Here is the transcript:
Ryan: So now I would like to pass it on to our speaker today Arec, and Arec
Ryan: You have the ability to share your screen now.
Arec: Whoo, I have the power.
Arec: We’re gonna pivot from your typical networking meeting now and it’s gonna be an easy shift for some people and maybe more difficult for others so.
Arec: We’re gonna, we’re.
Arec: Gonna get a little loose with it, we’re.
Arec: Going to open.
Arec: Up and drop our barriers.
Arec: We’re going to be unafraid to share our ideas.
Arec: We’re going to be unafraid to disagree with other people and we’re going to jump into creating something on the fly improvisation style on the scratch.
Arec: And what we’re going to make is a murder mystery story, OK?
Arec: Now this is the process that I follow.
Arec: When I make a new murder mystery game.
Arec: And let’s get the.
Arec: Share screen roll in here.
Arec: Alright, so a little bit about me.
Arec: Again, my name is Arec Ligon.
Arec: My company is Deadly Distractions and this is the demo version of the Murder Mystery Workshop.
Arec: This event typically runs like two to three hours for a group of 6 to 12 people.
Arec: Uhm, and we’re going to.
Arec: We’re going to jump right in with it.
Arec: Usually start with an icebreaker.
Arec: That introduction portion served as our icebreaker today, but I’d like to get peoples creative juices flowing early.
Arec: Uh, in fact, as soon as possible.
Arec: I started Deadly Distractions last year as a hobby because we could all use a little bit of distraction.
Arec: I went full time with it in April of this year, and I write the games I host parties, private parties, corporate parties.
Arec: I’m going to be on stage on Friday.
Arec: I have nine shows in the broader bowl.
Arec: And Fishers area of Indianapolis and my partner is named Mitch Walker and he’s out in Denver, Colorado, helps with a lot of the back-end website and ideas and feedback type things for me.
Arec: Alright, what we’re here for, the murder mystery part.
Arec: My role in this is not to make decisions for you.
Arec: You are making the decisions.
Arec: My job is to figure out what path the group would like to take.
Arec: And then make sure you get there as in as easy a way as we can.
Arec: So if I foresee some obstacles with some of our decisions, or I see that there’s something that’s going to be a conflict point between one idea and another idea, I’ll bring those up so we can talk about them and avoid the obstacles altogether.
Arec: But otherwise, I’m just here to make sure we all have fun along the way.
Arec: The first piece that we talk about this major section is worldbuilding so.
Arec: What are the?
Arec: Rules of the universe that we’re going to put this murder mystery story in, and now let’s turn on the.
Arec: Hey, that’s cool.
Arec: All right so?
Arec: The part that we’re.
Arec: Going to focus on is the setting, theme and tone.
Arec: It’s a little bit more interesting than the technical decisions, and since we don’t have time for everything, gotta start somewhere, but this.
Arec: Is how it works.
Arec: I explain what real ish versus fantasy means as the first decision point.
Arec: Alright, so think about something that is set in a realistic setting.
Arec: Your favorite shows.
Arec: Movies, books, things like that.
Arec: I’ve got a few examples on here.
Arec: Ocean’s 11 is mostly grounded in reality.
Arec: The Sherlock Holmes movies.
Arec: And then you contrast that with a fantasy setting, so where there are extraordinary things that defy the laws of nature and physics and all that stuff.
Arec: So Harry Potter, being a magical setting and then Hunger Games as like an advanced
Arec: technology.
Arec: Advanced technology is the method that they use to make things that would be impossible, possible.
Arec: So this is where you guys come in, and if we’re quiet, I’ll call on people.
Arec: But we’ve got a big enough group.
Arec: That I think will have.
Arec: Some ideas, who is feeling?
Arec: Inclined toward having a realistic setting or a fantasy type setting.
Chaster: Fantasy, I go for fantasy.
Chaster: If we get a vote.
Arec: Alright,
Arec: Chaster, let’s stick with you for a moment.
