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[Crescent]

vanessa atalanta post game chat

[amandel]

Brewed a mocha latte to prop up my eyelids enough to say Mega props to you and many, many Thanks! Am half brain dead and heading to sleepyville so my questions and insightful comments (JK JK) are better left 'til tomorrow.

Yes, please don't let all the kittens (or LOLcatz) loose as I would absolutely enjoy a further chapter or chapters of Vanessa et sa famille. THX for all your hard work.

[Dagada]

Yup, well done Paul. Lots of interesting stuff there and some clever use of multi-layered imagary which tended to divert my mind down more esoteric paths. Interesting characters too, and even at the end I'm not 100% sure about who could be trusted.

[dreamerblue]

Wow. I NEVER would have expected it to be you! I actually started suspecting another unfiction member after she mentioned the expense of international shipping in one of her Facebook statuses, but tried to let that go . Thanks for picking up on that bubbl site, heh...too bad we didn't keep going with that. Yes, you did break the rules, but it wasn't too bad.

I did notice changes in the game...but I'll hold off on questioning about that too closely until any further chapter is over.

I'm sure I'll post some questions later...

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I stopped following the game after a week or so. But, I am curious whether the people who did play it felt like they were more or less along for the ride.

There are 54 pages in the game thread and it seems the players needed help 36 times. Having the PM post a "help" every page-and-a-half seems like a lot to me.

[dreamerblue]

Off to work soon, but a couple questions to get started...

This being your first ARG (as a PM), what surprised you about running one?

What were some of the ideas you'd wanted to incorporate, but ended up totally scrapping?


I noticed there were a few different phases to the game:
- initial phase of getting to know the characters, of course
- a phase where the name of the game seemed to be "don't focus too much on any one clue, but make connections between everything"--this was pretty much everything pre-Jan. 1, including the pictures from Johan's desk and a bunch of the stuff we put into the bubbl mindmap
- during that phase, a big mention of chess imagery, including setting up the board, and a warning of sorts from Vladimir that over time we'd likely see the pieces fall one by one (this did not seem to materialize in the end, so I assume you did some significant reworking that made this part get dropped)
- the Tarot phase that started Jan. 1
- after the Tarot phase (after all the trumps had been exhausted), a sort of miscellaneous phase where there was some emphasis on sinople & stars/sparks.

Does that more or less sum it up? Any comments on the restructuring you had to do as the game played out? Did we have a large influence on what happened, or was it more you just rethinking things?

Anyway, I have dropped out of or found it hard to connect to some ARGs in the past, but I found this one engaging. I was frustrated because a lot of the time I felt like I was missing things & feared the PM must be getting frustrated with me/us, but I found it very easy to connect with the characters. Even when I was sitting here trying to figure out what to say to crazy-Vanessa and how to say it (in binary? cryptically, using some of her imagery? just say it & hope she'd "get it"?), or when feeling too pissed off at JPW to know what to type, I still *wanted* to communicate with them. Time zones likely did cause issues in your being able to have the characters interact with me, yet you still managed to connect with me quite often compared to how much interaction I've had with characters in real-time in other ARGs.

I also felt badly that I just couldn't afford timewise to get even more involved, especially as it seemed the player base was small. I am used to ARGs that make their major updates on a weekly basis, and even then I sometimes find myself getting too into them & avoiding real-world responsibilities. However, a lot of the action happened during my winter break from school as well as exam time (and the review period leading up to it), so it actually worked out nicely this time around.

Anyway, I had fun, even if I complained sometimes about not knowing what to focus on. Hopefully you enjoyed yourself & learned from the experience & will produce something just as fun in the future .

Edit: Also, re Rogi Ocnorb's question, once Crescent revealed himself & apologized about all the nudging, I went back and looked over his posts from the thread, and I honestly don't think he changed our thinking much. I think there might have been nudges we just totally ignored, heh ...but for the most part I think his posts read like player posts & there really isn't much nudging there at all (at least, again, not much that sank in ).

[Crescent]

[Crescent]

re: helping many times
I don't think I did, but was aware, quite quickly, that this would be a limited time ARG and wanted to keep the players on track.
I also, however, wanted them [and myself] to benefit from the coincidence/consilience that occurred in the looking for information.

Re: phases
That does sum it up, though tarot started earlier than jan 1st...

re: time commitments
I'm also a teacher and wanted to run it mainly at weekends but found myself getting 'addicted' to the characters themselves. [I HATE lol witha passion and thought I would share...]

This whole story originated from me finding out that 'red admiral' butterfly was vanessa atalanta and I thought it would be a good characetr name for something. I had been wanting to do some treasure hunt or trail around Greenwich and, with various findings, played with the idea of time travel, consequences. The rest evolved from those initial ideas and, tbh, relied heavily on player interaction for a lot of the time. Somethings were linear though - but players missed a great opportunity to become part of the 'ministry'... still - ideas not completely wasted....

[diszaster]

[Crescent]

thank you for this
re: red herrings - the elements that are in the game still have a place, but not right now. There were not meant to be so many as mopst had an 'end' which, unfortunately due to financing, could not happen last minute - i was then left with plot which needed to progress but with lots of info 'sitting there.
I totally agree with the pm involvement and resolve never to do again.
hard not to help though, esp when on a tight timeline. emergency procedures failed at times though and that's when i stepped in.
apologies once again - learning for PM quite a lot in this - thanks for input so far everyone,,,

[amandel]

[Crescent]

the music: stave 111 in the moonlight serenade

giants... nope, not saying - though there's 24 of them [as discussed] and they're greek...

as for other chat servers etc. had planned a whole web page but serious RL issues kicked in - the peopel i've had offer have either had to cancel last minute, have their own RL kick in or suddenly disappear [in RL!] from contact..
But things will be different - if there's enough interst then I will probably get one for next big holidays - easter time...
re FB centgric - while I found it limiting - it did do everything i neded to - host pictyures and updates quickly, remove possibility for steg to save lots of player wasted time, and host chat.
that, in theory should have worked.
FB being slow, jerky and with own problems as well meant fb was NOT a good choice.

any ideas anyone?

[dreamerblue]

[Crescent]

answer to riddle

[dreamerblue]

Re: answer to riddle