody who's
confused, or maybe isn't talking to people, all kind of pulling
them to the side, hey, should go chat with this person or you
should do this. You have any Questions about
your role. So there's like kind of the easy
to learn part the encouraging interaction, you have to do that
in Clock Tower. It's it's all about right
sharing those puzzle pieces that everybody knows and trying to
put them together and so you're never going to win a game of
Clock Tower if you don't talk to people.
When I play Clock Tower with people, I've never met before,
I'll go up to him. I'll say, hey, if you learn
anything, like, do you have any information game wise to share?
And then I'll say, Hey how do you like living in Colorado?
You know the conversation kind of switches to this more
personal connection. So you've got a little bit of
outside the game. You're kind of meeting people,
you're getting to know each other and then the last part
having laughs, so we've had some great games of Clock Tower.
Just a few things happen, maybe it's like you read your role
wrong and the demon killed themselves or they said the
wrong thing and the game in super quick or it goes the whole
time and you know somebody really pulled off a great move
and it's just You know, a great time.
Yeah. It's it's something that we've
had great success with in our friend groups, bringing people
together and playing that way, because it does do all those
things that introduces people and forces you to interact.
And it gives you a Framework for that interaction which is, which
is nice. Yeah, so I know that it's one of
your favorite games, I don't know where ranks in your
personal top whatever but I know I know it's one of your
favorites. It isn't there?
I know I want to ask you, how easy was it for you personally?
To get comfortable with being vulnerable.
We've been talking about vulnerability, a lot lately on
the show. How easy was it for you to get
comfortable with being vulnerable, in a group?
To allow yourself to fully enjoy.
Blood on the clock tower. I have a follow-up after that.
Okay, okay. Oh, I guess I'll preface this by
saying I'm I don't know introvert, extrovert some days,
I'm more introverted some days and more extroverted.
Okay. Most the time I fall in the
introverted side, I like my little alone time.
So when I'm in a big group, I need to have something to keep
me going of sorts when it comes to Clock Tower, that is the
framework of the game. That's the puzzle that's trying
to be solved and I have to talk to people.
I have played clock tower at conventions.
I played it with there was a Saint Louis on the Clock Tower
Group, that was great and it was people from all walks to life a
new. Some of them Outside of that
like we became friends and would host game nights together not
Clock Tower related, but a lot of them, I only saw that once a
month at the clock tower event didn't really know them outside
of that and specially the first time I meet them obviously know
nothing about them. Right?
And so for me kind of opening up to them, it was opening up to
them first in the framework of the game.
Hey I am this role. What are you trying to solve the
puzzle of the game itself? And then as you kind of do that,
and you start seeing the same people, you know, with their
game to game week to week or even just within the game night
tonight, conversation to conversation.
Sure. Then I would start kind of
opening up a little bit more and then it's more of like, hey,
that's PJ, that's not the guy who told me he was the monk, you
know, that's PJ the guy told me it was the monkey.
It's not just the guy, you know, it's not just the role.
It's, it's the person and you know, the next time we get
together and like, hey, that's PJ, I recognized him.
You know, we chat, At about this after the game that wasn't game
related but it always starts with that, framework of the game
of and clock tower terms, you know, puzzle that I'm trying to
solve right on the good team or on the evil team.
Trying to take the puzzle apart as like a yes.
Yeah. Yeah. so, how about a time when
I assume that you are Almost always the Storyteller.
Is that correct? Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much almost all the time of the times that I am not.
The Storyteller are usually when I'm at like a convention or
something, like sure that I'm just a player when we do host.
When we do host Clock Tower night special, when we're in
Saint Louis, and we had more of a regular ish group.
I would have people who wanted to also Storyteller or they
wanted to learn how to story tell.
And so what would happen is, we'd usually play, you know,
three maybe four games of it and at night, if we'd have people
over. And so the first gamer, two
usually I would story tell I've got new people learning, you
want to have somebody experienced to know everything
that's going on. So I would always storytel and
then we've got people who like, hey, I'm curious or I want to
story tell so you can play it'd be one of the two things.
And so my wife is story told before, so I can get in the game
and play. I've got friends who have done
the same thing and then others who are just curious like
Coastal retail a game. So you and I might post story,
tell a game just so you kind of get the ropes and then you're
like, okay, yeah, that's easy. I can do that.
And then, so that last game in the night, Your story tell and
I'll play, right? So it kind of bounces back and
forth but yeah most the time I'm the Storyteller just because we
usually have new players in the circle and it's just easier to
have I trust myself to like Run the game well enough but
hopefully answer those questions that the new players are gonna
have like, I've ran enough games with new players that I know
this is what's going to come up. These are the questions.