Arec: Uhm, tell me why you’re feeling fantasy today.
Chaster: I’m always in that mood.
Arec: OK, that’s good.
Chaster: I’ll default to that.
Arec: And what’s, uh,
Arec: Give me a little bit more on what kind of fantasy setting.
Arec: You would like to.
Arec: Explore inside of this murder mystery building thing today.
Chaster: I am more of a sci-fi kind of guy, so maybe we can go out into space or.
Chaster: We can well, I’m open to ideas.
Arec: No, that’s great. That’s that.
Arec: This is how it works.
Arec: We start somewhere and now we’ve got an idea.
Arec: We’ve got space in a maybe a futuristic setting for a sci-fi type thing.
Chaster: You’ve got the
Chaster: Moon and a colony, a moon colony.
Chaster: That’d be an interesting
Chaster: Place for murder.
Arec: Yeah, did I hear Bill chime in?
Arec: Or who?
Arec: Who was that that chimed in after Chaster?
Andy: I think that was me, Andy.
Arec: Oh OK, Andy, tell me what you’re feeling for the fantasy type setting.
Andy: Well, so the space got me thinking, like an asteroid or something, that was,
Andy: That was where I was going with that and the I’m the same way, like I just start bringing in magic, like I feel like that’s always more interesting, like I don’t do the realism, I spend enough time in reality, like they find the fantasy to be interesting and I’m, I don’t know, you know, fantasy, I
Andy: Yeah, I mean, I like the moon idea, but I, I was thinking.
Andy: I was thinking when
Andy: When Chaster started talking,
Andy: I was thinking more like, more like an asteroid.
Andy: Be on that asteroid somewhere.
Arec: OK, cool.
Chaster: Like it.
Arec: Andy brings up a good point about murder mysteries and really most types of media are about escapism and getting to live a life that’s different than the one you, you currently live in.
Arec: And that’s, that’s part of the appeal of, you know. of what I do in the party hosting, but.
Arec: Alright, does anyone not want to do space?
Arec: Let’s get some conflict.
Arec: Is space a turnoff for anybody or can
Arec: we roll forward?
Andy: I’m good with space.
Bill: Let’s go with space.
Bill: I kind of like that idea.
Arec: Alright, Yep.
Arec: Uh, one of the,
Arec: The
; in a team building setting one of the skills that I try to teach with this is,
Arec: Uhm, the avoidance of anchoring.
Arec: Anchoring is latching onto the first idea that comes up and saying, wow, that sounds good enough, and, uh, I’ll push you guys a little bit more on the, on the next few decisions on getting some additional ideas that we can
Arec: Talk about the pros and.
Arec: Cons and things like that.
Arec: A bit of a peek behind the curtain on
Arec: How this normally goes.
Arec: All right, so our next decision is choosing a location.
Arec: We’ve had a couple of ideas already, but we’re going to try to answer 2 questions with the location and the.
Arec: 1st is why are we, meaning the people in the zoom, meeting today?
Arec: Why are we gathered and why are we isolated?
Arec: And this is important for a murder mystery setting.
Arec: Uhm, there has to be something that brings us all together.
Arec: Some kind of an event or a reason that we’re all in the same place.
Arec: Let’s imagine for a moment that we’re all
Arec: In the
Arec: Bank and some of us.
Arec: Are here for deposits.
Arec: Some of us are.
Arec: Working, some of us
Arec: Are, perhaps, robbing the bank. Some of us are
Arec: Possibly working on the
Arec: Roof, but there’s a reason that we’re
Arec: All in the bank area.
Arec: Right?
Arec: And then for isolation.
Arec: For murder mysteries, it really helps if there’s a reason that we can’t just leave.
Arec: Like why, why do we
Arec: Have to solve the murder instead of just
Arec: Leaving or calling the authorities or I don’t know.
Arec: So, so let’s brainstorm a few location ideas that could possibly answer those questions in different ways.
Ryan: With being set in space, fleeing earth from a major catastrophe is a pretty good motivation to travel pretty far.
