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.