Just a fun graphic I made for the EN World forums…

Yesterday I made a logo for RPG Kids.

Today, I updated it based on some feedback from @newbiedm as well as a comment from the previous post suggesting that their be some accessories worked in (in this case a pencil and dice)…

So here it is!

Click to enlarge!

Today while at work I had a strange desire to create a logo.

No reason, just felt like doing it.

Of course, at work (like at home) I am in Photoshop a lot of the time, but today was a busy day and logo creation would have to wait until I got home.

The funny thing is, when I finally decided to get crackin’, I realized… “Uhh… what should I make a logo for?”.

Generally when I am in these moods, I make up some name. A fictional book title, or new game setting, etc. However, in this case I was also looking at Twitter and at that moment, my eyes floated across this tweet from @newbiedm…

well, screw it then. i’m going to have to go work on my #rpgkids adventure pack then.

…so I thought… I’ll make a logo for RPG Kids!

The thing I like about doing logos for other people (even though they don’t ask for them) is that I am going to make one anyway, and in this case who knows – maybe they can use it! Why let it go to waste right?

Thirty minutes later I was just about done with the logo, so I shot him a message and asked if he was interested. As luck would have it, he was and he even wanted to use it!

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Logo now…

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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.

Birds Fall on Beebe Arkansas

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.

Fire at the Days Inn Hotel

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

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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This is the second 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 1 yet?

Part 2 of 3

Where Is This Coming From?

After months of nearly no activity, on December 28th (a day after my birthday, of all days), emails started coming in. In fact, 13 applications were submitted that day compared to 5 total during the 4 months prior. These weren’t just simply “I want in” emails either, these were full blown applications.

While it was obvious that these were in-game applications detailing various degrees of experience with the supernatural and more (this was a game of course), what surprised me was the amount of detail and energy put into some of them.

I immediately began doing some research. Where are they coming from, and why? How did they hear about SAVER and what were they expecting to happen next?

It was during this research at the end of December and beginning of January that I first read about Alternate Reality Games (ARG’s).

Alternate Reality Games

I had heard of table top games like D&D (obviously) and of course there were live action (LARP) games, but ARG’s? I had no idea.

Much of the traffic that was coming to the site seemed to be coming from unfiction.com. I was quickly able to find a forum topic about SAVER Corporation. The title “SAVER Corporation” was followed by a tag “[Trailhead]”. As it turned out, my site had been discovered by someone there, and was posted as a potential new ARG. The SAVER website was apparently the trailhead, or the beginning of a new game.

With more research, I discovered there were actually many ARG’s out there. In this genre there were even guidelines, or elements to these games that people expected to see. There were rules about what a PM (a Puppetmaster as they are called, which was apparently me in this case) should and should not do.

I had a lot more to learn, and it needed to happen quickly. I was barely starting to grasp the common expectations of ARG’s by the time I had received 40 applications.

Up to this time,I was responding to each person letting them know they had been accepted. I was manually putting their names and twitter accounts up on the website. I answered their questions in character as “Human Resources, SAVER Corporation” from the staff@saver.co account, but I was quickly becoming overwhelmed. I was not ready for this and I decided I needed to make that known before anyone else invested time into an application.

I would simply apologize and shut SAVER down.

Just Run With It

The SAVER Corporation website

I told Forrest about my dilemma. There were simply too many applications for me to keep up with. As a programmer, he suggested a more automated process. For me, I needed a solution like this or I could not run the game. If this were in place though, I decided that I would indeed go ahead with it. After all, the system would put their info in a database. I would simply approve each one after looking it over, and their information would display automatically on the website.

When I initially setup the site, I had only asked that people apply for one or more positions – those being Research, Development and Media. Depending on which you joined, your tasks may vary (you can see these on the website). I also had ranks for the employees. Initially, you started at 1 just for applying, you gained another point for including your twitter account, and finally another point was possible for a detailed/interested/in-character application.

