November 4-6, 2011, there was a bay area "rerun" of Seattle's The Game
World Henchmen Organization.
It was awesome!
I played as a member of team
Bloody Goldfish Meat, a team with members who usually played in teams
Blood and Bones, Golden Golems, Mystic Fish, and Meat Machine (SF Bay
Area edition). We were:
- Alexandra Dixon, team captain
and fearless leader. Alexandra normally captained Team Mystic Fish,
my usual team.
- Sarah Barnum, normally of team Blood and Bones. (Blood and Bones was
organizing this bay area re-run along with Longshots and the organizers
of the original Seattle game: Silly Hat Brigade and
Los Jefes. Sarah couldn't
be with Blood and Bones for the lead-up to this game, so she played
with us, which was lucky for us.) I vaguely remember playing with
Sarah some before, though I'm not sure exactly when. MSPH12[3]
playtest? Various pre-game mixer activities? Anyhow.
- Allen Cohn, normally on
team Meat Machine, and organizing the upcoming Dr When game.
- Joe Fendel, normally
captain of Team Golden Golems. The golems normally play BANGs; and
aren't enthused about the idea of a weekend-long The Game. Mystic
Fish had teamed up with the Golden Golems before, most recently as
Team
Goldfish for the Shinteki Aquarius remix. Joe drove us around in
his van all weekend!
- Erik Stuart, normally
Team Captain of Meat
Machine. I'd played with Erik before for the
Hogwarts Game playtest, and was plenty glad to play with him again.
- Me, normally on team Mystic Fish, comic relief.
This game answered a question you might hear someone asking about other
puzzlehunts: "Where's the fun?" The folks who wrote the hunt did a great
job of interspersing fun activities with the harder puzzles so that
morale stayed high. Some of them came down to the bay area to act in,
mediate, and otherwise help along our re-run. As near as I could tell,
the folks Game-Controlling this The Game were:
- Members of Los Jefes from
Seattle;
- members of Silly Hat Brigade of Seattle, about which I knew almost nothing
heading into this game;
- members of Team
Longshots in the bay area;
- members of Blood
and Bones in the bay area;
- some folks who'd played the game before: some Burninators who weren't
out of the country for the World Sudoku Championship and/or the
World Puzzle Championship. Curtis Chen of the Snoutliers, Jeff Wallace
from Seattle, ...
- And maybe some folks who hadn't played in the previous event and were just
volunteering out of awesomeness. I'm guessing that Erica Baker,
Kiki Bragg, Linda and Casey Holman, and probably some others were in this
group.
This The Game was set in the world of Dr Horrible, the musical comedy
in which Neil Patrick Harris played Dr Horrible, an aspiring supervillian
whose complicated plans tended to go Wile-E-Coyotishly awry (only with
more tragedy). We (and the other teams) were aspiring members of the
World Henchmen Organization, folks who hoped to be the Igors to the
Frankensteins of the Evil League of Evil.
Contents
0:
Getting There, Memorial Hall, Time to Play
1:
Back to the Hotel, Game Day, The Chase is On, Get in the Van,
Saturday: Breakfast
2:
Saturday: Lunch, Beware of Grays Bearing Gift Horses or Something
3:
Saturday: Railroad, Dinner, Not Done Yet, Laundry Night
4:
Googleplex by Night, Keeping Warm
5:
Sunday: Stupid Hours, Sunday: Up the Coast, With the Fishes
6:
Sunday: Pacifica and Upwards, Growing Things, Denouement
![[next]](../../../images/next.gif)