Horror Pub Trivia Live · Host Field Manual
Live Show Cue Sheet
Everything the host needs to run one Live event start to finish, from building the show to the last standing ovation — written the way a stage manager writes a cue sheet, not the way a developer writes a spec.
Before the Show
Offstage. Nobody's watching yet.
Everything in this act happens on /admin/live, any time before doors open — a day ahead or twenty minutes before, doesn't matter.
Build the show
Hand-write rounds and questions in the event editor, or fast-track it with an import. Two ways in:
Import from MCHPT episode… on the hub copies a whole episode's rounds straight into a new event.
+ Import Round… and + Pick Questions… inside an open editor pull individual rounds or hand-picked questions from TRIVIA, MCHPT, or RANDOS. Nothing saves until you review it and hit the page's own Save — every import lands as ordinary editable rounds first.
Pick the Game Mode
Set once, on the event editor, and it shapes the whole rest of the night:
Championship — one cumulative winner, decided when the final scores are in.
Per Round — every round crowns its own champion; there is deliberately no overall winner.
A badge on every later screen — the editor, Live Play, the recap page — reminds you which one you're running. See the comparison in Act IV before show night if you're not sure which to pick.
Set the guardrails
Optional but worth a glance: a Max Teams cap, an event banner image, and whether the event is staged (hidden) or ready to go live.
Every event also gets a permanent five-character Join Code the moment it's created — generated once, never regenerated. That's the code you'll hand out tonight, so make a note of it.
Open the House
Doors open. The room starts filling in.
Turn on Player Auto‑Refresh
One switch on the /admin/live hub: 🟢 Player Auto-Refresh: On. It puts every player's phone into auto-polling mode instead of relying on a manual refresh — flip it on shortly before the show and leave it on for the run. Flip it back off once you're truly done for the night.
Go Live
Un-stage the event so it appears on the player join screen at /play. A staged event stays invisible to players no matter how ready it looks to you.
Open Session
On the event's Live Play page, click Open Session if nobody's joined yet. This just gets the session ready — you can unlock a round before a single player has joined, or wait for the room to fill first.
Announce the code
Read out the join code and event, on-screen or verbally. Players type their team name and that code at the join page.
Joining closes the instant you unlock Round 1. A team already in can still get back in on a new device, but no brand-new name can join after that — so get everyone in the room signed up before you hit Unlock Round on the first round.
The Round
The loop. Run this once per round, however many rounds you've got.
This is the whole show, repeated. Five cues, then back to the top for the next round.
Unlock the round
Players' locked screen ("Round is Locked — see Host") turns into a live answer form the moment you unlock it. Rounds are host-paced, not timed — there's no clock counting down, only up, so nobody's racing a deadline that doesn't exist.
Only one round — authored or tiebreaker — can be open at a time. Close whatever's open before unlocking the next.
Read the questions, watch the room
Read straight off the round card on Live Play — players never see question text on their own screens, that's the host's job. A live "N of M submitted" count tells you when every team has actually finished, not just started.
Close the round
Close Round grades everyone in one batch. Every player instantly sees their own ✓ / ✗ reveal on their phone, and can file a dispute on any text-answer question they think was mis-graded.
The leaderboard does not move yet. That's Cue 11, on purpose.
Cue 11 — the one that's new
Closing a round no longer moves the leaderboard. It only grades players and shows each of them their own result. The cumulative Live Standings panel every player sees stays frozen until you click Release Standings to Players, right below the Players table on Live Play.
The button shows how many closed rounds are still waiting — one click releases all of them at once, not one at a time. That gap between closing and releasing is deliberate: it gives every team a beat to see their own score and raise a dispute before the standings lock in, and it means the whole room finds out where they stand in the same instant — not whichever team happens to refresh first.
Close another round later and it goes back to pending — you'll click Release again. Nothing is ever silently skipped: if you forget on the last round of the night, running Final Scoring releases whatever's left automatically.
Releasing standings never touches a Per Round Mode round's champion trophy — that still shows the instant a round resolves, tie or no tie. This gate is only for the cumulative leaderboard.
Curtain Call
Ties, tiebreakers, and closing the house.
Championship
One winner, decided once, at the end.
- Ties are only checked once the last round is closed and the cumulative board is final.
- A tie sends the tied teams into a session-end tiebreaker chain — sudden-death rounds until one team pulls ahead.
- Start Tiebreaker Round → Close → Confirm Winner — three deliberate steps, so a late dispute can still flip the outcome before it's locked in.
Per Round
Every round settles itself, mid-game.
- Each round checks its own tie independently, the moment you close it — no waiting for the game to end.
- A tied round gets its own scoped tiebreaker chain, rendered inline for the tied teams while everyone else's game keeps going.
- No overall winner is ever crowned — cumulative points are skewed by however many tiebreakers any round needed, so the round trophies are the whole story.
Final Scoring
Appears once every round for the event is closed. Ends the session and unlocks the recap/leaderboard page for players. In Championship Mode with no tie, the winner is crowned automatically the moment you click it — no separate confirmation needed for the common case.
Also releases any standings you forgot to release along the way, so nothing stays hidden once the show is genuinely over.
Check the Disputed Answers panel first — Final Scoring turns the button red and warns you when disputes are still pending, but it will still let you proceed. Decide them first if you can.
Cheat Sheet
For the moment you need an answer, not a story.
| Situation | Do this |
|---|---|
| A team's phone died mid-showTheir score and history are untouched | Reset Device next to their name — the next phone to use their team name claims it fresh. |
| Closed a round by mistake | Reopen (Emergency) — reopens it for editing. You'll need to close it again to re-grade. |
| A player disputes an answer | Disputed Answers panel at the top of Live Play → Approve or Deny. |
| Bad AI grade nobody formally disputed | Text Answers page → manually flip that answer correct/incorrect. |
| Just want to browse without misclicking | 🔓 Read-Only Mode — disables every destructive control until you turn it back off. |
| Cleaning up after the showThese are destructive — read the confirm dialog | Purge Old Sessions (7+ days), Purge All Players (full session reset), or PURGE EVERYTHING. |
Troubleshooting
Things that look broken but aren't.
- A player says they can't join.
- If Round 1 is already unlocked, joining under a brand-new name is intentionally closed. A team that already joined can still get back in from a new device — check they're typing the exact name they used before.
- Players say the leaderboard hasn't moved, even though a round just closed.
- That's by design as of Cue 11 — closing a round only grades players and shows their own reveal. Click Release Standings to Players when you're ready for the whole room to see it.
- The Unlock Round button won't do anything.
- Another round — including a tiebreaker round — is still open somewhere. Close it first; only one can be open at a time.
- A Per Round Mode event isn't showing an overall winner on the recap page.
- That's correct, not a bug. Per Round Mode never crowns one — each round's own champion, shown in the round-by-round list, is the actual result.
- I released standings, but a new round I just closed isn't showing up yet.
- Release is per-round, not a one-time switch — a freshly closed round is pending again even after an earlier release. Click Release Standings once more to bring it in.