These are the answers. This is how to guide them the
best, they have a good time. That's right.
Really doesn't matter who wins or loses, it's just who has.
So what about a situation where you as a Storyteller have a
player that is whether it's a personality, whatever?
They are struggling with that vulnerability because the
reality is, is yes, it's a puzzle.
But when you're playing this game, it's like your basis
assumption. Is that the person online to the
person I'm talking to is lying to me, right?
That you have to assume everyone's the demon or the or
the the evil Party. Right?
And then try to ask or change whether or not they're telling
the truth based on what they reveal, Etc.
How have if you've had this before, how have you dealt with
players who really struggle with that part?
The social. Yeah, vulnerability.
Not the puzzle, like, they could understand.
Yeah. The fact that it's there's so
much of the, you know. Yeah.
Talk to me about that. Yeah, that's a good question.
So I've got two examples for you.
The first is there is a role that exists in the game.
There are these fabled roles. It's basically just an extra
rule that the Storyteller can throw in that modifies the game.
In some way, one of these is called the Revolutionary.
The way that works is two players are known to be on the
same team and then you as the Storyteller, once during the
game can register. One of them falsely to kind of
help balance out that the puzzle for the rest of people, keep the
game balanced, okay? But at its core what this role
does is Let's say, PJ you and Katie are coming to play Clock
Tower and for whatever reason, you know, maybe it's because you
guys are married. You guys are, you know,
Partners, you don't want to lie to each other, you don't want to
have that situation of, am I on the same team?
Am I not on the same team? You're not comfortable with that
aspect of the game and so To help you with that.
We throw the Revolutionary in there and then You guys are 100%
on the same team. I make sure you get roles that
are on the same team. One of you will reach in poll
roll out and then I'll reach in and grab a roll.
That's and I'll make sure it's the same team hand it to the
other person. Everybody else in the circle
knows hey, PJ and Katie are on the same team.
You could be good, could be bad, doesn't matter.
But you two know 100% there is another player that I can trust
in the circle so that's one way around, it kind of helped with
that social stuff and then I usually also throw in roles.
There are some roles that gain information about other players
or you as a Storyteller you can send a player to another person,
you know, giving them a paying on, You Know, Jack or whatever.
And so if I know there's a player who's more shy or Isn't
as comfortable. Oftentimes, I'll include them in
a ping like a washer woman or something, who sees a person as
a specific role, or maybe I'll put that role in there to try
and hopefully they'll pull that role and if not, I'll direct the
washer woman to them. so, I kind of use the tools that you have
as a Storyteller to either make sure people are talking with
people they know and trust or you know, 100% guaranteeing.
People are on the same side. So that's one thing you can do.
The game, gives you some tools to kind of massage that a little
bit, and kind of get around the. Hey, I don't want to lie to
people, I don't feel comfortable with that.
And then on the flip side, let's assume I haven't done any of
that. I gave up, I didn't put the
washer woman in. I don't have the Revolutionary
in play. You didn't tell me that like,
you have, you know, social anxiety.
And you know, and then the game starts.
You've got your role and you're setting on the couch, everybody
else is up talking, and you're just kind of sitting there.
I can tell you're like, hunching, into your shell, I've
had this happen before. And whenever that happens, I go
and talk to that person specifically and I'll say hey,
PJ what's what's going on? Do you understand your role?
Do you have questions about your role?
Something that happened during the game and just kind of get a
feeling for where they are. And then once you Kind of know
that. Then I like to focus the game
back to that puzzle aspect. Hey, you don't have to lie and I
guess if you're on the evil team, you kind of have to or,
you know, I can kind of give you some ways around that of sorts
sorta that gets a little bit trickier.
Yeah. but if you're on the good team, you don't have to lie.
Like there's there's really no. There are reasons to lie, it
protects your role and we're not going to get into game strategy,
but exactly, going back to the social stuff. if I'm
uncomfortable, I'm noticing somebody who's uncomfortable
with that, aspect of the game, For me, I love the puzzle aspect
of the game. I think that's my favorite part
of it. That's what sets it above,
secret Hitler. Or you know, One night werewolf
or Mafia or any of those other games?
Is because it has that puzzle aspect, it's not just me saying,
hey, I'm a villager, don't kill me, you can verify that when
that player is kind of in their shell, maybe I'll explain their
role a little bit more and say, hey, this is the information,
the pieces of the puzzle that you hold, you should go and
share that and just talk about that piece of the puzzle and try
and find the next piece. And so I guess there's the two
things that I do. If I know a player is going to
have those issues, maybe isn't as comfortable in that situation
before the game, there's some setup stuff that I can do to
minimize that and if I am caught off guard during the game, I can
pull them aside chat with them little conversation and then
focus on back to the puzzle aspect of the game.
