Blow My Mind!

Kickstarter and Forever Stoked Creative made a game—and we're bringing it to PAX East 2023. It's called Blow My Mind and it RULES.

Blow My Mind Logo

Kickstarter at PAX East 2023: Visit Us at Booth #13115

Kickstarter loves to engage with Kickstarter creators at game conferences in new and exciting ways.

So, for PAX East 2023, we're bringing Blow My Mind, a game we worked closely with the incredible brains at Forever Stoked Creative to create. Via the game, we'll be driving people away from our booth and toward Kickstarter creators throughout the expo hall.

Think of this game as a physical representation of Kickstarter, where instead of directing people towards your campaign, we're driving folks to your booth. Since Kickstarter does not make or sell games, we wanted our involvement with the conference to be community-driven, not financially-driven.

Kickstarter’s mission is to bring creators' projects to life, but that process takes more than just driving backers to a live campaign. It's a long process that starts in spaces like this conference.

Forever Stoked Creative took our mission to heart and created Blow My Mind with their passion for the tabletop games community.

Blow My Mind encourages wild conversations and outside-the-box thinking with its questions. More importantly, it gets the community to discover creators they may not have known about already by encouraging participants to look for new cards throughout the conference, which over 25 exhibitors will be handing out.

Scavenger Hunt

 illustrated goose with a Kickstarter logo in it's mouth
Blow My Mind is basically a wild goose chase.
There are geese at various Kickstarter creators’ booths throughout the PAX East expo hall. Find each of these booths and receive a corresponding stamp on your card. While you're there, talk to the creator about their game. Maybe you can even demo it!

Instructions

Participants pick up punch cards from the Kickstarter booth (#13115) and collect stamps from each participating creator. Those who collect 20 stamps can bring their stamped card to our booth to redeem a reward. There are limited rewards per day, so we encourage participants to act quickly.

Blow My Mind

Blow My Mind is a conversational debate game where the goal isn’t to win the debate, but to blow the most minds with weird and interesting points while you collectively try to answer the unanswerable.

Setup

Image
You’ve got the card. You’ve got some people. You’re done setting up. You’re crushing this.

Goal

Blow the most minds.

How to Play

  1. Read the question aloud and start talking about it. There are no set turns, just be polite and don’t talk over people. REMEMBER: This is a discussion, not a debate. Switch sides, ask questions, make counterpoints, back up someone else’s opinion, whatever.
  2. If anyone feels the conversation wrapping up, just ask, “Are your minds blown?” If 2 people say yes then the round ends. This could be a few minutes or a few hours if you go deep.
  3. On the count of 3, everyone simultaneously points to the person blew their mind the most. The person(s) who gets the most points(ha!) wins the round. They sign this card. The owner of this card decides ties.
  4. Play again. Or don’t. This card is not the boss of you.
  5. Go collect more cards and keep playing more rounds!

Two-Player Variant Rules

Read the topic aloud then just like, have fun talking about weird stuff with your friend. Try to bring someone else into the conversation. Make a new friend!

Be Cool

This is a fun game of weird conversations but sometimes things can get pretty real. If things get too heavy just let people know it’s bumming you out. If someone else says something is too heavy for them, respect that and move on. This is especially important if you’re playing with people you don’t know well. The most important rule is that everyone is having fun!

Variants

If you have a bunch of cards and want to sit down and play a “full” game follow these extra rules.

  1. Shuffle the deck, draw the top card, and read it aloud. Blow minds. End the round.
  2. All players secretly write down the player that they think made the most interesting point and set it aside till the end of the game. Draw another card and keep going.
  3. End Game

After playing 10 rounds, gather all the names that were written at the end of each round. Total up how many times each name was written and whoever has the highest count wins.

Timer
Grab a 30 second timer on your phone. Instead of asking “are your minds blown” to end a round, when any player feels the conversation has slowed down or that it is time to move on, they may start the timer. Wrap things up in 30 seconds. This can get a little hectic but if you’re feeling that, go for it.

FAQ

  • Can you point at yourslf?
    No, don’t be that dude.
  • Well actually, there is a CORRECT answer…
    No, don’t be that dude either.

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Marie Enger did the drawing. Gordon LeVasseur, Eric Slauson, Blaise Sewell, and Matt Fantastic along with Forever Stoked Creative made the rest of it.

Special Thanks: Socrates, Jonathan Ritter-Roderick, Cheech & Chong, Rene Descartes, Confucius, kaleidoscopes, Amanda Rios, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jack Handey, Emma Goldman, blacklight posters, Alex Hudson, shower beers, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Amato, and New Haven Game Makers Guild.