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Episode 183: March Gladness with Gavin Verhey
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! The goblins want to remind you that we have a very active and open Discord and love the oppurtinity for you all to join! On today's episode the hosts sit down with Gavin Verhey to NOT talk about Magic... Instead we talk about an amazing Project Gavin does yearly called March Gladness!! The hosts might also have an announcment
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Transcript
Introduction and Gratitude
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to an episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. All three hosts are back again. This is becoming hopefully a more routine occurrence happenstance. So yeah, so we're all here together. We have a very special guest and we're going to just basically jump almost straight into the episode today. Just doing a couple of quick announcements. We want to thank the Grinding Coffee Company, our amazing
00:00:57
Speaker
partners that have been very willing to help us out whenever we need, especially with charity events and just with, well, keeping me in coffee, which keeps the show running. So we want to thank them.
00:01:09
Speaker
And I think, well, I'll cut this out if I'm not allowed to say it by then, but I'm going to make an announcement, because I think it'll be formally announced
Magic Con 30 Panel Announcement
00:01:17
Speaker
by then. But the Goblin Lore podcast, along with Michelle Rapp and Chase Carroll, two of our frequent collaborators, have been approved for a Magic Con 30 panel. It is going to be on a topic that we've talked about on the show before, on sparking and what the spark kind of means for planeswalkers.
00:01:37
Speaker
looking not just at the concept of tragedy or trauma, but just kind of mental health recovery. So it's kind of going to be a look at for a lot of the hosts on how we sparked kind of having that conversation. So this episode should be out in time for us to be able to safely announce that if not, I will be cutting this out.
Gavin Verhey's Return
00:01:56
Speaker
But yeah, we have Gavin Verhe back for the first time in I don't it's been like two years.
00:02:04
Speaker
like hello so glad to be here hello welcome back thanks for having me on the podcast it's always a delight to come on and talk with all you wonderful humans and you know honestly I'm feeling a little glad today wow well that's just a very excellent so we'll go around you like that you like that segue you like that little uh little massaging in of a little wordsmithing there
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, you're better than we are when it comes to actually finding ways to move from topic to topic. So thank you. That's what this creative writing education is all about. Just dropping things like that in there.
00:02:39
Speaker
It wasn't just to get a job at Wizards. Um, well, it's one of the mini talents creative writing has. Well, it's just some quick introductions. So if people don't know, uh, my name is Hobbs. My pronouns are he, him, I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q and I'll introduce my, oh, I'll pass it over to my house, Taya. Hi, I'm Taya, uh, pronouns are she, her, or they, them, and happy to be here this week.
00:03:08
Speaker
And rounding out the hosts, I'm Alex. I'm found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him. And we're glad to have this upstart Gavin. Um, I believe your name is, is that, is that the correct pronunciation? We'll see if I go anywhere. I'm a, I'm Gavin Verhey and I'm he him.
00:03:25
Speaker
Thank you, Gavin. So yeah, you you mentioned you're
March Reflections
00:03:28
Speaker
glad to be here. And we're talking March gladness. So before we get into fully what the topic is, we just thought it'd be nice for us to just kind of celebrate gladness for ourselves and say one thing that we are glad for this month. Um, for me, it's been March was I got my new camera. And I actually got to go to New York City and do some street photography, while also helping to present on a D&D group for veterans that we're doing. So that's my
00:03:57
Speaker
Taya? Um, sure. I mean, mine was going on Joko cruise and getting to spend a week with my partners, uh, gaming and being geeks and seeing a bunch of people I haven't seen in a while and just had a great time. It would have been better if I didn't get COVID afterwards, but you know, I'm, I'm mostly better now. So, you know, that's the risk you take. We did. We talked about that, you know, those risks that we do have to make a decision on. So yeah.
00:04:26
Speaker
Alex, how about for you? Well, for me, I was thinking I was going to flippantly answer something about finally, we're getting some melting here in Minnesota. Then it snowed a whole bunch this weekend, so that's not maybe the best. But a more genuine one is this, a couple weeks ago, I finally was able to get my dad and some friends of mine and introduce my dad to sushi. So he is, has been very apprehensive.
00:04:56
Speaker
about sushi. And it's a thing that I really enjoy. And he's not a terribly picky eater. In fact, he works in food services and likes to find different things and get food from different sources and stuff. But it is a thing that he was not familiar with. He was definitely apprehensive about it. But
00:05:15
Speaker
I talked to him about it, we found a local place that's kind of an all you can eat place that works really well for a small like four or five person group. Because then you can just share things, you can get anything you want. And there's other people there to kind of help split it or you can just take one piece of whatever other people are ordering. And it's a good place to a good environment to just try new stuff. And well,
00:05:36
Speaker
I wasn't sure, like my dad was positive. He was not going to eat any raw fish, but he loves shrimp. He likes crab. I'm like, there's plenty of stuff you're going to like. And the fact that, A, I got him out there. I just like, I love hanging out with my dad, but that he trusted me enough to come out to this thing and let me share something with him that I love was, it felt good. I really enjoyed it. It was a good experience. And he enjoyed himself. He found some things he liked. So that's, that's what I'm going to go with. Awesome. Good.
00:06:06
Speaker
And Gavin, how about you?
