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Part 1 | Part 2
I think it goes without saying that the next two months of my life were a blur. In addition to my full time job and the lead organizing role for Wartron, my students were hard at work on a robotic sailing project so I was trying to balance long afternoons working on that project on top of everything else.
Life soon took on a rhythm. I would wake up at 6:45am and get to work in time for my my first class at 7:30am, I would leave work around 5pm and head home where I would spend the next several hours answering emails and putting out fires. Somewhere around 10pm I would finish with the new problems and start in on the more long term tasks on my todo list. Somewhere around 2am I would realize that it had gotten late and drag myself off to bed. I worked every moment of the day, even at work there was no down time. While my students worked on their assignments I idly cut things, or folded things, or just generally kept my hands busy. At some point I realized that my life resembled a tower defense game and I was spending my time idly picking off the little zombies while watching for the bigger ones to come racing in my direction.
My life quickly got divided into things that had to be done before Wartron and things that could wait until after. Due to the quantity of the things that had to be done ahead of time I became extremely efficient, even picking up the phone and cold calling people for the things I needed. My mother found this development to be shocking, doubly so as in our household me willingly making a phone call is one of the signs of the impending apocalypse. And so it went and each time one thing got accomplished I turned my attention to the next lowest hanging piece of fruit (for the record at one point applying to grad school was low hanging fruit). It was an interesting spring, albeit one that passed in a blur. Certainly I would have guessed that such a schedule was unsustainable but I was wrong, I managed it for three entire months.
At least I wasn't a hermit, not at all, indeed for awhile there I was hosting a social gathering almost every evening (I think that's what it's called when a slew of people materialize in one's living room and don't leave until the wee hours of morning. I think I even fed them, or at least my credit card from that time period shows an awful lot of payments to the local pizza place and I no longer have to give the pizza guy directions).
At one point one of my friends e-mailed me a handy graphic to help me make the choices necessary to stay on top of things, I taped it to the refrigerator and it remained there for months.
I have to say that my teammates were phenomenal through this period, they strung beads, they applied stickers to chess boards, and they soldered, and soldered, and soldered, and soldered.
Indeed not only were my teammates great, so too were my friends' teammates. dalryaug managed to recruit devjoe from Luck and DFA went above and beyond the call of duty, even sending James (who would be playing at the end of June) to MIT to help rccap solder). Probably this had to have been frustrating for him as we wouldn't tell him what he was working on, merely handing him one component after another to solder and making cryptic comments over his head about what else needed to be sorted.
Throughout all of this money, and the lack thereof was a recurring theme. We had leveled with our players as to our financial struggles and were really fortunate in that some of them willingly chipped in a little bit extra. For peace of mind alone this made a tremendous difference and I am so thankful that some of our participants were willing to do it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I mention this because even with the little bit extra we were still terrified of running out of money and so we went to some ridiculous lengths to keep costs as low as possible.
Chief amongst these methods was our ridiculous use of the laser cutter. Indeed by the end it was a bit of a running joke amongst my teammates. "Can't afford to buy that? Laser cut it!"
Where normal teams would have had badges printed, we laser cut ours (actually we lasercut the pieces, assembled them, laminated them, and then lasercut them again - we couldn't afford that much black ink so we lasercut black paper).
Where team Snout's BITEs had been housed in small cardboard boxes, we couldn't afford the boxes but what I did have was a stack of clear acrylic left over from a college project, and a lasercutter. Many hours spent designing a custom housing for our custom electronic gadgets.
Some last minute mishaps, most notably a problem with our Worcester parks with less than a week to go before the Game. Parks office opened at 8am and I had jagheterlelle waiting on their doorstep with a local friend in tow, this because the rental price for Worcester residents was half that for non-residents. In the end very relieved to be told that we didn't need permits, this because we'd been told that we could only have one permit for one park per 24 hours and we'd planned to use quite a number of worcester parks.
Somewhere in there we also found time to make some movies. Two for Wartron, one of which was an introduction to our main characters and a little bit of plot.
Another a 1980s era journal from Professor Goto which teams would encounter later in the game.
While we were at it we also filmed our application for the Famine Game and my house was well and truly trashed by the time we were done. Thank god I had Mike to edit everything, so glad I taught him how all those years ago when I had him as a student.
All in all the weeks passed at an alarming rate and we were down to the wire. When we'd planned our Game we'd chosen a weekend enough after the end of the school year that I'd have an entire week off to prepare, alas so many snow days that in the end I only got two days, so much for that brilliant plan. Next time can we plan our Game for the height of summer vacation? (What do you mean "no"?)
I had worked so hard for months. I'd barely been outside, no kayaking, no evenings out, no long afternoon naps on the couch (and this was doubly unfair as I'd just bought a new couch and it was crying out to me for sleeping - indeed it wasn't until the very last day of the semester that I got to try it out, as a present to myself to celebrate the end of a crazy year, I allowed myself a 45 minute nap. So paranoid was I about all that was left to be done that I asked three different friends to call and wake me at the end of the allotted time.
For the last few days people basically lived at my house and the soldering irons burned late into the night.
Before I knew it it was the Friday before Wartron and still we worked. Did take a break in the early evening to head to Danvers with Jess to check into our hotel site and hide 32 QR codes in each of three different rooms.
I'd been promised late checkout when I booked the rooms but now that the time had come the woman at the desk wouldn't allow it. Finally I got her to agree that we could stay until 1pm but only because I was on the verge of tears and not above begging. 1pm and not a minute later.
Back home in time to fetch dr4b from the bus station. She had kindly flown in for the weekend to help staff locations and I think she was a bit taken back to arrive at my house and find GC operations in full swing. Indeed we walked in to find Mike and Mark doing a final check of the finale which basically meant that 16 laptop computer were open and running on every available surface and electrical cords snaked back and forth around the room.
My electric company sends out a quarterly report showing where you fall with regard to energy consumption amongst 100 of your neighbors, typically I rank in the top 20 lowest energy consumers (and I've even been as low as 3rd). Wartron definitely hurt my ranking however, knowing that three days later I went away for over a month, can you tell where it fell in my billing cycle.
