Arec Ligon, owner of Deadly Distractions joins us to transform our July Keystone Business Connections meeting into a Murder Mystery Team Building Exercise.
Here is the transcript from Arec Ligon’s presentation:
Jamie: All right, so I actually met Arec on an Open In Indiana meeting and I’ve been able to invite him a couple other places and do a one-to-one with him and Arec.
Jamie: Just a fantastic guy. Like a lot of people, COVID affected his career in a negative way, and as the positive person he is, he was able to turn that around.
Jamie: And decide, hey, I’ve got this creative side of me. I want to start my own business and branched off on his own and he started a successful murder mystery business and we’re really excited to have him here today. So Arec, when you’re ready, go for it. Man, we’re excited.
Arec: Thanks Jamie, you guys are you-
Arec: Guys are really hyping me.
Arec: Up up and it’s being recorded, so we have that we have that extra pressure layered on top of everything, but I’m I’m going to break it down really simple for everybody. What we’re going to do today is go through my process that I use when I write.
Arec: Murder mysteries I’m going to start by explaining some of the story building concepts we’re going to learn a little bit about that side of things.
Arec: We’re going to have some examples from from real life. You know, media books and things like that, that that you’re all familiar with.
Arec: And then we’re going to. We’re going to go through some of the steps and decide together what kind of murder mystery we wanna write.
Arec: We’re going to build on each others ideas. We’re going to give feedback to each other. Sometimes we’re going to disagree with each other, but it’s all part of that creative process where we want the end.
Arec: Result to be as good as it can be, so that’s my that’s my goal today that we learn a little bit about stories. We learn a.
Arec: Little bit about communication.
Arec: And and also how much fun?
Arec: What I do can be for people.
Arec: So, so we’ll start very quickly with an icebreaker. I’m going to get everyone involved early on here, and I want you to think of the your favorite story, something that’s stuck with you that that you know, like the back of your hand, that that that book that you always turn to and and read, and that that TV show you don’t mind.
Arec: Watching reruns of all the time, but what’s your? What is your favorite story and try to explain it in 30 seconds to someone that has no cultural knowledge.
Arec: Uh, so you’re sticking to the the core elements of what? What makes that story a story? Who is feeling super brave and wants to impress everyone by going first?
Arec: All right with no volunteers, go ahead, Christy.
Christy: I want it to be me, but I don’t have a story.
Christy: Uh, like am I 12 because Harry Potter is.
Christy: What I’m thinking of.
Arec: Hey Christy, that’s really good. So tell me why Harry Potter has stuck with you and why? Why is that?
Arec: The first thing that jumps out.
Christy: Because I have read all of those books many times and watched all of those movies many times.
Christy: And I think we’re all done.
Arec: Yeah no, no.
Arec: Boil it down to something that that you can explain in just a few sentences.
Christy: OK, a wizard.
Christy: Doesn’t know he’s a wizard. Gets attacked by some crazy creature, it’s terrible.
Christy: And then he goes to Wizard School and make all these friends and becomes a master wizard.
Arec: But what happens at the end?
Christy: Uhm, he is victorious and.
Christy: I don’t know, yeah.
Arec: Well and if I remember right, he’s victorious because of the power of love, right? It was it was his mother’s love that protected him and the love of all of the friends that he met along the way, and his mentors that that kept him rooted in his morals. And then when he gets to the the final.
Christy: Yeah, hey.
Arec: Encounter with the bad guy. It’s those morals and that love that he feels that keeps him on top, right, correct.
Christy: You’re a way better storyteller than I.
Christy: Yeah, nailed it.
Ryan: Well, that.
Arec: Yeah, no, that’s it’s a really good example and something that you know a lot of people are familiar with. Who else wants to take?
Arec: A stab at it.
Jamie: I’ll go for it.
Jamie: Yeah, one of my favorite stories is actually from a movie. It’s about a young man who his entire life.
Jamie: Everybody told him he couldn’t do something. He was too small. He was too stupid and he just everybody tried to hold him down and his family wanted him to go into the family business and he had no desire.
Jamie: To do that, he wanted to play college football at the best university in the land and graduate from there.