Origin of March Gladness
00:06:09
Speaker
Well, March is always my birthday month. Um, that hasn't changed yet. And so it's very nice to, um, to be able to celebrate. I had a great week of doing fun things with people almost every night. So, uh, just a lot of, you know, friends around me and, uh, fun little activities in my life. You're like really 25 now, 26. I just turned 32. So 33. It's funny. My, my, um, my,
00:06:34
Speaker
See, this happened to me now. My mom put the wrong number of candles on my birthday cake. She thought I was turning 32. And I was like, mom, I'm turning 33. And my grandma called me and she's like, happy 32nd birthday. And I tell both of them I'm 33. So now I feel like I've just been accepted into thinking that I'm 32. So maybe this is just where I'll stay forever. We'll see. It might be just a vampire and cut it off here, you know? To be fair, last time you were on the show, you talked about like throwing things away that you thought were expired because
00:07:03
Speaker
you like went through your fridge and had this cleaning thing because you were in the wrong like state of mind based on like magic time travel. So are you actually 32 and you lost a year? Yeah, I mean, we all lost a few years over the past few years. Let's be real here. So Gavin, we brought you back to talk about not magic the gathering. What's that? Right. That's that's that a deckmaster game.
00:07:32
Speaker
It's a fad. I don't know how long it'll be around for. That's what that's what it is. It's just company startup startup company. We don't know where it's gonna go. But you were kind of saying last time we had you on I got to thank you before we move on because we had a discussion last time you were here we did talk magic it was about goblins and you know you you delivered we got we got goblins that good representation.
00:07:58
Speaker
But one of the things that you've been doing for, I believe this is year six, or is it seven? Nine. Nine. Jesus Christ, you're right, I did lose some years. So say we all my friends, so say we all. So for nine years, Gavin, you've been doing something called March Gladness. Do you want to tell us just a little bit about it, just what it is? Yeah, I'll kind of give the background here because
00:08:26
Speaker
I have had to explain this so many times because it's not like anything that any person ever does. It's such a strange concept. Um, but it totally took off. In fact, I even gave a whole presentation about this. Maybe it'll be linked in the show notes. I gave out a talk to a room full of a thousand people here in Seattle. Um, the people paid to come see me and a few other presenters talk is wild. So I had a thing called ignite. I can put the, put the link in the show notes. But anyway, so, um, imagine it's nine years ago.
00:08:55
Speaker
and you're using Facebook because that's all we ever use nine years ago. These days, a little bit less, but nine years ago we were all Facebooking because
00:09:06
Speaker
you know, the UI was better. And so one thing that I've always loved is I've got a lot of friends from around the world that I've met in all kinds of cool places. And I love having them on Facebook. I love posting things on Facebook because I got them all to interact together, right? And it was these, you know, my curated friends or not so curated friends, but you know, somewhat curated friends.
00:09:26
Speaker
And all my, you know, my friend from London with these great insights I met years ago, but it doesn't know anybody else, interrupted my friend from Seattle. And you know, that's kind of the joy of social media, seeing all these people come in together. And especially on my Facebook posts, I just really enjoy it. And people get to get to know each other a little bit, even be like, Oh, hey, this guy posted again, I want to see what he has to say, which I thought was really cool. And so I've always wanted to try and get as many people in the same room together as possible. I'm also, of course, a game designer. And I had the idea of what if I could
00:09:53
Speaker
use Facebook like a game. Like, yeah, yeah, Facebook games existed or whatever, but could I actually use my platform on Facebook as a game? And I was like, well, that's interesting. Let me give it a try. Let me see how it does.
00:10:10
Speaker
I had a couple games that are on Facebook, but the one and by far the most popular one I would say is called March Gladness. And this really came together when I realized that there were 31 days in March and a bracket of 32 things takes 32 days to complete. I was literally in the shower, it was truly a shower thought. I was in the shower and it all came together for me. And also, of course, March Madness is happening in March. In fact, I believe the way the thought came together was
00:10:36
Speaker
March Madness, it'd be so funny if I did something that was based on a bracket of my own in March. It's too bad March doesn't have 31 days. And then I realized, wait a second, March does have 31 days. At that point, I felt indebted to do it. So what it is, is
00:10:54
Speaker
I create a bracket of 32 things. Could be anything. Could be an abstract concept, like waking up and not feeling sick. Could be a very tangible place, like a library. Could be a thing that you eat, like a Girl Scout cookie. Could be a television show, like Parks and Recreation. Whatever you can think of, it's eligible. Anything that makes you glad. And in fact, right before March of Gladness every year, I ask people for things that make them glad, just to try and see the bracket a little bit.
00:11:20
Speaker
And then I just run off one match up a day. I simply post, hey, here's today's match up. We're gonna start with these two items against each other. And today is gonna be, you know,
00:11:30
Speaker
Star Trek versus the feeling of a fresh haircut. And people vote on that, whichever one they have higher, right? And you get people of all backgrounds. One thing I find is very funny is there's some number of people for which the other option, like it's just clear, right? There's like, obviously it's this one, like, come on. We all vote. Yeah. How did they get in here?
00:11:56
Speaker
And then the other side, you know, people on the other side are arguing the same thing, which I think is really honestly great evidence of just how our voting system works. You can look at, you know, not to get too political, but you can look at recent elections to, I think, really cement that idea in your mind. But yeah, so I started doing this. It's always a little terrifying to start a new project like this because
00:12:18
Speaker
It's like, is this going to take off, right? If, if I say I'm going to do this every day for 31 days and two people reply every day, I'm going to look pretty silly as I keep doing this for the next 30 days. Um, but no, it took off immediately. Lose that motivation for me. You know, like I, I'm going to commit to do this. Don't get a good response. And then I give up. I mean, that's another option. Right. One of my strategies is definitely just.
