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[Phaedra]

[LIVE EVENT] SF Tombstone Hold'em Players report in here!

[JTony]

I can tell my grandchildren...

[Silverkun]

Just Got Home

[RPGgame]

Re: Just Got Home

[missphinx]

It *was* awesome.
The weather was beautiful, green grass, trees, and tombstones stretching out into the distance.
We got there a little early. I thought we might need to wait, but I spotted a gracious and beautiful lady at the gates, so we went to pay our respects to her and her companion, and receive our chips and instructions.
My favorite part was seeing people show up and recognizing old and new friends. There was quite a crowd by 1:30, probably 40, maybe 50 players, many from other places (I expect we'll have some new arrivals to the game ).
At 2:00 we split into groups to play poker, some more seriously than others, and 2:30 arrived before we knew it. Phone calls! What to do next? I heard bits and pieces of what was being relayed, so spent the rest of the games pretty much following around the groups who looked like they knew where they were going - southwest corner? are these mausoleums? no? back! northeast corner? northwest corner? wait what's over there? I finally figured out that the guy who was reading off the yellowed pieces of paper actually had the instructions from the box (I think). Meanwhile some people were still playing poker. We all ended up at the final tombstone and paid our respects. And heard something about the site changing ooh ahh Then, unfortunately, I had to leave and miss the drinkering. Big sigh.

It was so very nice seeing everybody. Very, very, very, very nice. I'm not naming names

There was a San Francisco Chronicle reporter there with photographer, so there might be some press. Correction - there *is* some press. (NOTE: this has curtain-lifting spoilers, so don't look if you don't want to know!). I'm not commenting on the reporting.

There are some flickr photos up if you search for "graveyard games." (NOTE: also contains something of a PM spoiler)

[thunderclap8]

question about the nametags: Were they on hand when you arrived?

[catherwood]

[SMG3er]

Definitely a lot of fun... I got there around 1:15 which worried me, because sometimes bad things happen when you arrive to an event early.

It was great meeting people and finally putting faces to names and just having lots of fun.

Like what was said, we were greeted by a young gal representing the Brown estate () who told us to meet around a giant cross at 2pm and gave us 10 LCP chips. We played Hold 'Em for about 30-40 minutes, when we got the phone calls about the instructions for the 2:30 mission. Oddly enough, our little poker group spent about 5-10 minutes running around looking for the thing, but it ended up being behind the place we had set up to play Tombstone Poker. We only found this out after the person who had found it told us where it was.

We went on the "chase" around the cemetery with a tall photographer from the Brown estate () documenting it all. We left flowers on graves, got lost, tripped, asked people to give us chips for an offering, and had lots of fun, before ending up at the final grave belonging to a young boy. That's where we made the offering, held hands, sang Amazing Grace, heard the radio message, took photos of the hat. Then we went off to the tavern where people played poker with the all the chips. At "sunset," we opened the final envelope and got the cypher.

I updated lcp.textamerica.com with some of the few photos I took with the regular digital camera I had on me. And if people need a place to upload photos, due to bandwidth or storage issues, you can send it to that photoblog by emailing the photo from your computer or phone to the address lcp.lcpSPLATtamw.com.

[MageSteff]

[ariock]

well. that was fun.

As usual, I have the last moments recorded as an MP3, so I am putting it up on my webspace.

A few important caveats.

I am sniffling. A lot. it started to drive me nuts as I was listening to it, so sorry in advance.

It starts when someone misheard the counting of the chips (at 650) and thought it was the station we were supposed to tune into. Add to that the apparent sound of Morse when that station was found, and you have a very tense several minutes.

After that, we followed Lucky's last request for us at the final tombstone. We heard that the site had been updated, and then didn't know what to do for several minutes. Eventually, I believe Darkforge heard about the ten, ace and nine. Unfortunately...it was VERY difficult for the radios with analog dials to tune into 101.9 FM. I was the only person with a digital radio, so I was the only person able to tune it in. **NOTE FOR NEXT EVENT-DIGITAL TUNER ON RADIOS** Luckily this wasn't critical for anything to progress, but I think it is good that we have this.

Since my radio has no speakers, I was only able to listen on earbuds. I help one to my microphone, and gave the other to TheAdam, who was kind enough to repeat Lucky's words.

This is 17 MB, with a lot of extraneous stuff in the middle, so if anyone can/is willing to chop it up or remove sniffles or isolate lucky's stuff or help with hosting, be my guest.

And now, you can all listen.

[RPGgame]

wow it was very humerous listening to you all

Ill see if i can do anything with this

[ahecht]

[anon]

[ariock]

I started writing and it got far too long....standard ariock post...

Just a few bullet points for the next players.

1. The poker tournament ended up being fairly extraneous, and for our group, a distraction. I ended up missing the call from my UF contact at 2:30 and as a result was not the one who found the box and clue envelopes. In fact, in running around, I missed the start of the actual clue hunt. Once the hunt started, a significant portion of the players simply stopped, and followed along. See below why this might be a problem.

