The Architect and The Urchin - Detour Edition by Burn Unit, mean jeannine
May 12th, 2010 10:28 PM
I helped organize the game. I purchased ribbons, the stamps (most of the inkpads were bought by MJ9), and did the printing. I laid out the course, and went and hung the secrets. The rest, well, that's up to the players! I fear ours will be the only proof submitted for this task, which would be sad.
I could see clearly the game would be adaptable to the environment of a convention. As someone who's spent an inordinate amount of time there, I have a fairly sound knowledge of the Sheraton hotel in Bloomington.
We tried to do recruitment by the usual at-con means—posters, and promotion while partying. Unlike our other big con experience in town (CONvergence), the party culture at Anime Detour is a little less well-established and people didn't quite know what to make of us. We'll tweak for future years I think. Anyway, once we realized that people weren't going to "sign up" for a game they didn't know anything about, we adjusted and started recruiting on the fly rather than going for an event-style "launch". This allows you to very easily stagger the starting, by the way. And it still enables people just passing by to jump into the game quickly. Some of our most enthusiastic players got into it at the last possible minute (like an hour and a half before the finish) and there were still opportunities for them to have a great time. We also used it as a promo for the next week's Journey to the End of the Night. I don't know if that netted any results or not, but we're slowly building a community here.
I also sent the "after action report" to our email list. Allow me a moment to plug the MNZero email list which you can sign up for any time.
The Architect and the Urchin is really fun for people to play, clearly, and MNZero is going to execute it full scale somewhere in the city proper, later this year.
MJ9:
I assisted Burn Unit in organizing the game.
The game happened on Saturday night of the convention, which meant we had Friday evening and Saturday leading up to the game to recruit players. After Friday night I was really worried we would have no players at all -- no one seemed interested in what it was we were doing. This got me thinking about our tactics, so I came up with a new plan for Saturday.
I pulled them in with play-doh. Yes. It worked.
Once we got them into our space it was easy to get them excited about a scavenger hunt mixed with a three way game of tag. We sent them off with maps, and they came back with stamps!
trophy
sous la paves LA PLAGE!
Map of hotel interior
Shows playing area and hiding spots of the secrets.
exterior map
the remaining six secrets were hidden around the Sheraton hotel neighborhood. Almost all of them on bushes or trees.
The Secrets
These were inexpensive stamps (don't have the knowledge or skill to carve my own yet, like Dax did)
environs
You can just make out the MN0 flag
secret outside
This was the hardest secret for players to locate—for some reason. They had trouble reading its location on the map—though I was circumspect about getting pretty darn close. I had to run out mid-game to confirm all the Secrets were still in place (they were).
bush next to the highway
secret placed
this one was at the far southern end of the exterior map. really quite easy to find. Exposed though, if you were going to come out here with other teams chasing.
secret on the fence
southwest
This is the furthest southwest of the secrets.
secret in bloom
northwest
those pretty trees were at the northwest corner of the map.
explaining the game to passersby
we grabbed anyone who stood still in front of our party room for more than 10 seconds, and sent them out to play. If memory serves, these two actually survived and had fun.
First
The First pair to finish got these medals. They didn't have the most names, but they survived with theirs intact and they crossed the finish line first.
manifests, names, trophy
The pictured manifest is one of only a couple that had acquired all twelve secrets. Most people went for the minimum (9) to get into the finish line. Unlike the CG0 version, we did not put BELLS on the names.
medals
These medals are actually made out of parts taken from the door I removed back when I did the Door Installation task waaay back in the mists of Glasnost. I thought the couple that went for all the Secrets should be rewarded, so I crafted these (inspired in part by the lovely jewelry items Zerogee made).
The winners!
These decided to team up and go for the win. The woman in the back of this picture was press ganged into playing. She was kind of "oh all right" about it at first. Then something kicked in (you all would recognize it as symptoms of Drive) and she recruited her two pals. They made a good team apparently, capturing the most names. 
Pre award ceremony
A pile of rewards.
Receiving medals for finding ALL the secrects
They were so excited by our medals when we presented them. Look at their faces!
Showing off the shiny
A shot after the awards ceremony, wearing the shiny.
Trophy
And the trophy goes to...
Affixing tags to the trophy
Winning Team
FIRST medals
Burnunit presenting the medals for crossing the finish line first.
The team that crossed the finish line FIRST
Group player picture
A picture of all the players that hung out after the awards ceremony.
10 vote(s)
Silent Zig
5
done
5
rongo rongo
5
Dax Tran-Caffee
5
Dan |ØwO|
5
fin
3
Hortvald Inki
3
Figment Lattery
5
Brock Dubbels
5
Markov Walker
Terms
(none yet)5 comment(s)
BTW, what "other" events, Zig? If I may ask
Supervalu (a distributor of consumer products) used to hold vendor shows and meetings there. I used to attend those events on behalf of my employer (Tom's of Maine).
Oh! Trophies! I love the medal with the cherry!!
I love that this was at the Sheraton in Bloomington as I have attended several events there. How funny! Unfortunately, I didn't know this existed, or I'd have been down for some play-doh.
Good work!