{"id":966,"date":"2009-06-19T13:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/06\/19\/jotting-notes-on-my-clues-talk-from-gc-summit-2007\/"},"modified":"2009-06-19T13:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T20:51:00","slug":"jotting-notes-on-my-clues-talk-from-gc-summit-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/06\/19\/jotting-notes-on-my-clues-talk-from-gc-summit-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Jotting Notes on my &#8216;Clues&#8217; talk from GC Summit 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(with apologies to <a href=\"http:\/\/lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us\/new\/labels\/puzzlehunts.html\">Larry Hosken<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Some of this information is out of date, but there&#8217;s still useful stuff in here.  And no, I didn&#8217;t do this merely out of narcissism; I&#8217;m writing up a &#8220;clue design primer&#8221; for general reference (and specific application to a planned upcoming multi-city puzzle event&#8211;more on that later), and I needed something to get me started.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><embed src=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/googleplayer.swf?docid=2141805236943445801&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=true\" style=\"width:400px;height:326px\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" allowScriptAccess=\"always\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\"> <\/embed><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">What are your goals for the game?<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>Immersion, theme, cool puzzles, other?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Weekly GC meetings<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>frequency maintains momentum<\/li>\n<li>there&#8217;s always something you can do (even just talking)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Starting the clue design process:<\/li>\n<li>Someone will have an idea<\/li>\n<li>Bring a prototype to meeting<\/li>\n<li>Example: &#8220;meat clue&#8221; from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fobik.org\/wrapup\/\">FoBiK<\/a> called &#8220;food cryptogram&#8221; in development\n<ul>\n<li>Original idea was pencil, string, raw hot dog? (&#8220;gross food clue&#8221;)<\/li>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;\"><\/p>\n<li>CKL: &#8220;There were only two kinds of meat.&#8221;<br \/>Sean: &#8220;Rancid and rotten!&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Set criteria for including clue in game\n<ul>\n<li>For FoBiK, every clue had to be scary, creepy, or disgusting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Packaging is very important<\/span><\/li>\n<li>DeeAnn (logistics maven) isn&#8217;t really into puzzles<\/li>\n<li>Use previous clues as models\/templates for new clue\n<ul>\n<li>Steal from clues you liked (cool encoding\/construction)<\/li>\n<li>Change it up, repackage it<\/li>\n<li>Only so many encoding schemes available<\/li>\n<li>Take an old idea and put a new twist on it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">First playtest (clue prototype) within GC<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>Saves outside playtesters for more polished versions of clue<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Playtesting parties!<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>More like conference-room puzzle hunts<\/li>\n<li>You can draw playtesters from people who wouldn&#8217;t play in your event<\/li>\n<li>Usually go through 3 puzzles in 1 session (4-5 hrs, depending on attendance)<\/li>\n<li>What did they like? Was it fun?<\/li>\n<li>Worksheet &#8211; time data is crucial, helps us estimate average timing &#038; spread<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>(DeeAnn should do a talk just about skipping)<\/li>\n<li>Example: Hogwarts dry run\n<ul>\n<li>Good for testing integration of everything (clues, locations, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Also forced wand-maker to finish gadgets earlier<\/li>\n<li>Showed us several problems we fixed before actual game weekend<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Example: 8-ball was not significantly less work to do than full weekend game<\/li>\n<li>Argument in JU about whether to do dry run<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Living room playtest != in a van at 3am playtest<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Every team eventually hits &#8220;the stupid hours&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Red: we find it takes any team at least 15 minutes to start working on a clue<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>confirmed; Crissy rode along with several teams on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fobik.org\/Zeldamentary\/\">Zelda<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Playtesting is like usability testing<\/li>\n<li>Documentation? We do our best &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.malum-iter.com\/wiki\/\">Hogwarts wiki<\/a><\/li>\n<li>We like to give our phone force a lot of latitude in giving hints<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re all about customer service &#8211; everyone has fun!<\/li>\n<li>Red: Team Snood takes detailed notes during playtesting\n<ul>\n<li>Note times when solvers make each &#8220;leap of faith&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Help system comes directly from those notes<\/li>\n<li>Sean: important to note false starts and red herrings<\/li>\n<li>dry run helps to identify additional environmental elements which interact with clues<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Red: in Overnightmare, noted playtest times including false starts\n<ul>\n<li>actual solve time + false starts = spread<\/li>\n<li>not necessarily red herrings<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Sean: &#8220;the perfect clue&#8221;\n<ul>\n<li>each predictable false start reveals a &#8220;signpost&#8221; to steer you back to right track<\/li>\n<li>avoids too much feeling lost<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>little things can help you sort out extraneous bits of data<\/li>\n<li>usually you find a dead end when you decode to gibberish<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">&#8220;Only Game Control thinks that&#8217;s funny&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<li>goes along with &#8220;not having fun anymore&#8221;\n<ul>\n<li>allows teams to give GC non-bitchy feedback (this isn&#8217;t working)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fobik.org\/JU\/\">JU<\/a> Saturday night traffic on bay bridge &#8211; another argument in favor of dry runs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(with apologies to Larry Hosken) Some of this information is out of date, but there&#8217;s still useful stuff in here. And no, I didn&#8217;t do this merely out of narcissism; I&#8217;m writing up a &#8220;clue design primer&#8221; for general reference&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}