00:12:44
Speaker
Pretend it's going to work and it'll work. And sometimes it doesn't always, doesn't always work that way, but hey, sometimes it does. And then you feel like a genius. So, um, I, I just committed to it and it took off, right? I was getting hundreds of replies a day of people voting in the, in this thread and, um, it, it, yeah. So at the end of the very first year, the finals was cats versus dogs. It was big. It was epic. And there were almost like 500 replies or something like that. Right. I had very cleverly seated cats in one bracket and dogs in the other bracket.
00:13:27
Speaker
This year I went back to only running it on Facebook because it really feels like it's back to the original idea of what I wanted it to be, where my friends are interacting with each other. And like on Twitter, it's cool to see that like, you know, whatever, 8,000 people voted in some poll about this or whatever, but there's no discussion happening. There's none of that, like the people arguing their case really that much. And I kind of miss that. So I just only gonna do on Facebook from here on out, which is, you know, definitely impacts the numbers a bit just as folks are leaving Facebook. But it is,
00:13:37
Speaker
came into the finals and had an epic match.
00:13:55
Speaker
It is still something I look forward to every March. I have a lot of friends that are like, every March, this is what I come back to Facebook for, or I have some couples that use it every day at dinner. It's the thing they talk about. I know I have one person who works in a school with kids, and they bring it in when appropriate as the starter topic for the day. I have a friend in a library who puts it on their board every day of like, hey, here's your day. So I love, I absolutely love how much it has worked in people's lives and what they do.
00:14:24
Speaker
You know, immediately I barely use Facebook anymore these days. I use it for the Messenger feature and that's about it. But still in March for March gladness, then also I do one other one that's decently popular in November called Qvember. So every March and November I come back and I basically don't post on Facebook otherwise.
Predicting March Gladness Outcomes
00:14:40
Speaker
But it is something that I enjoy coming back to every year. I was kind of wondering, I saw that this year, because I remember it was fun to see as somebody who
00:14:50
Speaker
would often vote in it both on Twitter and on Facebook. I agree. I like it on Facebook better because I like to kind of think of an answer maybe that's not just vote because I think as you said, you see people start to comment, you'll see people like responses and you'll kind of be able to watch this in real time as people vote. You can see like clusters of votes and chunks, which to me is just a very interesting thing versus what Twitter was.
00:15:15
Speaker
Um, one of my favorite things to interrupt you just talking about clusters of trust. My favorite thing was one of the votes one year was like, one of the things was like sleeping in was, was one of the things. And like in the morning, sleeping in got like no votes. And then later in the day, sleeping in got a lot of votes. And I was just so funny to me. I'm like, yeah, well, story checks out, I guess, you know,
00:15:35
Speaker
I remember I was looking back through for to prep for this and I was looking back for the year that I think on Twitter something like feeling rested after a good night's sleep one and it didn't even like make it out of the first round on Facebook I was like because people on Facebook are realistic and we know it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's a it's a theoretical it's not an actual
00:15:54
Speaker
The other thing I really like about Facebook is you get to see what your friends voted because it highlights their comments on the thread too. So, you know, you don't get to see that on Twitter. Well, one of the things, I mean, of course, if I'm going to throw something out in the world, I want to set it up for success, right? And one of the questions I get asked every year basically is why is this not just a poll on Facebook because Facebook doesn't have a poll feature as opposed to people posting. And I have two reasons for that. The first reason is that
00:16:25
Speaker
It obfuscates the winner, which makes it just more exciting because if you can see the poll and you know who's winning, if it's a blowout, you're not going to vote in it, right? And I think it's cool to get you involved in it. I want to see what your reasons are. I want to see where you disagree. I want to see, you know, is there someone who dissents every week or whatever? I think everyone enjoys seeing that. And then two is simply just algorithm, right? You're having people post on a thing.
00:16:46
Speaker
is just gonna get people, be like, oh, your friend posted on this public thing, you should go check it out. And then they get involved in it, or they get invested in it, or they tag their friend. And that just creates this kind of viral nature for it, where people, I have friends on Facebook that I have never met, I have no interaction with, they do not play magic, they added me and they sent me a message, and they're like, hey, I love this, I just wanna be your friend so I can do stuff in March. And I'm like, awesome, like happy, you are a member of the Gladness crew now, good work.
00:17:16
Speaker
So with this, I am curious of a couple of things. So number one is seating. I know you mentioned that you do kind of ask people to either submit ideas or in the lead up, you might get some from there. Do you have an actual system for seating as a game designer? I do. And it is, I've never talked about this before, so you're getting some of the juicy inside scoop here on the Goblin Lore podcast.
00:17:40
Speaker
So it's different than a normal bracket. So in a normal bracket, like the way that you see this one versus 16, right? You want, you put the best team.
00:17:49
Speaker
against the, the, the worst ranked team of the ones that qualify or whatever the case might be. And the reason you do that is because over the course of the season, they've like, you know, done well to like get ranked in a certain place. And so, you know, you want the better teams to be in the finals. And so as a result, you set it up in such a way where upsets can happen and they quite often do in sports. But in general, you have the strong teams playing against the weak teams because the strong teams are more likely to win and the strong teams making it farther is kind of what, you know, what the whole system set up to do. Okay. That's how normal seeding works.
00:18:18
Speaker
March of Gladness is different because in March of Gladness, the thing that is actually by far the most interesting is when you have interesting things matched up against each other. Blowouts are usually not successful votes or not that popular because if you wander by a thread and it's obvious to you what's going to happen, you're not going to feel like you need to vote in it or attach your vote into the ring. And also it's not going to be very fun to discuss. Once again, getting back to that whole point of discussion, if we're voting between
00:18:45
Speaker
The ability to breathe oxygen and stubbing your toe, it's like, I'm going to choose the ability to breathe oxygen. That sounds like a pretty good thing. Not that stubbing your toe would ever be in there because that's not a glad thing, just as an example of a very polar one. So giving someone that's obvious is...