Yeah. I like that.
I like that a lot. You know what, one of the things
that I'm I'm constantly reminded of, as a member of the human
race as an academic, as an archivist, as a historian.
And as a gamer like he's like, humans were not computer
programs, right? We we come in all shapes and
sizes and we bring all of our baggage to the table for the
circle as it were, if you're playing.
Yeah. Now, um, you know, so and the
thing, the thing that I like while this is not a favorite
game of mine, one of the things that I do love about blood on
the clock tower, is that it does bring people together and I'm
really glad I didn't know about the Revolutionary one not I
didn't know that had rules built into help address some of the
things. I don't know.
I know you have to know ahead of time.
I think that's brilliant. I didn't know that but but that
it has the designers had enough Forward Thinking to say hey
there may be people who are uncomfortable with.
Aspect and we can address that in a way that doesn't just
sabotage the game for everyone else.
I get that right. Like I have I have real troubles
with lying and deception. I struggle with more Trader
mechanic games than social production, but I will tell you
one of my quick stories which ended up.
Yeah, nurturing a friendship, I was playing a character in Blood
on the clock tower and I don't remember who I was playing, but
my character was mad or drunk. I don't know.
Like, I thought I was one role but I was really another role.
Hmm. Yep.
Okay, so you know what you would be the drunk.
Yeah. Okay, yeah.
So my good friend who I love dearly who I would die for was a
Storyteller and tells me that I am this role.
So, game starts with the Storyteller, the one guy, the
one guy I can trust one guy you're supposed to.
Try. I'm supposed to trust lied to
me, and told me that I'm this role and so I played as it
turned out, I played the role that I thought it was
beautifully. So I was told but, you know, my
team ended up losing all these other stuff and most people were
finally, I was really upset. I was like, this game started
with you lying to me. Yeah, I played my entire game,
you know, and the other problem is it was remote.
So I don't have a copy of the game, I don't have all the rules
right? So it's a little different it's
not a bad game room. It's the only way I've ever
played. It was a remote.
I've never played in sure. so I was I was really upset but my
friend to his credit, you know, he reached out to me after it
was all over, there's like what's going on and I told him
and then he when he explained to me, Being the drunk and what all
that means within the game I was like, okay.
I Now understand. So here's here's my personal
problem and it's not a problem with you or the game.
This is a thing about me and, you know, our friendships only
grown from there and we've just become closer as a result.
But yeah, I was like oh, Yep. Yeah yeah I when I'm when I'm
when I'm storytelling with new players, I mean we always hit
drunkenness and poisoning because I focus on the puzzle
aspect and so when I'm teaching it, so on that and then I say,
well, asterisk there on that that info, you're gonna get,
yeah, it may not be true. So they're gonna have to kind of
figure it out and I think by by prefacing that I haven't, How to
play with the same story that you just described like they
haven't had that, but I have had players at the end of the year
of the night. Say, Had a good time.
Not gonna play it again. It's just not, not for not sure.
Sure. Most people have a great time
with it but I know there are players who don't you know, for
one reason or another bad game experience, they don't like the
lying aspect, they don't like the language that you know
whatever XYZ Everybody's their own person.
So right? Yeah, because we want to, at the
end of the day, we want to nurture a positive sense of
community, right? I know that the valid feel is
laughs, but I think that that kind of broader as we want, we
want to encourage positive community and so you got to be
sensitive to those things or be self-aware enough to know that
you have a problem with, right? Like I know I like I will I will
not play blunt on the clock tower, just I won't do it.
I'll pull it lightly, excuse myself.
If it's a, if it's going on. If I find myself in a situation
where everyone I'm with wants to play it, I understand the game.
As a seasoned gamer, I understand having played, I
understand the game and I'm like, okay also I've been, I've
been the drunk and I've succumbed to madness, madness
freaked me out, too. I was a role and then my role
changed, but I didn't. And if I tell if I reveal that
I'm mad, I instantly die. And that once happened to me,
but I didn't understand it because again, I'm playing
remotely and it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't explained
perfectly. So now I understand and I can be
like, okay well I will I will now the other problem is because
I don't like lying. It means I'm not good at it.
So I mean I'm not gonna I'm not gonna play Blood on the clock.
