![[Photo: Info line: Crystal Jumps into Place]](justin_georgia_crystal_greg_4114frog_tm.jpg)
DeeAnn looked at Andrew's schedule. It was a paper print-out, an extract from the big schedule spreadsheet. To let everyone know what they were doing, DeeAnn had created one-person printouts, each showing just those spreadsheet rows that applied to a person. It was like a personal schedule. If Andrew had read his personal schedule, he would have known he was driving us to GC HQ. But he didn't have his schedule printout--DeeAnn was going to pass them out to people at GC HQ.
The train had, of course, been a half-hour late. GC folks at the different classes called up to find out when they should let their students out. Receiving calls, placing calls, talking to people, getting coordinated. Thus did we spend our wait on a sunny bench outside the Sacramento Amtrak station.
Instead of Andrew, Lisa Long picked us up. She'd been delivering GC folks to classes, staying out of view of the students. She needed to stay out of view--she was the actress playing Cassandra Cross, that witch everyone was trying to find. In real life, Lisa lived in England. She was in town to just to help run this game. Her idea of a dream job was to work at MindCandy, the people running the PerplexCity game. Meanwhile, she was happy to volunteer with Snout. She'd designed a couple of puzzles, and was looking forward to playing a mad witch. For a mad witch, she made handy work of navigating Sacramento's freeways and side-streets. Soon we were at Game Control HQ. (As of October 2006, she was contracting with MindCandy, which just goes to show that single-minded nerdiness can lead to the fulfillment of one's geeky dreams. Uhm, I hope Lisa isn't willing to go to the trouble to come back to California again just to kick my ass.)
I'm going to talk about the general layout of GC HQ. I didn't figure it all out the instant I walked through the door. Part of being a helpless n00b is figuring out what goes on at GC HQ and where it goes on. But reading about that discovery process is boring, so... here's the layout.
Game Control HQ was a suite of rooms at some place called the Residency Inn in Sacramento. Now when I search business listings for "Residency Inn" in Sacramento, I find a few places with that name. I'm not exactly sure which one we were in, and I'm not exactly sure how much it matters. It was a perfectly reasonable business motel, one that had been pressed into service for an unreasonable purpose.
Most of the action was in the living room. Here, volunteers would sit, answering phones, handling calls from Players in the field. There was a laptop here so that we could keep track of team positions. as they called into the info line--it was hooked up to a projector, so that everyone could see Teams' positions. Not everyone here was answering phones--off-duty volunteers sat on sofas, played Nintendo.
The kitchen held snacks, as you might expect. But the kitchen counter didn't generally hold snacks--instead it was pressed into service as a puzzle assembly area, electronics lab bench, or place to spread out papers. Areas under counters were filled with piles of puzzles. When it was time for someone to deliver those puzzles to some far-off spot, we'd fetch them out.
There was a standing area close to the front door. From here, people could see the projected team position spreadsheet. This was an area for actors, drivers, puzzle-placers, and puzzle-watchers to mill around when they were at HQ instead of out on-site. The wall-space of this area was covered with papers attached to the walls with blue masking(?) tape. Maps, a copy of the main spreadsheet, GC members' contact information. Drivers used this info to figure out how to get to get to clue sites; phone line volunteers used this info to answer questions. There was a bowl to hold car keys; absent drivers left their keys here so that others could drive their cars. DeeAnn hung out here, keeping track of everybody. I hung out here, trying to keep up with DeeAnn.
There were two bedrooms. Originally, one of these was set aside as a second room for phone-line volunteers. But in practice, the phone-line volunteers were happier sitting in the same big room. It may have helped them to keep tabs on each other, hearing what kinds of questions teams had. Instead, that bedroom became a place for quick snoozes.
The other bedroom had a computer with a printer. Instead of printing up lots of documents ahead of time, we printed them up as needed. This room's bed variously served as another puzzle assembly area or another place for quick snoozes.
