Bang 7: Materials

As soon as Team Fishstick Mess got our starting packet we sat down at a courtyard table and went through the contents.

If you're thinking of running a BANG, pay attention here. These guys did a great job on the infrastructure of this game, and there are some good ideas to steal^W inspire you.

There was a satellite map of the business park. I had wondered how we were supposed to find our way through a business park, where all of the buildings look alike to the uninitiated. Here was the answer.

There was a code sheet with several coded values for each letter of the alphabet: ordinal number, binary representation of that number, ASCII value, Braille, semaphore flags, and Morse code.

There was the Game Board, also known as the giant wheel of words. When we solved clues they wouldn't say "Go to the lamp post by 400 Alta and look for an envelope". Instead, they would say "Bracken". We would find the word "Bracken" on the giant wheel of words, and see that it was next to the number 12. We would find 12 on the map--and that would bring us to a lamp post by 400 Alta. (The giant wheel was also the score sheet--as we found answers, we were to write their numbers on the wheel.)

There were nested hint envelopes. As in BANG V, if you needed a hint, you could open a sealed envelope. At Game's end, we would turn in your envelopes. For each opened one, we would get a time penalty. Each envelope contained a hint--and also a smaller sealed envelope which contained the answer.

And there were a couple of puzzly things.

The first was a paper titled "Earl's Peers" with many pictures.

I recognized one of them as Milhouse from the Simpsons. Alexandra knew that the "Earl" in the title was the middle name of James Earl Carter, and that "Milhous" was the middle name of Richard Milhous Nixon--she realized that these were middles names of presidents. Thus, that S for Snake or Dragon uh whatever was really the middle name of Harry S. Truman.

I spent a round stunned that she had picked up on that. (On the post-game car ride back to San Francisco, I asked her about that. When she had prepared to appear on the TV game show Jeopardy! she had studied up on the USA Presidents.) I sat around stunned some more as she and David identified other presidential middle names.

I snapped out of it. I had spent a lot of BANG V watching amazed as Alexandra and Dwight solved puzzles. Interesting, but not so helpful. I grabbed the other puzzle out of our packet, and started to work. I thought, Less gawk, more rock!

Strongbadia Night Game

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