I'm like oh hey guys. I'm the poisonous or the demon
or whatever. Kind of do that but it might
mean that I may inadvertently screw up because I'm not a good
liar, you know that but yeah so it's it is it's a fascinating
game. I'm fascinated by it because it,
it creates it allows for moments and encounters.
That. Could nurture community.
In very real ways that just a shared experience on a table,
might not, you know, because it allows for more vulnerability
and I think that that vulnerability is key.
To connections, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And there's some one of the
reasons I love the game. So much really just gaming in
general is the games that you play.
That stick with you. It's a story, something happens
in the game and like years down the road, you're thinking back
to like that one time when we played X game and you know Sally
did this one thing and it was awesome we get those moments in.
I've had those moments in Clock Tower.
I've had them in You know, Cosmic and almost every game
that I've played. There's some little thing that
sticks around and next time you pull the Box slit off, it's
like, oh I remember that experience, and that's what I
want to have again, for like this game, right?
I want to have that same community and laughing, and
having fun and, just whatever that little insight joke, is
that previous game? Yeah, yeah, tell me really
quickly about. So, your third, your third event
that had a larger group that went beyond the player count.
You did an unmatched tournament at your house.
If we did. So we actually hosted this at
billing Annie's apartment. This was back in, I think just
after college and we had graduated still living in St.
Louis. And so we got together as a
group of their friends group our friends.
Once again, we're mixing all kinds of people can To keep it
fun. Think we'll say half the people
had played on Match before the other half had never heard of
the game. Didn't know anything about it,
they just knew hey, they liked hanging out with us and they
were coming over for something. And so Billy puts together, this
Google form, a kind of quiz that we used to randomly assign the
characters beforehand and so the questions were anything like,
would you rather be a villain in a story or a hero?
And, you know, something like that to kind of, you know, do
you like history or do you like fantasy to kind of?
Because unmatched has people from history.
It's got Legends. It's got literature.
I mean, it's got IP. I mean, it's got everything all
over the place. So he sent out this
questionnaire, that has that kind of stuff, and he had just
had his wisdom teeth out. So the last question I think,
was rate your scale one to 10 on how well, you would take care of
somebody who just had their wisdom teeth out and like that
was one of the metrics that he used to like, assign
character's. And so, you know, everybody
showed up We taught the game and then just do right in.
And the first round was was kind of long rough and had questions
as people were kind of working out the Kinks.
And then after that, you know, people fell into a Groove.
And we're just, we're just playing the girl who won the
tournament had never played before, not a gamer, which was,
which was awesome sucked for me who lost in the finale, but you
know, it was great for her. It was great to, you know, see
that, hey, somebody who can, who has never played for isn't
really a game, can have fun with this game.
Have a good time and win and do good and then that specific
unmatched tournament was just single elimination and once he
lost and we just started playing games off on the side.
So they're playing, you know, some party games, just something
fun. And so they've kind of check in
but really we started as an unmatched tournament and then it
kind of shifted into continuing the tournament.
But then we're all just having a party game night, normal game
night of sorts nice side and so, That worked really well.
I'm planning on hosting another unmatched tournament.
Here in Denver, got some friends who are interested in have
played before and It'll be that same kind of group of people.
The mix of people who've played before people who haven't and
I'm gonna do stuff differently. Definitely going to have like a
practice round before the actual like things starts.
And I'm toying with some other ideas.
There's all this planning that goes into it, but that was
probably the simplest of our events that we've done.
It was just a five minute, teach of a game and then that takes
half hour to play and then, boom, here's a single
elimination tournament, and From each of those things, you learn
a little bit of something that you take to the next event that
you plan, right? Right.
Yeah. So we're we're in a period of.
We've been talking about it till we're blue in the face.
We're in a period of. Yeah.
Fear and anger emits, a trade War, right?
So there's a lot of a lot. So the thing that's happening we
all know it is either. Designers and Publishers are
closing their doors. It's unfortunate or bigger
designers. Bigger publisher houses are
withholding their inventory for Americans until they can figure
out what's going to happen, right?
I get it, you sure I'm gonna do that.
So what that means is us As Americans, we may be getting
fewer and fewer new games. So we have to go back to
revisiting all these Beauties on our shelves.
Right? Exactly.
So what final thought, what piece of advice do you have to
anyone? Who's considering having a
bigger event? You know, that's beyond the
player count, you know, any, any thought you want to share before
we end in the episode? Yeah, I've got kind of three
points. I think that you need to think
about when you're trying to host.
One of these gaming events, the first off is choose something
that you're passionate about something that you have
enthusiasm for. you know, I you know PJ if you were going to
host a blood on the clock tower night probably wouldn't go so
well because you Are you you aren't a fan of Blood on the
clock tower? It's just not.