Chaster: Still on the asteroid, like the idea of one of the miners on the asteroid getting game-murdered and now we gotta figure it out what’s going on
Chaster: Here, we’re the,
Chaster: We’re the company, we don’t want to get
Chaster: The Earth Federation involved, and don’t mind me, I’m,
Chaster: I like science fiction.
Chaster: Don’t mind me, I should.
Chaster: I’m going to take over the conversation if you let me.
Bill: You want the guy to be
Bill: Killed to be drilled, don’t you, Chaster?
Chaster: Yeah, just like Armageddon.
Arec: Let’s get, let’s get Jeannette. Jeannette,
Arec: What is a different location in space that we could potentially use?
Jeannette: Uhm, how about an asteroid?
Arec: So we’ve got asteroid.
Arec: We’ve got mining colony, we’ve got spaceship.
Arec: Can you think of any others that could work?
Jeannette: OK, uhm.
Jeannette: I love a space colony that’s already been established.
Jeannette: I’m a Star Trek fan.
Jeannette: The original Star Trek.
Jeannette: So they had colonies that were established in outer space.
Arec: Hey, very cool.
Arec: Uhm, all right.
Arec: So it sounds like the the mining operation on an asteroid is a is the crowd favorite so far.
Arec: Any other ideas that we want to throw out?
Ron: I had doubts about, OK.
Chaster: We could be.
Chaster: No, go ahead Ron.
Ron: I was going to say Mars ’cause we’re going to colonize on Mars at some point.
Arec: I have a Martian colony.
Arec: So that’s interesting.
Arec: So why are we,
Arec: In all of,
Arec: These colony ideas, what could be a reason that we – how many of us are there?
Arec: Like 12 of
Arec: Us or 16 of us?
Arec: Why are we isolated from the rest of humanity?
Jeannette: We can’t leave our area because
Jeannette: We’ve been told that outside of our area
Jeannette: Is deadly radiation.
Arec: Alright, there is a barrier between us and the rest of the world, and that barrier can be
Arec: A pathogen or radiation or
Arec: I don’t know, maybe, maybe even something, something evil.
Arec: Is out there.
Arec: Uh, but those would all be interesting ideas.
Speaker: I threw out a wacky idea just to mix it up a little bit.
Speaker: We were all cheese lovers.
Speaker: We heard the moon is made of cheese, so we go out there.
Speaker: But we’re lactose intolerant.
Speaker: Nobody wants to come near us, so we kind of have
Speaker: To figure it out for ourselves.
Arec: Interesting, we are outcasts so it wasn’t our, our choice to leave the rest of the people.
Arec: The rest of the people left us.
Arec: And we are excluded.
Arec: That’s a different direction.
Arec: We can take with it, yeah?
Arec: Let’s circle back to that decision and
Arec: I think this would be a good point to decide if we want a more silly.
Arec: A type story, serious,
Arec: Or deep, wide uhm?
Arec: And that’s actually four different things.
Arec: It’s a 2 directional.
Arec: No great.
Arec: But anyway.
Arec: That’s why, it they’re pretty sure
Bill: Josh’s little, little moldy cheese idea,
Bill: Uhm, that we’re outcast because, not only because we’re maybe lactose intolerant, but we, we cause mold, so nobody wants us on the moon.
Bill: They have launched us to Mars, which is made of
Bill: A fungi.
Arec: I love it. Now,
Arec: Now we’re digging deep for the ideas.
Arec: I love it.
Arec: All right?
Arec: So we’ve got some serious ideas.
Arec: We’ve got some silly ideas.
Arec: Let’s go ahead.
Arec: And let’s go ahead and pin down where we would like to be.
Arec: Let’s hear from
Arec: I don’t think we’ve heard from Claire yet.
Arec: I don’t have gallery view.
Arec: Is she gone?
Arec: She gone. OK, let’s hear from
Arec: Ryan, what are you feeling?
