View topic - FestQuest 2007 Post Mortem.

unforum
a.r.g.b.b

Welcome!

New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.

Website Restoration Project

This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.

Announcements

This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.

This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.

Our Esteemed Contributors

The time now is Mon Nov 11, 2024 3:14 pm
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)

View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum

Calendar

Forum index » Meta » Puppetmaster Help

FestQuest 2007 Post Mortem.
Moderators: imbri

Page 1 of 1 [2 Posts]

Author

Message

ariock
Has a Posse

Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 762
Location: SF East Bay

FestQuest 2007 Post Mortem.

I was just talking with Catherwood about Festquest 2007, and she asked me if there was a write-up about it. I searched and found nothing apart from an old LiveJournal post, which I linked her to. But that doesn't really help others, as she rightly pointed out.

I am going to repost the text of that here, and then post some emails I sent to Avatrix offering suggestions for FestQuest 2008. Finally, I'll put up a few more items I remember.

From LJ wrote:

ARGFest....

Jeez. Its been over a week now, and it feels like it can't all fit in my head.

Let me just say first off that I know an amazing group of brilliant people. I had planned to spend all of my free time on the weekend of ARGFest with these people, but then something happened. Due to circumstances beyond her control, Rose (of Unfiction.com who was organizing the whole damn thing) found herself with no time to spend setting up the Fest Quest. The Fest Quest is a puzzle trail for the participants of ARGFest that has the express purpose of getting them from wherever they happen to be once it starts, to the place where everyone is supposed to get together for dinner. Along the way, there should be puzzles, sight-seeing, camaraderie, a dash of competition, murder on the high seas, frenchmen, 2,000 Dolce and Gabbana purses, and a mayonnaise sandwich. Ok, not those last four things (fingers crossed for ARGFest 2008!!).

Rose asked for volunteers to take over the Quest. I'd already volunteered to HELP with the quest. I'd lassoed hmrpita into volunteering as well. She has this whole idea that she wants people to "like her city" and "have a good time in her city" and blah blah whatever. I just wanted to make something cool.

So yeah. With about a week to start with, pita and I came up with the theme, she reserved the restaurant, we scouted the wharf, created puzzles, coordinated with labfly and celina and gupfee and dancingkids and catherwood and rose and spacebass... oh, and Safeway... it was nuts.

We got hardly any sleep.

We were completely unavailable on Friday to hang out with our friends.

We argued a lot. (It is REALLY hard to explain the concept of a puzzle via IM. At least for me it is.)

And somehow...it happened. You can see the start at the very end of Elan and Sean's keynote for ARGFest. If you haven't taken a look, you should check out all of the panels. To see some of the photos of the teams doing the puzzles, check out:
Caspian's
Giskard's
TheBruce's
and
Konamouse's

It was a lot of work, and it kept me away from my friends more than I would have liked.

But damn. Apart from having one of our heroes play our game, it felt so good to have everything come together and everyone to have enjoyed it.

Email to Avatrix wrote:

Hello Alex,

Well, last year we were asked to help make puzzles about two weeks before the event, so it was kind of rushed. On top of that, a week beforehand we were given complete control of it, and the scope was changed so what might have been a 4-hour quest was cut down to 2-hours.

We knew from the previous year that they had done it like a race, and that didn't go too well. we even heard about some players possibly erasing a clue drawn on a sidewalk. So we wanted something that could be collaborative. On the other hand, about 50 people signed up to DO the quest, so we needed to split them into more manageable groups. We were given a list of the people who had signed up for FQ, so we were able to assign people who we knew were great puzzle solvers to different groups before ARGFest even started.

The core design was to get people from the Hotel where the event was happening to a restaurant within about two hours, and see some sights along the way. So, critical point #1 was getting the restaurant and informing them that there would be about 100 people coming and making sure they could handle it. Pita found a great place that was able to take our group.

So then, we really wanted to incorporate a story. To make the Fest Quest a little arg-ey. We came up with the idea of incorporating Gupfee's birthday with it by having her be kidnapped, and everyone is supposed to collect ransom for her safe return.