Not who you are. You know, if I'm trying to host
a Cajun gumbo night, like, that's not gonna go.
Well, either, you know, I don't have the skills that so you're
going to come over and you're going to be probably, you know,
Run to the bathroom and this is terrible.
I mean get out of here. So you have to pick something
that you're you know, passionate about because you're passion for
the thing is going to overflow and then everybody else have a
good time like the board game Olympics event.
Yeah, good. We'll see that.
If you're gonna host a a blood on the clock tower I will
happily come and just cook gumbo for everyone and then watch them
that I'm that. Yeah, great.
I'm happy to do that. It's all about Hospitality, my
friend. That'd be perfect.
Anyway, so good. Number two.
Yeah, number two point. Yeah, yeah.
So um yes. So number one got to be
passionate about whatever you're doing number two, you need to
have the ability to adapt to know that things aren't going to
go the way you plan for Clock Tower, it's a player count
specific game. Any game that is player, count
specific the board game Olympic event that we did.
Players were coming late leaving early.
You need to prepare for things aren't going to go perfect and
so have a little backup plan in place.
Don't get all flustered. I just know things are going to
go wrong adapt, it's going to be great.
A lot of the people who probably everybody who came to those
events didn't see the behind the scenes stuff that where I put
together a script beforehand for eight players nine players, ten
players in case we had one person show up or one person
bring an extra friend or, you know, not come or something and
they didn't realize that. Hey, I just scrapped the second
half of my board game Olympics schedule, because, you know,
time was running long. We had a longer dinner.
It's okay. Like, they still had a good
time, so be passionate about whatever you're doing.
It's going to overflow to the people who are there adapt, know
things are gonna go wrong, but it's okay.
It's all right. And then lastly, named tags have
named tags. It just makes things a lot
easier. So head over and over again and
then I'll throw in one. One bonus thing that I got from.
A tabletop bellhop. He hosts game nights up in I
believe Canada once a month or so at a local pub and he makes
these game night menus, he has people who are Gamers a lot of
time people who are casual and so they come in, he hands them a
menu, he's got the stack of games there and then they can
read off the menu like okay do I want a two-player game?
Do I want to four player game? Go on a party game go on a
strategy game and it's got little sections there.
And so I've like taken some of that from his book and I have
made my own menus for like when we have people over and, you
know, it's got three to four players at Main Course deserts.
And so just a little bit of planning ahead.
You know, if you're trying out a menu for some of India hosting,
whether it's a game night or whatnot, it just helps the whole
thing is to make sure people are having fun with out that
overhead of like, I don't want to be learning new rules and new
people and new places and whatever.
So if you can just Trim that all down to.
Hey, my name tags on. I can read yours it.
Says, Fiji now don't have to worry about that.
Like, I don't really have to worry about learning the rules
because it's like, easy enough to learn, you know, maybe I've
got some familiarity there. I'm just there to have fun.
So, New people have fun. That is really, that is really
simplistic. Be passionate be adaptable and
name tags. I mean, yeah, that's that's it.
That's all you need. That's all you need.
Maybe a game, I guess. Oh, yeah.
Maybe a game. If you need a, if you need an
acronym for that pan, fry it in a pan.
Dang, there you go, passionate adaptable and name tags.
There you go, buddy. So I love that.
Tell everyone where they can find you on the socials and talk
about hosting larger game events in their home.
Yeah. So if you have any questions at
all, you can find me on Instagram at re-engineer, the
game. We've got little underscores in
between the words there. So re-engineer underscore the
underscore game, but if you just type in re-engineer, the game,
you'll find us and yeah, shoot me a DM.
We're glad to talk glad to help out with anything.
I can help make a menu, help plan something, give you some
ideas show, you some things that went wrong and some things that
went well for us and maybe the work for you too.
So that next time you got large players coming over, you got to
get an idea. Yeah, I'd love to hear about it,
so that's great. That's great guys, make sure to
like And subscribe the video and podcast on YouTube Spotify, all
your streaming services, leave comments Jonathan.
I will see them particularly on YouTube, they're usually anyone
can see them if you have any Again, reach out to myself or
Jonathan. And remember if you are trying
to grow the circle and nurture, the community, remember it is
all about feel right? You want it to be familiar, easy
to learn, encourage interaction and laughs.
Jonathan, thank you so much. For being here.
Thank you, PJ. Thank you PJ.
It was a great. Thank you.
Yeah. Take care guys.
And we'll see you next week.