Ryan: I like the idea of Mars because humanity’s already been to the moon several times. We’ve also been in low Earth orbit for the last 50 years. It’s time to go a little further out.
Arec: How do you feel on the silly to serious spectrum?
Arec: What’s your mood today?
Ryan: I don’t know; that;
Ryan: Silly seems like we could bend reality a lot more to make the circumstances more dramatic.
Ryan: And you know,
Ryan: Alter the story exactly where we want it to go versus serious might have to subscribe to
Ryan: All of our existing understanding of sci-fi shows or stories.
Arec: It’s a really good point.
Arec: We got a lot.
Arec: More flexibility with,
Arec: If we’re not taking ourselves seriously.
Andy: I’ll second that.
Arec: All right, so we’re leaning silly.
Arec: And then when we’re constructing the world, this is more just something to keep in mind, but,
Arec: When I’m making a murder mystery game and I’m deciding what the rules are,
Arec: The more things you add, the more complicated it gets and then you wind up,
Arec: You wind up with something where you have to
Arec: Like JRR Tolkien, you have to invent languages, you have to develop millions of years of, of cosmic history and struggles between deities that have been around since the dawn of time.
Arec: And how that has influenced everything
Arec: Up until this point.
Arec: Now the silly setting means that we can kind of just handwave and explain those things away, but
Arec: We’ll want to, uh, we’ll want to recognize that
Arec: Adding things to the game does,
Arec: Does increase a little bit of,
Arec: It makes it a little bit more
Arec: Difficult to balance and develop.
Arec: Alright, and then let’s settle once and for all on a location based on the
Arec: Silly setting that we’ve got.
Arec: We’ve got votes for Mars.
Arec: Does anyone want to advocate for a different setting that they’re feeling strongly about?
Arec: I won’t make you, but we could use a devil’s advocate.
Andy: I mean, Mars feels too realistic to me.
Andy: Honestly, we should,
Andy: We should go someplace outside our Galaxy or
Andy: You know, find a,
Andy: You know, we’ve been banished,
Andy: We’ve been banished to some, some spot in some other Galaxy maybe.
Arec: Andy, where would we find a cheese created environment?
Andy: On LQ40-PQ.
Arec: Spell that in the chat for us?
Arec: And suddenly we’ve got, you know,
Arec: We’ve got more range.
Arec: So once we
Arec: Get those worldbuilding decisions made and there’s,
Arec: There’s a lot more that goes into that process, but once we establish the setting that we’re going to be in, then we talk about our characters and each person.
Arec: Here in the meeting today.
Arec: I would create their own character.
Arec: But we would start as a group and then split off individually where you would put more work into the character that you’re building, and then we would come back together, compare notes and make sure that all of these characters fit together based on the decisions that you’ve made so far.
Arec: Some of the things that you’ll want to think about are your role in the group.
Arec: And it’s important that we all have different types of roles, and it’s important because these people would have access to different types of information.
Arec: They could find different clues.
Arec: The role, the role itself,
Arec: Uhm, could lend itself to a plot point or some piece of action or.
Arec: But we are we are the outcast.
Arec: Outcast colonists who are threatening the, the cheese environment on LPR4Q something.
Arec: Uhm, what are some roles
Arec: That would make sense
Arec: In that kind of game, and I don’t think
Arec: We’ve heard from Max.
Arec: If you want to
Arec: Kick us off with some ideas.
Arec: I think you’re, I think you’re muted.
Max: Thinking, thinking to it, it’s very,
Max: You know, there are a lot of parts,
Max: I am not sure, to connect them together.
Arec: All right, who wants to give it a, a shot?
Andy: I’m thinking when you like a head cheese, like a top person, a leader of some sort,
Arec: That’s an important role in any group, right?
Andy: The moldiest of any of us.
Jeannette: And then you need a cheese maker.
Arec: Sure, someone should maintain the cheese.
Andy: Would it be [unintelligible] to say
Andy: To boldly go where
Andy: No one has gone before.