Jamie: And he worked really hard to make that happen, and he prayed a lot and God blessed him with people along the way that saw his vision and carried him along the way and helped him overcome his learning disability and overcome his athletic ability. And he actually did make it.
Jamie: On the best team in the land, even though his family didn’t believe him. And at the end he was able to play in the game and actually made a giant play to end the game and end the movie.
Jamie: And now a bunch of his brothers and sisters have gone on to college, and that’s something they never would have done if he hadn’t stepped out and done it on his own.
Arec: That’s good, Jamie, tell me what the moral of the story is.
Jamie: Don’t ever let anybody tell you no. If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.
Arec: That’s fantastic and what a powerful way to demonstrate that. That idea, then through a game that we’re all familiar with, right and and, and something that we’re going to do through this exercise, is pull from things that already exist.
Arec: And that we’re already familiar with, but we’re going to combine them.
Arec: In a creative way, let’s let’s get one more. If if Ryan or or Sammy wants to go.
Arec: Or TomTom, right?
Arec: Yeah, it’s Tom still with us.
Tom: Yeah I I can go so so so my favorite one is at a movie and it’s about the period at the beginning of World War Two when Germany starting to roll over everything and a couple trying to escape.
Tom: And so they go to Africa to Casablanca because they hear there’s a gentleman there that could help him get out and they go into his.
Tom: AmArecan restaurant, and that’s where you hear that famous line of all the gin joints in the world you walked into mine.
Tom: The the thing they they clicked there was the lady that is married was the bar owners old girlfriend?
Tom: Uh, so he was kind of mixed on whether he should help them or not. In the end he does.
Tom: He does help him to get away after working with the local authorities and having to do a little bit of murder and stuff and then.
Tom: Yeah, so she he says he’s going to go with her but he does not. And then the other famous line from that Moon is everybody always says play it again Sam and just so you know that line was never in the movie.
Tom: So that’s that’s my favorite movie.
Arec: That’s another good example. Thank you Tom. And what would you say the the moral is for that one?
Tom: A moral wow uhm?
Tom: I, I would think that the the moral would be do the right thing, even if it’s not something you want to do.
Arec: OK, very good.
Arec: I’ll talk a little bit about myself and then we’ll jump into the rest of the thing I I started this company in.
Arec: May last year.
Arec: Uhm, just kind of was a part time hobby, but it kept me and my family and my friends together with a little bit of distraction. And yeah we can use that now more than ever.
Arec: I write these stories. I host the parties, I customize them for people events and I have a partner in Denver who’s still part time with it.
Arec: But he’s supporting me with things like website design and marketing strategies. If you think my prices are too high, it’s his fault. So yeah, don’t don’t put that on me, but as we go through this.
Arec: Exercise I want you to know that I’m just here to be the guy.
Arec: If there’s if there’s a direction that you want to go in, I’m not going to say this direction is correct, and this one is not. It’s really trying to make it a smooth process for you, so we’ll start with worldbuilding.
Arec: During this first part we we create the. The skeleton is what I call it of the story and the world that we’re going to be operating in.
Arec: And you see down here that we’re going to be focusing on setting theme and tone for this part of the demo.
Arec: But the way this works is we’ll we’ll go through. I’ll explain each of these things, and then we’ll make a decision together as a group.
Arec: So starting at the first one looking at kind of the setting here, do we want a realistic type murder mystery, or do we want one that’s a little bit more fantasy whimsical?
Arec: And there are a few different ways that this can happen.
Arec: So you can do a something that’s set in current times with realistic you can go into the future. You can go into the past.
Arec: But most of what happens is based in reality we’re going to be stretching, you know, suspending belief in some situations, but for the most part, we all know how it works.
Arec: On the fantasy side, there are magical things we’ve already talked about, Harry Potter and you know, we have a wand that can solve all of the world’s problems and.
Arec: And then you also have like high technology type environments like Hunger Games and Star Wars.
Arec: Where we’re we’re using technology that we’ve never seen, and we may not ever see in our lifetimes.
Arec: But that introduces some elements, so starting here is anyone feeling strongly about any particular idea so far.
Jamie: I’m very real excited.
Sammy: I like that.
Sammy: Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Jamie: No, I just said I’m a very realistic person, but I’m OK either way. We we watched all the Star Wars. So whatever you want.
