Running each Brainflood game mode well

Start with the room, not the mode

A new format will not rescue a night with muddy sound or questions nobody can answer. Get the basics right first: a host people can hear, a pace that never drags, and questions that make a table say "we should know this". The Hosting 101 guide and the quiz-writing guide cover that ground.

Once the basics work, variety earns its place. Regulars who have played the same ten-question rounds for a year enjoy a picture round, a music round or a Brainpardy finale. Few of them want the whole night reinvented every week, though. Most hosts keep a fixed shape and change one slot at a time.

In Brainflood, a game is a set of rounds and each round has its own type. One night can run two standard rounds, a picture round, a music round, a Lightning round and a Brainpardy board, with one set of team scores across all of it. You don't pick a mode for the night. You pick a type for each round.

Which mode for which room

A rough guide for when you walk in and size up the crowd. Every row links to the section that explains it.

A starting point, not a rule. Most nights mix two or three of these as rounds inside one game.

Standard trivia rounds

This is the core of almost every night, and the format the other modes borrow from. Working hosts on r/triviahosts mostly run 4 to 8 rounds and 40 to 80 questions in about two hours. That works out to roughly a minute a question once you count reading, answering and the reveal. Twenty questions spread over three hours is the pace that empties a room.

A new round in Brainflood starts at 10 questions (you can set 1 to 25) with a 30-second timer. The built-in "Pub Trivia Night" template is five rounds of 8, 10, 10 and 12 questions plus a single final question, which is a sensible shape to copy and then make your own.

Paper, phones or both

Each round can be played on paper, on phones, or hybrid, so a room can mix both. Plenty of hosts and venues prefer paper: tables argue more, nobody is staring at a screen, and nobody has to explain QR codes to a table of retirees. Phones are useful for big rooms, remote players and rounds that need them. Players never need an app or an account. They scan the code, type a name and pick a team.

On paper nights, the print pack gives you answer sheets for every round with one team per page, and the marking grid takes either round totals or a mark per question. The scoring and fair play guide goes into marking a big paper room.

Difficulty across the night

Open with something gettable. People are still arriving and ordering, and a brutal first round tells latecomers they have no chance. Put the hardest material in the middle, after everyone has settled, and close on a round where most tables score well. A night that ends with everyone feeling clever gets remembered as a good night.

Three hard rounds in a row is the most common way to lose a crowd. Hosts who track their numbers usually aim for 60 to 80 percent of teams getting most questions. When most teams score under half, they start leaving early.

Multiple choice and written answers

Multiple choice lowers the bar for casual tables and keeps early rounds light. Written answers reward knowing the thing and give you better reveals. A mix across the night suits most rooms. An all-multiple-choice night with the same format every week gets stale faster than you'd expect.

The scoring break

Leave it in. Ten to fifteen minutes between halves is when people order food and drinks, go outside, and argue about question six. The venue makes money in that gap and the tables talk to each other. Keep it from stretching past fifteen minutes and put music on.

Picture rounds

Picture rounds suit tables that like to huddle over something. You can show the images on the TV, print them as a numbered handout from the print pack, or both. A handout gives every table time to argue at its own pace, which most crowds prefer.

The best picture questions take two steps: a photo of an actor, and the question asks for their famous parent. It's harder to search and more satisfying to get. Keep the images big and sharp, and check how they print in black and white if your printer is.

You can upload your own image for each question or search Openverse, Pixabay and Wikimedia from inside the question editor. Be careful with images pulled from anywhere else. Hosts have reported settlement demands of $2,000 to $5,000 over copyrighted photos used in picture rounds. Your own photos, public domain images and properly licensed ones are the safe choice. Business basics has more on this.

Name That Tune music rounds

Most crowds enjoy a music round, and plenty of hosts use it to close the night. In Brainflood, teams write the artist and the title in separate boxes and each half scores on its own (one point each by default). If anyone on the team gets a half, the team banks it. Grading is loose on purpose, and any half it can't decide waits for you. Paper answer sheets for music rounds have Artist and Title boxes.