00:19:01
Speaker
not not what you want so actually the way i see it is i take all the 32 things for the year and i try my best to match them up however i think is going to create good matchups i'm not always correct like obviously i'm one person trying to estimate um
00:19:16
Speaker
And sometimes there's some upside and match ups, but more often than not, I would say that things are at least reasonably close in the round of 32. It's, it's always hard to tell though. Cause like, sometimes there are things I think people are just going to value very differently than how they actually do or things that are, you know, and it's just, there's every year or something that's surprising. There's some that go late that surprised me and some that get eliminated early that really surprised me. And to me, that's the beauty of it where like.
00:19:41
Speaker
You never know where it's gonna go. One year, I had Baby Smiles on there, and I'm like, oh, Baby Smiles is like a lock for the Final Four. I cannot imagine Baby Smiles not making it to Final Four. I lost in the Round of 32 or the Round of 16, and it was just like, okay, well, I guess either not enough people have seen Baby Smiles or I am just wrong. So, you know, you have to
00:20:04
Speaker
I learned something every year. And one of the fun things about it to me is after this whole process is said and done, I learned something about people. I learned about what they value and about what they find meaningful. And I think that's cool. So can you run through real quick the nine winners?
00:20:18
Speaker
Let's see if I, off the top of my head. Yeah, so I'll tell you the ones that I know off the top of my head. So the thing is, is the last one word winner was in 2015, until this year actually. The winner this year is a one worder.
00:20:39
Speaker
But until this year had been many word things and there's kind of this run for a long time on these many word items that are hard for me to always remember. Let's see how many I can get correct. So I know the year one is dogs. I know year two is pizza. I know year three is Mr. Rogers. Those are the three that I really remember because they're so there are these concrete concepts that are easy to remember. Then they get into the way more esoteric stuff. It's like
00:21:05
Speaker
maybe like the smell of food in a restaurant? No, it's, one is big feast with friends. Let's see, let's see if I can do it. This is telling us is that March Gladness should have a Wikipedia entry. Oh, here we go. Okay, here we go, I got it. It's, I got him, it's dogs, pizza, Mr. Rogers, hugging, that's the last one, we're the winner, hugging one,
00:21:33
Speaker
Who doesn't love a good hug, right? It's like seeing someone enjoy a gift that you gave them. So it's like a gift-giving one. There's receiving praise from someone you respect, which was nice. There's big feasts with friends, which is, you know, going out and drossing me with all your friends for any reason. And then the last one is having inspiration and making it reality.
00:21:59
Speaker
Oh yeah. So as you can tell, some of those get very like esoteric and wild. And this year's library. So we're back to one word winner. Good work. Good work libraries. The, um, I was, I was in libraries throughout. I mean, I, I never vote because my rule is, it's never happened, but my rule is always, I'll be the tiebreaker. If for some reason it's deadlocked at the end of the day, someone has to break the tie, right? So from a game designer standpoint, as a game designer, I made sure there is a solution for that.
00:22:26
Speaker
The answer is I will break the tie. I've never had to actually exercise that though. There was one day where it actually was tied, but then I like went to the bathroom and came back and like someone else had posted and I was like, great, we're locking it in. Remember, people always get up and go to the bathroom. Anything could happen when you go to the bathroom. That's what Momo said.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I personally always vote for the one word. If I could vote, I'd vote for the simple, succinct things. I think there's no better example than how easy it was to remember them. There are things that are in your head. They're concrete examples. There are things that you know and love and think about.
00:23:07
Speaker
Also, the longer esoteric ones are often more favored because you might not like pizza because you're lactose intolerant, but everyone to some degree enjoys seeing someone enjoy a gift you gave them. And it's like, so if your goal is to just garner enough support for a thing, the ones that are more generically appealing are more likely to do well.
00:23:28
Speaker
Which is why this year I was actually very surprised, happily so, the libraries ended up winning. Because in the finals, it was up against completing a big task that you're dreading. I'm like, oh man, everyone has big tasks that they dread, that's probably gonna win. Another one that went further than I expected. But I know it ended up losing the libraries, which is great, go libraries, they're great. Yeah, they've been under attack a lot lately too, so it was good to see some support for them.
Evolution of March Gladness
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, go support local libraries.
00:23:57
Speaker
One of the things that I have noticed over the years, the first year, I remember the joke. Early on, you put them on opposite sides of the bracket for a reason. Cats and dogs was almost for where you were starting. It seemed to be much more concrete things, if I'm remembering rightly, that first year.
00:24:18
Speaker
I think more of the experiences and more of these kind of philosophical or esoteric ones have really developed. And I'm kind of wondering how it's been for you for a refinement of this. Well, yeah, so it's like cats and dogs like that was like a classic finale. Well, so here's the thing. It's actually a very good game design question, right? It's like,
00:24:41
Speaker
When I did the first year, I mean, same thing as magic and alpha, right? When I did the first year of this, I was like, I didn't know I was going to do this every year for the next eight years. I had no idea. So I just like took all the cool things people suggested or that I had thought about. I put them in a bracket together because I thought it'd be funny.
00:24:57
Speaker
and I ran the bracket and so I blew, maybe correctly so, but I blew a lot of this very good A plus material in the first year. The year one has a lot of very strong contenders because I don't know, let's take the first 30 things that I think of and I never repeat things inside of the bracket.
