Journal of No. 118

First off, hard drive went kaput, taking most of my photos with it. Veratrine has hers up, and there's still a slim chance I'll be able to recover mine.

We arrived in Mexico City Sunday afternoon. My first attempt to get money from an ATM was declined, but Becca's bank was less fussy. We taxied to the hotel, the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico, which is right on the main square, the Zócalo. The hotel is an Art Nouveau treasure with an enormous Tiffany glass ceiling, and ironwork elevators. Originally it was a department store, the Centro Mercado, but the initials worked well for Ciudad de Mexico when it was converted to a hotel in preparation for the 68 Olympics. Much of this we learned from Freddy the porter, who led us to our room. We had a gorgeous room with windows overlooking the square itself opposite the National Palace. Although the President no longer lives there, he dropped by for a visit -- On Monday, they hung red swags from the balcony, there was twice as much security as usual (which is usually a lot) and a couple dozen black SUVs arrived. Apparently, he and the president of South Korea had a summit meeting there.
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shad_0 delivered the correct solution to the final puzzle. I believe ladyeuthanasia was also involved in this momentous undertaking.

The solution has been sent back into the past so it can be sent forward into the future so that the scientists of the future can change the past to eliminate the danger posed by the Army of Twelve Monkeys.

But don't let that stop any of you others out there working on the solution. Science ain't exactly an exact science with these clowns.

Yesterday was Aaron's second ChronoAgents roadrally. Lots of fun and an agonizing finish for us, as we placed a close second behind Team Delorean. They beat us by 4 minutes, and as their thief managed to (within the rules) sabotage us by 5 minutes, that was a crucial difference. There were a billion other things that added or subtracted time that could be called the deciding factor, but that one just psychologically feels right, since they did it to us.

To recap:
Aaron ran ChronoAgents.
Inspired by his, I ran Save Our City
And now ChronoAgents Reloaded with added Gauntlet/light LARP elements.

This'll be a little spoilery, and I think it would be easy for Aaron to get the clues up so people could play the home game. So you may hold off until Aaron has said his say. (and that reminds me, I need to get the PDF of Save Our City back online.)

First, thanks to Aaron, Kirsten, Ross & the boffer squad for putting it all together.
Awesome thanks to my last-minute teammates: Chris, for driving, tech, and physical prowess. Beth for even more tech and Magic-User defense and offense. Nick, for thievery and being our main away team on many occasions.
Thanks to the venues for putting up with us. The Time Travel Mart (natch), Cafe 50s on Vermont, and PS612.
Special thanks to the helpful guys at the Kip's Toyland at the Farmers Market, and the caretaker at the Museum of Death.

Things that stood out:
Generally overloading our brains, simultaneously juggling audio clues on the CD, written clues, driving logistics, puzzles, gathering 'spell components' and thievable objects.
Our thief stealing a cup from someone. OK, it was on his tray, and he was headed for the trashcan, but still... it takes a special thief to Yoink! something from a befuddled stranger.
Shining a flashlight through the bars of the (unfortunately) closed and dark Museum of Death, and thereby rousing the caretaker, who came out, talked to us, and gave us the info we needed. (Not so triumphant, the winning team was also nearby and heard the clue and escaped while we were explaining to/thanking the guy.)
Witnessing our warrior participating in an epic boffer duel inside the Streetlamp art exhibit at LACMA. Aaron alleges he had clearance for this, but THE MAN came down on us and made us stop, but not until a fair degree of awesomeness had been achieved.
Finding the smallest and cutest park in LA county.
Um, the cleric and the magic-user researching in their WiFi spellbooks, in order to solve a clue through astral projection, rather than having to go to the location itself.
Being part of a surprisingly well-oiled team, with complementary strengths.

What kinda bit:
A number of closed locations. Though I have no right to complain since one of the clues in my game was actually demolished before game time.
The dinner location was only revealed after doing X, but we didn't know that. So doing X had no priority for us. So we did X near the end of the first half of the game, and dinner was quite a distance from the X location.
The final location (or rather the puzzle for it) was only revealed after doing Y. This we knew. But with the closed locations, many of the after-dinner clues became gimmes [though rewards were given for having achieved it while they were still open, or sweettalking the caretaker]. But the effect was that you do Y, get the last puzzle and the answers for the gimmes all in one lump. And I think if you were missing a clue, maybe two, this big lump would be enough to solve the final puzzle without doing all the locations. So it was sort of like: do Y, and go directly to endgame. Now I have no personal beef with this: I think we were the first to do Y, so we were off quick, and I know the winning team did both of the gimmes (even if they overheard one that we have the moral right to say we earned) and we did only one. And we only astrally projected one location, so it's not like we visited them all. But it'd be interesting to see how many teams did #10 in the flesh, rather than astrally, or just not at all but were still able to solve the final puzzle.
Probably because of the rapidity of the endgame, it bit a lot to get there before the gamestaff. We were later 'remotely' checked in at the end, but who knows what the actual time we exited the maze was? Again, my moral ground is shaky here, since Team GRAB BAGS got to lunch a bit before I did in Save Our City.
But mostly... PARKING IN DTLA

But these are pretty small potatoes. I had a lot of fun, again.

A complete PDF of Save Our City, my Los Angeles area puzzle rally, is now available. If you didn't make the game, but still want to go play in the streets, there's a link to it back in my spoiler-free post, along with raw score data, soundtrack info, drink recipe, and other discussion.

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).

( This will probably get long, so I'm putting the cut in now )

Dad's 65th was on Saturday. We went to La Vie En Rose (or LAH VEE AWNG ROSE, as the website helpfully offers). The restaurant has been there for ages and was always the watchword among the high school crowd for a hoity-toity place to get your eats on. Certainly the food was excellent, but there are certainly signs that you are getting the Orange County Disney-fied "reproduction of a Normandy farmhouse". Such as the waitress being stymied by the phrase "café au lait". What in tarnation is that? After dinner, the dozen or so revellers went back to Dad's place for more drinking and carousing.

Sunday, smaug had a few people over to test out Rock Band. Definitely a party game. The guitar felt pleasantly solid, but it took some getting used to. I was a bit fumble-fingered and slow, and the extra buttons on the neck are so narrow that they're more trouble than they're worth (at least so far). The drum kit is really fun, though even on the Easy level, there's more than enough to keep you busy. I sweated my way through one song on Medium, and that was plenty. I even tried my hand (so to speak) at singing. The game is encouragingly forgiving on Easy. Definitely a fun experience, but I wonder if I have room in my house for a whole recording studio of equipment.

I passed Cult of Personality on Expert on GH3. I'm not sure I have the courage to even look at Rain of Blood. In my backing-and-filling, I've passed and 5-starred all of Easy and about half of Medium.

Oral Roberts University was $50 million in debt, while Roberts Jr. was "taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel to the Bahamas aboard the university jet." For a while, it looked like the world was about to lose an excellent source of unintentional humor, but "the founder of a Christian office and education supply store chain pledged $70 million to help the university."
Personally, I think sending your daughter to the Bahamas is probably a better use of money than propping up ORU, but different strokes for different folks.

Save Our City on Saturday. Start your engines.

The last Save Our City puzzle has been designed, if not quite finalized. The soundtrack has been burned. Prizes are piled up. Now there's just a few fiddly bits to slap together and I'll be ready for this thing. I'm psyched.

Not that you needed to hear this, but mostly I wanted to try to the facebook thingy that shows when you've posted on LJ.