Clips play from the TV, audio only, from a YouTube video or an uploaded audio file, when you press "Play on TV". The clip editor shows a waveform for audio files and lets you set the start, the end and a fade in or out. Clips can run 3 to 60 seconds and default to 15. Most hosts find 10 to 20 seconds is right: long enough to place it, short enough that the round doesn't drag. A setlist holds up to 20 songs.

A few things that make music rounds better:

• Start the clip after the most famous line, not on it. A chorus gives the answer away to the whole room in two seconds.
• Spread the decades. A host's own taste is the easiest way to lose half the room, and the people under 30 notice first.
• Mashups, covers in an odd genre and songs that share a hidden theme all make good rounds once the plain version is getting easy.
• Bring the round's songs back as background music during the next round. People enjoy hearing them again with the answers known.

The full rules are on the Name That Tune page.

Brainpardy

Brainpardy is a Jeopardy-style board run as a round inside a game. It works best when the whole room can see one screen, and it makes a strong last round because the scores can swing. A board is 3 to 5 columns by 3 to 5 rows, 5 by 5 by default, with values from 200 to 1000. Teams type every answer; there are no multiple-choice clues on the board.

How a clue plays

A random team picks first, and after that the team in control picks, either on a phone or by telling you. Buzzers open three seconds after the clue appears, or earlier if you open them yourself. The server decides who buzzed first, so there are no arguments about whose hand went up. Each team gets one try per clue.

A right answer adds the value and a wrong one subtracts it, so scores can go negative. After a wrong answer the other teams can steal. The correct answer only shows on phones and the TV once the clue is finished. The team answering has a clock, 20 seconds by default (you can set 10 to 60), and when it runs out whatever they have typed is sent.

Daily Doubles

Daily Doubles are placed at random when the round launches, never on the cheapest row. You can have 0 to 3 of them, and the default is one. The team that finds one can wager up to its own score or the board's top value, whichever is larger. Only that team answers, and they get an extra 10 seconds.

When one turns up, slow down. Say it's a Daily Double, give the table a moment to talk about the wager, and read the standings if the game is close. That pause is most of the fun.

Final Brainpardy

Final Brainpardy is optional and off by default. If you use it, read the standings before you show the category: teams can't wager sensibly without knowing where they stand. Then the category, then wagers (up to each team's current score, and $0 is allowed), then the clue. Answers close, you grade each team, and the reveal goes one team at a time starting from the lowest score, so the leader is last. Phone teams enter their own wagers. You type them in for paper teams.

Building the board

Pick columns that don't overlap, so a team with a strong subject has somewhere to go and a weak one has somewhere to avoid. A column can be filled from one of the Cellar's question packs under a label of your own, and it draws a fresh easy-to-hard set each time the round launches, skipping questions you've used lately. That's handy for a weekly board. A full 5 by 5 board is 25 clues plus buzzing and steals, so give it more time than a ten-question round. The Brainpardy page has the complete rules.

Lightning rounds

Lightning is a fast round played on phones only, with true/false and multiple-choice questions. By default everyone answers every question at the same time. A right answer in the first second scores 100 points, falling evenly to 50 by the end of the answer window, which is 15 seconds by default (10, 15, 20 or 30, and up to 60 from the live console). A wrong answer scores nothing unless you set a penalty of 25 or 50. Three right in a row pays 1.5 times, and the final question pays double.

Those points go on a separate Lightning leaderboard. Only bonuses for the top three players (50, 25 and 10 by default) go to their teams in the main game score. That's deliberate. Speed rounds reward the quickest thumbs rather than the best table, and some hosts dislike them for exactly that reason. Keeping the per-question points out of the game score means a Lightning round can liven up the room without deciding the night.

There is also an optional single-buzzer style: the first player to buzz answers alone within seven seconds, and a miss reopens the buzzer. It's louder and more competitive, and it suits a smaller room better than a big one.

Some practical points:

• One Lightning round a night is usually right. The second feels repetitive.
• It needs phones, so it's a poor fit for a mostly paper room. Check a few tables have a charged phone before you start.
• Keep the questions short. Nobody can read three lines in the first second.
• Lightning is also one of the two match types in tournaments.

More on the Lightning page.

Wagering rounds

A wagering round lets each team bet once on a question: by default at least 10 points and at most 100. A right answer adds the bet and a wrong one subtracts it, and a score can't go below zero. It runs on phones or hybrid, so paper teams can still take part.