Arec: OK, are there thoughts?
Christy: I am open.
Christy: To whatever.
Christy: But mostly whimsical and magical.
Christy: But we’ve already gathered.
Sammy: I do like the Harry Potter idea.
Arec: Yeah, a lot of people like magic, but maybe there’s a way to blend the two since we have a.
Arec: Since we have Jamie talking about.
Arec: I’m doing a realistic setting, maybe there’s a way we could do like an illusionist type story where there is magic, but is it really magic?
Arec: You know that kind of.
Arec: Thing, but what do we think?
Arec: About that idea, I love that idea.
Jamie: I love it.
Arec: OK, so let’s start there, and obviously that’s not really enough to.
Arec: You know to make a murder mystery on its own, so let’s talk about some of these other ideas. When we’re choosing a location we want to answer those two questions you see on the screen.
Arec: Why is our group gathered? So why are we in this spot? And why are we isolated from the rest of the world in some way?
Arec: With most murder mysteries you have a group of people that’s trying to solve the murder and for whatever reason they’re not involving like the outside world that they’re not calling the authorities. They’re not like just leaving after someone gets killed.
Arec: Uhm so.
Arec: So let’s let’s brainstorm a couple location ideas and see if we can answer those questions.
Ryan: One thing that comes to mind to not involve the authorities is that there’s other illegal activity you’re trying to cover.
Arec: That’s a good idea, Ryan.
Arec: And and a unique one so far.
Jamie: That’s good stuff I I was going to joke that Christy, Sammy, and I all grew up within about 20 miles of each other.
Jamie: So if we can get as far away from Indiana as possible, that might be good. Maybe a beach or something tropical. I’m pumping in the mountains.
Christy: Yeah, or mountain?
Sammy: Or we also feel like learning something like on like the highest point of a.
Sammy: Mountain that involved.
Christy: Smelling that now when I.
Jamie: Well, I can breathe.
Christy: We’ll take care of you, alright?
Arec: Let’s build on that. I’m gonna put it on TomTom. Can you think of a place that is in the mountains?
Arec: Uhm, where illegal activities would be happening?
Arec: And what, what? What was the third thing?
Arec: It’s it’s far away from Indiana.
Jamie: I I think we may have lost Tom.
Arec: OK.
Arec: I’ll throw it to. I’ll throw it to Sammy then.
Sammy: I’ve never been out of the country.
Sammy: But it doesn’t. It doesn’t like.
Sammy: Sweden and Germany, don’t they have a lot of.
Sammy: Places over there that are kind of.
Arec: Yeah, the Alps run through UM.
Arec: Uh, they run through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, yeah.
Jamie: But let’s do Switzerland. They got lungs.
Arec: OK and uhm, maybe we’re outside, but maybe we’re in a building.
Arec: Uhm, what what? What’s a building or or some place outside where these illegal activities would be happening?
Ryan: And eglu.
Jamie: I was going to say a ski lodge, but igloo sounds pretty cool.
Arec: OK, let’s talk about the merits. Uhm, here’s here’s our first like conflict point. So when we do this for a team building thing we’ll want to, you know, talk about how to disagree with people productively and still move forward so we have two conflicting ideas and igloo and a ski lodge. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of those.
Christy: The glue seems cold.
Jamie: Ski Lodge seems warm huh? Right now I agree.
Sammy: A ski lodge might also have other people.
Sammy: Trying to stagger in.
Christy: Oh and Igloo would be more like remote or isolated.
Jamie: Ilaj might have a bartender and a chef.
Christy: I was mostly thinking snacks, but I’m just being selfish.
Ryan: I I don’t know the ski lodge lends itself to, you know, the deep. The deeper, bigger operation than an igloo might. It’s been a little difficult to build the igloo for a whole group of people.
Sammy: You’re right, it might have more resources one.
Christy: You know my Internet.
Arec: I think that’s perfect. All four of you jumped in and and gave a little bit of input there, and that’s that’s really the goal with those types of situations, because now we all own the decision that comes at the end here, where we decide right? Ultimately, which way do we think we’re going?
Arec: Put on like belongs to me right? Yeah, yeah.
Arec: We had, I think, five or six different positive points for ski lodge and and a couple for igloo like.