So what was going on in GC HQ as I arrived? There was a flurry of activity. Several people needed to go to the Sacramento airport to pick up rental vans. DeeAnn was one of them. She briefed van drivers on a complicated procedure--where was everyone supposed to go in the airport? Did they have directions to drive vans back here? There were many drivers to keep track of. I wasn't going to the airport. Instead, I'd hang on to DeeAnn's phone and hang out back at GC HQ. There was a rush as all the drivers headed out the door. There was a second rush as a few of them came back in the door, picked up various things they'd forgotten, and rushed back out again. And then they were gone.
In the relative quiet that followed, I met
some friends of Jim Keller who wanted to see what he
was so excited about. They were working on some
puzzles that Greg deBeer had brought over, some fun set of
puzzles someone had posted on the net to celebrate Labor Day.
Drivers were currently driving vans from the Sacramento airport to this motel. You may recall how the vans worked from a Player's perspective:
So, what did game control need to do?
With the drivers on their way back, we laid out the team signs on the bed. We'd post each team's sign in its van's window to help them spot their van. We had team signs laid out. A couple of teams had brought CPAP machines so that team members could sleep in the van--we put those with the appropriate team sign so that it would end up in the right van. As drivers showed up with vans, us non-drivers swung into action, stocking the vans with stuff. Confusion reigned--did we need to keep track of which team was associated with each set of van keys? Did we need to keep track of--I forget all of the various theories that floated around.
Drivers were showing up with another batch of vans from the airport. Vans were loaded with stuff. Drivers drove vans to the shopping mall.
Now I was back to being DeeAnn's personal assistant, following her around. I sat in her van as she drove it to the mall. Get a parking ticket, don't lose it. Find a parking space. Write the location down on the location card. Make sure that Professor Guzzany's message CD is in the player and cued to the beginning. Put keys into packet. Then go to an agreed-upon place in the parking garage so that other drivers could turn in their packets and parking validations.
We were running late. Some classes were close to finishing. Drivers showed up, shuttled van drivers back to GC HQ to pick up the next batch of vans. DeeAnn went somewhere to validate a batch of parking tickets. I stayed at the arranged-upon spot to receive more packets from more drivers. DeeAnn was back. She got a call--some quick teams were done with their last class, were heading to St. Rose of Lima park. We weren't going to make it.
Finally we had all the vans in the garage. We were running late, and so we didn't try to validate all of the parking tickets--instead, some teams got an extra five dollars in their packet. We did the final assembly of packets as mallgoers walked past, staring. Lesson learned: let teams arrange their own vehicles.
When we walked the packets over to the Park, teams were already gathered around, solving. Fortunately, none of them had finished the puzzle. They would have opened up the locked box to find it empty. A couple of the boxes didn't have any teams around yet. We opened those up and slipped the appropriate packets in. What to do about the locked boxes that already had players sitting around them? I was vexed--we'd totally messed this up by taking too long. I was wrong to be vexed, though. Teams were happy to let us borrow the locked boxes while they stared at the portraits. Jan Chong walked up to one group, picked up the box and said "House Business" and that was all the excuse she needed to carry it away for a couple of minutes. We put the packets into those boxes, replaced the boxes. Lesson Learned: Even if you don't think there's a Plan B, maybe there's a Plan B.
Soon we were in a van heading back to GC HQ. DeeAnn was talking to Sean on the phone: "Oh well, it sounds like wands class was harder than we thought, but at least they got lunch out of it." I wondered what it would be like to struggle through the game with a half-hour of wand training. Hopefully, team would figure out what worked and what didn't by practicing. Someone asked DeeAnn about GC sleeping arrangements. There were so many volunteers for this game that GC had scheduled six hours' sleep for each person. Were there beds for everyone? Nope--as one person was done sleeping, the next would take over the bed. DeeAnn had been in the US Navy for six years. "We called this 'hot racking'."
There was some hubbub at GC HQ. Some folks were heading out to watch for "marauding" students in Sacramento Old Town. Jim Keller's friends were getting ready to leave. Earlier, they had been smiling at everyone. Now they looked sad. It was as if we had somehow disappointed them, or perhaps as if they were worried about us. Maybe they were just wondering if we'd be able to keep up this level of activity for the next 24 hours. I was kind of wondering about that myself. (I needn't have worried--things calmed down soon after.)
