Save Our City - Public Post - NO SPOILERS PLEASE

[essentialsaltes]

Herein is public discussion of my Save Our City puzzle rally in Los Angeles.

If you are interested in the game, you can now download a PDF of the whole shebang, so that you too can Save Our City. (Thanks, Riz!) Go out and play! Have fun! (File also mirrored here

Players, please do not spoil any of the puzzles in this thread. Comments that I consider spoilers will be deleted. So keep your comments general, using words like "diabolical", "impossible", "asshole" and "evil", rather than referring directly to puzzles and locations. So it's fair to discuss your overall impressions as well as general aspects of the experience that won't be available to those playing at home (so to speak): the soundtrack, the party, the prizes, etc.

For spoiler-laden comments, please go to this thread. For those of you who haven't played the game, but might... don't read the spoiler thread, duh.

Once again, thanks are due to all the players, who generously allowed me to torment them under trying conditions. Despite the various stumbling blocks that I intentionally and unintentionally threw under your wheels, everyone seemed to be good natured about the whole thing.

Again I thank Becca who provided insight, advice, and nachos.

And notjenschiz, who offered advice and feedback on some puzzles.

And one person I forgot to thank last night, but who deserves it is aaronjv, whose ChronoAgents road rally inspired me to run my own (including the time travel theme, though I mixed in a huge dose of 12 Monkeys).



Getting teams checked in, cameras checked and modified, and teams under way was a bit frenetic, but once things got started, all 9 teams were on the road in less than 30 minutes. Total number of players I think was 33.

After that, I sat on my ass next to the phone for about an hour, before the first team called in for a clue. It was crazy going from frantic activity, to nothing. I really wanted to be riding along with each team to see how things were going.

Fielded a couple more calls before heading to the lunch location. Operation Grab Bags had arrived by the time I got there a couple minutes late (police were blocking an exit off the 105, causing thousands of Angelenos to slow down to look at the flashing lights). I got a chance to hang out with the teams as they arrived and chat a little bit, but I was still too wired, sleep-deprived and jumpy to enjoy much. Got everyone off on the afternoon/evening session and headed back to HQ, passing by the mission #11 location to see if it was still as I remembered it (it was).

Fielded many more calls after lunch for clues. Honestly, I didn't intend those puzzles to be harder - I tried to arrange things so that the morning missions would be better for daylight hours (I failed at that too, to some extent). Team Platypus tried its hardest to turn this into a LARP after all, and I got plenty of confusing communications from them. This also had the effect of pulling Becca into LARPing mode as she fielded a lot of calls in the home office of 'Mickey's Carpet Cleaning'. [In 12 Monkeys, the number to call the future appears (at one point) to be a carpet cleaners. Teams in the game called the carpet cleaners to get hints and/or abuse me.]

Team Two Wongs Don't Make a White threw in the towel around 5. They rocked the morning session, but things went sour after lunch, it appears. Although they didn't 'finish' the game (and were thus ineligible for this particular prize) Two Wongs did post the highest average speed: 21.2 mph. They hung out for a bit at HQ before moving on to greener pastures.

The other teams poured in from 8-9 pm, and I was deluged by answer sheets to check, photos to download & judge on artistic merit, etc. Oh, and order pizzas. Everyone seemed pretty happy to chat and reminisce and bitch and moan, but I apologize if it took a long time to get the results out.

I'm also sorry that I gave everyone a little too much to do... so that no one finished the final puzzle. If you still have that sheet ( or download it when I get the game up) go do that puzzle. And follow the instructions to the letter.

But anyway, here are the main results. Items with dual numbers are raw score and penalty-adjusted score:

Stamina Prize (out the longest): The Wyrd Ones (657 minutes)
Gas Guzzer award (drove the furthest): Alpha Squad 7 (166 miles)
Tortoise award (slowest average speed): The Deloreans (10.74 mph)

Most Bonus Points: Team I Went 50 Years In the Past and All I Got was Shot in an Airport (144 points, a crushing victory)

Aesthetic Award (best photos): Shades of Glory (average 8.125/10)

Leadfoot Award (completed game with fastest average speed): Alpha Squad 7 (16.04 mph)

Efficiency Award (completed game in least distance): The Deloreans (113 miles/130 miles)

Saved Our City (completed game in least time): Operation Grab Bags (616 minutes/621 minutes)

Grand Prize (best average rank in each category): Team I Went 50 Years In the Past and All I Got was Shot in an Airport (3.2)

Comments

[boymaenad.livejournal.com]

way more than two cents from a team somewhat on the outside:

I loved the CDs. I look forward to ripping many of the tracks. I also love having a mix to remember an event by. this was a beautifully challenging, brainstretching day for those of us who don't generally spend a lot of time on puzzles (and there was even some algebra!), but like them. I was really happy and proud to have experienced those flashes of insight where something only partly explained becomes crystal-clear, especially since I'm not a seasoned gamey type. mmm, seasoned game.

I also had never actually been to one of the locations, despite having an LA Conservancy poster of it proudly and hitherto-hypocritically on a wall here.

I'd also read about the recent events at one of the landmarks but hadn't actually seen it; it's arresting and I hope you tell the teams what happened and maybe get them interested in helping. and I had no idea that gorgeous water park area was there (not spoilery, because it was actually a wrong turn that caused us to find it). I love it and will totally be going to it in the future, and thank you for that.

I agree that it was a little too long, a little too challenging, and could have started later - but what I think would have helped all these things is if there hadn't been so much traffic. had I not been struggling through seas of cars, I could have accomplished many more of these. I would suggest starting the meetup at eleven, throwing in more random bonus factors (including stuff that interacted the CDs with the game more, perhaps in unexpectedly devious ways) as that stuff made it more fun and less of a brainstretch, and most of all, doing it on a Sunday. yes, many things would be closed, but I think (though I could be wrong) traffic would be lighter. then again, I didn't expect it to be as heavy as it was - stupid holidays. (doing this in the spring or summer makes a lot of sense anyway, as long as we're talking ideals: warm is nice, and later daylight hours too.)

also, I don't know if you knew about any of the missing clues or problems with the items during the game, but if so, it would have been useful to call all the teams and alert us. with traffic, we lost almost an hour on one.

beyond phone calls, perhaps setting up emailling to txt messages for all players, pinging us with periodic communique SMS updates could be a nice touch.

but still, it was fun, though yes we wanted to give up at a couple of points. our heads hurt, but we solved every puzzle (or were within one or two steps of solving them) except the big one, with no hints whatsoever, and that felt good. every time we had a new insight, or saw a cool landmark we hadn't seen, it was instantly fun again.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

this was a beautifully challenging, brainstretching day

Glad to be of help on the brain-stretching. Even if it was aggravating at times. Maybe it's like they say: no pain, no gain.

Thanks for the comments. Certainly, I've had a lot of "If I knew then what I know now" thoughts.