This is the third and final part in a short series that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how I ran an ARG for 100 people, every day for 1 month.

Did you read part 2 yet? How about part 1?

Part 3 of 3

Using Current Events

When I was first writing articles for the site, I was incorporating Saver into real news in ways that could not be confirmed. If something big happened in Iraq, I would write an article stating that Saver Corp agents were there in some (positive) capacity.

That’s why in the first week of January, as I was browsing the news (CNN), I ran into the strange event that had just occurred in Beebe Arkansas. Thousands of birds had fallen onto the town and were dead. There was no explanation yet, but theories were flying.

I decided that instead of random questions sent from time to time, I would assign tasks based on Saver’s “involvement” in certain actual events. I wrote up the Black Rain project that night and sent it out to the various teams.

The project briefing told the story of Saver agents going to Little Rock Arkansas to witness the testing of an area denial weapon test. It was used on a habitat of birds who simply fell out of their trees. (Click here to read the full briefing). It went on to say that the next day, thousands of birds fell on Beebe some 30 miles to the North.

Research members were tasked with finding answers to 4 questions posed to them, one of which asked… “Setting aside the fact it would have required them to rise from the dead, could the initially effected (killed) birds have flown 30 miles North in 7 days?”

Development members were tasked with developing a weapon concept that could do something similar to what the agents had witnessed. A number of those on the Dev team not only submitted ideas, but actual plans as well.

Media members were tasked with getting the message out that Saver was working on a new area denial weapon (in Twitter, see the #saverdev hashtag).

Black Rain was a success, but the number of applications coming in presented a new problem. Those who came in after Black Rain would never quite catch up in ranks to those who had been around for the project. I was also concerned about people feeling left behind, or out of the loop.

As such, I shut down the “recruiting” one day. It just so happened that the number of accepted applicants at that point was 100. Now what?

Where Is This Going?

One of the things I was trying to wrap my head around while working on Black Rain was, what will the goal of all of this be? Will it be to see who has the most ranks at the end? If so, what is the end, what exactly does that look like?

I needed to have a story, and it was one that would very much need to be railroaded. As much as I love reacting to players in D&D games, and as much as I enjoy that kind of dynamic environment, I needed to have an end game planned. With 100 people playing this game, I needed to prepare as much as I could in advance, so I needed to know where this was going.

While writing the briefing for Black Rain, I decided that Saver was not going to be the ‘good’ company it was making itself out to be. In fact, it would be quite corrupt. As such, I decided the end goal of the game should be the downfall of the company. The imprisonment of it’s CEO would be fun as well. I order to do this, I needed people to dislike him.

For this to work, I felt I needed someone who would empathize with the players. Someone who they would enjoy interacting with who could then be wronged by the company, specifically by its CEO Eric Newold. This person who would build a rapport with the players would be Jared Hoit, the new CIO.

Staff Interaction

Throughout the entire course of the game, I was interacting with people daily. Emails came in all the time. Players were emailing their department heads, and others within the company to get more information on a variety of topics. I responded to each of them in character myself.

Whether I was playing Victoria Alverez, the friendly HR rep who used smilies a lot and said more than she should, or Jared Hoit, the outgoing CIO who typed so fast his emails were full of typos and other grammatical errors, I took on the role and responded accordingly.

Years (22 now) of DM-ing D&D games came in very handy here. I also used my iPad and an app called Awesome Note to track a number of Saver items, particularly a photo (stock from the web) for each staff member as well as a brief description to help me see them in my mind. I had reminders and other tasks related to the company as well. Keeping everything organized for Saver at times felt the same as it would be for a real company. It’s odd getting reminders that you need to get back to an employee at a certain time, or to make sure you send out this message to that department, especially for a company that didn’t even exist.

Complicating all of this was the time difference. Saver Corporation was located “near” Norfolk Virginia, while I am in California. If there was a deadline of midnight for agents to get information to someone, that meant I needed to have it by 9pm. If I told agents they would have something by the end of the day, that meant I should try and send it out by 2pm at the latest.

Time For a Puzzle

After Black Rain, I wasn’t sure what the next project should be. It was clear people were ready to go and that delays on my part would quickly lead to boredom (if not irritation on the part of a few).