Helped myself to a slice of pizza and went right back to what I had been doing, not looking up again until 10pm. That was it, I'd made my goal, I was done. While Mark and rccap still had a long night ahead of them with the tech but my work was done here, there was nothing else I could possibly do until morning. Plugged in the last of the BITEs to charge overnight (we'd opted for rechargeable battery packs to power the BITEs since we could borrow them for free instead of buying batteries), said goodnight to Mark and rccap and with only the barest twinge of guilt headed to bed.
Up early and into action. Woke dr4b, said good morning to Mark and rccap who had only just finished their preparations and into the car and off to Danvers for the start.
By visiting town offices instead of merely calling, I had had amazing luck with my parks and in the end the only one I actually had to pay for was in a location that I couldn't feasibly get to during business hours. Danvers had been no exception and after explaining what we were doing, the woman at the Parks and Recreation office had told me I could use any park I wanted. Alas no one quite sure who handled the one I wanted but a call to the library (whose property it was) confirmed that it was first come, first serve and I could use it for anything I wanted so long as I realized that I couldn't stop anyone else from simultaneously using it for anything they wanted. No problem!
Alas apparently not everyone got the memo and the woman in charge of a children's concert that would be held later in the day not at all pleased to arrive and discover us in occupancy and even less pleased when our teams started to arrive. "You can't be here, we're having a concert, all these people need to move their cars," she told me belligerently, "we have a permit".
"So do I." That shut her up and off she stormed to glare at my teams from a distance. Trust me, as soon as the kids' music starts, we're going to want to be gone as much as you want us to be gone.
A few hiccups at the start, most notably that the BITEs took awhile to hook up (though we'd expected this and had budgeted in some time - how nice it would have been to have the Friday night event so that that could have all been taken care of ahead of time).
For the most part our teams were assembled and ready to go (one person's flight had been delayed so I sent inkmark off to the airport to fetch her, and DFA (or Death from Next Door as they'd opted to be called for this Game) nowhere in sight. Apparently there was a problem with the vehicle they'd rented and they'd had to find a new one. Alas option number two turned out to be a small sedan. With five people squashed into it (particularly when one of the people is as tall as James) it was essentially a clown car, fully expected them to be hating life by morning.
When things were ready, I introduced myself and gave teams a few pieces of important information (most notably GC phone numbers and the assurance that food was never a puzzle and that when provided with it they shouldn't question it but eat it!)
Turned things over to rccap who jumped right into a spiel about Professor Goto, all the while clutching his laptop tightly to his chest as he'd just realized that cthulhia was going to drag him away into custody and if he put it down he wasn't going to see it again for awhile.
cthulhia swept in on cue and rccap flung out cards with a BITE code on it, we were off.
Hung around for awhile to make sure temas had no trouble using our ssh answer submission system then off to check in with rccap and cthulhia at Patton Park and then Mike and Jess at the first hotel.
Apparently a hotel employee had been around to remind them that they needed to check out exactly at 1pm and one of the teams had found a pile of condom wrappers behind the couch, and this was our high end hotel!
Handed off a set of puzzles to kirkjerk in one park and to cobie in another then off to Lowell to check into the Motel 6.
Unlike the first hotel puzzle this one couldn't realistically be solved by more than one team at a time and as we couldn't afford more than three rooms I had ivo_b write a holding pattern script for the next section of the event. The first teams to solve the prior puzzle would be sent to the motel and subsequent teams would be skipped to the bead store. When teams solved the motel puzzle and submitted their answer, the next team to submit an answer that hadn't yet been there would be directed there. As the idea (for financial reasons) was to run them around outside until we ran out of daylight, there were a lot of puzzles in the queue including several that didn't end up opening.
Alas not all of our rooms were available when we showed up, but managed to get one which was useful as it allowed me to show dr4b how to set things up before abandoning her there with one of her friends for company. Very sad to discover that the hideous bedspreads were a thing of the past and we would no longer be able to hide the components of the puzzle in plain sight.
I'd dropped the bead puzzle off with lizzielizzie earlier in the week but headed in that direction to hangout and keep an eye on teams for awhile.
Back to Motel 6 to pick up dr4b just as teams started exiting the holding pattern and getting sent to dinner. She had had an entertaining day and regaled me with the highlights.
Apparently the three rooms we'd been given included two right next to each other and a third a little further away. In the interest of safety she had wisely decided to put Death from Next Door in the more isolated room. Safety first!
Next stop the arcade where I handed off the puzzle and tokens to sauergeek before stopping for dinner of our own.
As we wanted to keep an eye on things, we opted to have dinner at the same Panera Bread where most of our teams were currently dining. It might have been a fairly relaxing meal as I wasn't scheduled to be anywhere for another hour except that I realized we had five minutes before all of the BITEs were set to alarm. Finished our sandwiches in record time and booked it out of there.
Made a quick stop at the rest area to place the QR code for that puzzle and then rushed dr4b to Harvard to help build the entrance to the computer. This was the sportsman's club and I had a small group of people ready and waiting when 8pm rolled around and we finally got access to the place.
Abandoned dr4b to the world's most voracious mosquitoes and headed back towards Lowell to keep an eye on the teams.
Made it back just as the first few teams were arriving back at Western Avenue Studios for the "gallery opening".
This puzzle which involved a series of propaganda style video game posters, each of which had been defaced with someone's initials, was one of my favorites. Not because of the puzzle itself, I've never actually solved it (because I was given the whole overview of the event, I personally never solved any of the puzzles as my run down had included just enough information as to the mechanics of all of them as to render me a lousy test solver.) Rather the reason this one was one of my favorites was because of what we'd managed with regard to the location.
This had been one of Snout's afternoon puzzles and they'd simply hosted it in a park, but for our event we'd managed to rent an empty studio and had hung the posters as though they were fine art. I'd had a successful trip to the dollar store which had resulted in a pile of cheap frames and the result was that the art looked quite fancy hanging on the wall. lizzielizzie and I had hung the show a few days earlier when I'd dropped off the bead puzzle and we'd also run to Market Basket to acquire appropriate snacks for a gallery opening (cheese, crackers and veggies). "How did the lactose intolerant girl with bad hands end up cutting up 4 lbs of cheese," lizzielizzie asked me accusingly. Whoops.