Arec: I love it.
Arec: What are some other roles that would make sense in this group?
Ryan: Well, you need someone to import crackers and wine to go with the cheese.
Andy: Your importer-exporter man.
Arec: So trade, we’re going
Arec: To trade. Introduces the idea that we can have things here that we normally wouldn’t.
Jeannette: The security to protect our team and cheese making equipment.
Arec: Yeah, this is the enforcer.
Jeannette: Bouncer, cheese bouncer.
Andy: And we need quality control, so like a cheese grader for example.
Andy: It’s great.
Max: We have discovered a new
Max: Power inside the cheese, you know,
Max: A combination of elements that give more power for humans.
Arec: I love it.
Arec: Max follow up question for that.
Arec: Do you feel like this person is more spiritual or scientific?
Max: Don’t really know.
Max: Hey, I like spiritual, yeah I like the idea.
Arec: So we have a Mystic.
Arec: A Mystic in our group.
Arec: More Cheese shaman perhaps?
Andy: OK, what about the one person who’s lactose intolerant?
Andy: Who hates cheese and just wants to get rid of it all once to banish it, like lactose Larry or something.
Andy: That could be our nemesis.
Arec: Introducing a little bit of conflict in the group is, is healthy and it
Arec: Helps move the plot forward.
Arec: Also gives us an opportunity to introduce red herrings.
Arec: Unless they actually
Arec: Did it, and it’s not a
Arec: Red herring, but yeah.
Arec: All right, we’ve got
Arec: We’ve got some great ideas, uhm?
Arec: So you would you would decide for
Arec: Yourself what role you want.
Arec: I have a list of
Arec: All of these, and we
Arec: Would pick and choose who’s going to be what.
Arec: Very important to give
Arec: Your character flaws, as well as strengths so
Arec: When you’re thinking about your character, what
Arec: Are they good at?
Arec: But also what are
Arec: They not good at? And I always like to talk about myself here as a confident person,
Arec: A natural flaw for me is overconfidence or sometimes perceived as arrogant.
Arec: Or you know what, what have you.
Arec: Someone who is really good at
Arec: Calculating and thinking ahead in different
Arec: Moves could be seen as cold and
Arec: Impractical in the real world.
Arec: Things like that.
Arec: So your strengths and your flaws are usually tied together.
Arec: From a story and dialogue perspective,
Arec: Adding in preferences, quirks, catchphrases and or dislikes help give
Arec: A lot of
Arec: Realism to your character and it makes them easier to portray that character, whether it’s scripted or not.
Arec: So if you have someone who,
Arec: Let’s see, who wants to play, who wants
Arec: To do a Madlib for me real quick?
Arec: Alright, let’s say Bill. Bill give me a noun.
Bill: Give you what?
Arec: A noun.
Bill: I was thinking of smell, but I can’t, they’re, smelly.
Bill: But that’s not a noun, it’s an adjective.
Arec: What’s something smelly?
Bill: Smelly? limburger cheese.
Arec: Let’s get something that’s not cheese. Chaster?
Jeannette: A book.
Arec: A book.
Arec: If your character hates books and you decide that during the creation process and it ever comes up as the story is moving along, and as we’re building it.
Arec: But now there’s
Arec: A book – that’s a, that’s
Arec: A special moment for your character that they
Arec: Can have and maybe books never come up.
Arec: But if your character hates books that may come up, that’s
Arec: Going to be a lot
Arec: Of fun for
Arec: For telling the story and
Arec: I don’t know, maybe even we
Arec: Could contrive and force that kind of thing to happen.
Arec: Like my character hates
Arec: Fish, and suddenly there’s a fish.
Arec: I’m, oh I’m all up in arms about it and it’s
Arec: Going to distract
Arec: From the story and it’s gonna it’s gonna inject some more humor that we weren’t expecting and
Arec: Things like that.
Andy: So is that a way of generating flaws as well, or is that is that one way of thinking about the flaws that?
Arec: It could be, it could be.