Arec: It’s not a. It’s not a bad idea. There are no bad ideas, but maybe we’re more comfortable in a ski lodge and that’s easier to work with going forward, so.
Arec: So let’s go that route.
Arec: Any defense?
Jamie: No, Sir.
Arec: Nope, OK.
Arec: I’m just throwing back what I’m hearing, so feel free to disagree at any time.
Arec: All right, so I I do want it before we jump into the style I I do want to nail down what? What type of what type of nefarious thing is happening in this ski lodge.
Ryan: If it’s Switzerland counterfeit watches.
Arec: OK, that would be interesting. Yeah, and very thematic. We could do a yeah we could do a lot with the concept of time.
Arec: And the clock is ticking and we have to solve this murder.
Arec: You see?
Arec: Timers being used with things like explosives and with thumb.
Arec: You know, maybe there’s a there’s a poison that has a certain amount of time left. But yeah, thematically time is a big one there. What’s another idea?
Jamie: That’s kind of picture in an Ocean’s 11 scenario.
Arec: Oh OK, maybe we just robbed the bank and this is where we’re storing the cash.
Jamie: That could be good stuff and you don’t know whose team anybody is on you. You think you know who’s working together, but you’re not sure.
Jamie: Not sure who’s going to turn around. Stab somebody in the back and take it all.
Arec: That’s interesting, and someone already did.
Arec: That’s why it’s a murder mystery, right? Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely.
Arec: OK, I like those ideas.
Arec: But let’s let’s go ahead and move down to the style.
Arec: So there there’s, uh, there’s a spectrum here, ranging from silly to serious. And as we are the the the next portion after this would be creating characters.
Arec: And that’s that. That’s a more independent activity where you work on it on your own, and then you bring things back to the group.
Arec: But we still want to keep things generally in the same ballpark, at least. So if if we’re all on the same page with the range from silly to serious and then deep to wide, it helps keep everyone characters. HHH
Arec: In in a place where they make sense together so. 00:19:08 Arec: You’ve got a couple of examples there. You’ve got a children cartoon show Pokémon, anyone that has kids know that there are lots of silly TV shows out there, and then something that’s very dark and serious like the Batman Christopher Nolan trilogy.
Arec: But what are we feeling today with our mood?
Sammy: I kind of like the Philly.
Sammy: I don’t know.
Sammy: I’ve been watching a lot of Titans so.
Sammy: I’ve got like a dark vibe already.
Christy: She’s like I’m tapped out on dark vibes. I also really love John Wick movie, so I’m in a weird place.
Christy: Beepo are we meant to be together? Sidebar won’t do it.
Sammy: We need to.
Arec: That’s awesome.
Arec: Yeah, there there’s no reason why we can’t go dark with it, and maybe it’s the kind of the kind of self aware darkness where it’s over the top and exaggerated so we can still enjoy ourselves and have fun with it. We don’t. We don’t have to actually feel all of those big deep dark feelings, right, right?
Arec: OK, so so maybe maybe gritty and maybe.
Arec: Maybe a little dark the next one.
Arec: We’re not going to dive too deep into this, but I just want to talk about it a little bit.
Arec: In different works of literature and different movies, and then things that there’s there’s a spectrum that runs three ways deep, wide and then shallow and narrow.
Arec: You think about the Lord of the Rings universe that JRR Tolkien created, and he invented several different languages. He’s got, you know, millions of years of history that he wrote for that series. And we all know the movies. But he’s got other supporting works.
Arec: Around all of that that that you know tons of named characters, and describing foods. And he gets really deep and wide with that story. I’ll just contrast that with with something like the mark.
Arec: And it’s a very narrow scope what they’re doing with that with that book in that movie on Mars. But they go really deep with it and they get very detailed, and they’ve done their research like how would a man survive on Mars by himself for several months?
Arec: Now contrast that with Avengers, where it’s pretty wide but not very deep, right? We’re not going to get into explaining the science. We’re not going to.
Arec: We’re we’re, we’re just gonna we’re just going to focus on the action and and keep it keep it moving along at a pretty good pace but.
Arec: Those are some of the the directions that we could go with the story. I find that usually for murder mystery games it’s it’s easier to stay pretty narrow and pretty shallow. We want to be able to.