But the gallery looked fantastic, the snacks seemed to be appreciated and I was very pleased both that I got to feed people (because as my team will tell you, it's what I do) and because the whole thing was so thematic.
Left lizzielizzie and cthulhia to man the gallery and headed off to lizzielizzie's house to check on Professor Goto who was just starting to receive visits from teams. Managed a quick conversation with her between teams and hid in the kitchen between times.
The interactions were really amusing, and it was great fun to hear the responses when she greeted teams with an angry "OK, you found me, what do you want?" Some teams knew exactly what was going on plotwise and launched right into an explanation of what BIGMAC was up to, but some hadn't a clue. "What do we want? What DO we want?"
I'd been continuing to monitor teams throughout the course of the evening and one team which had been right in the thick of things during the day, hadn't had any activity for awhile. Started calling my staffers to figure out where they were and if they had simply forgotten to enter a solution word. (Here I should say that having an online answer submission system was fantastic, not only could I monitor how teams were doing, and what locations they were being sent to, but dalryaug and I could also edit driving instructions and location times on the fly.)
The BITEs on the other hand were not fantastic and while about half of them were functioning properly the other half were behaving about as badly as was possible.
One of the things that Team Snout had done when they'd designed the Game was to create a finale that involved all of the teams working together to defeat BIGMAC and while this was a lovely idea, it unfortunately required that we get all of the teams to the final location at a very specific time. In order to facilitate this rccap had hard coded a few time based messages into the BITEs, one of which was the instruction to teams to stop what they were doing and head to our finale location in Worcester. The problem was that for whatever reason some of the devices were choosing to spit out this instruction at random times (after the fact we've determined that the reason has something to do with carriage returns and the overflow buffer). Needless to say in the midst of the Game this was disheartening but we figured out it was happening really early on and the second we realized what was happening, I gave instructions to my staffers to tell each team that if they received this message they should call GC instead of doing as instructed. Unfortunately there was one team that missed this instruction and as I was trying to figure out where they were, they were on their way to Worcester.
I don't think I need to tell you how awful I feel about this, even now I wince recounting it. But it happened and I am so, so, so, so, so sorry. (My team does have a new expression as a result however, the verb "worcestering", which loosely defined means for something to go wrong about as badly as it is possible for it to go wrong.)
I think the team in question has since forgiven us, but I suspect that I will always feel bad about it.
Fortunately it was a simple matter to get them back on track.
I used the excuse of teams solving a cryptic text adventure at Dunkin Donuts as an excuse to acquire a coffee coolatta. (DFA apparently adored this puzzle and it was nice to see that they were still bouncy and enthusiastic despite the clown car.)
Then off to the rest area to make sure things were on track. I still don't know why we were so dead set that we had to have a payphone but there it was, one of the last unicorns.
While the rest area may not have been our best location, viewed objectively, it was one of the most hilarious ones. With picnic tables and plenty of parking it was a convenient spot and I was doubled over laughing to see a few of the truckers hanging out the windows of their cabs, mouths agape at the sight of people huddled over computers at every available table. They were so confused!
Next stop the entrance to the computer at the Harvard Sportsmen's club where I had left dr4b earlier. Arrived to find jagheterlelle manning the main gate and sending teams in one at a time. Oh shit, in order to make sure everyone made it to the car wash as close together as possible dalryaug and I had spent ages playing around with the timing data, and it appeared we had succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Too bad we'd forgotten that since we were no longer using the car wash our teams didn't have to be nearly as tight. We'd succeeded too well and a line of vehicles was waiting at the entrance. Headed in to do what I could to speed things up.
My team had done an excellent job turning a pavillion into an enclosed maze that teams traversed to enter the computer. sallythetimid would greet each team as they arrived and instruct them to plug in their BITE so that BIGMAC could be stopped. She would then hit them over the head with the only plot point they needed to retain from the experience (that BIGMAC was angry and they were being sucked into the computer) and then send them into the passageway where we'd done our best to make the flashing lights drive home the point that "something was happening".
When they reached the end of the passageway they encountered rccap who handed them their identity disk (a glow in the dark frisbee). During this time dr4b was frantically updating the BITEs, a fact I wasn't aware of and made harder as I lurked in the darkness and called jagheterlelle to send down the next team the very second the last team was clear.
We slammed teams through the character interaction in a desperate attempt to keep people from having to wait for more than a few minutes.
The next location involved light cycle races at my exboyfriend's family's gym and inkmark and Henry had things well in hand there so once the last of the teams were through the entrance to the computer, I abandoned my teammates to tear everything down and headed to Clinton to check in on things at the theatre.
Thanks no doubt to the slowdown at the computer entrance, we were behind schedule and as we'd paid a lot of money for not a lot of time at the theatre (and were already an hour into our rental and nobody was there), starting to worry that we weren't going to get teams through in time. Call to dalryaug and after some discussion decided to ditch the post light cycle puzzle so that we could pick up the pace a bit. Call to inkmark and Henry to pass on the new instructions.
Mike and Jess had the theatre location well in hand and fun to check in with them and share some stories of the day.
Jess sorry to admit that despite their best searching (and the fact that she'd helped me hide them) they'd been unable to find one of the QR codes in each of the three hotel rooms.
Wandered inside to say hello to the theatre owners and write them a check. Quite amused to find one of them staring at the screen which was changing slowly from one color to another. How in the world were teams supposed to solve that, he wanted to know so I gave him a quick rundown.
Meanwhile teams were starting to arrive and entertaining to see their reactions to this next puzzle. One team in particularly amused me. "Ohhhhhh, bathrooms!", followed by "ooooooooh, popcorn!" and then, "fuck!" as they entered the theatre proper and saw what awaited them on the screen.
This was quickly voted "the world's most boring movie", but so amusing to watch teams staring at it so intently. Certainly the theatre owners were amused and the one who had asked me how the solution worked pulled me aside before I left to inform me that even knowing how it worked he was struggling to decode the letters and could I just tell him what it said.