00:25:14
Speaker
So as a result, you kind of squeeze yourself into going more and more esoteric the longer you go, because as you burn through the more the obvious stuff, what remains is either esoteric stuff or stuff that is somewhat less popular. And every year I do find a few diamonds in the rough that are simple things that haven't been used yet for sure. And, you know, the suggestion thread I have where folks suggest stuff, there's always someone that says something and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's, that's brilliant. Like I haven't, we haven't done that before. But you end up with a little more esoteric stuff because you just, uh,
00:25:44
Speaker
That's just how it goes. There's less normal stuff to choose. And there's only so many foods in the world, but you can kind of repackage feelings in any number of different ways. So that's why we've ended up with more of that. But like I said, there's still some good short ones, and libraries winning this year is a great example. So in 32 years, we could have the bracket of all runner-ups.
00:26:08
Speaker
You're poisoning yourself very well. You're just setting it up. My plan was always in 16 years, after 16 years, over the 17th year, to do some previous ones. Either the winner and runner up from every year, and maybe all the runner ups are in one bracket, all the winners are in one bracket, and you have the top runner up versus the top winner or something. Or to just take two that I love from that year that didn't get the shine they deserved and put them in.
00:26:33
Speaker
We'll see. I mean, you know, I've always said that's what will happen when I, when I get to number 16 or number 17, um, will it actually happen? Who knows? Right. But it's, it's like I said, sometimes I think when you saw my writer, right? I studied creative writing and one thing they teach you when you're writing, especially if you're going to write a movie or TV show or something.
00:26:52
Speaker
is you want to create plot threads you can come back to later. You might never come back to them, but just mention something, could be a throwaway line, could be something small, and then you can come back to it later if you want to, that you have access to that. And if you don't, then you don't have to tap into it. And with me, when I'm creating something like this, I'm always like, hey, you know what? I'll have an idea of a cool thing I can do. If I get to year 17, awesome, I'll run it.
00:27:17
Speaker
And if I don't get to year 17, then it didn't matter. And it's like, well, I just had this funny idea and, um, you know, it's in the back of my mind, but I think it's
March Gladness and Mindfulness
00:27:25
Speaker
a funny thing. And I've mentioned a few times in comments as well. So some people are always like number 17, number seven. It's like, you know, six, six seasons on a movie, right? It's like number 17. So, you know, that'd be a funny way to end it. We'll see. We'll also see if Facebook still exists in, um, whatever, eight years or society, whichever. I mean, whichever comes first. Yeah. I believe in society.
00:27:47
Speaker
I mean, this is one of the things I personally like about March Gladness. It is a reframe for me. I mean, this is something that I like to do. I like to do daily gratitude. And actually, I've been doing some more milieu based groups. So just kind of like group programming for groups that meet multiple times per week.
00:28:10
Speaker
Whenever I lead our Monday morning, I do a daily gratitude for some of the reason that marriage gladness is good for me. It's not a Pollyanna-ish, we need to just act like everything is good, but we do need to acknowledge the things that are gladdening, the things that do make us happy, the things that we do have to be mindfully aware of. I oftentimes talk about, so we try to do this in our family. My wife and I went to this great talk called The Happiness Project, or Bounce Back.
00:28:40
Speaker
And it was kind of this idea and more positive psychology, but there is the kind of we do like three good things at night. So what are three things that were actually good from the day? And then what's something that you're looking forward to tomorrow? And oftentimes that looking forward to tomorrow might literally be the cup of coffee because we got a blend in that we really like. It's just a way to kind of, I don't know,
00:29:05
Speaker
I can get stuck in that doom and gloom kind of trap. Personally, that is my brain likes to go that direction. I live there. Right. Hobbs, you've talked about that approach, that mindfulness technique on the show before, and I've used that myself when I start to feel
00:29:24
Speaker
bogged down with things or I'm not like days are passing that I'm not really noticing and it's a way for me to help kind of ground myself and what I'm doing and what I've done because then I have to if I have to sit down and write three concrete things and even if it was just I went to lunch at the fast food restaurant and it came out pretty good like even if it's just something like that it's keeping me mindful of what did I do today and paying attention to what's going on and
00:29:51
Speaker
The what's one thing I'm looking forward to is always, for me at least, has been an important thing to again keep kind of keep me engaged and involved in all the stuff that's actually happening around me. So I love the March Gladness thing. It's not exactly the same thing, but I love this concept of just every March, let's talk about things we love. Let's talk about positive things and put this out there and have conversations and get people going about it.
00:30:21
Speaker
It's really where it was born from for me of just like, hey, there's nothing in the world that'll make you sad. Let's talk about things that make us happy. And I think for a lot of people, just like a good reminder of happy things that are around them all the time. And how much the also how much those things matter to other people, too. It's good reminder of how much how much those things do matter. You mentioned the hope for society, right? Like, I know that when I do it, I love to see, as Taya said, I see people that I know on there. And then I get to see just what others are writing. And
00:30:49
Speaker
it is a great kind of like reconnection to people. Around things that like are pretty low stakes in the terms of like, yeah, I've never really seen it like devolve into like some sort of vitriol over something that's happening. It's hard to get angry over butter versus peanut butter. It's just, you know, it's gonna be a fun conversation.
00:31:13
Speaker
I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I mean, everybody knows magic players will argue about anything. Which one's strictly better than the other? It's peanut butter, but that's besides the point. We could do it right now on the show. I basically can't cook without butter. So yeah, but yeah, it isn't right. Like it's it's good nature. And this is good nature. That's the whole point.