Within a day he had it set up, including a drop-menu asking people which department they would like to join. This would come in handy after an email situation came up, and Forrest ended up building me a system by which I could select a department, type out a message, and it would be sent individually to each person in said department.

Forrest also mentioned using a “Terminal” system he had setup for his own website for fun. This tool would be the driving force pushing me forward to the end-game, but I will go into that later.

The applications were really starting to come in now, and I needed to figure out what the players would do.

That’s when thousands of birds fell onto a town called Beebe in Arkansas.

Continue to Part 3 >>

Part 1 of 3

Let me start right away by addressing those of you coming here who happen to already know me… This article probably won’t make much sense at first, but you might find it interesting. Here is the Wikipedia article on ARG’s for more information on what those are (if you don’t already know).

To those of you coming here from Unfiction, or who were sent here from the Saver site, we haven’t met yet, or at least not in this manner so, hello!, my name is Mike (aka Weem) and I have been running the SAVER Corporation ARG that just concluded.

I played the role of every character in the game. Eric, Marty, Jared, and the rest. I created the story, and did my best to keep you interested during these last 30+ days. I responded in character to hundreds of emails over the course of the game, as well as managed the related twitter, gmail accounts and more. The voice message for SAVER Corporation? Yea, that’s me too!

I also had a friend (@ForrestHat) help me with some online tools (the Terminal, and the tools I used to manage members and mass emails) and another friend (@smittyhalibut) who helped me with some cipher stuff, thanks guys I really appreciate it!

If you have any questions or wanna talk about the game, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up on twitter, or email here!

This article is meant to share with you the process of how I created and ran the game. It’s a peek inside I guess, and as much as this is a piece for my records and anyone else wanting to run an ARG, I hope that you find it interesting as well and perhaps it will answer some of the questions you might have had (if any).

Everything written here has been written as the game approached it’s end. In fact, it is currently Jan 31st, and Minz and company are very close to finding the evidence they need to bring down the company via the “Terminal” (terminal.saver.co).

As such, I have had to go off of memory and various records (emails, etc) to recall events as they happened in order to write this. I have tried to be as accurate as memory allows, but a good memory is not something I am known for at all (ask my wife).

Anyway, this is the story of how I ran a game for 100 people, every day for 1 month.

I Like Domain Names

For a long time now, I have had a habit of thinking up ideas for websites, snatching domain names for them, and then sitting on them for years. As a web designer/developer, this is not an uncommon thing, but compared to those I know who do the same work, this habit is much more prominent with me. In fact, this extends beyond domain names. To date I have almost 50 twitter accounts, over 10 gmail accounts, 6 IM accounts, a few Facebook accounts and am down now to 18 domain names (after 2+ years of trimming the fat)!.

In July-ish of 2010, .co domains became available. There was a ‘landrush’ for them and I was right there with everyone else at the front of the line. I had my credit card ready… this was going to be fun. However, at $25 each it can get out of hand very quickly.

In the end, I spent about $500, so I had done well – better than expected even. It would be a few days before everything would be ironed out as it was determined who really had snatched up each domain. I knew I would not get everything I was after, so the wait was aggravating but exciting as well.

Days later, the results were in and as expected I had lost many of the domains I really hoped to have grabbed. I won’t list them all, but I WAS able to get the name of the city I work in, as well as the name of a very popular table top game. One of the last domain names I had snagged was saver.co.

The Company

Whenever I have a domain name, I like to put something up for it related to the name, even if it will not be used in the same form. Of course, with saver.co I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t have a clear plan for the domain other than the hope it could be used in the pharmaceutical field .They have a lot of money and related domain names auction well.

The .co had me thinking “Corporation” of course, and for some reason my mind went immediately to a corporation that ‘saved’ lives. That line of thinking took me to the game Army of Two for some reason – perhaps the whole aspect of the privatization of the military. Naturally, my mind went to Blackwater from there.

Of course, as a gamer I started flirting with the idea of the supernatural and how it could be incorporated. Now I was thinking of the game Crackdown – one of the only games I have every fully completed (my attention span regarding them is very short, so I don’t finish most games).