Next stop Camelot and I arrived to find jagheterlelle baking cookies and teams hard at work on every available table. It's amusing, I think of the common house as being a pretty big space but we filled it to bursting. Checked in with rccap and dalryaug downstairs at HQ then sent jagheterlelle, cthulhia, sallythetimid and dr4b to bed as they needed to be up in a few hours to deal with the exit from the computer. Helped myself to some milk and cookies and picked up jagheterlelle's cookie making duties. Gratified to find that teams appreciate the late night snack.
The next two puzzles were to take place here at Camelot, first the bit builder one which involve assembling a 3D paper object and then a secondary puzzle that only about half of the teams saw that involved a series of TRON themed trading cards. While not all of the teams solved that puzzle, we did try to make sure that they at least grabbed a copy for later and saw the room it was in as Mark had spent a lot of time creating an el-wire path which reflected nicely in a room that just happened to be full of mirrors.
Dawn was breaking by the time the last team headed out (and I very much approved of the use of their Bits as dashboard ornaments) and the next stop was a fabulous local game store that the owner had kindly agreed to open up for us at 4am. Here teams were working on a chess puzzle and I poked my nose in briefly to write a check before heading back to Camelot for a three hour nap.
The next puzzle in the line was actually intended to be an emergency puzzle that only one or two teams encountered and as such we hadn't bothered to warn Denny's that we had an influx of people coming. Alas due to our on the fly manipulation of location timing, quite a number of teams made our cut off and as sitting around eating breakfast at Denny's (with conveniently located bathrooms) seemed far more rewarding that huddling on a park bench by the turtle boy statue, dalryaug and I decided to just let it go. Quick call to lyadann to let her know we weren't going to need her to open her site.
Headed off to take a well deserved nap and as I slept teams headed first to Bancroft Towers to defeat cthulhia in her neon guard outfit, perform a secret handshake with jagheterlelle and dr4b and have a character interaction with Professor Goto and rccap before exiting the computer.
jagheterlelle would later report that despite the park being a public park open from dawn to dusk, one of the neighbors was a bit annoyed at having so many people there and threatened to call the police. It's so nice to have a permit!
In the process of scouting the area I'd visited almost every park in Worcester and by far the nicest was Green Hill Park, located on a hill above the city. As WPI alumni, both jagheterlelle and sallythetimid completely weirded out by the location as when they'd been in school it was not the kind of place you wanted to visit but apparently even Worcester isn't immune to the effects of gentrification.
Showered, dressed and continued to keep an eye on things as teams searched for the location of BIGMAC's back door, and raced to the site of the polaris missile in Auburn to try to stop him. This site which was behind the fire department, I'd assigned to hak42 as she was originally from that area and very amused to later learn that every one of her uncles and cousins work at that fire department. Apparently they were quite surprised to find her sitting in the park on a Sunday morning.
Personally I was glad of the connection as this was one of the parks we didn't have a permit for. It wasn't that I hadn't tried to get one, rather that the parks department and cemetery department were one in the same in Auburn and when I'd called to inquire about a permit, the man I'd talked to had seemed genuinely confused, assuring me over and over that you didn't need permission to go to the park but rather you just went to the park and then you were at the park and you didn't need to ask anyone.
We'd now entered the final holding pattern and for the next hour or two we sent teams from location to location, each closer and closer to the final location until such time as it was time to call them in.
As we had no way of knowing how fast teams would end up being I'd given Henry and inkmark a copy of every puzzle we had and sent them to a park just down the street from the restaurant where our finale would take place. They had access to the solve data and strict instructions to keep throwing puzzle after puzzle at the teams until such time as it was time to head to lunch.
While this final location was not one of our better ones, it was better than Crystal (meth) Park located just a block away from the restaurant.
Mike, Jess, rccap, jagheterlelle, dr4b, and Mark had headed over to the restaurant to set up the very second they opened but dalryaug and I stayed at Camelot to field questions and phone calls up until the call went out to head to the finale. Both of us far past tired and well into punchy as we piled into the car. Why was it that we only now had the brilliant idea that rather than the finale we had planned we should have instead sent teams to McDonald's to save the planet by feasting on a bigmac? Damn it, why didn't we think of that earlier?
Instead we had a tech heavy finale that involved 36 people playing simon simultaneously and the less said about that the better. Indeed let me merely admit that it was an unmitigated disaster and leave it at that.
Problems aside it did do what it was intended to do, it ended the Game so that we could all go home and get some well deserved sleep. It was over.
Gave away as many of the leftover items as possible (the framed video game posters proved very popular) and then piled into the car to head back to Camelot where we cleaned up GC and the guest rooms and divided up the assorted detritus of the Game.
Some temptation to curl up and nap at Camelot, but I wanted to sleep for a very long time so with rccap in tow climbed into the car for the last time.
Acquired well caffeinated frosty drinks and headed for home - the last 20 minutes may have been touch and go (and required switching drivers) but we made it and blessed sleep soon followed.
Funny how much of a walking zombie I was for the next few weeks. Indeed three days later I headed to Europe to visit family and I'll admit that I took a nap each and every time I was left unsupervised for more than five minutes. One day in particular I napped in the car on the way to town, napped in the car on the way home from town, napped in the garden before dinner, and again on the couch after dinner. This last nap went on so long that I awoke to find that everyone else had gone to bed so I immediately dragged myself off to do the same and slept late into the next morning.
My narcoleptic tendencies improved gradually over the next few weeks, but even a month later I still look exhausted in all of my vacation pictures and even this winter I was still collapsing in exhaustion at a drop of a hat. Fortunately I own an excellent napping couch.
So that's it, the whole story. Would I do it again? "Yes, probably." Will I do it again? "Yes, probably."
Despite all the work, the sleepless nights and the heart breaking problems, running a Game was a phenomenal experience and for all of the things that went horrifically awry, two or three others functioned flawlessly.
I think we can genuinely say that we learned a lot from the experience, certainly we have a whole Gdoc devoted to lessons learned and things to do differently next time.
I am so very grateful to Team Snout for trusting us with their Game baby and to DeeAnn for being there whenever I needed her. I'd like to think that the lessons we learned and the experience we gained will prove enormously helpful when it comes time for us to write an original Game and despite it all I look forward to finding out.