I knew I needed to start laying the groundwork for Jared’s persecution, and it didn’t take me long to realize how that would come about. I decided that rather than use the huge amounts of data collected from Black Rain in a new project, I would simply make it disappear. It would be stolen, and despite being innocent, Jared would eventually take the fall.

The great thing about this plan was that it allowed me to start for-shadowing the event. Jared began posting on his twitter account that some strange things were happening. That he was having some bad days, and seeing things he was not comfortable with.

By now I had read even more about ARG’s and came to discover that many them incorporate various cipher puzzles for their players to solve. A friend of mine, Mark (a big fan of ciphers/cipher history) told me about an idea he had for the game. He could encrypt phone messages I would write with what was called a Solitaire Cipher. These messages would be a clue as to who was responsible.

What I needed to do was get these encrypted phone messages to the players via a story. Probably one involving a double agent and/or Saver coming across the information somehow…

…and then a fire broke out at a Days Inn, in Roanoke Virginia

The Incident at Days Inn, Roanoke VA

While responding to emails one day, there was a “LIVE” breaking news element on CNN regarding a fire that had broken out at a hotel in Virginia. My mind immediately went to the game and how it could be incorporated.

I decided this was the perfect place to use the solitaire cipher. There would have been an altercation between Saver agents and someone else. One Saver agent will have died, but the other will have captured the suspect. The possessions on the suspect will have been gathered, including encrypted phone messages. I would write these messages in such a way as to implicated Jared in the theft and sale of Black Rain data. The reality would be that this was a setup. The phone will have been tampered with in order to pin everything on Jared.

I did not have the cipher yet, or even the phone messages written up, but I immediately posted a briefing of the event to all teams. I told them that they would be receiving evidence soon from their team leads.

I was so fast at posting this briefing, and the news so slow to spread (it wasn’t big news of course), that some players thought I had actually written the briefing BEFORE the fire took place. It was then offered that this was either pure coincidence, or that I was very dedicated to the game (implying, jokingly of course, that I set the fire).

Eventually, the cipher was passed on to the players who had it resoled within an hour and a half. I was prepared for it to be done quickly, in fact I had assumed it would not take more than a day. If for some reason it took longer there were ways to pass on clues, so I was pretty comfortable with it.

The messages were between Jared (or at least, they were made to look like that) and a “CJ” arranging the theft and sale of Black Rain data. Jared maintained his innocence but was eventually jailed. Just before being jailed, I posted a tweet from his account stating “Well fuck”. The players knew it was likely he was going to jail, and this message essentially confirmed it.

The Terminal

Immediately after posting that message, I sent a mail to every player (from Jared). This was presumably a message Jared had written in advance detailing a number of steps he had taken in case it came to this. One of those was a link to what he called the “Terminal” – a backdoor entrance into Saver’s internal systems that the players would dig through and eventually end the game with.

The terminal was based on a Linux shell that Forrest put together. The original he made as something to navigate his own personal site, but we copied and modified it for the game. The idea was that there were various access levels. By creating an account, you could access everything at level 0. There was an access upgrade command and if you had the right key for it, the command would upgrade your access level.

As such, the players learned various clues that allowed them to access upgrade keys. Once upgraded, they could access new user files (of various staff members) culminating in the access of the CEO’s files including bank statements and other evidence linking him to the sale of Black Rain data, thus exonerating Jared.

Forrest and I received emails indicating when each account accessed a new level, so it was interesting to see those come in as players navigated the system.

I Made It

I could not have been more relieved when the game was over.

Not that I didn’t have fun, or that it wasn’t a great experience, but it was something that took a lot of work every single day from start to finish. Fortunately I have a very understanding, and even supportive wife which allowed me to spend mornings and nights responding to emails and forum posts, and dedicating weekends to getting more work on it than I could during the week.

I’ve been asked whether I would run one of these again, and the answer is probably not. I might consider helping with someone-elses in some way, but once was certainly enough as far as running one of my own. The experience was well worth doing once, and I recommend it to anyone with the time to try it.

To those of us who have DM’d various rpg’s such as Dungeons and Dragons, alternate reality games are something similar to what we are already used to, but on a much larger and more challenging scale. The end results can be just as rewarding too.

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