It was 4:00 in the afternoon. Acorn took a nap. You might think that he was sleeping at such an early hour to make sure he'd be awake for a nighttime shift, and that was part of the reason. The other part is that he'd stayed up all night Friday night assembling wands.
Things had quieted down a lot, but there was still plenty going on. DeeAnn was answering a phone call from Jim Keller, who wanted to know where in the mall he could get his parking validated. Chris Nichols was studying a printout of notes on the latest revision of the FLOO network puzzle, getting ready to answer questions on the info phone line. Crystal, volunteering on the info line, had her phone out, seemed to be daring it to ring with tough questions from Teams. Curtis was adding her number to the phone rotation. Elena was affixing stickers that said "Mmmmmmuggle Breakfast" to boxes of breakfast bars.
At 4:21, DeeAnn and I set up another sleeping room: opened up the sofa bed, put sofa + chair cushions down on the floor so that yet one more person could rest. According to the schedule, DeeAnn was taking a nap right now, had been since 4:00. That didn't go exactly as planned. She went back to GC HQ, and people had plenty of questions there that only DeeAnn knew the answers to. I checked the clock. 5:18 and she was still answering questions. The last team had picked up their FLOO network map, and the GC folks who'd been patrolling Old Town Sacramento were back at HQ, milling around. They were asking questions, but these were questions that other people knew the answers to--how were the teams doing? The info-line phone rang, rang a couple of times surrounded by folks who weren't info-line phone volunteers. Those volunteers were mired in the crowd. Cory wasn't on shift for phone duty, but he scooped up the phone, answered it. It was a team with a question about the FLOO network: What were they supposed to "cross under"? Cary nudged them towards "under cross". Phone folks got themselves situated near the phones. People knew what they were supposed to do, order arose from chaos. Thus, at 5:30 DeeAnn was able to get away for her nap.
![[Photo: Studying the Emergency Puzzles(?)]](sean_chris_puzzlecramming_tm.jpg)
I had DeeAnn's phone, a printout of the big schedule, and a printout of the contact list. I also had an extra mission: to keep an eye on Ryan, and if he was messing up on phone duty, to yank him. Ryan was about 14, was here with his step-dad. I think that step-dad was officially on phone-line duty, but Ryan had taken a few calls. Apparently, one of these calls hadn't gone so well. Talking with Ryan later, I could tell he had a sense of humor. Maybe he told a joke on the info-line. That could backfire. When teams call up to confirm that they've solved a puzzle, they're in a great mood. They feel like geniuses, all's right with the world, and they'd love to hear you talk to them in your approximation of a British teacher's voice. When a team calls up because they want a hint, they're probably not in such a great mood. They're calling up because they can't solve a puzzle; they're frustrated. If they feel like you're joking at them instead of with them, they get grumpier. And depending on how upset they already are, you can't count on them to judge the difference between "joking at" and "joking with".
I went into the first bedroom, which at this point was still the room for the second phone. Ryan and his step-dad were here. The phone in the living room would ring first, so there wasn't actually much going on in this bedroom. I sat and scribbled notes, let the conversation swell around me. It was Ryan's step-dad who noticed that Ryan had slipped into the living room, and was talking on the phone there. This didn't go over so well; the step-dad was also watching to make sure that Ryan did OK on the phone--but he couldn't do that if Ryan started answering another phone. So step-dad yanked Ryan off of phone duty completely.
I talked to Ryan later. He had been answering the phone, "Ministry of Magic. This is Ryan the intern." He'd been reading up on the magic mirror puzzle. I quizzed him about it, and he had learned that puzzle really well. I figured that soon he'd be a great info-line volunteer.
I was back in the front area. The bustle was done--volunteers had scattered to other places--some had left, some had gone for naps. Occasionally, the info-line phone would ring, but mostly we just sat around and chatted about game stuff. I think it was during this time the second phone migrated from the bedroom to the living room--watching a silent phone was boring, but talking with fellow Game enthusiasts was fun. Curtis talked with a British accent; he didn't seem to be able to turn it off. Crystal cast spells with a spare wand. At 6:30, DeeAnn reappeared. She'd woken up early.
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