Arec: Let’s say I
Arec: I dislike something, something like affection.
Arec: And two of our characters are romantically involved. And any time they’re romantically involved like that,
Arec: That just really gets under my skin and that would be a flaw of mine that I can’t,
Arec: I can’t handle that, I can’t be around those people.
Arec: But maybe as a strength,
Arec: I’m, you know, fiercely independent and
Arec: I don’t know.
Arec: All right, so then you
Arec: Come up with your back story.
Arec: I always find it hard giving your,
Arec: Or I always
Arec: Find it hard giving characters the names.
Arec: I usually outsource that to some more creative people than me.
Arec: If you could believe that.
Arec: But yeah, they gotta have
Arec: A name at some point.
Arec: After the characters are made, we fill in the rest of the story so they make it an actual murder mystery rather than a
Arec: You know, fiction novel.
Arec: We want to add in the means and opportunity.
Arec: What are the different plot points, both before, before the party and during the party?
Arec: So there’s going to be some backstories, some things that happened before we all got together and and the murder happened.
Arec: And then there’s going to be things that we do afterwards.
Arec: Maybe it branches in a, you know, in a couple different directions depending on what we choose during
Arec: The game but
Arec: Well decide on
Arec: The storyline, if there are extra characters we need
Arec: To add in,
Arec: NPC’s or non player characters.
Arec: So jumping back to Max’s idea for having someone who discovers a mystical, perhaps divine power inside of the cheese by
Arec: Doing something,
Arec: That divinity, that, that entity now is an NPC.
Arec: That we can
Arec: Use for Deus Ex Machina Type things or revealing critical information, or
Arec: Whatever function we need it to fill up.
Arec: Other NPC’s could be people that used to be here but aren’t here anymore that we refer to.
Arec: Uh, or someone that arrives and does
Arec: Something and then leaves.
Arec: Red herrings. Murder mystery stories are more interesting when they’re not easy.
Arec: So we’ll, we’ll have some different threads that lead in different, directions to throw people off.
Arec: Uh, we will have a sense of urgency
Arec: And limited resources.
Arec: Why do we have to solve the murder
Arec: Before everyone goes home for the night?
Arec: Right?
Arec: Uhm, we need to take care of this quickly.
Arec: Something is running out.
Arec: The killer is still out there and the rest of us are, at threat, are under threat.
Arec: Uh, any of those things,
Arec: And then we’ll,
Arec: We’ll wrap things up with a conclusion so
Arec: That’s the,
Arec: The, that’s the process.
Arec: Take a moment and look inward,
Arec: Don’t focus on me for a
Arec: Moment, just notice what’s going on
Arec: In your brains and how you feel
Arec: And if anyone wants to share, I would encourage you to do so.
Ryan: Arec, I feel like being so remote and isolated from, I guess, the rest of humanity,
Ryan: It makes something, as serious as something like depression, able to play a prominent role in character development.
Ryan: That feeling of being so far away from
Ryan: Everything else about civilization.
Arec: Gotcha, Ryan.
Arec: The question was how are you feeling?
Arec: But I feel like we still got an answer.
Arec: Who wants to share how they’re feeling in, in
Arec: Their head right now.
Arec: Just in general.
Josh: It’s great, I love this.
Josh: It’s got the juices flowing.
Josh: You’re missing a word on the slide here the C word which for me is creativity and I, creativities, hate to say, it’s the new buzzword in corporate America.
Josh: However, it’s something that we haven’t been using a lot, and I think it needs to come back with a vengeance because
Josh: That, in fact, I think a tagline for you like ‘creating success’.
Josh: Because that’s what leads to innovation.
Josh: That’s what leads to relationships.
Josh: Everything is a story or human beings.
Josh: That’s how we bond, and you can look at facts and figures and data about Q3
Josh: And Q4 all day long. But if you can’t tell a compelling story, if you don’t have buy in from your entire organization on where you’re headed, that
Josh: It doesn’t,
Josh: It’s not going to matter.
