the HMS Delicious
I doubt I could have imagined it working out better, particularly when one considers what a rough start we had.
The evening--like the ship, the rum-filled punch, and the ice cream cake--was delicious.
I was nearly an hour late, due to a series of extenuating circumstances. I had cut my workout short (something that seems to be rule rather than exception as of late), but still milled about, seeking every possible excuse for procrastination rather than hop into an ice-cold shower. To that end, I did some prop work - artificially aging art paper through repeated crumpling followed by a wash of yellow-brown acrylic paint and the application of hair dryer. The two ends of this yellowed sheet (which could have been more stained, next time I shall use tea) were then attached to cardboard tubes to create Mephistopheles' scroll. I rapaciously devoured a six-inch Subway® Red Wine Vinaigrette Sub while watching more of the Buffy Third Season on DVD. * When at last I had expended all alternatives, I slowly submerged myself into the less-than-warm shower water. Much to my surprise, it was more tepid than gelid. I must assume that they fixed whatever the problem was, but the significant hiatus had left the water heaters working overtime. I had cranked the hot water nozzle all the way up and left the cold one off entirely; the resultant flow was tolerable, being slightly above room temperature. So, I gleefully scrubbed up (making an extra attempt to be expeditious not so much because of my ever-increasing tardiness but rather because I feared I would soon use up whatever pittance of warm water remained).
Clad in my dressier black shoes, black pants, and a crisp white shirt, I figured I could pass as a ship's steward in semi-formal wear regardless of whether the promised tuxedo appeared or not. I headed off to Dairy Queen and acquired the cake, a heart-shaped ice-cream affair with layers of vanilla and chocolate separated by some sort of "fudge crisp." For a moment, I marveled over the catastrophe that was the decoration. Seeking the most inappropriate illustration possible, A. and I had previously settled on the depiction of a woman somewhat sullenly consuming a cup of coffee, selected out of a flipbook of available designs (our first choice, a woman slumped over, apparently exhausted, in a chair while the devil's face hovered overhead, required two different decorations and was deemed by the decorator to be impossible unless I purchased a cake of the next larger size). Regardless, when one is presented with a rather diverse complement of potential cake decorations, one gets the impression that what you see is what you will get. I assumed that they had some sort of automated transfer process, like iron-on patches for t-shirts. After regarding the cake, I know this to be untrue. It looked pretty horrific, not that far from what I would imagine resulting had I presented A. with a cartoon and then asked him to reproduce it in frosting. The woman's face was ghoulish, a distressing milky clear color, and caving in upon itself not unlike that of Michael Jackson. Her features were smeared, whorish blue eye shadow running down to her cheekbones. Her arm was distorted, conjuring images of Slaine the Horned God in the midst of a fabled warp spasm. Her breasts were uneven and were mistaken by several people to be a cooked turkey. Finally, the potted plant to her right resembled a miniature volcano spewing forth gouts of red flame.
Suffice to say, I was pretty pleased.
Fifty minutes later, the cake was safely ensconced in A.'s refrigerator as he and I set about rapidly finishing off the remaining props. Despite the fact that the murder party was not expected to begin for some four hours, things were quite rushed. A. had rather obtusely invited people to begin arriving as early as six-thirty for an event with a start time between eight-thirty and nine. A. is, quite often, an idiot and felt some relaxing socialization should take place before we hurled ourselves into the void. Somehow, he forgot that the entire impetus for the murder mystery party was the fact that these are a lot of people with whom we were not terribly interested in straight socialization (for the most part, they are merely friends by way of role-playing games). This left us with a mere two and a half hours to get things ready before unwelcome interruptions. Another kink in our plans was L., who we had anticipated joining us earlier than most so he might help to produce props (L. being the only member of Boy Bünd other than myself with artistic talents). Unfortunately, when A. called L. sometime after five, the hobbit was still getting out of bed. I thoroughly devoted myself to drawing ridiculous caricatures of pirates on poster board we would attach over the windows of the house. Meanwhile, A. drew and cut out a few nautically themed symbols (whales, squids and so forth) to be taped onto the walls. The final unexpected twist was that Doctor William Gull (Jack the Ripper) decided to bring his girlfriend after all. Having learned this detail at two hours to game time, I was quite annoyed, but mostly with A. for refusing to ever lay down ground rules for "his" parties. I refused to make accommodations for her (worrying more about finishing all my posters in the time allotted) while A. struggled to generate a character background on his own. She ended up as character#0, Suzy Sunshine, an Australian actress with damn near nothing humorous or interesting about her (all characters were ordered based on increasing importance to the plot, Suzy supplanted the prior late edition, character#1 Lucy Blandbrandberg, as low participant on the totem pole).