We decided to split the people into six groups, and to send the groups on different paths. So we needed six starting puzzles, (6) which were made by Labfly. They were supposed to go to a specific place and then get a piece of the ransom, and then, like a treasure hunt, they'd be told to walk along a specific path to another location where they'd find some kind of text...some kind of public map, or a historical site description, etc, and there was a code they'd decrypt using that text that would send them somewhere else (+6). That sent almost everyone to Ghirardelli square, where they found another public historical plaque which allowed them to use a special map overlay puzzle that sent them to a six completely different sites (+6). Once at that site, they'd find an envelope containing a puzzle that would bring everyone back to the same location (+1) with a puzzle piece that would fit together to bring them to the restaurant (+1). So, a total of about 20 different puzzles. But each of those three sets of 6 puzzles had similar designs, just with different destinations.

Well, except for the birthday cake with the vigenere cipher. Smile

We (Pita and I) would each double check the other person's solves. Pita checked Labfly's puzzles, and we ended up having to make a few last-minute changes to those because the player directions weren't quite clear enough in a couple of cases. I'd given labfly some general instructions and left the puzzle creation completely up to her, and I didn't communicate what we needed well enough.

We walked the route ourselves to figure out how long it would take. I think the fastest group got to the final park within an hour after the start. then they had to wait around for the other groups.

Another thing that we did that was critical was to have helpers we could trust. Celina helped at the start. Catherwood was stationed at the Safeway parking lot to take the cake so that group wouldn't have to carry it all the way to the restaurant.

The other thing we did was to include a contact email that groups could send text messages to if they needed help and then I was set up at a location with wifi so I could relay hints to people if they needed them.

I think how far is subjective. Generally, people who are concerned about walking a ways know not to participate. I'd suggest figuring it out and including that in the materials you produce. And since I'm speaking of materials...

12 large manila envelopes (2/group: 1 starting, and one found later)
6 pages of general instructions
6 maps (produced by pita)
6 acetate map overlays
6 pages of lyrics
6 printed letter wheels
6 printed historical puzzles.
1 11x17 park map on card stock, cut into puzzle pieces
1 cake.

Some more hints: Explore. Take easy-to-read photos of anything you plan to use. Check. Double check. Have someone else double check. Map out the routes on google maps. Walk the routes. visit every site. If you have helpers making puzzles, have a deadline, and then check and double check the solves. Get as much done early as you possibly can.

Some more items:

We also put together one puzzle at the last minute. Bad idea, but it was unavoidable. We got photos of Gupfee kidnapped/tied up the day she came into town, and I inserted images with clues inside them so that people online/in IRC could help out with the quest. They were released when I heard that the first team was on their way to the square. The idea was that the other teams could be helped out by the people online. That everyone was in "Teams" but were working together to get what they needed. Unfortunately, no one was playing along online, so the puzzles weren't used. Luckily, we'd also made the puzzles easy enough to solve without help, but this might have made things go faster.

The other thing was that the players seemed to view themselves as competitors against the other teams. That wasn't our intent. We wanted teams to help one another. The final puzzle was designed to be solved only once all six teams had their puzzle pieces back together at the statue of Ben Franklin. The first team to arrive thus had to wait, but I had hoped that they'd keep in contact with other teams to help them find what they needed.

The Cake puzzle was too hard. I again thought the players might work together on this to more quickly solve it. That they might enlist people online who could put the text right into a solver. But that didn't happen. The Cake team ended up being the last ones to the Statue I think an hour after the first team had arrived.

The "ransom" (a flattened souvenir penny) wasn't clear to at least one team, possibly two (memories are fading). Luckily, Daisy let the Birthday Girl have the ransom that did get collected AND the cake.

So that's about it. If you have any questions, please let me know.

stickied - Gup

_________________
"It says, 'Let's BEE friends'...and there's a picture of a bee!" -Ralph Wiggum
When the Apocalypse comes, it'll be in base64.

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:04 am

Gupfee
Site Admin

Joined: 22 Sep 2002
Posts: 817
Location: Massachusetts

Thanks so much for this breakdown, Ariock. I'd love to see something similar from the 2008 team. (hint hint! Wink

)

_________________
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. - Judith Martin

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 8:56 am

Display posts from previous: Sort by:

Page 1 of 1 [2 Posts]

Forum index » Meta » Puppetmaster Help

Jump to:

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum