![[Photo: Candy Tray Coming Through]](crissy_chris_curtist_train_candy_blur_tm.jpg)
I was a Game Control volunteer with Team Snout on Game weekend. I want to write about what I saw. But I have an agenda, and I worry that what I'm writing might backfire.
My agenda: I want to encourage Teams to run Games. I want them to succeed, so I write about this Game--things that worked (that you could try), things that didn't work (that you might avoid), things that fell apart (and how Game Control adjusted).
This might backfire: Team Snout's competence is intimidating. When you read that DeeAnn Sole figured out a detailed schedule for 37 volunteers, keeping track of where everyone would be at every time--and updated that schedule to fit circumstances... Well, my first thought is "I couldn't do that. I'm not ready to be a Game Control person. I'm just going to go sit on the couch." But don't think that. You don't need to take on tasks this big. DeeAnn didn't need to let in 37 volunteers.
The point is this: The Hogwarts game was ambitious. Your game doesn't have to be this ambitious. I hope you can look this over, steal some ideas. If you don't have DeeAnn on your team, don't try to keep track of 37 volunteers. If you don't have Acorn and Cary on your team, don't create a plethora of custom electronics for your game. Steal ideas from Team Snout; but play to your strengths.
Enough preface; Here's what went down.
At 6:30, a little before dawn, the morning of September 9, 2006, Tom Lester stopped his car in front of the Emeryville Amtrak station. Tom wasn't playing in the Hogwarts Game. Later that day, Tom and Annie were going camping. Camping sounded like fun, sounded a lot more sane than what I'd gotten myself into. I thanked Tom for the ride, stepped out into the darkness.
I met some more Game Control folks in the Amtrak station parking lot, helped them to carry things to the movie theater parking lot. Game Control had rented the theater for the Sorting Hat ceremony. They had a video ready; now they were unloading a projector and a sound system from vehicles. Other GC folks assembled breakfast bags.
I didn't stick around, however. I started on my primary job. I was DeeAnn Sole's personal assistant. I'd carry and answer her phone (when she'd let me). I'd encourage her to delegate tasks (except when I couldn't figure out which tasks were delegate-able, which was most of the time). I'd encourage volunteers to follow DeeAnn's orders instead of getting creative and thus messing up parts of the plan they didn't know about (I didn't do much of this either). I was DeeAnn's assistant--so I trotted after DeeAnn.
We visited other GC folks, other volunteers. There was someone on the station pedestrian overpass to register teams and send them on to the theater. There was someone at the base of the overpass to send teams up one at a time and prevent overcrowding. There were teams to check up on--had they received parking permits? Did they know where to go? Were things running smoothly?
Things that were under DeeAnn's control were running smoothly, but there were things not under her control. She got a phone call: it was the GC folks by the theater. The theater manager was supposed to have shown up and unlocked the place; this had not happened.
And thus there was a series of phone calls as DeeAnn tracked down the person who'd taken her reservation, as she obtained more numbers, as she received an ETA that the manager would appear in "just five minutes", as she apprised GC folks of this, as she tracked down the contact information of someone who could give her a refund if it came down to that, as she found out that the manager still hadn't shown up. We were standing on the overpass. Every so often, a just-registered team would walk past. They smiled, stopped to chat. Why weren't they panicking? Oh yeah, they didn't know that anything was going wrong. For all they knew, they were supposed to end up milling around in a movie theater parking lot.
In the end, Sorting Ceremony took place in front of the movie theater. There was a rueful remark that due to a strange draining of magical powers, none of the wizards present could unlock the protective wards on the meeting place. OK, good save. Instead of a projection onto a big screen, there was a little laptop. It wasn't what they had in mind--but it was a good "Plan B". Or so I told DeeAnn. "Plan B? This isn't Plan B? Plan A was we get into the theater on time. Plan B was the manager shows up half an hour late and we don't set up so much. This? This is Plan C." Lesson learned: It's good to have a Plan C.
There were 16 teams playing. The Sorting Hat sorted them out into four houses, four teams each. One by one, the had called out a poem for each team, dispatching them to one of the house prefects. Prefects welcomed teams to houses, passed out bandanas. For a jury-rigged Plan C, things were working pretty well.
When all the teams were sorted, we walked them over to another section of the parking lot where their breakfast bags awaited. And then it was time to separate from the teams again. As they ambled across the pedestrian walkway back to the train station, we dashed to the parking lot. DeeAnn was riding the train to Sacramento, but Elena was driving DeeAnn's car there. Thus DeeAnn had to explain the car's new-fangled electric controls. Soon Elena was driving us over to the train station. Then there was much shuffling of matter between vehicles--some were staying in Emeryville, some were ferrying people and stuff to Sacramento. Boxes were labelled, different things had different purposes; my head spun as I listened to it all. By the time it stopped spinning, we were walking to the train platform.
I had a special assignment. When the train arrived, I was to scurry up to the conductor before the crowd of players got there. I was to say, "When someone shows you a ticket for 100 people going to Sacramento, instead of saying 'Everyone going to Sacramento, board this train car', please say 'Everyone going to Hogwarts board this train car.'" During the play-test, we'd found out where we were going far too early. But the real game would be different. So I was watching for the train, watching for the train. Meanwhile, I was following DeeAnn around as she touched base with house prefects, making sure that they knew which train we were catching.
