Halloween Party 2013

Another year, another Halloween party: this year's theme was conspiracy theories. We kicked off the party with an organized game. Unfortunately, Dev and I were so busy running the game that we didn't get any photos of teams playing - I hope someone else took some.

Picture of Aleister Crowley

All the ins and outs of the game would take pages and pages to explain but I'll try to summarize here. Party-goers that want the full back story, feel free to email me for a long, convoluted history with insane sub-theories covering everything from Liebniz to Atlantis.

 

Travis, Aubrey, and Zac helped with the planning, and as usual, Dev did all the actual work, including building many of the props and puzzles.

THE STORY

In the year 2580 BC, aliens from a planet orbiting Tau Ceti landed in Egypt.  They attempted to create alien/human hybrids but humans at that time were not genetically compatible enough with the aliens and their experiment failed.  The aliens then set about guiding and directing human evolution to make us hybrid-ready.  They also intervened in human civilization in various ways, particularly in Egypt and in the Holy Land. (Tons more here about Octavian, Cleopatra, Nebuchadnezzar II, etc.., but I'm skipping ahead.)

Ada as an FBI agent

Peter as an alien from Tau Ceti and Aaron as Indiana Jones

Finally, the Virgin Mary was born as the first sufficiently evolved, hybrid-ready human. She gives birth to Jesus, an alien/human hybrid.

 

The aliens possess life extension technology, essentially allowing them to enjoy immortality via uploading and storing their neural nets. They upload Jesus's brain in this fashion, leading to his "resurrection" and eternal life. The Holy Grail (hereafter referred to as THG) is in fact a computer disk on which Jesus's brain is stored. If found and properly understood, it could be reverse-engineered to guide all humans to being able to use life extension technology to achieve eternal life.

Throughout subsequent history, various influential people have been aware of this story, wholly or in part, and have sought either THG itself or the technology/understanding to use it. Much mysticism and science, from Templars to alchemy to the calculus, were early attempts to figure out this technology.

 

A long and complicated path took THG itself from Egypt to Jerusalem to Rome and then to Paris when Napoleon raided the Vatican Archives in 1810.  THG is now hidden in the Catacombs underneath Paris.

 

THE INVITATIONS
 

 

Everyone got the same first invitation: a map of the constellation Cetus with Tau Ceti marked with an arrow, a letter with their team assignment and a scarab seal, a small carved onyx scarab, and a copy of a newspaper with an ad hidden in it.

 

 

 

The ad contained a series of numbers that correspond to key dates followed by the IP address for the party information website).

 

 

 

(The hardest part of this whole party was driving around Burbank at 6am trying to gather up 100 free newspapers).

 

Everyone also received a link to a Craigslist post with additional information.

 

 

In addition, people on the secret teams received a second paper invitation about a week after the first with further instructions.
 

THE GAME

Everyone invited to the party was assigned to one of eight teams of around 10-12 people each. Every team had the same goal, to find THG. The first team to do so would win.

 

However, approximately 25 people were also assigned to second, secret teams.  The goal of these people was to actively - but secretly - impede the progress of their teams and assure that THG remained hidden. If no one found THG in 90 minutes, the secret teams would have won.

 

 

Another six people, The Nephilim, were assigned to yet another secret team.  I gave these people all the answers ahead of time and their goal was to assist any and all teams in succeeding, in the role of secret helpers/guardian angels.  If any team were to find THG in 90 minutes, the Nephilim would also win.

 

The game was structured around eight puzzles set up at eight stations, which could be completed in any order.  The first team to complete all eight puzzles gets a chance to answer the final question and win THG.  That question was simply, "What is the Holy Grail?"  (Where the answer is some version of "Jesus's uploaded brain.")

THE PUZZLES

Putting together the puzzles was really fun.  Here are some very brief summaries of what we did.

 

1. The clue says, "He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair. Nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear.” - Job 41:31-33 And then, "As above, so below." The players are given a map of my neighborhood in Burbank, printed on a transparency.  At the party there was also a large framed map of the night sky at our time and location, with Tau Ceti* marked with a gold star.  The players had to line up the two maps and then go to the place in my neighborhood that lines up with the star (a nearby park).  There they found a stone plaque with an image of a sea monster on it.  To complete the puzzle they had to make a rubbing of the plaque.

 

2.  The clue was a page from Newton's The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms featuring his sketch of The Temple of Solomon.
The players were given a box of wooden blocks, each block labeled with a letter, and a picture of the completed temple. They had to construct the temple; the four blocks left over were marked with the letters I, I, N, R, which they had to unscramble to get the answer INRI.

3. The clue read, “Now what I propose to do is furnish psychic investigators with an apparatus which will give a scientific aspect to their work . . . I have been working out the details for some time; indeed, a collaborator in this work died only the other day. In that he knew exactly what I am after in this work, I believe he ought to be the first to use it if he is able to do so." - Thomas Edison, with a picture of a light bulb.  They were also given a "key" (really just a lollipop stick).

In the same room as this clue was an ornate sealed cabinet with two peepholes.  If you stuck the key into one peephole and peered through the other, an old-fashioned Edison bulb would turn on, and the message "Life Extension Technology" would appear illuminated in the back.

4. The clue read, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."
Dev did a masterful job of altering Da Vinci's Annunciation so that there is a scroll under Gabriel's feet that reads "Maria summa laborem." 
There were also a bunch of variously labeled scrolls at the party.  If you unrolled the one labeled "Maria summa laborem," you'd find the answer, a DNA double-helix.

 

5. The clue was a picture of King Arthur's Round Table missing one seat for Percival.  The players are given a laptop that would play a selection from Wagner's "Parcifal" and then ask for a password.  If the team entered the password "Parcifal" they got a splash screen that reads "Neural net uploading," which was the answer. (And thank you Sam for programming this one for us!)

 

 

6. The clue read, "Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume," with a picture of the Templars' mass execution and the date Friday, October 13, 1307, as well as some facts about the number 13 and how it relates to the U.S. dollar bill. The players were given 13 dollar bills.  On one the answer "Baphomet" was written in invisible ink.  Somewhere at the party there was also a black light labeled with the pyramid from the U.S. dollar which they could use to reveal the hidden word.

7. The clue was an alchemical recipe with antique chemical names like "green vitriol," "fixed air," and "lunar caustic."
The players were given a rack of test tubes are labeled with the modern chemical symbols for the old-fashioned names (for example, "lunar caustic" is silver nitrate).  They had to combine the right tubes together to turn the clear liquids into "gold" to get the answer.

8. The clue read, "Heureux celui qui a toujours devant les yeux l’heure de sa mort et qui se dispose tous les jours à mourir." and "Napolean, 1810."
Somewhere at the party was a clock stopped at 6:10 (18:10).  Tucked into the back of the clock was a note with some GPS coordinates, a key, and a clue about Napoleon being exiled on an island.  At the place indicated by the coordinates (a traffic island near my house) they found a locked box. Inside were tokens - taking one back solved the puzzle.

I'm happy to say that six or seven of the eight teams finished all of the puzzles in the allotted time.  And I learned a great deal about game design, including which things didn't work (areas where bottlenecks formed, problems with resource allocation and timing, etc.) I think my favorite games were 1, 2, 3, and 7.

There are still four more days left to enjoy the Halloween season! And then it's on to Thanksgiving.

*In the constellation Cetus, the whale, or the sea monster, hence the Leviathan.