00:31:41
Speaker
Maybe maybe a weird tangent or a weird comparison to make but it's got me thinking about I don't know a couple years ago I saw somebody on Twitter was talking about a sports anime that I like there's this volleyball anime. It's it's That that is a tangent, but they're talking about why they love Sports anime as a thing and they're like they realized it's because this is a you know, these are it's it's a
00:32:06
Speaker
part of anime where the characters can get really passionate and they can still have all the same over the top ridiculous stuff of all the other action animes, except that no one's life is in danger. And there's no, you know, world ending things, there's no killing, there's this stuff, they're just playing a game. And I think there's a similar thing too, where people can get engaged in these debates between cats and dogs and really get involved in that and get passionate about something.
00:32:32
Speaker
But as you said, it's not about anything bad. You're just and ultimately, neither one is bad. One you may prefer over the other one may be clearly better to you than the other. But the whole point of it is that these are all just good things. And people talking about why they love one or another. I go ahead. I have something on a totally different subject to say. But go ahead. Welcome to the show. You're perfectly good to go now.
00:33:00
Speaker
Just tangent us, take us wherever you wanna go,
Introducing Qvember
00:33:03
Speaker
Gavin. I was gonna say that so, you know, March Gladness, I mentioned I've done a few of these different Facebook games. March Gladness was my second of these games. The first was a thing called Qvember, which still runs and it's still popular. And it's still, I highly recommend checking out. It's every day in November, I post a new question. And these questions are things that are, I would call, they're not simply yes or no questions, right? They're kind of free form response, getting people interacting with each other. And the, you know, usually there's like,
00:33:30
Speaker
50 to 70 on a really spicy one meal get over a hundred. It's not as many replies nearly not even close as March gladness but it's still kind of same thing as getting folks interacting with each other and
00:33:41
Speaker
You know, one thing about those though is, I mean, I really enjoy them. I love it. But because they're these kind of, you know, wide ranging questions and someone have to deal with very deep parts of people's personalities, they can get, they don't always leave them feeling as glad. You leave them feeling maybe like you learned something or you found some introspection or like you had a fun discussion, but you know, maybe you don't walk away thinking about happy things as much. And when I pioneered March of Gladness, I was just glad that you could come in. It would take you two seconds to write your answer and you could leave thinking about puppies and you know, what's wrong with that?
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say, so I love Qvember too. There have been some that have left me feeling very, I don't know, conflicted. I mean, not in a bad way, like very introspective, but right? Like there's no guarantee that I'm gonna walk away feeling good from it, which I am in March Gladness. So it's been nice to see, you know, even looking at this year, the amount of responses and now realizing it's the ninth year, not the sixth since I have no concept of time, that you're still getting kind of this level of engagement.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's always, it always ebbs and flows. I can find the date, the time I post and the day matters a lot. Of course, as Facebook becomes less popular, that changes a lot too. But you know, as long as it's still reasonably popular, I'll probably keep doing it on there. It's easier for you to count up the results at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, you know, people always ask, wow, must take you so long to count everything up. And I'm like, no, not really. I mean, it takes me
00:35:07
Speaker
Under somewhere between five and 10 minutes tops to do that. So, um, yeah, I'm pretty good at it. It's actually, I do it on my phone, which is way faster than on my computer screen for some reason. I'm just very good at counting things on my phone. So I just, I just sit there, I count it up, I double check it. And, uh, that's the whole thing. As you don't have minions, you haven't hired people to manage. No, no, I haven't crowdsourced it quite yet, I think.
00:35:34
Speaker
So what are some of your favorite stories that you can think of them? I mean, either match-ups that you clearly remember or just like you said, you've mentioned some of them, but like people bringing it to their classroom or those sorts of things.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess I blew it early, but those are the ones that the ones where people take it and use it as part of the everyday life to me are just awesome ones when it's like, hey, this is a great dinner conversation, or sometimes I'll get a message from people. And the person I get a message from is like, hey, we spent all dinner tonight, me and my friends just arguing this thing over and over. And I was like, that's awesome. You know, I mean, maybe not the arguing, like hopefully it was nice.
00:36:07
Speaker
But in general, that philosophy is awesome, and I'm glad that you were able to have this fun discussion out of this. And once again, just reflect on things that make you glad and how they impact your lives. And it is sort of, as you said earlier, a way of doing your daily intentions. And I love that with my friends who does it in the classroom, it inspires kids, right? Let's talk about things that make you happy. Let's talk about how they impact you. I think that's really cool and probably a great exercise to do with the kids.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, I was already thinking as this group that I've been doing the gratitude with, that could be a great place during March to see if we could bring these in. I mean, that's I hadn't even thought about that. And yeah, so I have to ask, are you going to give us a couple of words on April anguish? Oh, well, it's just
00:36:52
Speaker
So here's what happened. I finished the first year. So I'm coming down the home search for the first year, right? It's May 29th, May 30th, May 31st. And I'm like, great, I'm gonna post the winner on April 1st. But I realized that posting anything on April 1st is like a bad idea because no one's gonna believe you if you tell them what something is on April 1st. So we all know how that goes on the internet. April Fool's has lessened me a little bit in recent years, but it's still on the present. So I was like, okay, well, what if I did something else on April 1st?
00:37:20
Speaker
When I was concepting March Gladness, actually, at one point I had an idea that I'm very glad I discarded for basically the reason that this entire podcast is talked about. But I had the idea of doing March Sadness, right? And I was like, oh, what if instead of the 30 happy things, I threw 32 sad things against each other? Because I bet that would be popular and get traction. As we all know, negative things are more popular than happy things on the internet.