Related Material
Part 1
I think it goes without saying that the next two months of my life were a blur. In addition to my full time job and the lead organizing role for Wartron, my students were hard at work on a robotic sailing project so I was trying to balance long afternoons working on that project on top of everything else.
Life soon took on a rhythm. I would wake up at 6:45am and get to work in time for my my first class at 7:30am, I would leave work around 5pm and head home where I would spend the next several hours answering emails and putting out fires. Somewhere around 10pm I would finish with the new problems and start in on the more long term tasks on my todo list. Somewhere around 2am I would realize that it had gotten late and drag myself off to bed. I worked every moment of the day, even at work there was no down time. While my students worked on their assignments I idly cut things, or folded things, or just generally kept my hands busy. At some point I realized that my life resembled a tower defense game and I was spending my time idly picking off the little zombies while watching for the bigger ones to come racing in my direction.
My life quickly got divided into things that had to be done before Wartron and things that could wait until after. Due to the quantity of the things that had to be done ahead of time I became extremely efficient, even picking up the phone and cold calling people for the things I needed. My mother found this development to be shocking, doubly so as in our household me willingly making a phone call is one of the signs of the impending apocalypse. And so it went and each time one thing got accomplished I turned my attention to the next lowest hanging piece of fruit (for the record at one point applying to grad school was low hanging fruit). It was an interesting spring, albeit one that passed in a blur. Certainly I would have guessed that such a schedule was unsustainable but I was wrong, I managed it for three entire months.
At least I wasn't a hermit, not at all, indeed for awhile there I was hosting a social gathering almost every evening (I think that's what it's called when a slew of people materialize in one's living room and don't leave until the wee hours of morning. I think I even fed them, or at least my credit card from that time period shows an awful lot of payments to the local pizza place and I no longer have to give the pizza guy directions).
At one point one of my friends e-mailed me a handy graphic to help me make the choices necessary to stay on top of things, I taped it to the refrigerator and it remained there for months.
I have to say that my teammates were phenomenal through this period, they strung beads, they applied stickers to chess boards, and they soldered, and soldered, and soldered, and soldered.
Indeed not only were my teammates great, so too were my friends' teammates. dalryaug managed to recruit devjoe from Luck and DFA went above and beyond the call of duty, even sending James (who would be playing at the end of June) to MIT to help rccap solder). Probably this had to have been frustrating for him as we wouldn't tell him what he was working on, merely handing him one component after another to solder and making cryptic comments over his head about what else needed to be sorted.
Throughout all of this money, and the lack thereof was a recurring theme. We had leveled with our players as to our financial struggles and were really fortunate in that some of them willingly chipped in a little bit extra. For peace of mind alone this made a tremendous difference and I am so thankful that some of our participants were willing to do it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I mention this because even with the little bit extra we were still terrified of running out of money and so we went to some ridiculous lengths to keep costs as low as possible.
Chief amongst these methods was our ridiculous use of the laser cutter. Indeed by the end it was a bit of a running joke amongst my teammates. "Can't afford to buy that? Laser cut it!"
Where normal teams would have had badges printed, we laser cut ours (actually we lasercut the pieces, assembled them, laminated them, and then lasercut them again - we couldn't afford that much black ink so we lasercut black paper).
Where team Snout's BITEs had been housed in small cardboard boxes, we couldn't afford the boxes but what I did have was a stack of clear acrylic left over from a college project, and a lasercutter. Many hours spent designing a custom housing for our custom electronic gadgets.
Some last minute mishaps, most notably a problem with our Worcester parks with less than a week to go before the Game. Parks office opened at 8am and I had jagheterlelle waiting on their doorstep with a local friend in tow, this because the rental price for Worcester residents was half that for non-residents. In the end very relieved to be told that we didn't need permits, this because we'd been told that we could only have one permit for one park per 24 hours and we'd planned to use quite a number of worcester parks.
Somewhere in there we also found time to make some movies. Two for Wartron, one of which was an introduction to our main characters and a little bit of plot.
Click to viewAnother a 1980s era journal from Professor Goto which teams would encounter later in the game.
While we were at it we also filmed our application for the Famine Game and my house was well and truly trashed by the time we were done. Thank god I had Mike to edit everything, so glad I taught him how all those years ago when I had him as a student.
All in all the weeks passed at an alarming rate and we were down to the wire. When we'd planned our Game we'd chosen a weekend enough after the end of the school year that I'd have an entire week off to prepare, alas so many snow days that in the end I only got two days, so much for that brilliant plan. Next time can we plan our Game for the height of summer vacation? (What do you mean "no"?)
I had worked so hard for months. I'd barely been outside, no kayaking, no evenings out, no long afternoon naps on the couch (and this was doubly unfair as I'd just bought a new couch and it was crying out to me for sleeping - indeed it wasn't until the very last day of the semester that I got to try it out, as a present to myself to celebrate the end of a crazy year, I allowed myself a 45 minute nap. So paranoid was I about all that was left to be done that I asked three different friends to call and wake me at the end of the allotted time.
For the last few days people basically lived at my house and the soldering irons burned late into the night.
Before I knew it it was the Friday before Wartron and still we worked. Did take a break in the early evening to head to Danvers with Jess to check into our hotel site and hide 32 QR codes in each of three different rooms.
I'd been promised late checkout when I booked the rooms but now that the time had come the woman at the desk wouldn't allow it. Finally I got her to agree that we could stay until 1pm but only because I was on the verge of tears and not above begging. 1pm and not a minute later.
Back home in time to fetch dr4b from the bus station. She had kindly flown in for the weekend to help staff locations and I think she was a bit taken back to arrive at my house and find GC operations in full swing. Indeed we walked in to find Mike and Mark doing a final check of the finale which basically meant that 16 laptop computer were open and running on every available surface and electrical cords snaked back and forth around the room.
My electric company sends out a quarterly report showing where you fall with regard to energy consumption amongst 100 of your neighbors, typically I rank in the top 20 lowest energy consumers (and I've even been as low as 3rd). Wartron definitely hurt my ranking however, knowing that three days later I went away for over a month, can you tell where it fell in my billing cycle.
