Hosting a Dinner Party is Tough

Hosting a dinner party is tough nowadays. I don't just mean the effort of shopping for food, cleaning the house, preparing food, and cleaning up afterwards. Even just planning the menu is getting difficult. So many people have food allergies nowadays that if you get 2-3 people with different no-can-do lists it's hard to assembly a reasonable sized menu that offers enough choices for everyone.

BTW I don't dispute people's food allergies. Many folks out there observe that food allergies "didn't used to be" so common and therefore conclude that they're fake. I instead attribute the apparent increase to better awareness of medical conditions today versus years ago. I believe the same proportion of people have always had various allergies or sensitivities but now more of them know they have such conditions.

For example, one of my college roommates learned a few years after graduation that he's lactose intolerant. "When did that start?" I asked. "You always loved splitting a pizza with me." "I've probably always had it," he explained. "I just thought I had a weak stomach. Now I know why."

For a small gathering we hosted Saturday night there were already competing allergies and religious restrictions in play, even with just a few people attending. The menu was quickly whittled down to, "No meat, no dairy, no eggs." Ugh, what's left? I grumbled silently.

Cutting across the issue of planning a menu around different people's limitations is the matter of how hosts view their responsibility for entertaining guests. At one end of the spectrum people take the attitude of, "Our house, our menu, and guests are rude if they don't eat all of it and say thank-you." At the other end of the spectrum are hosts who bend over backward to accommodate a guest, setting the entire menu around pleasing a single person even if the hosts and their family find it unsatisfying. From reading online discussions of hosting problems it seems not uncommon to find people operating at either of these extremes.

In the lead up to Saturday's party I felt we were reaching the bend-over-backwards extreme. My partner had quickly negotiated a menu with the guests that respected all of their needs— including the tough restrictions of a person who told us he might not even be able to attend, and if he did come, it would be hours late. Finally I told my partner on Saturday after lunch that I was probably going to eat nothing at dinner. In my own house. I was even considering no-showing my own party because I found nothing on restrictive menu appealing to eat.

Fortunately it didn't come to that. My partner agreed to relax some of the restrictions when she realized how dissatisfied I was. I got her to recognize that when we're entertaining people with limitations we don't have to make everything on the table fit everyone's limits simultaneously. At the same time, of course, we're not going to tell a guest, "Hey, we heard you can't eat X, so here's the one thing with no X in it for you!" There's a happy middle ground in making sure that each person has at least a few food options they can enjoy.

I Need More Than 10 Minutes Notice for a Pre-Hours Meeting

My normal working hours start at 8am local time. From the perspective of accommodating others it's an eminently reasonable start time. It's not like I'm being a stereotypical engineer and drifting up to my desk sometime around 9:30am, maybe. (At my previous job my colleagues tended to arrive at the office just before 9:30am.)

Today a colleague wanted to meet with me at 7:30. My 8am start time is displayed on my calendar— so anyone who tries to book an earlier meeting sees a warning that I'm generally not available. I am willing to accommodate pre-hours meetings, though. But I need, among other things, reasonable notice. Today the person inviting me to the 7:30am meeting sent the invitation at... 7:19am. If you're asking me to start work early I need more than 10 minutes notice!

And by "more than 10" I don't mean 11!

Reach out to me during working hours the day before to confirm that the pre-hours meeting is okay.

How Players Have Fun in Role-Playing Games

A few weeks ago I read a good blog in the roleplaying games blog Gnome Stew, entitled Entertainment is Key (Nov. 2023). It's about how roleplayers have different motivations to play and how a good game master (GM) strives to understand their goals to craft a playing experience that's entertaining for everyone. It got me thinking about the successes and failures of group entertainment in the games I've played and a few techniques that help tilt the game toward the former rather than the latter.



The first thing to recognize is that gamers do have different expectations of what to get out of the game. Some are looking for high fantasy storytelling, some are looking to crush every opponent, and some just want to play everything for laughs. I've seen games struggle and occasionally fail because the players want things that are too dissimilar.

The second thing to understand is that trying to stitch together a game around conflicting interests is not the way it has to be. You can elicit players’ ideas of enjoyment, align the game to them, and ensure they fit with each other. For me this is an indispensible part of Session Zero.

I’ve found many other GMs regard Session Zero merely as a chance to align on what game system we’ll play, what our character classes are, and check that we’ve constructed our characters per the rules. To me this is only part of Session Zero. The other critical part is aligning on how we have fun with the game and with each other.

One tip I have for fellow GMs is not to make “What’s your idea of fun?” an open ended question. That’s where you’ll get a lot of vague or confused answers. I recommend instead you start by outlining the broad strokes of how you’ve designed your game. Then invite the players to identify where, within that range, they find it most enjoyable to play.

For example, in the City of the Dead game I've been running recently I pointed out in our Session Zero that the game system I’d chosen is on the “crunchier” end of the spectrum (rules-heavy D&D) because working the rules and rolling dice to determine outcomes is fun for me— up to a certain point. Then I asked the players each to weigh in on how far they liked to take letting the mechanics determine the story vs. the story determine the story. We quickly reached a consensus on how we'd enjoy playing this game. Note, if I'd asked an open ended question I probably would have gotten 5 disparate answers, but by starting with an outline and asking the group to choose where the center is, we converged on a mutually satisfying answer much faster.



A second tip for fellow GMs is to believe what your players tell you but also not believe it. Watch how they act in the game to determine whether they’re really having fun! I’ve seen this repeatedly with respect to the question, “Do you like a combat heavy game vs. roleplaying heavy?”

Players so often tell me they want more roleplaying, more courtly intrigue, etc., versus hack-and-slash… yet repeatedly when I create role-playing heavy stories they lean away from engaging them, look bored, and grumble about how they’ve “done nothing” all session since there were no combats. So yes, definitely talk about what players want from the game up front, but keep an eye on where & how they're engaging as you go, too.