I eventually decided I would put up a WordPress site for it and pass it off as Blackwater, re-skinned as a company who protected the nation against supernatural threats. Just for fun.

Somewhere between the time I was making the site and the time it was up and running, I realized that I had subconsciously recreated something I had seen before – that is, a website dedicated to something that didn’t really exist in the real world, but nonetheless acted as though it did. The first time I really noticed something done like this (obviously of higher quality of course) was the Multi-National United site created for the movie District 9.

The MNU site was my new inspiration, and I decided to even allow people to apply for a job. I would simply ask for people willing to help by being available to answer questions, etc. If anyone applied, I would just email them from the saver account and let them know they were accepted. I would put their name on an employee page of the site and that would be that. Using a Google Voice widget, I would even allow people to call in to Saver where they would hear a recording of some kind (it’s my voice you hear by the way) stating that no agents are currently available.

At this point I really wasn’t expecting more than one or two people to contact the site. Who would want to participate in something like this anyway, right?

More Twitter Accounts

I love twitter. In fact, I wrote an article about it a while back and how powerful a tool it could be for your D&D game. Naturally, I created a new twitter account for this (@savercorp) and began tweeting out the headlines of the articles I was writing. I added more as I went including one for the CEO (@enewold) and one for the CIO (@SAVER_Jared).

D&D is one of the primary connections I have to twitter and as such, I decided to tie Saver to D&D so I could leverage my familiarity with the crowd. I knew that many people used the #dnd tag as I did, and really it was fellow gamers that I figured would be the most interested in seeing something like Saver anyway. Even at this point, I was not imagining anyone really getting involved – I was more expecting a tweet or two along the lines of “wtf is Saver?” at BEST.

That’s where the story came in. I decided that Saver, as a company who faced the supernatural, would be at the pioneering edge of recruiting. They were going to actively seek D&D/RPG players as new employees because those were the people who knew the most about the supernatural and magical elements.

It didn’t catch though, and to be honest, I didn’t put in much of an effort. I sent a few tweets from time to time linking to an article about how SAVER was looking for RPG players, but only 1 person ever applied. I decided for the most part to let it go. It didn’t need to be active, and in fact I didn’t even need to have the site up. I continued putting up a few articles here and there as inspiration hit me based on current events, but for the months of November and December I was pretty much done with the idea…

…But at the end of December, something happened. Emails began coming in… lots of them.

Continue to Part 2 >>

Follow me on Twitter!

I’ve been working on a new (gaming-related) project for a little while that has begun consuming a lot of my time. In this case, it’s a good thing as it is exciting and something totally new to me. The downside is that regular updates, articles, random images and more will not be happening here for a while (a few months).

I will still be around, posting on Twitter, and will post here from time to time as well, just not as regularly as I have been the last 6-7 months or so. I know it’s not a big deal to most people (anyone?) to miss out on my randomness for a bit, but I thought I would mention it anyway in case anyone wondered why the activity slowed here.

Seventeen year-old me predicted I would not see another 17 years. Well, today is my 34th birthday so I guess he can suck it!

Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone for their birthday wishes – they are much appreciated.

I’m still taking a break from writing much here until January. Between Christmas, my birthday and a New Years party we are hosting, I have a lot going on until then. With that said, today I hope to look into some ideas for a new campaign I intend to start in February and I still need to think about my character for a Serenity RPG game I am about to play in. Looking forward to these upcoming games as well as a Pathfinder game I will be playing in soon. I have a lot to look forward to!

Thanks for being patient about my end of December lack of updates!

With the holidays approaching, there has been a lul in activity from me here at theweem.com as well as on Twitter. Despite my being on vacation now and having more time than usual to be posting and making updates, I seem to be using my free time to do anything but that.

This is a good thing though. I have some ideas, and will be fleshing them out with a mind to start them as we come into the new year.

Stay tuned and have a great break (those of you who get one… to the rest, I’m sorry).