110317 Time Weave Puzzle Playtest

From DoctorWhen

26 Weeks to go!

Allen, Sean, Trisha, Wei-Hwa met at T & WH's place (thanks for hosting!)...and were joined by new member Doug Banks--welcome! Cake was served. Puzzles were played.


PERSONNEL

Trisha said that there are things going on in her life right now (such as a demanding new job) that make being the Puzzle Time Lord not a good fit for her.

Sean agreed to take over this role. Thank you Sean!

Everyone, from this point forward please consider sending your puzzle creation questions to Sean. Sure, some will still need the whole group's consideration. But we're about to start working on a lot of puzzles simultaneously so we don't want to overwhelm the main email distribution list.

Allen & Sean reported that they (+ Dan) have made headway in the process of networking in the theater community to recruit a technical director. Stay tuned.

The group raised the possibility that we'll also need a Location Time Lord to coordinate the scouting for locations, obtaining permissions, etc. Any volunteers? Allen will contact Justin about the topic because he expressed interest in at least participating in scouting.


PUZZLES

We playtested Doug's first prototype of his "Time Weave" puzzle. The basic premise is that the team has to connect and weave together graphic representations of timeline segments so that various pairs of people from history (e.g., Paul McCartney & John Lennon) meet. The group enjoyed the prototype, felt it could easily be adjusted to fit in very well with our Game's story, and gave feedback for revisions. Doug will do some more work on it. However a new job may leave him short on time so he might hand it off to another GC member after partial progress.

In related discussion, there was general agreement that a majority of our puzzles should have a "clever" way to solve them in addition to brute force (the "a ha!").

We discussed the Choose Your Own Adventure puzzle (password #1). We all agreed that the core elements of the creation (a CYOA book, the multiple layers of encoding) will work great, but that the text needs modification to make the solve even more fun (e.g., fewer embellishments that can unintentionally act as red herrings) and to reduce the solve time. We also agreed that we should make the final product look as similar to a classic CYOA book as time and budget allow. Sean will discuss requested revisions with Dwight to see if he wants to implement them or if he wants someone else to do the next round.

Trisha & Wei-Hwa reported that last week's playtest of the first prototype of Erik's film clip puzzle ("calibration") went well and promises a very entertaining puzzle. Wei-Hwa will collaborate with Erik on a revision.


QUALITY CONTROL

Allen asked a methodological question of how will we know/agree that a puzzle is "done," i.e. is ready for the final playtest. Much laughter ensued. The experienced puzzle authors in the room, i.e., everyone else, said that in practice we'll be tempted to fiddle with them till the last moment. But for now, instead of creating some sort of "puzzle approval committee," we'll just let the author and the Puzzle Time Lord jointly decide.


SCRIPT

We didn't carefully dissect the script this session because the main point of Allen's recent distribution was to inspire all the puzzle authors to create, and the current draft + the event descriptions in the wiki should be enough.

Some issues we noted for future discussion include:

  • The new draft includes one approach to including the "theory vs. practice" character traits.
  • The new draft includes a new approach to the JiffyPop puzzle, this time as a message that the players leave to them selves in 1986 to be found in 2011. (Yes, we're going to have to wrestle with this puzzle idea again.)
  • The new draft includes catch phrases for Doctor When ("Great Scott!") and Prof. Chronos ("Gadzooks!")
  • Tireseas does not currently appear in the 2011 action of Act II, but he probably should make a mysterious cameo
  • Currently after adult Buffy is introduced in Act II she does nothing else for the rest of the Act. *Perhaps* it would be fun/useful for her to take some actions (that lead to a puzzle), maybe even sabotaging the repairs since she doesn't want that husband-stealing Prof. Chronos to be rescued.


CHARACTER BACKGROUNDS

Similarly, we didn't dissect the latest revisions of the character biographies. Wei-Hwa expressed that he was comfortable that everyone had "heard" and considered his perceptions and recommendations on the topic.


NEXT STEPS

  • Allen will contact all the team members to check in with them and to make sure that everyone understands our shared vision as encapsulated in the recent script.
  • Allen to discuss location scouting with Justin.
  • New Puzzle Time Lord Sean will contact all the various puzzle authors to make sure that if they want to create something now, they have all the information, etc. they need to start.
  • Allen and Dan to continue recruiting a technical director.
  • Doug to revise his Time Weave puzzle and let Sean know when either a new version is ready or he's ready to hand it off to someone else
  • Sean to collaborate with Dwight to plan next steps on the CYOA puzzle.
  • Wei-Hwa to collaborate with Erik on revising the film strip/"calibration" puzzle.

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As always, please reply with your revisions, amplifications, etc.


Allen

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