{"id":1763,"date":"2020-02-14T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1763"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:37","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:37","slug":"quick-shot-on-flirtsquad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/02\/quick-shot-on-flirtsquad\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Shot on #FlirtSquad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I bring you an interview with the excellent Ken Davidson about #FlirtSquad, which is part of Zine Quest 2 on Kickstarter<\/a>! Check out the interview below!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is #FlirtSquad, both as a product and as your vision?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hello Beau, thank you for taking the time out to interview me, I really appreciate it. Okay, background first. My memory of events may not be exactly accurate, but about two years ago, Darcy Ross posted on Twitter because she had a hard time trying to flirt and she asked for advice. This was picked up by a lot of people on Twitter and spawned the hashtag #FlirtSquad. From there, you could post a picture or short clip of yourself trying to look flirty and you were guaranteed to have at least some people respond and tell you how amazing you were doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was one of the first to reply and shameless about tagging people in that I thought could contribute (IIRC you were just such a person). There were so many people sharing so many things, and I read a lot of great advice on how to take better pictures, what was considered too far for people, how to communicate expectations etc. I was like “wow, this is really something.” However, when things really clicked for me was a couple of weeks in, when people who normally don’t try to be flirty online, people who don’t share a lot of pictures of themselves, people that have low self esteem, things like that started to post. They told me either in private or in their tweets that they had always been afraid to post pictures of themselves or to share selfies. Either thinking they weren’t cute, or people would make fun of them, or people would be creepy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew we had something special at THAT point, I was also knew it was Twitter, therefore it was ephemeral, it wouldn’t last forever so I’m like “alright, how can I capture these moments? How can I share this with more people who either didn’t see the tag, or aren’t on Twitter, or aren’t in our small indie RPG bubble? What can I do?” The answer I had for that was “write a LARP!” So, here we are, this is my attempt to give people a safe place, where they can explore their flirty selves and build their confidence with like minded folks, and I think I’ve done it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 That’s\na whimsical answer, sorry. So, the game is a LARP that is a series of workshops\nunder the guise that the #FlirtSquad is a real group you can join, we’re going\nto train you so you can build your skills, then we will choose who gets to join\nat the end. I have compiled an amazing team and we will be releasing it as a\nzine as part of #ZineQuest2. This is my first physical product that I will ever\nrelease, and depending on how this goes, either the first of many or the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is so awesome! What is the structure of the larp, if any, and what are the guidelines under which players interact?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you I also think it’s awesome! The structure of the LARP basically starts with warm-up exercises, followed by safety discussions, then we assign short roles which are different types of flirters, then an intro, then a series of workshops that I call phases. In each phase we’re teaching a skill related to Flirt which you can use in real life. For example, how to ask for consent, how to say no, how to do different flirty looks, things like that. I don’t want to spoil too much but some of the phases are REALLY fun.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ran the game at Big Bad 19 and there’s a phases I call speed flirting and OMG Beau it was SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH. I was giggling the whole time, that may have been my favorite thing that happened at Big Bad, the only problem was that it wasn’t long enough, which I am fixing as we speak! As far as guidelines for interaction I am teaching consent through various methods during the game as well as setting some hard rules in the beginning, safety was my biggest concern with this game and I think we’ve done it. Plus, I have a stretch goal, which was of writing we have not reached yet, to bring in Adira Slattery. Adira is going to add a phase which will deal with boundary settings in a more explicit manner, but still cute and fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you support players to ensure they\u2019re able to commit to the #FlirtSquad theme safely and enthusiastically?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to be very frank and up front about what this game is.\u00a0 I frontload the Play principles and advise to explicitly say what they are when you run this game. They are: goofy, fun, inclusive and encouraging. If people are not there for those four things and want to be creepy or whatever they can GTFO. As far as getting people enthusiastic about the game you have to be the model when you run this game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The facilitator has a character in this game, they are the experienced Flirtsquad member who is going to run the recruits through the workshops and it is imperative that they model the behaviors they expect from the players. I ramble and mentioned safety in the last question but going back to it we use Okay check in and Open Door but we also actually have the facilitators not only model good behavior but also model bad behavior and have the crowd call it out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, I don’t want to spoil too much, but Jess Meier and I ran the game and we had “shame” yelled at us a couple of times, it builds a camaraderie between the players which is built in the game and I hope extends to the world. I think that’s all I got, thank you so much again for taking the time out to interview me I really appreciate it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks so much to Ken for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out #FlirtSquad on Kickstarter today<\/a>! Happy Valentine’s Day!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I bring you an interview with the excellent Ken Davidson about #FlirtSquad, which is part of Zine Quest 2 on Kickstarter! Check out the interview below! — What is #FlirtSquad, both as a product and as your vision? Hello Beau, thank you for taking the time out to interview … Continue reading “Quick Shot on #FlirtSquad”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[10,4,17,25,47,48,11,35,55],"class_list":["post-1763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-larp","tag-live-action-roleplaying-games","tag-love","tag-mental-health","tag-party-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/flirtsquad-bannerKS.png?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-sr","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":262,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2016\/10\/what-makes-a-good-player-with-ariana-ramos\/","url_meta":{"origin":1763,"position":0},"title":"What Makes a Good Player? with Ariana Ramos","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"October 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Hello all!In this new feature, What Makes a Good Player?,\u00a0I'll be covering the experience and practices of good players nominated by their fellows and GMs. All of the players were asked the same questions, but it's interesting to see where those vary.\u00a0The first interviewee is Ariana Ramos!--What do you try\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-Em9wO1iOCPQ\/V8sVFHrtOEI\/AAAAAAAArQM\/k08z9fC5u9QOgEBbT3bSr780Q4E6bROXACEw\/s320\/john%2Bcompleted%2Blogo.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1899,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/04\/short-term-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1763,"position":1},"title":"Short Term Changes","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"April 24, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey all! 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