00:37:45
Speaker
And so I thought about it, but I discarded it. I'm like, no, let's stick with the glad thing. And once again, I'm really glad I did, but I had that in my back pocket and I was like, okay, well on April Fool's this year, I'll just post this thing called April anguish and I'll make up two dumb, two silly things, right? That are going to go against each other. They're negatives, right? Things that like spiders versus stub in your toe or whatever. And so every year I just post that on April 1st. And it does mean that in about, uh, what, 20,
00:38:12
Speaker
23, no, 24 more years, 23 more years? How does it matter? 23 more years, we'll have a completed bracket, so stay tuned. So stay tuned. Or, you know, then in 16, you could run the two of those and get your own. Like I said, I have long ranging plans, whether or not to come to fruition, who the heck knows? But one of the things that's interesting is a couple of my friends really love April English.
00:38:38
Speaker
And, uh, one of them took it in particular and ran it on her Facebook or their, uh, their Facebook, excuse me. And so, um, the entire month of it. Yep. Now, you know, one of the things that is of course, unique about me is I have just a huge traction of people. So theirs was not quite as.
00:38:58
Speaker
As well attended, but it still you know had whatever 20 or 30 people every day showing up to vote and I thought it was fun You know it didn't quite bring the same happiness to my day every every day But it didn't make me a lot of them did frankly make me smile cuz they're so ridiculous, so it's fun
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think of that as being the harmless version of an April Fool's joke, something that you clearly had taken two things that people, you know, following up as long as people know you, right? You're not putting it out there trying to trap into anyone into thinking something different about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And it is a funny way to talk about negative things, right? Right.
00:39:36
Speaker
So Gavin, anything that we haven't covered that you've been wanting to tell people?
Surprises and Future of March Gladness
00:39:41
Speaker
I mean, I had been wondering about seeding, so I'm glad that I asked that. But is there anything else about this experience that you've been wanting people to ask you? Well, I'll just say this, that I think one thing to not be underestimated here is
00:39:58
Speaker
I, it shows to me the power of a little bit of surprise because there's a lot of people that just love coming in every, every day for the first 16 days and seeing what the match-ups are. And the first 16, except for maybe the finals are usually the best attended days. Cause everyone's wants to see what's going on. Right. And after you've seen all 16, you know what all the entries are. And maybe you pick a favor, you come back and vote for it only or whatever. But those first 16 days, like everyone is like really interested and excited. And so definitely I just, you know, I always talk about the power of mystery in games.
00:40:29
Speaker
And to me, like the mystery of what made the bracket this year didn't make the bracket is really powerful for a lot of people. So just as you're doing things in your life and creating your own fun experiences, you know, when there's a fun mystery, try and preserve it, which is why people ask me every year if I can give them a bracket on day one so they can build their own brackets. He was going to try and win. That's a very popular thing to do in March Madness style competitions, right? You build, you have your own bracket and you build it.
00:40:54
Speaker
For me, I don't want to explicitly do not want to do that because so much of that might be fun for a few people want to fill it out. But so much of the fun for people is seeing what's even going to be on there in the first place that I want to preserve it as this. And I will say I the seating thing has always been interesting to me because of some of the reasons you were saying like, I like to know people's mindset of when we're taking things that are not
00:41:18
Speaker
You know, like rec, there's a lot in sports seating that it makes sense, right? There's ways to look at strength of schedules. There's going to be some arguments about where people get in. Uh, people follow college basketball, you know, that there are certain types of upsets that are common because it's like, you know, 12 versus fives because 12s are winners of like a regional conference. I mean, there's like certain things like that, that are built into it still where you do want upsets. You want those things, but I like to know processes. Um, I think of this one, uh,
00:41:46
Speaker
Mark rosewater used to do a lot more polls, right? I remember him running a lot of head to head competitions. And I was always interested in he would do the bracket, you would be able to see it. And so it's always that question of like, how is seating done? I am fascinated by how people see things. So
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I think just as like, you know, that's been the game design that coming through. I've got such a unique skill set that, you know, whenever I see something that I think only I can uniquely bring, or that I have the right tools that am I just supposed to bring the people who would be interested enough to participate in this kind of thing to create that crowd. Because, you know, one of my favorite sayings is nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. So like, you know, getting people excited about requires people to exist to initially participate in it. So when I see the chance to do something like that, I want to try make it happen. And
00:42:30
Speaker
When it comes to, you know, the game design aspect of seeding and things, just you try stuff out and you learn and like any game designer you iterate. And over the past nine years, I have a pretty good hunch about how, how certain things are going to turn out or what's going to be popular with people or how to seed things. And it's thought I was perfect, but it's a good enough hunch to get rolling with at least. Is there one that like is just blew you away that like you really just completely missed?
00:42:54
Speaker
That's so hard. The ones I was thinking about are the failures, like Baby Smiles, where I was like, wow, I really thought Baby Smiles was going to go far. I can't think of one that pops into my head. I mean, libraries this year went way further than I thought it was going to. I did not have a lot of hope for libraries. So the fact that it won, as a writer, is very pleasing to me. But I thought that was a top 16, tops kind of situation.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, as a resource center as somebody who works with people who are, you know, homeless and especially coming out of a pandemic. You know, I've even tried to return to reading and the fact that I can get things digitally from a library is just exciting to me now, right? Like, yeah, to still have that support where I can check a book out on my Kindle is a cool thing.
