Bday 21

Already in the 2nd year of Corona, severe restrictions on meetings and no end in sight. For my 21st birthday therefore only an online celebration was an option. The big challenge is to combine this with fun. Offline you can just put out drinks and turn up the music and it's an organized evening. Online that is not so easy. You have to come up with something to keep people entertained. I decided to to set a framework first. Since most people got to know Discord via Corona, I decided to use this platform. In addition to some restrictions, there are also many opportunities online that are not possible offline. For example, you can work much better with gamification to motivate people. That's why I thought to myself, why don't I just turn my whole birthday party into a game? I could divide my guests into into two teams that compete against each other in different disciplines over the course of the Bday and collect points. and collect points. The team with the most points wins. As I have a large group of people from Karlsruhe through my studies and a large group of Mannheimer from school, I decided to have these two groups compete against each other. The Mannheimer against the Karlsruher. So I thought about creative disciplines and events that were as different as possible to increase the fun for everyone. There was even a detailed information booklet so that the guests could prepare themselves.

Events & Disciplines

Event: The Bday Counter

To increase the hype and reduce the lack of planning, there was a countdown on my Bday that counted down the time until the next event. This was a non-joinable voice channel that was constantly renamed by a bot (Bday-Timer) to display the time until the next event.

Event: Speed-Dating

What should have been called Speed-Friending was an event at the beginning of Bday, which was supposed to get people to get to know each other better, as it is more difficult to get to know each other online. Participants could get to know each other in groups of three in a voice channel. Each group had 5 minutes time to introduce themselves to each other and ask questions. After 5 minutes, they switched and the next group could get to know each other. The self-written bot Shuffle took care of the fully automatic distribution of the participants into the groups.

Discipline: Rally (35 points)

The Rallye serves as a scavenger hunt to motivate the guests to explore the complete offer of the birthday party. Guests have to find answers to bots and events in order to collect points. There were also creative tasks to help the guests grow together. This produced interesting results, such as this caricature:

... or this story:

Jack

Endlich. Endlich war der Zeitpunkt gekommen. Carl blies die Kerzen auf dem Kuchen aus, während seine Freunde anfingen zu singen. Es war sein einundzwanzigster Geburtstag und er hatte alle seine Freunde eingeladen, um mit ihnen Among Us zu spielen. Aber davor durfte der Kuchen natürlich nicht fehlen! Plötzlich spürte Carl eine Hand auf seinem Rücken - es war Aki, die beste Freundin von Piggy und Poll. "Danke für die Einladung, Carl. Ich weiß, dass du uns eigentlich nicht magst, weil wir die Danksten Memer der Klasse sind." "Ihr macht vielleicht bessere Memes als ich, dafür habe ich aber besseren Rhythm als ihr. YEAH!" Carl legte ein phattes Trommelsolo auf dem Tisch hin, während seine Schwester Miku den Shuffle dazu tanzte. Beide hatten die Nummer perfektioniert und sie beeindruckte alle Partygäste. Nachdem die ersten Stücken Kuchen aufgegessen wurden, klopfte es an der Tür. Wer konnte das bloß sein? Die Tür quietsche und ächzte bedrohlich - es war Septapus, der ultimative Quizmaster! Aus einem Reflex sprang Hodor, der breitgebaute Riese, direkt zur Tür und stemmte sich dagegen. Der Quizmaster durfte auf keinen Fall eindringen! Beim allmächtigen ROB, das durfte einfach nicht passieren! Ansonsten würden alle in Hydras verwandelt werden! Ein Glück eilte Jack zur finalen Rettung: Er rannte zur Tür und trat Septapus durch den Türspalt direkt ins Gesicht. Sein Kopf zersprang in tausend Teile und die Gefahr war gebannt. Der Geburtstag konnte endlich weitergehen!

Discipline: Discord Dungeon Adventure (10 points)

The Discord Dungeon Adventure was an elaborate text adventure that took the guests into the depths of the Temple of the holy Ilias. Here they had to solve puzzles and complete tasks in order to leave the temple. A detailed description of the adventure can be found in this article: Bday Metagame 21.

Event: XP-Leveling

XP-Leveling should motivate guests to actively participate in my Bday. You could collect XP by writing messages or interacting with certain bots. The XP was recorded on a leaderboard to increase the competition factor. Once you reached a certain XP level, you could level up and unlock rewards. These rewards were higher Discord rights (like adding emojis) or insights into very personal texts of mine.

Discipline: Codenames (10 points)

The game Codenames is a wonderful game that you can also play online in 2 teams against each other. The game was played via the website codenames.game. The secret service chiefs and the agents of both teams were each in a language channel and had a chaotic conversation about the meaning of the words.

Discipline: Movie quiz

Since I had some movie fans among my guests, I decided to organize a movie quiz. The guests had to guess movies via a bot. The bot streamed a video clip and the guests could guess which movie it was. 20 films were shown. The team with the most correct answers won.

Event: Counting down to midnight

As I was celebrating my birthday, there was a countdown to midnight. The guests could gather in this channel and celebrate my birthday together. As Discord limits the number of people in the voice channel to 25 when cameras are activated, we all streamed our camera app so that all the guests could be there. When counting, you could clearly hear the bit rate of the stream going down, as everything sounded very crackly. It was still a really nice moment for me. Here's a picture of the moment:

Event: Award ceremony

Team Mannheim won the class battle with 43.5 points, just ahead of Karlsruhe with 42 points. As a prize, Mannheim will be ranked above the other team in the Discord member list until the next birthday!

Conclusion

Around 50 people took part in the birthday party. The criticism was consistently positive. There was only criticism of the complexity of the metagame and Discord. I hope that I was able to give you some inspiration for a bday with this article. If you are interested in other bday, have a look at my other Bdays.