unforum

[Almighty]

[Advice Sought]

[Ciaran_H]

You might want to take a look at http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14645 - there's a lot of useful views in there on every aspect of ARGs, including TINAG and how far it goes. A quote from Ehsan:

[Almighty]

ta.

hope i didn't make a faux pas by posting the thread.

[Ciaran_H]

Not at all. And actually, the thread doesn't say as much about TINAG that I thought it did. Oh well. It's interesting in its own right, too.

[Almighty]

reading it, i'm not sure it answers my question either.

most of the discussions about ARGs talk about the overall assumption that "players" have that they're in an ARG, and that it's solvable.

my concept is very web light, in that there may be web elements of it, but a large amount of it may well be artifact and physical clue based. the web elements of it would be used primarily as a tracking mechanism to indicate progression of participants through the game as they discover clues, and use information to gain information from web sources.

i'll add to the other discussion and see where i get with it

[colin]

Re: [Advice Sought]

[Almighty]

well, if you were trying to solve a murder, or even say, something to do with corporate espionage, and you received an email from "the bad guys", that'd count as threatening yes ?

i'm only looking at this froma hypothetical point of view, but for the ARG to work, you need motivation, and there'd need to be some kind of reactionary effect from making moves within the game.

this is my point, and i've posted a main thread-starter in the META forum too. for TINAG to mean what it says, there needs to be a bit more reality involved. even if, say the ARG required you to meet someone, that might be threatening if you didn't know it was really a game.

likewise, trying to solve a puzzle, involving other people, who don't want the puzzle to be solved, if you don't know it's a game is a potential source of fear....

which is why i'm asking advice on the line between really TINAG games, and when it comes down to it, most ARGs which are really TIAG.

[colin]

[MageSteff]

[Almighty]

[Phaedra]

[Delusional]

@almighty

It appears to me that your ultimate goal is to create a purely TINAG ARG(am I right?). Well IMO such a thing doesn't/can't exist.

ARG's are two sided games. They can be fun creative and social exercises for the pm's but they are also for the players enjoyment.
If you take away the *wink wink* from tinag. Than you take away the player enjoyment part as well (I don't consider being threatened by a real organization as enjoyable) and it becomes only a game for the pm's that really boils down to screwing with peoples lives & emotions. That imo doesn't qualify as an ARG to begin with. There are obvious ethical concerns with a truly tinag model. You have the potential to cause serious emotional harm to your puppets(as they aren't really players).

I think a good ARG is a balance between tinag and tiag. Starting with tinag can considerably up the excitement and immersion levels of a game but tiag is needed to balance it out so as not to cause the players any real emotional stress. While still not completely breaking the immersion level that gives ARGs their unique edge that sets them apart from other forms of entertainment.

[MageSteff]

[Rolerbe]

Personally i think TINAG was a somewhat unique feature of the progenitor of the genre -- the Beast. After that, there come to be some limitations to TINAG -- let's face it, there's some really bizarre and unpleasant stuff out there in internet land.

PM's don't need to highlight the fact that its a game, but there are some things they should consider:

Do not become an Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" -- i.e. do not do something that would be likely to inspire panic

Do not structure a live event such that it would place the participants in danger of: arrest by the police (the good guys) or predatory attack by weirdos (the bad guys)

Do not structure a live event so as to encourage participants to engage in dangerous behavior to 'solve' the clues -- e.g. trample each other in a winner take all race, etc.

I'm sure there are others, but the general rule is to use common sense, then go a little bit further in the direction of conservatism and safety.

[Ofiuco]

Another example:

If a character I have been speaking to on AIM (and antagonizing) suddenly tells me, 'I am going to stab you in the eye with my Nazi-era dagger,' I would laugh at him. How could he kill me over the Internet? He doesn't even know where I live.

But if I'm snooping around somewhere I shouldn't be online, something that would already make me nervous -- and out of the blue I get a message telling me to back off or pay the price because we know what you're doing -- I might just pee myself. (Kidding. Exaggeration. I have excellent bladder control.)

From my point of view, TINAG is all about realism and taking things seriously -- as if they were real and as if they mattered. Sometimes this is accomplished best through details. To draw an example from a currently running game, Jack Harrison, if I'm going to be helping investigate a murder, I am more willing to believe an official-looking police report than a Word document with a few sentences in it. Because a police report -- or ripped-up memos, like in Orbital Colony -- makes more sense.

I probably just reiterated what everyone else just said, but oh well. For me, TINAG stops with me, the player. Everything should be absolutely real until it reaches me. I and the other players should be the only people in the whole universe (or really just feel like we are) that know it is actually a game. Or is it?