Making Custom Content for Blather 'Round

Blather 'Round is one of the most customizable games for the Jackbox Party Pack 7. As such, it has a lot of confusing content options. Here's a description of what each content means, along with some descriptions for the options:

Word

The word that the player is trying to guess.

Word/Phrase Category

The category to describe the word/phrase. Default options are person, place, thing, or story. If you want to add your own broad category, see Category.

Subcategory

You can put anything you want here. Just add one word that adds a little bit more detail than the previous category (e.g., tv for Yu Gi Oh!, athlete for LeBron James, animal for Walrus). You should use an existing subcategory (See the Possible Blather Round Subcategories). If you're going to make up your own subcategory, please see Descriptor for making your own descriptive sentences.

Difficulty

I'm pretty sure you can put whatever you want, but it's recommended to put easy for things that are fairly common knowledge (e.g., Australia, Office Space), medium for things that require more specific knowledge (e.g., Walrus, Marianas Trench, Les Mis), and hard for things that require very specific knowledge (e.g., Diff'rent Strokes, Mr. Snuffleupagus)

Forbidden Words

Hardly ever used, but if you have some common words that occur in your word/phrase or some really good descriptors (Like murder in Murder She Wrote or big and dude in Big Lebowsky), then you should put in those words here.

Tailored Words

Words that are tailor made to more accurately describe the word/phrase. First describe the descriptor (put into brackets: <descriptor>), then the specific word (separate by |, so: <descriptor>|word). What are the categories/words? Well, you can make your own in the Descriptor menu. If you want to use pre-existing words, search the Blather Round Descriptor Words List. You should see each descriptor (listed under name), along with a list of words to match that descriptor (for instance, if I had Pompeii, I would write <emotion-bad>|sad|<building>|structure|<land>|land|<texture-complex>|firey|<abstract-concept>|tourism|<building-complex>|ruin, etc.)

Category

A broad category meant to describe the general idea of a word (ideally person/place/thing/story work well, so making a new category isn't recommended)

Structures

The sentence structures used to give hints about what the thing is about. Use <descriptor> tags (e.g., <emotion-bad>, <building>) for each thing you have to fill in the blank for (again, go to the Blather Round Descriptor Words List to see the words you can use, or add your own with Descriptor). Separate each entry by |.

Descriptor

You have three options: Describing Adjectives/Nouns/Verbs to apply to a category, sentences to respond to other people's guesses (like It's very similar to ____!), or descriptor words meant for <descriptor> tags (to be used in the Tailored Words section for a Word). The steps for making each are similar.

Descriptor name

How you name the descriptor will (I think) determine how that descriptor is used.

• If I'm making a specific group of words (adjectives, nouns, or verbs) that pair with a category, I'd name the Descriptor CATEGORY-VERB/ADJECTIVE/NOUN-SIMPLE/COMPLEX. Where you write in the category name, whether you're using a verb, adjective, or noun, and whether the list of words is simple or complex. Something is considered complex if it has relatively simple words (I trust you to use your own judgement here). So if I were making a list of verbs that matched with category story with verbs like runs, eats, lives with, etc., I'd call it story-verb-simple
• If I'm making a responding sentence to a subcategory, I name it: response-sentence-CATEGORY-SUBCATEGORY. You can remove the -SUBCATEGORY if you want to make a responding sentence to an overall category. So for instance, if I wanted to list possible responding sentences to something that has a category of place and tv, I'd write response-sentence-place-tv.
• If I'm making a descriptor words for a <descriptor> tag (to be used by Category and Word content), I'd call it whatever I'd like (as long as it's hyphenated). So if I were to make a bunch of words describing odors I'd call it smells-simple, or something like that.

Words List

The list of words (or sentences) that you're using for the Descriptor. If you're writing a list of words, you can use <descriptor> tags to refer to other descriptors. Separate each word/sentence with |. If you consider a word or sentence to be essential to a descriptor, add a T| in front to signify that the word/sentence is essential:

• If I'm writing something for story-verb-simple, I write something like: runs|eats|lives with|T|discovers|T|learns, etc.
• If I'm writing something for response-sentence-place-tv, I'd write something like: T|It's something like|T|It's a fictional version of|T|It reminds me of, etc.
• If I'm writing something for smells-simple, I'd write something like gross|<taste-complex>|nasty|lemony

Max Choices

If a player is making a selection on what words to choose, is there a set limit to how much they get to pick? (Please write something like 1, 2, or 3)

• For something like story-verb-simple, you should set this to 1, 2, or 3 since you're probably going to use a verb once in a sentence (1), an adjective maybe three times (3), and a noun maybe twice (2).
• For something like response-sentence-place-tv, set this to 1, since you're only going to pick one sentence.
• For something like smells-simple, don't set this at all, since the game will automatically decide a limit for descriptors regarding <descriptor> tags.

Placeholder text

Generally, the placeholder text used when you can't get a sentence or a word there. Usually, it's something like blank (for non plural words), blanks (for plural words), and blanky (for sentences).

• For story-verb-simple, the placeholder would be blanks (since almost every word/phrase is plural)
• For response-sentence-place-tv, the placeholder would be blanky (since everything in the words list is a sentence)
• For smells-simple, the placeholder would be blank (since every word is singular)