Newbie Game: RFP describes the game as it is now and asks for your help in getting it to where it ought to be. "RFP" here stands for Request For Puzzles, Pictures, Programming, Playtesting,… uhm, it stands for a lot of things.
I don't know how this project got started; when I joined, it was a DASH variant. Variant? Side project? Uhm, DASH-related thingy. For a while Scott Royer and I worked on it; it eased away from being a DASH-thing and towards more of a general-puzzlehunt thing. Scott re-upped for fatherdom and dropped out of the project. Right now, it's just me. If it keeps on as just me, it could be a fun game. But it would be... what's the word I'm looking for? Unbalanced? Lopsided? Some types of puzzles would be over-represented, others would get short shrift. For example, right now there's a set of Nikoli-style logic puzzles. You will be surprised to learn that I made these puzzles, since I'm not into Nikoli-style logic puzzles. But there are some of Nikolish things that puzzlehunters should recognize, so I made some so that newbs could learn to recognize them. But wow, the ones I made are really clunky. And I don't a better way to improve them, than to, y'know, ask the puzzling community. Now consider the small set of puzzle types that I'm good at writing. Uhm, yeah, lopsided.
So I'm asking. If you want to make a puzzle or two and then be done, that's great. If you want to be deeply-core GC, spending months of your life obsessing over hunt structure or whatever, that's awesome. A couple of drawings would be great. A better web interface would be great. If you want to do a little, that's great. If you want to do a lot, that's greater. Take a look at the Newbie Game: RFP. Ask questions, speak up about areas where you're interested in doing stuff.
Yes, this is the thing I wanted to playtest recently. Thanks to Lila, Geoff, Casey, JD et al. of team Drop_Table for putting up with the early version so that you don't have to. At the beginning it was just newbs, so it was good to see them learn something. Many hours later, the newbs had been kinda nudged aside by already-experienced puzzlehunters. (The et al, most of whose names I didn't get. Jordan? Audrey... or Aubrey? Dave? Oh man I don't know. These folks showed up later and some of them had already been remotes for the MIT Mystery Hunt. Ringers much?) But it was good to test a team enjoying playing through the whole hunt and not, y'know, getting sick of wading through learn-to-recognize-Morse exercises before reaching the more interesting puzzles.
