Tonight's talk wasn't recorded, which is too bad because it touched on The-Game-ish themes. Participants move through space, facing challenges which they overcome as a group. Still, that lack of recording was appropriate: this group's differentiator is that they trespass into abandoned buildings. Instead of renting out a community center, they break into an abandoned train station, sneak a few hundred people in, hold an event, and then sneak people out again.

You may recall the time that Orange Snood called in BOLTCUTTERS as an answer to that No More Secrets puzzle with the padlocks? This group uses that as their answer to scouting and reserving locations.

They raised some interesting issues. Where I have been hassled in games? In spaces that were patrolled because they were in use, not abandoned. We play in malls, mall cops roust us. We scream at an audio sensor on some hillside in Marin, rangers roust us. These were all spaces where people were expected, with crowd control in place. If we'd instead broken into owned, abandoned places, then it wouldn't have been so clear who should have to deal with us.

No, I'm not suggesting that Game-ists start busting into abandoned buildings. No, I'm really not. Not even in a wink-wink let's not plan crimes on a public blog way. These guys are figuring out logistics for one site per event. I don't want to come up with a police-raid contigency plan for every dang site in a weekend-long game.

But… I started attending these talks not necessarily to pick up ideas to use but to get some far-flung perspectives, shake up my thinking a bit. Tonight, that worked.