As the time neared and nerves were frayed, A. set an arbitrary cut off point for working on props and so forth (as it was, the blood-soaked rag from the Ripper's last crime never had adequate time to dry and I am certain Mephistopheles ended up with red acrylic paint on his hands (not that this was out of character for him)). We needed to be in the right state of mind ourselves or the event would simply fall apart. So, A. set about preparing the punch. His generic fruit punch lacked kick and thus failed to balance out the impressive amount of rum and triple-sec that made its way into the fruit bowl. With me serving as taste taster for each step along the way, we eventually ended up with an alchemical masterpiece that looked a little like mud but had a decent flavor and indecent amount of alcohol (the trick is orange juice and heaping spoonfuls of sugar). I indulged heavily while A. did a few bong hits, whereupon his mood improved radically. By the time guests began arriving, he was bouncing off the walls while I was occasionally falling into them.
This is the mortar upon which great performances are built.
There were a few more wrenches, though, before we achieved traction. Bobby American and Lucy Brandblandberg, the two late editions from Friday night, were running quite late. Worse yet, Jack the Ripper and his late addition girlfriend were running later than anticipated. So much so, that a number of participants were becoming antsy. After consuming their share of ham, most contented themselves with sitting in a relative silence periodically broken by tedious (at least to me) discussions of details from on-going Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. When the Doctor finally arrived, everyone was so delighted that they begged to begin at once (it being eight-fifty by this point). A. and I were at our wits end as the natives had become unruly. We determined to simply begin the story and explain the absence (and anticipated late arrival) of two characters by claiming that they were in the officer's mess but unconscious. Happily, seconds before I began my introduction, Lucy Blandbrandberg entered the house, clad in period-appropriate garb (a rather refined looking gown with accompanying fan). She helped me into a cummerbund and her tuxedo jacket (alas, I had no tie). Her boyfriend was off parking the car.
When Y. walked through the door as Bobby America, I knew the evening was going to prove an unforeseen delight. Having been told nothing of his character except his name, Y. made an intuitive leap and created a caricature that perfectly fit the fact that he was actually a time-traveler from 2089 doing his best to imitate a turn of the century American. Bobby America bore a rather remarkable resemblance to Owen Wilson's character from the Royal Tenenbaums. He had the most delightful black and white cowboy shirt imaginable, brown pants, cowboy boots, and slicked-back blond hair beneath a cowboy hat. His accent seemed eerily reminiscent of that of the current American president. He was in character from moment one, even as he immediately headed to the refreshments table and helped himself to some ham.
Squeezing an oversized monocle into my left socket (apparently distorting the surrounding flesh in the process), I summoned forth my half-assed, slightly-sauced version of a refined British accent and began:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am the ship’s steward, Lieutenant Commander Seigfried Poise. Fate is a tricky mistress, full of the spiny promise of love and the sharp pincers of tangy jealousy. Tonight, the callow bitch dumps us into the barricaded officer’s mess of the HMS Delicious, a third rate Turkish battle-barge recently converted into a floating pleasure palace. Only an hour ago, I was in this adjacent kitchen preparing a birthday ham for an esteemed passenger, Mr. John Buttadaeus. But as we all know, the Devil’s Work was done in the last hour. Chief Bos’n Sergeant Stickie made the first discovery...