Arec: We want to be able to write something that makes sense and can be explained in a short period of time.
Arec: Something that people are already familiar with and can latch onto, but that’s not a reason to to not go deep or to not go wide. It’s just there should be. There should be a reason.
Arec: The last thing here is rule.
Arec: And rules and quotation marks because it’s not the rules for how to play the game. It’s the rules of the world that we’re building, so we can’t leave this ski lodge.
Arec: Maybe because there’s a snowstorm or we have to solve the murder in a certain amount of time, let’s say 3 hours.
Arec: Or the murderer is going to kill again, or he’s going to get away or she’s going to get away, but those those are examples of rules that will want to establish.
Arec: So that we know the constraints of the world, like why? Why can’t family just call someone and say hey come get me?
Arec: Someone died and I’m out of here.
Arec: All right?
Arec: So after we go through a couple more slides of worldbuilding, we get it into character building, which is where the group creates their own characters that are going to operate in the murder mystery.
Arec: So we’ll talk about one of the pieces of character building.
Arec: And the first thing that we’ll do is decide what people’s role is going to be.
Arec: The an important thing to do with a murder mystery game is to make the characters easily distinguishable from each other and to give them differences that that we can use, because if they’re all the same, it makes it hard to have an unequal distribution of information.
Arec: It makes it hard for them to, to, you know, to keep track of each other.
Arec: And and and remember, Oh yeah, this person does this then that person does that.
Arec: Uhm, but let’s talk about some possible roles.
Arec: Of a group of people at a ski lodge.
Arec: And there are ideas.
Jamie: I could be the funny bartender that gives good advice.
Arec: Sure, yeah, we need a bartender at.
Arec: At a ski lodge.
Arec: I’ll, I’ll note something important with that one. It’s an employee and not a guest.
Arec: And knows more about the building maybe than other people, so it’s it’s a useful role to have functionally.
Jamie: Nikki called me guilty already. 00:25:08 Arec: Ha ha.
Christy: I know I’m like envisioning like I want to be ushering people to where they go and like.
Christy: Herding cats.
Jamie: The concierge
Christy: The hosted.
Christy: Account here.
Arec: The host is maybe the owner, or the manager would fill that kind of a role.
Arec: Or maybe you’re you’re a regular that is just super friendly and wants to show people around and hey, have you checked out the ice machine and blah blah blah?
Jamie: Or somebody or somebody that just wants to be in everybody with business so she.
Christy: Gets involved, I love that sign me up for that.
Sammy: Yeah, like the one that’s like gossiping and then always yells at everybody when they bring their skis inside and like it has the dirt on everyone.
Arec: That’s a good role to have as well.
Arec: What’s another thing?
Ryan: What about the foul mouthed ski lodge maintenance person?
Arec: The guy that does The Dirty work and knows some dirty secrets, and, uh, maybe had.
Christy: With names like Bob.
Arec: This is the guy that had would have access to maybe tools and information and and and would know a lot about the about the environment.
Ryan: Hidden doors
Jamie: The guy that had the guy that entertains all the Single Ladies.
Arec: OK, yeah, we’ve we’ve got the rich Playboy.
Arec: What’s he good for?
Sammy: That’s a lot of money.
Ryan: Distracting that he everyone escapes.
Arec: Say that again.
Ryan: Distracting the killer while everyone escapes.
Arec: OK, yeah could be.
Sammy: Or like maybe he’s always trying to make a trade, like I’ll tell you this, if you do this for me or tell me this or.
Arec: Yeah, this is someone whose stature matters in the outside world.
Arec: Uhm, someone that has a lot of motivations and someone with a lot of resources but has been separated from his resources in this situation and is very motivated to get back to them.
Arec: Which is an interesting dynamic.
Arec: OK, we’ll we’ll wrap up that part. Those were all that was. Yeah, that was fantastic. Thank you everyone for those ideas.
Arec: Uhm, the next line there you see, is flaws and strengths. I lead with flaws because I think flaws are a lot more interesting than strengths, and I’ll talk briefly about my own.
Arec: Like I, I’m a very confident person on the strength side of things, but I can come across as as a know it all and arrogance if I am not. You know, presenting myself.