A capped bet keeps a single question from erasing an hour of good play while still giving trailing teams a reason to hope. If you want a big all-or-nothing finale, Final Brainpardy is the better tool, because it shows every wager in the reveal. The fair play guide covers final-round design that can't be gamed.

Bluff

In Bluff, the players write the wrong answers. You enter a question and its real answer. Each team writes one fake answer on a phone. Fakes that match the real answer or another team's fake are rejected, so nobody can sneak the truth in. The real answer is mixed into a lettered lineup, and each team votes once for what it thinks is real, never for its own fake.

By default a team scores 20 for finding the real answer and 10 for every team its fake fools, and you can change both. The TV then shows who fooled whom, one card at a time. Read it out; it's often the loudest minute of the night.

Choosing questions

Bluff needs a real answer that sounds made up. Good sources are odd original names for famous products, strange laws still on the books, unusual word meanings and the real purpose of everyday objects. Avoid years and numbers: every team writes a plausible number and nothing marks the real one out.

Running it

If you read the lineup aloud, read every option in the same tone. Your voice is the easiest tell in the room. Bluff is better when the tables know each other, because part of the game is guessing what your rivals will fall for. With a cold crowd, run it after a couple of standard rounds rather than first.

There's an optional timer, and a content filter (none, casual or corporate) for fakes, which is worth switching on for an office party. A hybrid option lets you type in fakes and votes for paper teams. The Bluff page has the rest.

Bingo

Bingo levels the room. Nobody needs to know anything to win the classic version, which is why it works for families, mixed ages and fundraisers. There are three kinds of item list:

• The classic 75 balls on a B-I-N-G-O board.
• A custom list of 25 or more of your own items: movie titles, local landmarks, brands, whatever fits the night.
• Trivia Bingo, where the squares are answers to questions, so you have to know the answer to find the square. It needs 25 or more multiple-choice questions with short, distinct answers, and has optional early bets (+15 if right, -5 if wrong).

Phone cards are 5 by 5 with a free center square. Win patterns are a single line, four corners, an X or a full card, and places pay 50, 30 and 20 points by default. When someone claims on a phone, the server checks the card against the items you have actually called. For paper bingo, the print pack makes unique cards (30 by default, each with an ID). When a player shouts, you type the card ID and the pattern and the console checks it.

Music bingo

There's no dedicated music bingo mode. A custom list of song titles works: you play the songs from your own setup and the cards mark the titles. It's a good fit for breweries and late crowds.

Pacing and prizes

Watch the cards, not the clock. If heads are down and people are scanning, wait. If cards look quiet, keep going. Several wins in one game (a line first, then a pattern, then a full card) keep more people interested than one prize for a full card, because the room doesn't deflate when the first line goes. When a card is confirmed, make a fuss of it. The Bingo page has all the variants.

Polls

A poll round has no score. You ask up to 10 questions with 2 to 8 options each, every player votes once on their phone, and the results show as percentages. Use it as a breather between rounds, to settle a running argument in the room, or to let the crowd choose next week's theme. It's phone-only.

Karaoke

Karaoke in Brainflood is a queue and a screen. Singers join by scanning a QR code or typing a code, with no account, and the line is first come, first served (up to 150 singers). Between songs the TV alternates the join QR and the waitlist, which answers "when am I up?" before anyone has to walk over and ask. You assign a YouTube karaoke video to each singer and the TV plays it. The lyrics are whatever that video shows.

Open the queue well before the first song and put the QR on the tables. A line that fills before you start makes for a much better first half hour.

Contest mode

For a competition night, contest mode lets people in the line rate each performance from 1 to 5 stars on their phones, with a 60-second voting window. Standings use a fair average that stops one 5-star vote from a singer's friend from winning the night. "Crown the winner" puts the leader, the prize and the top five on the TV. Save it for special nights so it still feels like an event.

Fairness mode

On a busy night, the same five singers can take most of the turns. Fairness mode (off by default) puts a returning singer behind everyone who is waiting for an earlier turn, so first-timers get on before someone's fourth song.