Helped myself to a slice of pizza and went right back to what I had been doing, not looking up again until 10pm. That was it, I'd made my goal, I was done. While Mark and rccap still had a long night ahead of them with the tech but my work was done here, there was nothing else I could possibly do until morning. Plugged in the last of the BITEs to charge overnight (we'd opted for rechargeable battery packs to power the BITEs since we could borrow them for free instead of buying batteries), said goodnight to Mark and rccap and with only the barest twinge of guilt headed to bed.
Up early and into action. Woke dr4b, said good morning to Mark and rccap who had only just finished their preparations and into the car and off to Danvers for the start.
By visiting town offices instead of merely calling, I had had amazing luck with my parks and in the end the only one I actually had to pay for was in a location that I couldn't feasibly get to during business hours. Danvers had been no exception and after explaining what we were doing, the woman at the Parks and Recreation office had told me I could use any park I wanted. Alas no one quite sure who handled the one I wanted but a call to the library (whose property it was) confirmed that it was first come, first serve and I could use it for anything I wanted so long as I realized that I couldn't stop anyone else from simultaneously using it for anything they wanted. No problem!
Alas apparently not everyone got the memo and the woman in charge of a children's concert that would be held later in the day not at all pleased to arrive and discover us in occupancy and even less pleased when our teams started to arrive. "You can't be here, we're having a concert, all these people need to move their cars," she told me belligerently, "we have a permit".
"So do I." That shut her up and off she stormed to glare at my teams from a distance. Trust me, as soon as the kids' music starts, we're going to want to be gone as much as you want us to be gone.
A few hiccups at the start, most notably that the BITEs took awhile to hook up (though we'd expected this and had budgeted in some time - how nice it would have been to have the Friday night event so that that could have all been taken care of ahead of time).
For the most part our teams were assembled and ready to go (one person's flight had been delayed so I sent inkmark off to the airport to fetch her, and DFA (or Death from Next Door as they'd opted to be called for this Game) nowhere in sight. Apparently there was a problem with the vehicle they'd rented and they'd had to find a new one. Alas option number two turned out to be a small sedan. With five people squashed into it (particularly when one of the people is as tall as James) it was essentially a clown car, fully expected them to be hating life by morning.
When things were ready, I introduced myself and gave teams a few pieces of important information (most notably GC phone numbers and the assurance that food was never a puzzle and that when provided with it they shouldn't question it but eat it!)
Turned things over to rccap who jumped right into a spiel about Professor Goto, all the while clutching his laptop tightly to his chest as he'd just realized that cthulhia was going to drag him away into custody and if he put it down he wasn't going to see it again for awhile.
cthulhia swept in on cue and rccap flung out cards with a BITE code on it, we were off.
Hung around for awhile to make sure temas had no trouble using our ssh answer submission system then off to check in with rccap and cthulhia at Patton Park and then Mike and Jess at the first hotel.
Apparently a hotel employee had been around to remind them that they needed to check out exactly at 1pm and one of the teams had found a pile of condom wrappers behind the couch, and this was our high end hotel!
Handed off a set of puzzles to kirkjerk in one park and to cobie in another then off to Lowell to check into the Motel 6.
Unlike the first hotel puzzle this one couldn't realistically be solved by more than one team at a time and as we couldn't afford more than three rooms I had ivo_b write a holding pattern script for the next section of the event. The first teams to solve the prior puzzle would be sent to the motel and subsequent teams would be skipped to the bead store. When teams solved the motel puzzle and submitted their answer, the next team to submit an answer that hadn't yet been there would be directed there. As the idea (for financial reasons) was to run them around outside until we ran out of daylight, there were a lot of puzzles in the queue including several that didn't end up opening.
Alas not all of our rooms were available when we showed up, but managed to get one which was useful as it allowed me to show dr4b how to set things up before abandoning her there with one of her friends for company. Very sad to discover that the hideous bedspreads were a thing of the past and we would no longer be able to hide the components of the puzzle in plain sight.
I'd dropped the bead puzzle off with lizzielizzie earlier in the week but headed in that direction to hangout and keep an eye on teams for awhile.
Back to Motel 6 to pick up dr4b just as teams started exiting the holding pattern and getting sent to dinner. She had had an entertaining day and regaled me with the highlights.
Apparently the three rooms we'd been given included two right next to each other and a third a little further away. In the interest of safety she had wisely decided to put Death from Next Door in the more isolated room. Safety first!
Next stop the arcade where I handed off the puzzle and tokens to sauergeek before stopping for dinner of our own.
As we wanted to keep an eye on things, we opted to have dinner at the same Panera Bread where most of our teams were currently dining. It might have been a fairly relaxing meal as I wasn't scheduled to be anywhere for another hour except that I realized we had five minutes before all of the BITEs were set to alarm. Finished our sandwiches in record time and booked it out of there.
Made a quick stop at the rest area to place the QR code for that puzzle and then rushed dr4b to Harvard to help build the entrance to the computer. This was the sportsman's club and I had a small group of people ready and waiting when 8pm rolled around and we finally got access to the place.
Abandoned dr4b to the world's most voracious mosquitoes and headed back towards Lowell to keep an eye on the teams.
Made it back just as the first few teams were arriving back at Western Avenue Studios for the "gallery opening".
This puzzle which involved a series of propaganda style video game posters, each of which had been defaced with someone's initials, was one of my favorites. Not because of the puzzle itself, I've never actually solved it (because I was given the whole overview of the event, I personally never solved any of the puzzles as my run down had included just enough information as to the mechanics of all of them as to render me a lousy test solver.) Rather the reason this one was one of my favorites was because of what we'd managed with regard to the location.
This had been one of Snout's afternoon puzzles and they'd simply hosted it in a park, but for our event we'd managed to rent an empty studio and had hung the posters as though they were fine art. I'd had a successful trip to the dollar store which had resulted in a pile of cheap frames and the result was that the art looked quite fancy hanging on the wall. lizzielizzie and I had hung the show a few days earlier when I'd dropped off the bead puzzle and we'd also run to Market Basket to acquire appropriate snacks for a gallery opening (cheese, crackers and veggies). "How did the lactose intolerant girl with bad hands end up cutting up 4 lbs of cheese," lizzielizzie asked me accusingly. Whoops.