The station P.A. system crackled to life, and the voice of R. Terrell boomed out. "Will the leader of the Hogwarts group going to Sacramento please report to the ticket window?" Thus did the Players find out where they were going. The good news was that I no longer needed to worry about reaching the conductor before our players did--our cover was blown, my special mission was moot. I don't even remember what R. Terrell told DeeAnn when she went to talk to him at the ticket window. Maybe that the train was running late. For the train was indeed running late. Fortunately, most teams seemed to be OK sitting around and talking.
When the train finally came, we filled up most of two cars. But just most. GC folks went up to disturb-able looking folks and warned them that they were in the midst of a big, loud crowd. Would they like help finding their way to a quieter area? I escorted one nice lady downstairs to a quieter passenger area before heading back up to the main passenger compartment. It wasn't that rowdy, but there was plenty of conversation going on. People were making name tags for each other. Somehow, Trisha of the Burninators got labeled the Trishanator. I asked about the Burninators' wrist walkie-talkies. Team Blinded By Quidditch came through, offering chocolate frogs and everyflavor beans. People looked over each others' code reference sheets. Someone said, "The print on this code sheet is so small--do you need, like, a magnifying glass to read it?" Burninator Corey Anderson reached for his bag, saying "I have a magnifying glass."
DeeAnn wanted to make her way through the crowd and handed me her folder full of notes. I peeked inside, found the spreadsheet with a detailed schedule showing where each person would be at any given time. That spreadsheet was 22 pages long.
Miss Jerry made her way through the train car in her owl mask, delivering newsletters to players. Conversation died away. Everyone was reading. There were mutters as players fastened upon details. Corey whispered about Mugglium. Writing implements were applied to crossword puzzles. As folks spotted the secret message in the crossword, there was more talk, but it was quiet. One of my tasks for the train ride was to help keep the players "under control." I looked out at row upon row of players reading and quietly talking. My job was a piece of cake.
Things got more exciting when the candy tray came through. Crissy delivered boxes of candy, and teams opened them up, discovered jellybeans. Unlike most of us play-testers, they figured out that this must be what their egg cartons were for. Soon they were sorting beans, tasting.
Wei-Hwa of the Burninators didn't wait for the rest of the team to count all of their jellybeans. Having entered the label's list of flavors into a spreadsheet, he figured out the message in no time flat. In the time it took him to tell his team-mates what he'd seen, a couple of players from Team Golden Snitch (this Game's incarnation of the Gold team (Advil/Scoobies combo)) strode past--they'd solved the puzzle, too.
Other teams took longer. Some of them took much longer. As I watched them struggle to identify flavors, I really appreciated Rebecca Weisinger's jellybean expertise. Desmodus Rotundus (the "Bats" team) had mobile Internet access, found a web site that had pictures of the different jellybeans for visual identification. Conversation got heated. "That's not kiwi!" Well, it's brown on the outside and green on the inside. What else could it be?" "That's not fucking kiwi!" (It was toffee apple.)
Briny Deep had identified 27 flavors. One guy figured that there were really 26 flavors, but that they'd mis-classified some of them--they could map 26 flavors to 26 letters of the alphabet. Peter Sarett didn't like the idea, it wasn't clear what you'd want to do with the alphabet when you'd finished.
I cringed a little when I heard wrong ideas; I was glad when I heard teams on the right track. It was OK being a silent observer. You might recall that I had a difficult time being a silent observer when I hung out with a team of Google interns--I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. Why was it OK this time? I think it's because I'd already seen (and helped solve) the puzzles. I wasn't having an insight right then--with no way to test that insight until someone else had the same idea. Knowing the answers already was much easier, much calmer.
After a while, Curtis sent me to the back of the train to sit next to DeeAnn--she was calling up the rental agency, calling up driver volunteers--she could use her assistant now. I headed back. The rental agency had a strange notion of vehicle "reservations". They'd gladly "reserved" 17 vans for our group. But "reserved" meant "didn't mention that they didn't have". Now that we were upon them, they let us know that some of these "vans" would not be vans. I wondered if they'd let us use different varieties of payment methods--pay half by credit card, half with Monopoly money. Lesson learned: let teams arrange their own vehicles.
Then the train arrived at Sacramento station. We made sure that everyone was off the train. We watched teams wander off downtown, clutching their photo sheets, pointing at landmarks. We weren't looking for landmarks, we were looking for Game Control vehicles. We weren't spotting any. Some vehicles had been there, had picked up some GC folks to sprint them to classes ahead of the Players, but there weren't any vehicles here now. Where was Andrew? Andrew was supposed to be here to ferry folks to GC headquarters. DeeAnn made phone calls. She called someone who was at GC HQ. They said Andrew was there, at HQ. Soon Andrew was on the phone. He didn't know he was supposed to drive to the train station. Should he now? Nah, another car was already on its way.
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