The rest was magic. There was some initial reticence on the parts of many as they acclimated themselves to the lack of direction, even most role-playing games involve a more linear plot than just encouraging the participants to chat and socialize amongst themselves in an effort to uncover a murder. For most, the natural drive is to want an action - "Can we acquire weapons?" "Can I check exits?" et cetera. I think it took maybe twenty minutes or so for them to realize that all that they needed to know could only be uncovered through the interrogation of their fellow passengers. Very quickly, people began dividing into smaller subgroups for more easily managed conversations. Equally quickly, attempts were made to have private discussions, something that proved possible but difficult as they were confined to two rooms - the den and the basement. Typically, A. and I would divide our attentions, each of us taking a floor of the house.
Things went swimmingly.
Almost everyone (except perhaps the Ripper's girlfriend) did an excellent job. The greatest performances though belonged to Doctor Gull (Jack the Ripper), Colonel Itch (Mephistopheles), and Bobby America (the time cop), with honorable mention going to Oliver Grist (the time criminal).
Doctor William Gull (Jack the Ripper) arrived at the party in a black waistcoat with exceedingly long tails and a black top hat. He looked outstandingly the part. Almost immediately, he examined the body himself. It was not long before he had ascertained that Nicoli Borgia was a vampire, but he kept this knowledge to himself and attempted to use it as leverage for prying loose what the Count knew about the murder. I learned during the debriefing after the game that Gull had also played the unexpected role of serving as Mephistopheles' pimp. Among the motivations of Colonel Itch (Mephistopheles) was to acquire the soul of one of the fellow passengers. It was suggested that Gull's soul seemed particularly alluring to him because he sensed in it "rich, sweet hubris and false piety." To that end, Mephistopheles had acquired a bloody handkerchief (washcloth soaked in red acrylic paint) and a straight razor (my portable corkscrew/bottle-opener) utilized by the Doctor during an earlier dalliance unrelated to the present murder. It appears, however, the Gull managed to deflect the devil's efforts by suggesting alternatives based on blackmail information he had acquired from other passengers.
Mephistopheles followed Gull's lead and approached Veronica Shanker, ex-whore, now Christian charity worker, but she predictably fled from his offer. Gull next sent Mephistopheles to John Buttadaeus, the Wandering Jew. In a turn of events that A. and I had not foreseen, Mephistopheles offered John a chance to finally perish (at the hands of the pirates) in exchange for his immortal soul. Weary of his accursed existence (and perhaps doubting the perpetually imminent Second Coming), Buttadaeus signed on the Colonel's blood-inked (really just red-inked) scroll. The intriguing thing being that the wording of their agreement was unclear. It appears likely that Mephistopheles merely promised Buttadaeus the ability to die at the hands of the pirates. Since the telegraph saboteur was uncovered at the end of the evening, the pirates were driven off by the Royal Navy. John Buttadaeus continues his angst-ridden existence while Mephistopheles most likely still walked away with his prize. Such is the Devil's way.
Bobby America (the time cop named Bobby Xenon) proved to be the biggest surprise of the evening. He was a late edition and both A. and I had fretted over his potential for ruining everything. Y., however, came into the game with the clear intention of showing everyone up, be it by dressing the part, playing his character, or solving the mystery. In this case, he did all three. Bobby America worked the room the way one must when solving a crime through investigative socialization. He actually listened to what people said and connected information from disparate sources. Prone to a certain amount of American hubris, he believed he had solved the crime after a mere thirty minutes, but it worked to his advantage that others were not quite as quick to judge. He refined his own hypothesis (periodically updating A. and I) over the course of the evening. When it came time for accusations, someone pointed the finger at Bobby and his rebuttal exposed the basic underlying truth of the situation:
"Well now," he smiled, speaking with a Texan twang. "I may be know to ya'll as Bobby America..."