Josh: So if you can’t create a future that everyone can buy into, because that’s to me is what you’re doing here,
Josh: You’re helping people create a future that people are willing to follow and are
Josh: Looking forward to.
Josh: So that’s my two cents on that, but I’m a branding dude, so I always look at it that way.
Arec: No, thanks, Josh.
Arec: You make a
Arec: Great point uhm.
Arec: Kind of what I’m fishing for here is,
Arec: When you go through a mental exercise that’s different from what you normally do when you get out of that normal path that your neurons are traveling in and you’re making new neural connections in your brain, that’s that,
Arec: That C word, creativity, yeah, so I hope that going through this process has
Arec: Kind of lit you up, in your mind.
Josh: The word is alive.
Josh: It makes you feel alive like it’s,
Josh: You’re not in the same old routine.
Arec: Yeah, who’s – show of hands,
Arec: Who’s feeling that way?
Melissa: I would say that a lot of times in all the things that life has, my brain always feels anxious and
Melissa: Like there’s a
Melissa: Million things will do it, but I
Melissa: Actually feel very calm.
Melissa: Like going through this process and it’s really like really
Melissa: Fun and it’s really calmed everything.
Melissa: I don’t
Melissa: Know why but
Melissa: That’s a great feeling.
Jeannette: Arec, I was gonna say this is so outside my comfort zone because I’m a numbers person.
Jeannette: There’s black and white and I guess maybe that’s why I enjoy reading so much.
Jeannette: I read, I like murder mysteries. I, I read a lot of mysteries and my goal is to see how they get to the end.
Jeannette: And that’s, I don’t have,
Jeannette: I believe I’m lacking in the ability to write stuff like that,
Jeannette: That’s why I read so
Jeannette: Much because I
Jeannette: Love to see what other people have
Jeannette: Come up with.
Arec: I, I would say that
Arec: Everyone has the ability to create.
Arec: Yeah, we,
Arec: We, we get on our own way.
Arec: And
Arec: I, I think what this process identifies is that one thing leads to another and it’s just getting started and having this conversation that we had as a group.
Arec: Having this conversation with yourself.
Arec: As you’re you know, going through it
Arec: And and creating something.
Arec: I hope
Arec: That if this did brighten you up, that you
Arec: That, that you try it out for yourself and whatever it is that you do,
Arec: For some people, woodworking, making furniture, gardening things like that but trying something new outside of your normal routine and, and, yeah.
Andy: The thing is you take me back to my improv days.
Andy: I love doing these kind of creativity activities and, and that’s a lot of what I do too.
Andy: Is helping people kind of get out of the way they currently think about things and think about it in a new way.
Andy: And the thing, the thing,
Andy: I’m most interested
Andy: About and more of what Melissa may be experiencing is that creativity is based on structure, right?
Andy: People think that you have to
Andy: You have to have any sort of thing available, but you asked us a series of very specific questions and you just have to make kind of an either or answer and all of a sudden we, you know all of a sudden, we’re cruising out Asgard in another Galaxy and, and cheese is playing is playing a major role and I just I always loved how
Andy: That, I always love how that comes together.
Andy: I could just get these ideas that that suddenly pull together, right?
Andy: So I really, really appreciated this exercise.
Andy: It’s a fun, fun way of doing it and, and really, really good for getting the creative juices going.
Arec: Thank you Andy.
Arec: Alright, that, that’s it.
Arec: At the end of the workshop, the thing that
Arec: Happens, I, I get asked about
Arec: Is do we get to play the
Arec: Game and unfortunately creating the bones and the and the structure of the game only takes a few hours, but making it a playable game takes another, like 40, on my end.
Arec: Including like playtesting.
Arec: And yeah, all that stuff so we won’t have a playable game, but the journey, like I pointed out at the beginning, the journey is the enjoyable part of this exercise, and we, we do learn some skills along the way.
Arec: But I’ll take any questions.
Arec: That people have, and then I’ll
Arec: Turn it back over to Ryan.
