110120 Working Session

Hello, team,

Erik, Trisha, Wei-Hwa and I met last Thursday for a working session.

LOCATION AND DATE

We settled on the Highlands Recreation Center (near Melissa & Erik's place) for the weekends of 9/17 and 9/24.

There. It's done. Yay!

The one wrinkle with this location is that they have a 9 AM Jazzercise class every Saturday 8-9 AM and Sunday 9-10 AM. We discussed and believe that we can make our Game work around that schedule (especially since they're only charging us $500).

We already have a tentative reservation for those weekends. Erik will proceed with the formalities of putting down a deposit and other legalities after GC Summit.

LEGALITIES AND OTHER ADULT SUPERVISION

Erik has consulted DeeAnn and done other research. He recommends we set up a legal partnership to protect us from tax liability. But that can be done later.

No legal structure will protect us from accident liability, etc. since we're the operators of the event. But getting appropriate event insurance should reduce the risk.

PERSONNEL

Allen expressed his concern that although we have quite a few people involved with the project, we don't have quite the "critical mass" of local and regularly-active GC members. He suggested we use the GC Summit as a venue to recruit.

• Allen to contact GC Summit and request some time on the agenda
• Allen to draft a short presentation
• Wei-Hwa to edit presentation and do the graphic design

Allen encouraged Trisha to call each of our far-flung members and introduce herself as the new Time Lord of puzzles.

Wei-Hwa requested some suggestions of how to describe what we're doing and what we're looking for for him to use when he meets interested parties (especially those not already in the Game community).

• Allen to draft "elevator pitch" description of what we're up to and what we need

We all acknowledged the big, gaping hole in our staffing, i.e., our need for a technical director. But we don't have a solution yet.

SCRIPT

Trisha will take a pass through the draft script of the game. The goal is now to have a read through post-GC Summit so that our newest recruits can understand our vision.

JIFFY POP PUZZLE

We wrestled with the issue of precisely what this puzzle should be, when it should first be solved, and when it should be reassembled. Although this remains a thorny issue, this puzzle is in many ways the archetypal time travel trope, the showpiece of our Game, and an initial inspiration for the Game, so it deserves a lot of consideration.

There was general agreement that the arrival and solution to this puzzle in Act III is what helps the players figure out that all is not lost, they are not stuck in the infinite time loop forever, and tells them how to break the loop.

There was a lot of discussion about whether we really can create a puzzle that's "as much fun to solve as it is to reassemble." There was concern that once one solves the puzzle that it would be trivial/no intellectual stimulation to reassemble it.

But perhaps we can separate those two challenges. For example, perhaps the puzzle could be some sort of Rube Goldberg-type contraption so that the wacky things it does when activated form the puzzle. Resetting it later could be a very different task (much like resetting a falling dominos display). In any case, it's too early to give up on this impressive goal.

Allen continues to prefer that this be an actual physical device (one for each team) that shows up early in Act III.

When activated it should do something that the players can solve to a message like, "You're caught in a time loop. To break it, change "right" to "left" in note. Tell no one. Change nothing else or the universe will explode." (Yes, this is long...but perhaps the puzzle will merely solve to the key that helps them decode this long text on the body of the device.)

And finally, he leans towards the players having to reset their devices later in the game, but still while in the present day.

Of course, this approach means that there's no explanation of how these devices were initially assembled...like matter being spontaneously created. But Allen considered this quirk a feature not a bug. Others leaned towards the bug interpretation.

Others favored the puzzle not be a separate physical device. Perhaps the puzzle could be incorporated into the design of the time machine.

Other favored that the reassembly have to take place in 1985.

[Hey everyone, please chime in here: I didn't capture all your ideas properly.]

That's all for now. Please respond with any corrections, amplifications, etc.

Allen

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Erik added:

> JIFFY POP PUZZLE > > Allen continues to prefer that this be an actual physical device (one > for each team) that shows up early in Act III.

I think all of us (from last week) have a similar opinion

> And finally, he leans towards the players having to reset their > devices later in the game, but still while in the present day. > > Of course, this approach means that there's no explanation of how > these devices were initially assembled...like matter being spontaneously created. > But Allen considered this quirk a feature not a bug. Others leaned > towards the bug interpretation. > Others favored the puzzle not be a separate physical device. Perhaps > the puzzle could be incorporated into the design of the time machine. > > Other favored that the reassembly have to take place in 1985.

I - and I think some others - prefer having Jiffy Pop part II take place in 1986, mainly so that there's a longer interval between Jiffy I and Jiffy II - it increases the dramatic tension. It also gives the players a little more to do at the in-the-past climactic setting.

I don't think it's bug _per se_ about having the players carry the solved Jiffy I with them and having that be the Jiffy II. I just think that that creates a bunch of practical problems and constraints. What if they lose a piece? More importantly, that forces Jiffy I to require a "disassembly", and that might mean players get very careful about how to reassemble, which could make Jiffy II trivially easy... there are ways to address these issues, but they are extra constraints on an already difficult to conceive puzzle.

The easier version (which I lean toward) is simply: Jiffy I invovles a physical device. Jiffy II involves the creation of Jiffy I from parts, but not necessarily the parts resulting from that team's disassembly of Jiffy I.

To make this more concrete: the two mental models we were using were -

"Music box". Jiffy I appears in the time machine. It's some sort of music box that plays a song. (Maybe it's a mini figure that waves flags - who knows.) The point is, it conveys a message, probably partly through mechanical means. (Might be a puzzle to unlock it, a puzzle to figure out the song message, etc.) The music boxes are confiscated from the players. At the science fair, teams find pieces that are music-box parts - say, as part of some of the science fair exhibits. They must recreate a working music box (and perhaps set the "music spindle" to play the correct song), then "send it to the future".

"Hidden works". (I'll be a little more cagey about this since it involves spoilers to a puzzle that exists somewhere in the world.) Jiffy I is a mechanical puzzle that must be "opened" or somehow solved. This involves some inner workings (gears? levers?) that the players can't see. They solve the puzzle, open it, and get the message, and see that, in the solving of the puzzle, the inner workings have somehow disassembled or jumbled themselves (but in a way that wasn't visible to the players at the time). Teams carry the puzzle with them, and in Jiffy II, must reset the puzzle to its original state (which they can't simply "reverse", since they didn't see the steps to begin with).

I think the latter may be too hard (for us). That's my main reason for preferring the music box.