Suddenly, his demeanor became more serious and his voice adopted a lower tone and nonspecific American accent. "But my real name is Bobby Xenon, time cop from the year 2089. Four years from now, that man, Fred Nieman, will assassinate President John McKinley, leading to the rise of Theodore Roosevelt and organized labor. A fellow time traveler has come back here to prevent that assassination by allowing you all to be murdered by pirates. I believe that man to be Oliver Grist!"
Oliver Grist (the time-traveling criminal from 1901 played by H.) proved, not-surprisingly, to be a delight. We expected his natural inclination towards deceptions would make him the ideal candidate for playing a telegraph and time-space continuum saboteur. As is the nature of the game, I unfortunately missed some of his best performances while I was on duty supervising others. He largely held court upstairs, spinning yarns and deflecting questions. There were a few post-game complaints that he may have violated our core rule ("evasions, yes; lies, no") one or two times, but overall it worked out (he was still exposed). I am still waiting for a briefing on what exactly was "the Golden Apples rant."
If there was an area needing improvement, it was the accusation process. We had done quite a bit of deliberating over how it should take place. In the end, we allowed the accused to respond with an accusation, but stopped once the truth came to light. This meant that certain people who had made progress towards solving the crimes (Doctor Gull, for example) never had a chance to make his or her claim after Bobby America solved the mystery. We then encouraged each player (from character of least importance to that of most importance) to read his or her backgrounds. Strangely, the murder itself (theoretically a red herring) was not really solved, since the key concern was to recover the missing components of the telegraph machine by exposing its saboteur. It turns out Veronica Shanker knew she had most likely committed the murder in one of her fits of syphilitic rage, but she was not about to expose herself.
Once all secrets had been exposed, we sang happy birthday to John Buttadaeus (it being the birthday of both him and the party-goer portraying him) before jointly devouring the ice cream cake.
The game itself went on for a full two hours. A. and I had no idea what everyone's tolerance would be. As I mentioned, some felt they had already unraveled everything early one. Even at the two hour mark, though, there were still those seeking more time as they wheeled and dealed in the basement (Gull and the Count had an unlikely partnership). A. and I hope that this indicates my desire to actually trap people in V.'s parent's cabin much longer event is feasible.
We wrapped everything up sometime after eleven. A. had allotted a full hour for others to praise us. Even that seemed to work out surprisingly well. Participants were content to discuss details, mechanics, and issues. There was applause for A. and I, as well as the ego-boosting suggestion from Lucy Blandbrandberg that we actually publish ourselves (she has played store-bought murder mysteries before and could not believe we wrote all this over the course of a week's time). A., of course, was basking in it while I confined myself to a general sense of contentment mixed with the realization that I had a looming headache from rum saturation. Most people drifted off around midnight, while A., myself, and a couple others debriefed further. The evening was ruled a fantastic success.
As I stumbled, exhausted but bizarrely manic, to my car somewhere around one in the morning, I began anxiously preoccupying on how we were going to top this one. A. has already begun spread tale of a sequel to be run in March or April.
*In the process, discovering much to my amazement that Tara actually made an appearance during the third season episode "Dopplegangland" (long before being formally introduced). Willow, while clad in the dominatrix gear of her alternate universe vampiric self, goes to stroke the hair of a seated girl only to clumsily find her fingers entangled. The victim of this act is none other than Tara, who sits unmoving and expressionless. I am sure all true Buffy fanatics are already aware of this bit of foreshadowing on Joss Whedon's part, but I found it fantastic since this is the very same episode wherein Willow, while discussing her vampy alter-ego, states, "and I think I'm kinda gay." Buffy then responds that it is okay because nothing remains of the original person's personality when the demon takes over. At which point, Angel starts to pipe in, "Actually..." before trailing off. Apparently, the groundwork for lesbian action was laid a half-season in advance, as soon as they realized that Oz was going to be leaving the show.