2. Since there were around 100 people, there were SEVERAL(10+) poker games going on for the tournament. According to the rules, the person with the most chips at the end of the poker tournament was declared the winner. They got a deck of antique playing cards. There was no playoff or anything. just whichever person had the most chips got the prize. Also according to the rules, people weren't allowed to pool chips. It was supposed to be a fair game. According to the rules, you are only supposed to play 2 chips per team per hand. this doesn't add up to a lot of chips, and within two hands, there could be a tie. However, modifications to the rules were allowed. I would suggest an ALL-IN mod, where one hand decides who gets all the chips. it is about as fair as anything I can come up with. Assuming you want someone in your group to win the swag, make sure you assemble the largest group in the place.

Or, if multiple groups play the ALL IN mod, you could have the winners of each table face off in one ultra tourney. If SF was any indication, a large (temporary) offering of chips will be made at the end.

Please be cool and don't hoard chips. Remember, it is SOCIALIST POKER! EVERYBODY WINS!

3. When the quest starts, designate a photojournalist, an audio recorder, a photographer/scanner, and a cartographer. Audio recorder records all of the instructions as they are read. Photographer makes a record of all of the pages of instructions and hints. I don't know what happened to the cards/photos from our quest, but I haven't seen them posted yet. Photojournalist records the answers to every piece of the quest in photos. Either of the tombstone or of the filled out instruction if the answer is inside a mausolem and the pic won't come out. get name, date, and whatever else might be interesting about each site. Cartographer has a map of the cemetery. I will try to get an aerial photo of the next site for someone to print out. note on there where each location was. This is the kind of interesting things that I would love to see from the other sites. I will try to put up a scan of my map of the site tomorrow.

4. Radios should have a digital dial. No one was able to get the FM signal on their analog radios. I was the only one able to pick up the broadcast. I assumed that there would be a ton of people playing it, so I didn't bring speakers for my radio. Not that I have any...but still.

um....those were the main things I could think of.

I wish I didn't have to work for the next month and could fly around and experience the hunts again. If you can.... I highly recommend it. But then, I liked hunting for payphones.

I am going to see if I can take a few days to go down to LA. ....

[The Adam]

My original plan was to show up a few hours early to scout out some choice card combinations while being able to leave before I could interfere with any setup. However, I ended up only showing up an hour early, and was kind of in the thick of things. Okay, so maybe I wouldn't have been, but I have this thing for redheads

All of which was for naught, though, since the notes I took ended up getting muddled, and the place where we played the poker game was much further from the area I had scouted than I expected. Too bad, since I found one spot where I could easily pick two out of three aces for any hand. It was a struggle finding non-face cards, as most of the graves were for family burials. There were also more clubs than anything, and very few spades. (Observation here is that this Italian cemetery consists mostly of multiple family members buried under crosses. If you need a Jack, Queen, or King of Clubs, just spin around in a circle and touch a random gravestone.)

For those really intent on following my example, I'd reccomend a printout from Google Maps of the graveyard and a thin marker, and to not completely rely on the maps, as many of the teams were able to beat mine back by just running around and looking while I was busy consulting my notes.

Also, as ariock stated, the poker games themselves were cannibalized by the website related shenanigans. I myself didn't realize until a few minutes into it that I had abandoned my poker buddy in favor of letting my body be steered remotely by a voice on a cell phone (Sorry Daniel!)

I took an extreme wrong turn during the initial scavenger hunt, since it was taking so long to get the box I decided to go on the possible assumption that the PMs had mixed up West and East. Fortunately, the instructions in the box ended up leading the entire group to where I was standing, and so got to meet up with them.

About halfway through the box instructions, we all regathered at the initial meeting place to crown the winners of the tournament, and begun to collect the 500 chips we needed for the final offering (big ups to Silverkun's impassioned speech). After that, back to the end of the instructions.

We ended up at the grave of a young child, to whom we were to give the offering. We begun counting the chips and placing them on the grave, and ended up with six hundred and sixty sev*cough*ix chips, after which we all stood in a circle and kind of held hands. Then we sung Amazing Grace as one of those yippy skippy neat things that just randomly happen during these events. hmrpita arranged some of the chips into the four poker suit symbols, which I'm sure there are countless pictures of.

After some initial misunderstandings, we got the proper frequency for our radio message, which now that it's been mentioned, was being broadcast from a lot closer than I had expected. Which ended up being fortuitous, because of the positioning that made ariock and I the perfect antennae to recieve the message. Message relayed to the rest of the group, while our many members with wireless internet access checked the LCP page and announced when the "great journey" to the 1940's took place.

Afterwards, we had to rush to clean up the poker chips as the graveyard was to be closing soon. I ended up with around 150 LCP poker chips in my jacket pockets (don't contact me about getting some of them, as I thankfully ended up getting rid of most at the tavern).

At the Globe Tavern, we got a few games of Texas Hold 'Em going, and for the first time in my life, I did okay. I unfortunately had to take off soon after to speed off to work.

It was really good seeing a lot of friends I hadn't seen since last year and meeting new people. I'm totally glad my mojo kicked in in time for me to get the time off of work, and absolutely recommend everyone reading to do their best to make it to one of the other live events, as they are what really make the whole ARG experience for me. YMMV, of course.

---Adam, even more confusing due to the name tag