Arec: Well or being careful about what I say or how I say things, so our flaws and our strengths often go together.
Arec: And and for our characters, we want we want them to have flaws and not just to be good at whatever they’re good at and and be very boring characters. So when you’re making a character, make them interesting.
Arec: And then next thing here, preferences, quirks, catchphrases, dislikes. This is just building out a little bit of personality for for the character.
Arec: I I wrote one recently where as I was going through and creating each character, I gave them an emotion and everything I wrote for that character tried to incorporate that emotion, so I had one character whose word was.
Arec: Was happy and another one was lonely and another one was angry.
Arec: So even though it’s me doing the writing for all of them, and I I’m I’m not the strongest creative writer.
Arec: But this was a technique to force myself to to to make them all different from each other and make them interesting.
Arec: But as you make your characters, you’ll you’ll want to do things and adding catchphrases, especially adding a random dislike that if it comes up in conversation, they can say oh, don’t talk about that.
Arec: I hate that it really spices up the game and you don’t know if you’re going to get into a situation where you get to use that.
Arec: And break it out and have your moment. But if you do, it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Arec: Same thing with preferences.
Arec: And then using all of those things that you’ve started. So using the role in the group flaws and strengths, and then all of those other pieces to start fleshing out the back story.
Arec: I gave this character the the strength of being a man.
Arec: Let’s say someone who thinks very quickly and then their flaw would be. They often make mistakes or jump to conclusions quickly.
Arec: And I’m going to work that into their back story in an interesting way where something happened and it shaped their life going forward based on their flaw or based on their strength.
Arec: And then last thing you’ll do is give him a name.
Arec: All right, after we go through the character building process and everyone collaborates on their characters, and then we introduce, we introduce our characters to each other and then we try to get them all matched up in terms of how well developed they are. After that we wrap up the.
Arec: The story building process.
Arec: We’ll talk about motive during character creation, but now we need memes.
Arec: Uh, so how was the person? How? How was the victim killed? And we’ll talk about opportunity which which of the characters had opportunity to murder the victim?
Arec: And and then, based on those things, flesh out the storyline. What was the sequence of events that led us to the merge?
Arec: Here and what are some possible things that could happen as the story progresses and we try to solve it?
Arec: And we’ll, we’ll think about those things and see if we run into roadblocks and maybe redirect and add more details or change certain details that don’t work.
Arec: NPC’s are non player characters.
Arec: Maybe we need someone to come in from the outside that’s not played by a character to present a key piece of information.
Arec: Maybe there’s a coroner that is going to tell us something about how the the victim was killed or something like that.
Arec: We’ll introduce some red herrings. We don’t want the story to be too easy to solve, so we’ll we’ll give some false clues and maybe point the finger at each other in in different ways.
Arec: The character creation process usually introduces resources.
Arec: Uhm, limited resources and motivations, so we will basically get everyone on the same system.
Arec: In terms of resources, so we talked about the the rich Playboy earlier. If the amount of money that he has matters, then it it should matter to everyone and we should give everyone some amount of money, even if that amount is 0, right?
Arec: If money doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter and we don’t.
Arec: Need to do that but.
Arec: We’ll go through those things.
Arec: And then the conclusion. The unfortunate thing about building the murder mystery together is that we won’t get to play it because we all know how it ends.
Arec: But what I’ll do at the end is provide a little bit of narrative and wrap everything up and and get us some closure for the story.
Arec: This is a really good group activity as people are moving back into office culture and and work culture and.
Arec: You have teams that are working together that have a high level of communication. Things can get kind of weird I I know, especially for my wife and I.
Arec: My small talk with our friends was weird for a month or two when we started seeing people again.
Arec: And I’ve talked about being able to disagree with coworkers being able to build upon ideas, being able to innovate.
Arec: This exercise in unlocking your imagination is a great way to smooth, smooth over some of those rough spots that that the pandemic has caused. But yeah, and this is actually a good point for me to pause and ask you guys.
Arec: Like how are you feeling? Do you have like a little creative buzz going on right now?
Christy: Or share.
Jamie: Yes, Sir.
Arec: Yeah, you feel that and that was with me talking through like half of it you you did a little bit of work with your imagination, but you already have a little bit of that buzz going.