The evening--like the ship, the rum-filled punch, and the ice cream cake--was delicious.
I was nearly an hour late, due to a series of extenuating circumstances. I had cut my workout short (something that seems to be rule rather than exception as of late), but still milled about, seeking every possible excuse for procrastination rather than hop into an ice-cold shower. To that end, I did some prop work - artificially aging art paper through repeated crumpling followed by a wash of yellow-brown acrylic paint and the application of hair dryer. The two ends of this yellowed sheet (which could have been more stained, next time I shall use tea) were then attached to cardboard tubes to create Mephistopheles' scroll. I rapaciously devoured a six-inch Subway® Red Wine Vinaigrette Sub while watching more of the Buffy Third Season on DVD. * When at last I had expended all alternatives, I slowly submerged myself into the less-than-warm shower water. Much to my surprise, it was more tepid than gelid. I must assume that they fixed whatever the problem was, but the significant hiatus had left the water heaters working overtime. I had cranked the hot water nozzle all the way up and left the cold one off entirely; the resultant flow was tolerable, being slightly above room temperature. So, I gleefully scrubbed up (making an extra attempt to be expeditious not so much because of my ever-increasing tardiness but rather because I feared I would soon use up whatever pittance of warm water remained).
Clad in my dressier black shoes, black pants, and a crisp white shirt, I figured I could pass as a ship's steward in semi-formal wear regardless of whether the promised tuxedo appeared or not. I headed off to Dairy Queen and acquired the cake, a heart-shaped ice-cream affair with layers of vanilla and chocolate separated by some sort of "fudge crisp." For a moment, I marveled over the catastrophe that was the decoration. Seeking the most inappropriate illustration possible, A. and I had previously settled on the depiction of a woman somewhat sullenly consuming a cup of coffee, selected out of a flipbook of available designs (our first choice, a woman slumped over, apparently exhausted, in a chair while the devil's face hovered overhead, required two different decorations and was deemed by the decorator to be impossible unless I purchased a cake of the next larger size). Regardless, when one is presented with a rather diverse complement of potential cake decorations, one gets the impression that what you see is what you will get. I assumed that they had some sort of automated transfer process, like iron-on patches for t-shirts. After regarding the cake, I know this to be untrue. It looked pretty horrific, not that far from what I would imagine resulting had I presented A. with a cartoon and then asked him to reproduce it in frosting. The woman's face was ghoulish, a distressing milky clear color, and caving in upon itself not unlike that of Michael Jackson. Her features were smeared, whorish blue eye shadow running down to her cheekbones. Her arm was distorted, conjuring images of Slaine the Horned God in the midst of a fabled warp spasm. Her breasts were uneven and were mistaken by several people to be a cooked turkey. Finally, the potted plant to her right resembled a miniature volcano spewing forth gouts of red flame.
Suffice to say, I was pretty pleased.
Fifty minutes later, the cake was safely ensconced in A.'s refrigerator as he and I set about rapidly finishing off the remaining props. Despite the fact that the murder party was not expected to begin for some four hours, things were quite rushed. A. had rather obtusely invited people to begin arriving as early as six-thirty for an event with a start time between eight-thirty and nine. A. is, quite often, an idiot and felt some relaxing socialization should take place before we hurled ourselves into the void. Somehow, he forgot that the entire impetus for the murder mystery party was the fact that these are a lot of people with whom we were not terribly interested in straight socialization (for the most part, they are merely friends by way of role-playing games). This left us with a mere two and a half hours to get things ready before unwelcome interruptions. Another kink in our plans was L., who we had anticipated joining us earlier than most so he might help to produce props (L. being the only member of Boy Bünd other than myself with artistic talents). Unfortunately, when A. called L. sometime after five, the hobbit was still getting out of bed. I thoroughly devoted myself to drawing ridiculous caricatures of pirates on poster board we would attach over the windows of the house. Meanwhile, A. drew and cut out a few nautically themed symbols (whales, squids and so forth) to be taped onto the walls. The final unexpected twist was that Doctor William Gull (Jack the Ripper) decided to bring his girlfriend after all. Having learned this detail at two hours to game time, I was quite annoyed, but mostly with A. for refusing to ever lay down ground rules for "his" parties. I refused to make accommodations for her (worrying more about finishing all my posters in the time allotted) while A. struggled to generate a character background on his own. She ended up as character#0, Suzy Sunshine, an Australian actress with damn near nothing humorous or interesting about her (all characters were ordered based on increasing importance to the plot, Suzy supplanted the prior late edition, character#1 Lucy Blandbrandberg, as low participant on the totem pole).
