I don’t mind admitting to you that my last party was a total disaster.

I read somewhere that a good party needs refreshments, music and activities. Like for example games, right? Well, I love games. I have a gazillion games. No problem there.

Refreshments… that was a little dodgier. I ended up making an enormous pot of oatmeal. It was all the food I really had in the house, other than all those fish from our camping trip, and they’re frozen. I put them out anyway, and they were thawed by the end of the night, but no one had any. So maybe that was sub-excellent party food. It would have been better if I’d gotten some plastic flatware so people didn’t have to wash and share my two spoons. As for drinks, I guess V8 is not as widely beloved as I might have guessed.

Me, I live on V8 and oatmeal. It’s a highly nutritious diet, and I don’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about what I’m going to eat on this day or that day. Oatmeal, that’s what I’m going to eat. It’s heart smart.

For music, I made a playlist for the party comprising all my historic Sousa recordings, which I was pretty sure would be a hit, but hey, guess again.

So the party is dying. It’s DYING. People are expressing open hostility. The only thing that can get this train back on the rails is game time. So I bust out the big guns—FURY OF DRACULA. Everybody loves FURY OF DRACULA, right? It takes a long time to finish, requires a lot of explanation, and there are tons of little tiny markers and pieces to keep track of. Perfect!

I make everyone be quiet for 25 minutes so I can concentrate on set-up, because it’s kind of complicated. I assign characters. I tell everyone but Carlos, Jill, Scott and Neil that they have to sit out the first round, ‘cause it’s for five players max. And suddenly I’ve got a mutiny on my hands.

People are crying. Friendships are ending. Furniture is overturned as several people storm the bedroom for coats. Someone—I still don’t know who—smears fully nine pounds of oatmeal all over the kitchen windows.

Next time I’ll suggest something simpler, like Pass the Buck. You could play it with little kids. You could play it drunk. (You shouldn’t do both simultaneously.) It’s a great icebreaker, and it doesn’t take a lot of reading and learning the rules to get started, you just start. You roll the dice, you pass the buck. It’s cute. And it’s probably better suited to a co-ed party than FURY is.

But I’m sticking with the Sousa. The March King deserves one more shot at least, right?

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