But the gallery looked fantastic, the snacks seemed to be appreciated and I was very pleased both that I got to feed people (because as my team will tell you, it's what I do) and because the whole thing was so thematic.
Left lizzielizzie and cthulhia to man the gallery and headed off to lizzielizzie's house to check on Professor Goto who was just starting to receive visits from teams. Managed a quick conversation with her between teams and hid in the kitchen between times.
The interactions were really amusing, and it was great fun to hear the responses when she greeted teams with an angry "OK, you found me, what do you want?" Some teams knew exactly what was going on plotwise and launched right into an explanation of what BIGMAC was up to, but some hadn't a clue. "What do we want? What DO we want?"
I'd been continuing to monitor teams throughout the course of the evening and one team which had been right in the thick of things during the day, hadn't had any activity for awhile. Started calling my staffers to figure out where they were and if they had simply forgotten to enter a solution word. (Here I should say that having an online answer submission system was fantastic, not only could I monitor how teams were doing, and what locations they were being sent to, but dalryaug and I could also edit driving instructions and location times on the fly.)
The BITEs on the other hand were not fantastic and while about half of them were functioning properly the other half were behaving about as badly as was possible.
One of the things that Team Snout had done when they'd designed the Game was to create a finale that involved all of the teams working together to defeat BIGMAC and while this was a lovely idea, it unfortunately required that we get all of the teams to the final location at a very specific time. In order to facilitate this rccap had hard coded a few time based messages into the BITEs, one of which was the instruction to teams to stop what they were doing and head to our finale location in Worcester. The problem was that for whatever reason some of the devices were choosing to spit out this instruction at random times (after the fact we've determined that the reason has something to do with carriage returns and the overflow buffer). Needless to say in the midst of the Game this was disheartening but we figured out it was happening really early on and the second we realized what was happening, I gave instructions to my staffers to tell each team that if they received this message they should call GC instead of doing as instructed. Unfortunately there was one team that missed this instruction and as I was trying to figure out where they were, they were on their way to Worcester.
I don't think I need to tell you how awful I feel about this, even now I wince recounting it. But it happened and I am so, so, so, so, so sorry. (My team does have a new expression as a result however, the verb "worcestering", which loosely defined means for something to go wrong about as badly as it is possible for it to go wrong.)
I think the team in question has since forgiven us, but I suspect that I will always feel bad about it.
Fortunately it was a simple matter to get them back on track.
I used the excuse of teams solving a cryptic text adventure at Dunkin Donuts as an excuse to acquire a coffee coolatta. (DFA apparently adored this puzzle and it was nice to see that they were still bouncy and enthusiastic despite the clown car.)
Then off to the rest area to make sure things were on track. I still don't know why we were so dead set that we had to have a payphone but there it was, one of the last unicorns.
While the rest area may not have been our best location, viewed objectively, it was one of the most hilarious ones. With picnic tables and plenty of parking it was a convenient spot and I was doubled over laughing to see a few of the truckers hanging out the windows of their cabs, mouths agape at the sight of people huddled over computers at every available table. They were so confused!
Next stop the entrance to the computer at the Harvard Sportsmen's club where I had left dr4b earlier. Arrived to find jagheterlelle manning the main gate and sending teams in one at a time. Oh shit, in order to make sure everyone made it to the car wash as close together as possible dalryaug and I had spent ages playing around with the timing data, and it appeared we had succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Too bad we'd forgotten that since we were no longer using the car wash our teams didn't have to be nearly as tight. We'd succeeded too well and a line of vehicles was waiting at the entrance. Headed in to do what I could to speed things up.
My team had done an excellent job turning a pavillion into an enclosed maze that teams traversed to enter the computer. sallythetimid would greet each team as they arrived and instruct them to plug in their BITE so that BIGMAC could be stopped. She would then hit them over the head with the only plot point they needed to retain from the experience (that BIGMAC was angry and they were being sucked into the computer) and then send them into the passageway where we'd done our best to make the flashing lights drive home the point that "something was happening".
When they reached the end of the passageway they encountered rccap who handed them their identity disk (a glow in the dark frisbee). During this time dr4b was frantically updating the BITEs, a fact I wasn't aware of and made harder as I lurked in the darkness and called jagheterlelle to send down the next team the very second the last team was clear.
We slammed teams through the character interaction in a desperate attempt to keep people from having to wait for more than a few minutes.
The next location involved light cycle races at my exboyfriend's family's gym and inkmark and Henry had things well in hand there so once the last of the teams were through the entrance to the computer, I abandoned my teammates to tear everything down and headed to Clinton to check in on things at the theatre.
Thanks no doubt to the slowdown at the computer entrance, we were behind schedule and as we'd paid a lot of money for not a lot of time at the theatre (and were already an hour into our rental and nobody was there), starting to worry that we weren't going to get teams through in time. Call to dalryaug and after some discussion decided to ditch the post light cycle puzzle so that we could pick up the pace a bit. Call to inkmark and Henry to pass on the new instructions.
Mike and Jess had the theatre location well in hand and fun to check in with them and share some stories of the day.
Jess sorry to admit that despite their best searching (and the fact that she'd helped me hide them) they'd been unable to find one of the QR codes in each of the three hotel rooms.
Wandered inside to say hello to the theatre owners and write them a check. Quite amused to find one of them staring at the screen which was changing slowly from one color to another. How in the world were teams supposed to solve that, he wanted to know so I gave him a quick rundown.
Meanwhile teams were starting to arrive and entertaining to see their reactions to this next puzzle. One team in particularly amused me. "Ohhhhhh, bathrooms!", followed by "ooooooooh, popcorn!" and then, "fuck!" as they entered the theatre proper and saw what awaited them on the screen.
This was quickly voted "the world's most boring movie", but so amusing to watch teams staring at it so intently. Certainly the theatre owners were amused and the one who had asked me how the solution worked pulled me aside before I left to inform me that even knowing how it worked he was struggling to decode the letters and could I just tell him what it said.
Next stop Camelot and I arrived to find jagheterlelle baking cookies and teams hard at work on every available table. It's amusing, I think of the common house as being a pretty big space but we filled it to bursting. Checked in with rccap and dalryaug downstairs at HQ then sent jagheterlelle, cthulhia, sallythetimid and dr4b to bed as they needed to be up in a few hours to deal with the exit from the computer. Helped myself to some milk and cookies and picked up jagheterlelle's cookie making duties. Gratified to find that teams appreciate the late night snack.