As the time neared and nerves were frayed, A. set an arbitrary cut off point for working on props and so forth (as it was, the blood-soaked rag from the Ripper's last crime never had adequate time to dry and I am certain Mephistopheles ended up with red acrylic paint on his hands (not that this was out of character for him)). We needed to be in the right state of mind ourselves or the event would simply fall apart. So, A. set about preparing the punch. His generic fruit punch lacked kick and thus failed to balance out the impressive amount of rum and triple-sec that made its way into the fruit bowl. With me serving as taste taster for each step along the way, we eventually ended up with an alchemical masterpiece that looked a little like mud but had a decent flavor and indecent amount of alcohol (the trick is orange juice and heaping spoonfuls of sugar). I indulged heavily while A. did a few bong hits, whereupon his mood improved radically. By the time guests began arriving, he was bouncing off the walls while I was occasionally falling into them.
This is the mortar upon which great performances are built.
There were a few more wrenches, though, before we achieved traction. Bobby American and Lucy Brandblandberg, the two late editions from Friday night, were running quite late. Worse yet, Jack the Ripper and his late addition girlfriend were running later than anticipated. So much so, that a number of participants were becoming antsy. After consuming their share of ham, most contented themselves with sitting in a relative silence periodically broken by tedious (at least to me) discussions of details from on-going Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. When the Doctor finally arrived, everyone was so delighted that they begged to begin at once (it being eight-fifty by this point). A. and I were at our wits end as the natives had become unruly. We determined to simply begin the story and explain the absence (and anticipated late arrival) of two characters by claiming that they were in the officer's mess but unconscious. Happily, seconds before I began my introduction, Lucy Blandbrandberg entered the house, clad in period-appropriate garb (a rather refined looking gown with accompanying fan). She helped me into a cummerbund and her tuxedo jacket (alas, I had no tie). Her boyfriend was off parking the car.
When Y. walked through the door as Bobby America, I knew the evening was going to prove an unforeseen delight. Having been told nothing of his character except his name, Y. made an intuitive leap and created a caricature that perfectly fit the fact that he was actually a time-traveler from 2089 doing his best to imitate a turn of the century American. Bobby America bore a rather remarkable resemblance to Owen Wilson's character from the Royal Tenenbaums. He had the most delightful black and white cowboy shirt imaginable, brown pants, cowboy boots, and slicked-back blond hair beneath a cowboy hat. His accent seemed eerily reminiscent of that of the current American president. He was in character from moment one, even as he immediately headed to the refreshments table and helped himself to some ham.
Squeezing an oversized monocle into my left socket (apparently distorting the surrounding flesh in the process), I summoned forth my half-assed, slightly-sauced version of a refined British accent and began:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am the ship’s steward, Lieutenant Commander Seigfried Poise. Fate is a tricky mistress, full of the spiny promise of love and the sharp pincers of tangy jealousy. Tonight, the callow bitch dumps us into the barricaded officer’s mess of the HMS Delicious, a third rate Turkish battle-barge recently converted into a floating pleasure palace. Only an hour ago, I was in this adjacent kitchen preparing a birthday ham for an esteemed passenger, Mr. John Buttadaeus. But as we all know, the Devil’s Work was done in the last hour. Chief Bos’n Sergeant Stickie made the first discovery...
