unforum

[Chetta34]

ARG slang

[ScarpeGrosse]

I'll give it a poke

viral - Not a cold or a flu, but spreads like one. When we refer to something as "viral," we're saying that it's something that starts small, and through word of mouth (or click of mouse) from person to person, it becomes bigger. For example, that YouTube video of the dog skateboarding - someone put it online, people found it and sent the link to their friends, who sent it on to their friends, etc, until it ends up on the iPhone commercial. A "viral campaign" is a game or a website or something that generates buzz by spreading as above.

Trailhead - A "trailhead" is where people are first introduced to a game. So, to take it into hiking terms - the trailhead is where you start hiking up the mountain. In ARG terms, its where you start playing the game. Usually we consider there to be one trailhead per game, usually the first found website or email that introduces the audience to the game setting. For example, the Resistance 2 ARG going on now started by people finding the website www.getawarjob.com, and is why we call that website the "trailhead."

PM - "PM" is an acronym standing for "Puppet Master." This harks back to the early days of ARG awareness, where the people who were creating and running the game were considered to be pulling the strings of the audience like they were puppets and getting them to dance. While this term isn't necessarily as vogue as it used to be, we still use it. Kinda like how we call everything we blow our noses into "Kleenex" though they might actually be Puffs brand.
"PM" can also stand for "Private Message," which is very different and nothing like Kleenex.

[Gregoriev]

Well this is sort of a decryption method, but it isn't really used outside of ARG's, unless you want to talk to your friends and make them really confused.


ROT- Rotational device(or atleast that's what I call it). It is basically the full spectrum of Caeser's code(and one of the most common types of code), where one takes a phrase, and moves each letter 3 letters down the alphabet. For example:

Hey! Welcome to unFiction! Would be:
Khb! Zhofrph wr xqIlfwlrq.

Please note that at the end of the alphabet, when you move 3 letters forward, you begin with a again, and so on.

Rot doesn't do a 3 displacement(the word for the number of letters it goes forward). It shows the results for ever displacement for each letter of the alphabet.

The main cypher's name is the Vignere cypher, although the software used to automatically break one, is the ROT.

[thebruce]

here's how I'd describe rot... I actually consider rot/vigenere the opposite way.

A ROT is a 'rotation cipher' - that is, letters in the source phrase are shifted forward a certain number of letters in the alphabet (the 'rot' happens because if you go past Z, you start at A).
For example, "THIS IS A ROT" coded as a ROT-7 would become "AOPZ PZ H YVA"
So to decode, you'd shift the letters 7 backwards.

The vigenere is a more complex rot cipher... picture the ROT-7 above as:

[Chetta34]

[konamouse]

Try checking the Glossary forum.

[Gregoriev]

[Euchre]

Although it may be apocryphal, I understand that the term puppetmaster was a result of some communications or other media involved in The Beast (basically the original ARG) being signed or otherwise marked as originating from Gepetto, the fictional creator of Pinocchio.

IG and OOG are not listed in the Glossary, so perhaps we ought to add some more entries. Acronyms are especially confusing, hence why most training and education systems discourage their use. They are usually reserved for efficiency once someone is trained to know their meaning first.