Trivia between sets

"Trivia between sets" is three multiple-choice music questions. The clip plays from your laptop, the TV shows the question and how many have answered, and only singers in the line answer on their phones. The winner gets a Priority Pass that moves them up the line, one per person per night. It gives the people waiting something to do.

If you want a proper trivia break, you can also launch a separate quick trivia game of 1 to 20 questions over a set (there's a Name That Tune preset). It opens in a new tab and you return to the queue when it's done.

Hosting the singers

Introduce every singer with the same energy, whatever you expect from them. When a song ends, be on the mic first and start the applause. If a performance is rough, start clapping a few seconds before the end. The room will follow you, and that singer comes back next week. Keep one song of your own ready for when the queue stalls. You don't need to be good, only willing. The karaoke page has the full rules, and the equipment guide covers mics and sound.

Sports Pick'em

Pick'em turns game day into a contest. Players predict tonight's real games on their phones: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and soccer (Premier League, MLS, Champions League, Europa League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the World Cup). Picks close for each game at kickoff, and you can close them all early. Every player gets one Lock of the Night, which pays double if right and costs its price if wrong. Pushes, ties, postponements and missing stats go to a "Needs judging" queue for you to settle.

It's phone-only, it's on the Free plan, and each Pick'em counts as a game toward your monthly allowance. The Pick'em page covers game-day setup in detail.

Tournaments

A tournament is a bracket where every match is its own game, either standard or Lightning. The formats:

Teams can sign themselves up at the tournament's own link. Every match has a human host.

Plan the time before you open sign-ups. A 16-team single-elimination bracket is 15 matches, and you can only run as many at once as you have hosts and screens. Tell teams how long the night will run before they commit. Seed from past results if you have them, and say how you seeded. Teams accept a bracket they understand.

Give something to more than the winner. When only first place gets a prize, the third-place match feels pointless. A small prize or certificate for the final four keeps more tables interested. Tournaments are on Pro (up to two a month) and unlimited on Business and Enterprise. See the tournaments page.

Leagues and seasons

A league ties separate nights into one standings table across a season. It gives regular teams a reason to turn up on a rainy week, which is most of its value. Scoring is either by placement (10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points by default, plus participation points) or cumulative, adding each night's game score to a running total. Standings live on a public page you can share.

Placement scoring is usually fairer. Your scores vary from night to night, and cumulative scoring lets one unusually high-scoring evening decide the season. Participation points reward turning up, which is what you want from a league. If you run a season on paper instead, some hosts drop each team's worst night so a missed week isn't fatal.

Leagues are on Pro and up (Pro can start two a month). If you're on a smaller plan, a standings sheet on the wall works too. See the leagues page.

Mixing modes in one night

Because each round has its own type, a night can be planned like a setlist. Three shapes that work:

Keep the slot structure steady from week to week. If round two is always pictures and round six is always music, regulars know what's coming and you make fewer decisions when you write.

A four-week rotation

Regulars like knowing what kind of night they're walking into, and they like having something to look forward to. A light rotation keeps the core the same and changes one slot:

• Week 1: your standard night. The easiest week to bring a friend.
• Week 2: the same shape with a Brainpardy board as the last round. Announce it the week before.
• Week 3: a Lightning round after the break, or a Bluff round in place of one standard round.
• Week 4: a theme night (a decade, a TV show, a holiday) built on the usual structure.

Once a quarter, try something bigger: a tournament night, a karaoke contest, or the start of a new league season. Give it two weeks' notice. Whatever you do, tell the room at the end of every night what's coming next week. It takes thirty seconds and costs nothing.

What each plan includes

Every mode except Tournaments and Leagues is on every plan, including Free: standard, picture and music rounds, Brainpardy, Lightning, wagering, polls, Bluff, Bingo, karaoke and Sports Pick'em. Free covers three games a month and Starter covers twelve. Pro, Business and Enterprise have no game limit. Tournaments and Leagues start at Pro, with two of each a month, and are unlimited on Business and Enterprise.

Auto Assist (grading suggestions for typed answers, read-aloud and pacing hints) works across the modes on every plan. Exact and close matches are graded free, and only unclear answers use Brain Credits. If you'd rather not use any of it, the "No AI" switch in Settings hides every AI feature. Current prices are on the pricing page.