The rest was magic. There was some initial reticence on the parts of many as they acclimated themselves to the lack of direction, even most role-playing games involve a more linear plot than just encouraging the participants to chat and socialize amongst themselves in an effort to uncover a murder. For most, the natural drive is to want an action - "Can we acquire weapons?" "Can I check exits?" et cetera. I think it took maybe twenty minutes or so for them to realize that all that they needed to know could only be uncovered through the interrogation of their fellow passengers. Very quickly, people began dividing into smaller subgroups for more easily managed conversations. Equally quickly, attempts were made to have private discussions, something that proved possible but difficult as they were confined to two rooms - the den and the basement. Typically, A. and I would divide our attentions, each of us taking a floor of the house.
Things went swimmingly.
Almost everyone (except perhaps the Ripper's girlfriend) did an excellent job. The greatest performances though belonged to Doctor Gull (Jack the Ripper), Colonel Itch (Mephistopheles), and Bobby America (the time cop), with honorable mention going to Oliver Grist (the time criminal).
Doctor William Gull (Jack the Ripper) arrived at the party in a black waistcoat with exceedingly long tails and a black top hat. He looked outstandingly the part. Almost immediately, he examined the body himself. It was not long before he had ascertained that Nicoli Borgia was a vampire, but he kept this knowledge to himself and attempted to use it as leverage for prying loose what the Count knew about the murder. I learned during the debriefing after the game that Gull had also played the unexpected role of serving as Mephistopheles' pimp. Among the motivations of Colonel Itch (Mephistopheles) was to acquire the soul of one of the fellow passengers. It was suggested that Gull's soul seemed particularly alluring to him because he sensed in it "rich, sweet hubris and false piety." To that end, Mephistopheles had acquired a bloody handkerchief (washcloth soaked in red acrylic paint) and a straight razor (my portable corkscrew/bottle-opener) utilized by the Doctor during an earlier dalliance unrelated to the present murder. It appears, however, the Gull managed to deflect the devil's efforts by suggesting alternatives based on blackmail information he had acquired from other passengers.
Mephistopheles followed Gull's lead and approached Veronica Shanker, ex-whore, now Christian charity worker, but she predictably fled from his offer. Gull next sent Mephistopheles to John Buttadaeus, the Wandering Jew. In a turn of events that A. and I had not foreseen, Mephistopheles offered John a chance to finally perish (at the hands of the pirates) in exchange for his immortal soul. Weary of his accursed existence (and perhaps doubting the perpetually imminent Second Coming), Buttadaeus signed on the Colonel's blood-inked (really just red-inked) scroll. The intriguing thing being that the wording of their agreement was unclear. It appears likely that Mephistopheles merely promised Buttadaeus the ability to die at the hands of the pirates. Since the telegraph saboteur was uncovered at the end of the evening, the pirates were driven off by the Royal Navy. John Buttadaeus continues his angst-ridden existence while Mephistopheles most likely still walked away with his prize. Such is the Devil's way.
Bobby America (the time cop named Bobby Xenon) proved to be the biggest surprise of the evening. He was a late edition and both A. and I had fretted over his potential for ruining everything. Y., however, came into the game with the clear intention of showing everyone up, be it by dressing the part, playing his character, or solving the mystery. In this case, he did all three. Bobby America worked the room the way one must when solving a crime through investigative socialization. He actually listened to what people said and connected information from disparate sources. Prone to a certain amount of American hubris, he believed he had solved the crime after a mere thirty minutes, but it worked to his advantage that others were not quite as quick to judge. He refined his own hypothesis (periodically updating A. and I) over the course of the evening. When it came time for accusations, someone pointed the finger at Bobby and his rebuttal exposed the basic underlying truth of the situation:
"Well now," he smiled, speaking with a Texan twang. "I may be know to ya'll as Bobby America..."