Arec: Uhm, it it’s it. It it’s just.
Arec: It’s it’s incredible what this does to the chemical balance like in your brain.
Arec: Uhm, I customized it. I’ve already talked about that, but I can. I can incorporate it to an existing meeting like this one. I’ve shortened to the demo.
Arec: We can do recognition events etc.
Arec: Let’s see, I’ll pause for questions, and then I’ll let Jamie take back over.
Sammy: Is I have a question.
Sammy: Or Jamie, do you want to go? I think you should leave hand out for a minute.
Jamie: Yeah well, please no please go.
Sammy: Do is there usually like a magic number of people that you like to have for these like or like?
Sammy: Once you hit double digits, does it get too many people or you know what I’m trying to say?
Arec: This is probably the best run that I’ve had with only four people, so at the low end I really like 6.
Arec: But we did really well today with just four and I I I really want to thank you guys for being so like open and willing to jump in and not just let me. You know flounder up here on my own.
Christy: And it’s my very first time at this meeting, so I just like walked right in and talk about Harry Potter, you know?
Christy: Not knowing about anything, yeah.
Sammy: I like you just longer.
Arec: Yeah, at the high end I I would say it it I I can work pretty well with a crowd. I think up to 15 after 15 then.
Arec: Not everyone gets a chance to contribute as much as I would like.
Arec: But but then again, there are some people who don’t want to contribute as much, and we’d rather just enjoy the show so.
Arec: Yeah, I just want to keep everyone comfortable there, but thank you for the question.
Jamie: Absolutely. Do you ever have situations where maybe the executives will get together and they’ll help develop the characters and then you come back and do the presentation for their employees and it makes it seem like it’s already incorporated into what they’re doing?
Arec: I’m working on one of those for a. My mom got a part time job out in Montana working at a nursery and and she’s going to write one with the high school kids that she works with for all of the old ladies that work in the office of this nursery.
Arec: So the answer is yes, it can be done. Now I’m going to charge them more because that’s a lot more work, but they’re they’re.
Arec: They’re gonna love it and it’s going to be like it’s going to be everything that they want to get out of it. And yeah, those
Arec: That those ladies that work in the office are just going to be tickled to death, and I’m sure the high schoolers are going to learn a lot and have a great time with it too. So yes, great question, Jamie. Thank you.
Jamie: Oh absolutely, question 2 is that if we developed any characters or situations for you today that you haven’t thought of, do we get any royalties for this?
Jamie: Going forward.
Arec: I I have so many stories already.
Arec: That’s probably not but.
Sammy: Uhm, I do get enough.
Jamie: I’m just messing with you.
Ryan: I I do get I.
Arec: Well, the the issue is it takes me so long to finish one. It’s not that the ideas are I. I have like 3 that I’m working on right now so so getting around to.
Arec: Getting around to this and actually typing it all out and making it pretty and presentable. It’s it’s a lot of time and I usually have other things going on, but.
Arec: I I said at the beginning that writing these and any kind of writing really is just pulling different ideas together and putting them together in a unique way.
Arec: Uhm, the the idea of having like a uh, a fake watch.
Arec: That that Ryan gave. That’s something I hadn’t thought of before, like doing counterfeiting for something that isn’t money is an interesting concept and would lend itself to like creative clue, presentation, and and things like that, so that that might be an idea. I feel just maybe not in the Swiss Alps, you know.
Jamie: There you go. Hey Ryan. Ryan grew up near Chicago and I used to live in Chicago, so we’ve seen just about everything counterfeited at one.
Jamie: Time or another?
Ryan: Yeah, and and there’s some creative ways to dispose of your victims, like buckets full of concrete and stuff like that.
Christy: He’s Ryan.
Arec: O, Ryan getting a little too into this.
Christy: Brands like been there done that.
Jamie: There you go now Christy and Sammy know why I wanted to move to the small town.
Christy: Coming out.
Christy: Well, I really could feed this human.
Jamie: Awesome Arec. Well this was great man. Thank you for letting us participate in this. We really enjoyed it.
Sammy: Yeah, thank you.
Sammy: Great job.
Arec: Thank you, you guys were great. I yeah seriously couldn’t have done it without a good group.
