I threw this party with Mike Wang, who’s my collaborator at Long Journey. Everyone that came to this dinner party had to try on a pair of spectacles, and the spectacles had a role that they had to play written on the side.

Jackson: Cool.

Cyan: Maybe you had to be an optimist, or maybe you had to be a pessimist, or maybe you had to act like you’re a child. What was really interesting was how seriously everybody took their role, and they got into it.

There was someone who was a critic. They were supposed to critique the food and act like they were displeased with everything. We gave that role to a person who’s a people pleaser.

Jackson: So you hand-picked every role?

Cyan: Yes. For this one, we knew the people and we knew their personalities, so we gave them a personality that didn’t suit them.

Jackson: One of the lovely things about games is that people are so willing to opt into something so seemingly ridiculous, as long as you scope it or call it a game or a party.

Cyan: It was so fun. We had this eye doctor, a friend of mine, and she worked the eye doctor station. What people didn’t realize is that we already had their prescription filled for them. They thought it was random. I hang out with magicians, and we do something called Magician’s Choice, where you make it look random, but it’s not.

We had these dice they would roll for a color, and it would land on a box. From that box, they were able to pick out a pair of glasses. It turned out that every box was the same, and there was a pair of glasses for them in every box. It was a force.

They got what they thought was a random prescription, put the glasses on, and immediately got into character. There was a guy who was supposed to be five years old, and he kept demanding bowls of sugar. He was saying, “I want sugar and I want it now.”

There was a person we blindfolded, so they couldn’t see and had to eat their whole meal blindfolded. The person sitting next to them was supposed to help. This is a person that doesn’t like to help anyone and is deeply uncomfortable with that role, but he got into it.

FROM:

Jackson Dahl

26. Cyan Banister - A Fool’s Dérive

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