Suddenly, his demeanor became more serious and his voice adopted a lower tone and nonspecific American accent. "But my real name is Bobby Xenon, time cop from the year 2089. Four years from now, that man, Fred Nieman, will assassinate President John McKinley, leading to the rise of Theodore Roosevelt and organized labor. A fellow time traveler has come back here to prevent that assassination by allowing you all to be murdered by pirates. I believe that man to be Oliver Grist!"
Oliver Grist (the time-traveling criminal from 1901 played by H.) proved, not-surprisingly, to be a delight. We expected his natural inclination towards deceptions would make him the ideal candidate for playing a telegraph and time-space continuum saboteur. As is the nature of the game, I unfortunately missed some of his best performances while I was on duty supervising others. He largely held court upstairs, spinning yarns and deflecting questions. There were a few post-game complaints that he may have violated our core rule ("evasions, yes; lies, no") one or two times, but overall it worked out (he was still exposed). I am still waiting for a briefing on what exactly was "the Golden Apples rant."
If there was an area needing improvement, it was the accusation process. We had done quite a bit of deliberating over how it should take place. In the end, we allowed the accused to respond with an accusation, but stopped once the truth came to light. This meant that certain people who had made progress towards solving the crimes (Doctor Gull, for example) never had a chance to make his or her claim after Bobby America solved the mystery. We then encouraged each player (from character of least importance to that of most importance) to read his or her backgrounds. Strangely, the murder itself (theoretically a red herring) was not really solved, since the key concern was to recover the missing components of the telegraph machine by exposing its saboteur. It turns out Veronica Shanker knew she had most likely committed the murder in one of her fits of syphilitic rage, but she was not about to expose herself.
Once all secrets had been exposed, we sang happy birthday to John Buttadaeus (it being the birthday of both him and the party-goer portraying him) before jointly devouring the ice cream cake.
The game itself went on for a full two hours. A. and I had no idea what everyone's tolerance would be. As I mentioned, some felt they had already unraveled everything early one. Even at the two hour mark, though, there were still those seeking more time as they wheeled and dealed in the basement (Gull and the Count had an unlikely partnership). A. and I hope that this indicates my desire to actually trap people in V.'s parent's cabin much longer event is feasible.
We wrapped everything up sometime after eleven. A. had allotted a full hour for others to praise us. Even that seemed to work out surprisingly well. Participants were content to discuss details, mechanics, and issues. There was applause for A. and I, as well as the ego-boosting suggestion from Lucy Blandbrandberg that we actually publish ourselves (she has played store-bought murder mysteries before and could not believe we wrote all this over the course of a week's time). A., of course, was basking in it while I confined myself to a general sense of contentment mixed with the realization that I had a looming headache from rum saturation. Most people drifted off around midnight, while A., myself, and a couple others debriefed further. The evening was ruled a fantastic success.
As I stumbled, exhausted but bizarrely manic, to my car somewhere around one in the morning, I began anxiously preoccupying on how we were going to top this one. A. has already begun spread tale of a sequel to be run in March or April.
*In the process, discovering much to my amazement that Tara actually made an appearance during the third season episode "Dopplegangland" (long before being formally introduced). Willow, while clad in the dominatrix gear of her alternate universe vampiric self, goes to stroke the hair of a seated girl only to clumsily find her fingers entangled. The victim of this act is none other than Tara, who sits unmoving and expressionless. I am sure all true Buffy fanatics are already aware of this bit of foreshadowing on Joss Whedon's part, but I found it fantastic since this is the very same episode wherein Willow, while discussing her vampy alter-ego, states, "and I think I'm kinda gay." Buffy then responds that it is okay because nothing remains of the original person's personality when the demon takes over. At which point, Angel starts to pipe in, "Actually..." before trailing off. Apparently, the groundwork for lesbian action was laid a half-season in advance, as soon as they realized that Oz was going to be leaving the show.