The next two puzzles were to take place here at Camelot, first the bit builder one which involve assembling a 3D paper object and then a secondary puzzle that only about half of the teams saw that involved a series of TRON themed trading cards. While not all of the teams solved that puzzle, we did try to make sure that they at least grabbed a copy for later and saw the room it was in as Mark had spent a lot of time creating an el-wire path which reflected nicely in a room that just happened to be full of mirrors.
Dawn was breaking by the time the last team headed out (and I very much approved of the use of their Bits as dashboard ornaments) and the next stop was a fabulous local game store that the owner had kindly agreed to open up for us at 4am. Here teams were working on a chess puzzle and I poked my nose in briefly to write a check before heading back to Camelot for a three hour nap.
The next puzzle in the line was actually intended to be an emergency puzzle that only one or two teams encountered and as such we hadn't bothered to warn Denny's that we had an influx of people coming. Alas due to our on the fly manipulation of location timing, quite a number of teams made our cut off and as sitting around eating breakfast at Denny's (with conveniently located bathrooms) seemed far more rewarding that huddling on a park bench by the turtle boy statue, dalryaug and I decided to just let it go. Quick call to lyadann to let her know we weren't going to need her to open her site.
Headed off to take a well deserved nap and as I slept teams headed first to Bancroft Towers to defeat cthulhia in her neon guard outfit, perform a secret handshake with jagheterlelle and dr4b and have a character interaction with Professor Goto and rccap before exiting the computer.
jagheterlelle would later report that despite the park being a public park open from dawn to dusk, one of the neighbors was a bit annoyed at having so many people there and threatened to call the police. It's so nice to have a permit!
In the process of scouting the area I'd visited almost every park in Worcester and by far the nicest was Green Hill Park, located on a hill above the city. As WPI alumni, both jagheterlelle and sallythetimid completely weirded out by the location as when they'd been in school it was not the kind of place you wanted to visit but apparently even Worcester isn't immune to the effects of gentrification.
Showered, dressed and continued to keep an eye on things as teams searched for the location of BIGMAC's back door, and raced to the site of the polaris missile in Auburn to try to stop him. This site which was behind the fire department, I'd assigned to hak42 as she was originally from that area and very amused to later learn that every one of her uncles and cousins work at that fire department. Apparently they were quite surprised to find her sitting in the park on a Sunday morning.
Personally I was glad of the connection as this was one of the parks we didn't have a permit for. It wasn't that I hadn't tried to get one, rather that the parks department and cemetery department were one in the same in Auburn and when I'd called to inquire about a permit, the man I'd talked to had seemed genuinely confused, assuring me over and over that you didn't need permission to go to the park but rather you just went to the park and then you were at the park and you didn't need to ask anyone.
We'd now entered the final holding pattern and for the next hour or two we sent teams from location to location, each closer and closer to the final location until such time as it was time to call them in.
As we had no way of knowing how fast teams would end up being I'd given Henry and inkmark a copy of every puzzle we had and sent them to a park just down the street from the restaurant where our finale would take place. They had access to the solve data and strict instructions to keep throwing puzzle after puzzle at the teams until such time as it was time to head to lunch.
While this final location was not one of our better ones, it was better than Crystal (meth) Park located just a block away from the restaurant.
Mike, Jess, rccap, jagheterlelle, dr4b, and Mark had headed over to the restaurant to set up the very second they opened but dalryaug and I stayed at Camelot to field questions and phone calls up until the call went out to head to the finale. Both of us far past tired and well into punchy as we piled into the car. Why was it that we only now had the brilliant idea that rather than the finale we had planned we should have instead sent teams to McDonald's to save the planet by feasting on a bigmac? Damn it, why didn't we think of that earlier?
Instead we had a tech heavy finale that involved 36 people playing simon simultaneously and the less said about that the better. Indeed let me merely admit that it was an unmitigated disaster and leave it at that.
Problems aside it did do what it was intended to do, it ended the Game so that we could all go home and get some well deserved sleep. It was over.
Gave away as many of the leftover items as possible (the framed video game posters proved very popular) and then piled into the car to head back to Camelot where we cleaned up GC and the guest rooms and divided up the assorted detritus of the Game.
Some temptation to curl up and nap at Camelot, but I wanted to sleep for a very long time so with rccap in tow climbed into the car for the last time.
Acquired well caffeinated frosty drinks and headed for home - the last 20 minutes may have been touch and go (and required switching drivers) but we made it and blessed sleep soon followed.
Funny how much of a walking zombie I was for the next few weeks. Indeed three days later I headed to Europe to visit family and I'll admit that I took a nap each and every time I was left unsupervised for more than five minutes. One day in particular I napped in the car on the way to town, napped in the car on the way home from town, napped in the garden before dinner, and again on the couch after dinner. This last nap went on so long that I awoke to find that everyone else had gone to bed so I immediately dragged myself off to do the same and slept late into the next morning.
My narcoleptic tendencies improved gradually over the next few weeks, but even a month later I still look exhausted in all of my vacation pictures and even this winter I was still collapsing in exhaustion at a drop of a hat. Fortunately I own an excellent napping couch.
So that's it, the whole story. Would I do it again? "Yes, probably." Will I do it again? "Yes, probably."
Despite all the work, the sleepless nights and the heart breaking problems, running a Game was a phenomenal experience and for all of the things that went horrifically awry, two or three others functioned flawlessly.
I think we can genuinely say that we learned a lot from the experience, certainly we have a whole Gdoc devoted to lessons learned and things to do differently next time.
I am so very grateful to Team Snout for trusting us with their Game baby and to DeeAnn for being there whenever I needed her. I'd like to think that the lessons we learned and the experience we gained will prove enormously helpful when it comes time for us to write an original Game and despite it all I look forward to finding out.
Related Material
- Official Website
- Application Mini-Game (feel free to register a team and give it a try)
- Team timing data and puzzle archive
- Snoutcast Interview about Wartron:Boston (Part 1 | Part 2)
Part 1