00:43:40
Speaker
And like I said to me, it is a spot where I know that for us locally, when we've worked with people on job searching that they can get internet access. I mean, there's a lot that I I just want to make sure we're giving enough props to libraries, because I thought the fact that it won, I was it was not something when I was looking through initially that I thought was going to go far. And Taya, I know you said you were pulling for it the entire way. Yeah, definitely. I was
00:44:07
Speaker
I was really hoping to see it do well and just super excited to have it work out. I think it's the first time the one I picked actually made it all the way. Oh, nice job. Nice job. It's like the one that you followed from round one.
00:44:32
Speaker
It wasn't from round one, but the one I had been, I had supported it since round one. It wasn't the one that I would have picked to win the whole thing, but it is one that I voted for every time and it won. So I was happy for that. I'm curious what you had as number one, if you remember. Oh, I don't remember exactly which one. We don't know the full 32 at first. I'd have to go back and look at like which one was my favorite to win.
00:44:57
Speaker
This is why it's also an interesting thing is we're talking about it, right? Like it's trying to remember some of these matchups. They almost get lost because the discussion kind of moves on. It's, it's, but I, I'm curious because, uh, I, what's funny is the final one to be the, uh, the completing a task was actually, it was very high up on my list. And I think that I've noticed it for myself doing March Gladness every year. I, I tend to notice that the, the ones that are things like that, that are more kind of task oriented or, or accomplishments for me, or I think, as you've mentioned,
00:45:27
Speaker
Like people liking things that I or getting praise or those things. I have been finding myself drawn to those So I I actually think I chose tasks in the final And it's just it's it's interesting For me to look at what I choose and why so I Just want to thank you for like giving us that is a kind of a cool opportunity and hearing the kind of the game designer perspective behind it and
00:45:53
Speaker
No, it's been a lot of fun to run and I look forward to bringing it back next year. Year number 10, March of Gladness. I keep thinking, I mean, this is November's 10th year in November this year too. And I keep wondering if I should just do something special for the 10th year. I haven't cracked it yet, but I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. If anyone has any ideas.
00:46:10
Speaker
You got time. Yeah, there's you got like seven months. Well, the way it works for November, especially as I write the questions for it because they're I mean, they're pretty involved questions. So I read the questions for all year whenever I have one. And so you never know what's gonna happen. Maybe I'll have some fun for what it'll come up with for the for this year.
00:46:25
Speaker
Sounds good. And Gavin, do you want to let the kids know where they can find you out there on the interwebs, besides Facebook? Yeah, you can. I would suggest my Facebook friends, the group is full, although some of those people drop off, but you can always just go follow me there as well on my Facebook. You can of course find me on Twitter, just Instagram, my name, at Gavin Verhay, very easy to find. You know, you can Google me and probably find me on most social media platforms. So, at Gavin Verhay, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok,
00:46:54
Speaker
Tumblr, Instagram, whatever, Tik, I guess I said TikTok already, Friendster, whatever. Are you gonna start making ones up and we have to guess if they're real or not? Yeah, my face, spacebook, friendmedia.org, I don't know, wherever you wanna find me. Always got good morning magic on YouTube as well. Of course, yep. So I always enjoy watching.
00:47:17
Speaker
of course i should i should plug the youtube shows it's funny i don't i don't always think of youtube as social media but i mean it kind of is in a way so hit me up youtube go watch my channel good morning magic it's a blast i talk about magic design three days a week literally anything and everything um and it's i got videos that span a very wide range of topics you should come check it out are we gonna get more of the uh commander series breakdowns i've really enjoyed those
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I love doing them. Melissa loves doing them. It's just a time thing because, you know, the episodes are two and a half episodes. Melissa and I are extremely busy. So I've actually been trying to record the last one for about the past month and just stuff keeps coming up on the days we pegged to record.
00:47:55
Speaker
So we will, we will find a time to record it. It is on the books, but, um, things have just gotten really, really busy, but we want it. We very much want to, and there's a lot of say in C 19, including Doc's side extortionists. So, uh, stay tuned. Yeah. There's a lot to say about that. It's a goblin. That's, I don't know. Like, I guess there's other things, but it's a goblin. So it's obviously a decent card.
00:48:21
Speaker
I do enjoy pointing people, whenever you do one of the explainers on certain rules, like the Ninjutsu one, I like to point people to them. I always love when I hear from people being like, this is how I proved to my friend that my thing works, thank you. And I'm like, great, awesome. I just imagine they're playing a match, someone complains, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, and just pulls out their phone and is like, watch this video. I don't know how that interaction goes down, but I really hope that's how it goes down.
00:48:47
Speaker
I kind of just did it in advance when somebody was like, I don't get new jitsu. And I'm just like, go watch this video. This will explain it to you. Yeah, it's, it's a weird mechanic. I remember we talked about changing it. So it didn't do any of those things. And then we didn't change it. And I was like, Grant, I'm going to tell people how to do all these things. So, um, you know, if you let out, if you're going to give them tools, let them play. Yeah.
00:49:08
Speaker
Great. Thank you so much, Gavin. It's been a great conversation. I'm glad you came on to talk about March Gladness. It's a lot of fun on the four dates, at least one listener out there somewhere playing next year in March Gladness. And you come join up now on the Facebook feed and you can be there for a key member. I really don't post anything basically except for March Gladness in Qvember. So if you follow me, you're not going to get a bunch of random spam. You're basically just get stuff in the fun months. Yeah.
00:49:33
Speaker
And hopefully we'll be seeing you in Minneapolis. Yep. I'll be in Minneapolis. I'll see you all there. I've got the unknown events. I'm excited to see what your mystery event is. I've already signed up for it. So whatever it is, I'm going to be excited to do it. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransense, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore Chronicler.
00:50:03
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com.
00:50:13
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:50:41
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.