What do thirty people do in a mountain house for two and a half days?

For my bachelor party, I wanted friends from every part of my life in one place. A weekend in the mountains sounded perfect. It also created a practical question: what were thirty people going to do once we got there?

The answer was a giant game. My friend James and I spent weeks turning brackets, side quests, and a completely unnecessary legal agreement into a 60-by-48-inch board. Beer pong counted. So did chess, push-ups, jumping in the lake, cleaning up after dinner, and dozens of other things that might happen anyway. Almost anything could move the score.

We played it all weekend. It gave people who had never met a reason to team up, compete, and laugh at the same ridiculous scoreboard. It was fun enough that I later made versions for three other bachelor parties. One activity was Know the Name: anyone could ask me to point to someone else, then earn points for knowing who they were. It worked because the house was full of friends from different parts of my life who did not all know one another.

I always wanted to turn it into something other people could make for themselves. The builder now handles everything from an 8.5-by-11-inch home printout to a 60-by-48-inch poster, with 107 activities for bachelor weekends, family trips, reunions, and weekends with friends.

Now I am well past bachelorhood and firmly into fatherhood. The full-circle moment came when I made a kids' version for a weekend my children spent with my mom in Chattanooga. Same idea, different activities: give a group a little structure, and an ordinary weekend starts collecting stories.