Josh: I’m curious who, who’s your
Josh: Not just ideal client, but how are you finding, how are you doing your reach out to find people or are you working mainly with organizations?
Josh: I guess, I mean, it’s not going to be individuals, but what type of organizations and, and how are you finding them?
Arec: I have sent I think 3 quotes.
Arec: For, for this
Arec: Activity and I to be honest I have not
Arec: Won any of them.
Arec: People are more interested in the murder mystery games themselves.
Arec: It’s hard to conceptualize what this activity is going to be like unless you go through the demo.
Arec: And you’re like, OK, I know I get it.
Arec: Uhm, but uhm.
Arec: With all of my focus for the last like 3 months being on the show that I’m producing, writing, starring in, all that stuff,
Arec: I have not
Arec: Done a whole lot of corporate reach out, but I have had some cold contacts come in through the website and through social media and a couple farmers markets that I’ve worked and those are good sources of, of
Arec: Leads for me, probably after the show
Arec: I’ll pick back up on the networking side a little bit more.
Arec: Hit on LinkedIn, write some posts,
Arec: Things like that.
Arec: So thank you for the question, Josh.
Chaster: I don’t know what your show is, but if you have any extras in the background, sometimes it gets,
Chaster: It’s expensive,
Chaster: I’ll happily be your extra for free.
Chaster: I like I like just doing stuff like that.
Arec: Hi thanks Chester, where are you located?
Chaster: I’m in Fishers, so you know.
Arec: Oh, fantastic.
Arec: Would you email me just so and like put in the subject line actor or something like that so I can find you later?
Chaster: Not an actor,
Chaster: I’m not an actor
Chaster: At all, I’ll be your extra.
Melissa: What is this show that you’re doing?
Melissa: You should tell
Melissa: Us about that.
Arec: Sure, I
Arec: I wrote a murder mystery story based on Norse mythology, starring Loki and five other gods and giants, and one of the goddesses has been murdered.
Arec: And of course we think Loki did it.
Arec: It’s, it’s a one man show.
Arec: I’ll be playing all six characters.
Arec: It’s going to be wild.
Arec: Uhm, it’s an audience interactive type show, so they’ll, the audience will get a chance to ask questions of all six characters as they come out and do their bit.
Arec: And then it’s choose your own ending type thing.
Arec: Depending on who they accuse.
Arec: If you search for
Arec: I can type in the chat as well –
Arec: Search for the ‘God of Mischief’s Murder Mystery’.
Arec: You’ll find me on Facebook and Eventbrite for tickets.
Arec: I’ve got 3 venues.
Arec: Fishers is Roots School of Theatre, and then Donuts and Dragons is a Keystone
/ Clearwater Crossing, and then the shows that include a costume contest are at Storefront Theatre of Indianapolis and that is
Arec: Underneath the Vogue,
Arec: In Broad Ripple, where Crackers used to be, if you’re that old.
Ryan: Arec, I put the link to your event right in the chat.
Ryan: I was able to find it and it seems to have all of your upcoming dates on it.
Arec: Thank you Ryan.
Arec: Oh, and I’m still seeking sponsors.
Arec: Maybe you guys would
Arec: Be good to ask, I don’t know,
Arec: I need people who are looking for clients in the Broad Ripple area that are probably Gen X or millennials
Arec: That have some discretionary entertainment budget.
Arec: That’s who’s going
Arec: To be at my show, right?
Arec: Uhm, and the
Arec: Sponsors will get a vendor table during the costume contest and then they’ll also be the judges of the costume contest.
Arec: So all eyes on them as they decide who, who wins the prizes.
Arec: That’s all I’ve got.
Arec: I’m not gonna like,
Arec: Beat anyone over the head for more questions.
Arec: So Ryan back to you.
Arec: Thanks everyone.
Ryan: Awesome, well fine, no one
Ryan: Else has any questions for Arec?
Ryan: Let’s give him a hand for his presentation.
