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radiantfractureOn this most recent trip, my distraction of choice was Escape This Podcast, in which the hosts guide players (who are often the hosts / casts of other podcasts) though escape room scenarios.
The scenarios are authored by Dani Siller and brought to life by Dani and Bill Sunderland, who Does Voices, playtests, and produces.
Escape rooms are not my go-to kind of game -- they are (? seem to be?) primarily puzzle boxes in cool settings, and I like something more emotional and cathartic -- but Dani is great at creating these stories-in-a-bottle, and the hosts and guests have a lot of fun working through the scenarios. I've just been listening to the Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory doppleganger Escape Roompa-Loompa. (The link is to Episode 2 in the series, but if you know the books or film, you'll know exactly where you are.)
(A propos of nothing in particular, a guest also mentioned the new-to-me term "haunt," for an interactive horror experience. I like that a lot.)
In a cool and generous move, the show makes its scenarios available for free if you want to run one yourself.
My creative brain is coming to life again, and of its own accord it began to write an escape room scenario. I find it's best to let my brain do what it wants, so I sketched the scenario and puzzles in today during a long walk along the west shore and a sojurn at Denny's.
(This is all a bit ironic, since while I love the idea of puzzles and ciphers, I am not very good at solving them.)
You Are Invited
This is your invitation to playtest a very rough escape room scenario. I have not written one before, and I am still feeling out how the form works.
To playtest, all you have to do is to leave a comment with what your character does next. I will comment with the response text, and you can go on from there as far as you like, or until I realize something doesn't work and have to redraft.
When you're done, or as you go, you are welcome to comment with ideas for elaborating or clarifying puzzles or other room elements.
I think this would probably be considered quite an easy escape room to anyone familiar with them. The puzzles are (I think?) pretty transparent. A diversion rather than a challenge?
If you're not familiar with escape rooms (as I am not, really, except through the pod), it's customary to start with a detailed examination of the room and its contents. You're looking for puzzles to solve rather than more open-ended challenges -- "figure out the key code," not "win over the security guard.
It's much more about puzzles and setting than character or story, and the setting's primary function is to provide clues about how to solve the puzzles. (I think. As I say, I am new to this. Any escape roomers (escapees?) out there?)
Comments will obviously contain spoilers, though the details may vary as I develop and improve the language of the scenario. Also hopefully I think of a better title?
(I made this a Christmas scenario to create some quick stakes -- invoking familiar genre tropes seems to be a staple of the format, a shortcut to understanding the task at hand.)
The Scenario: Long Winter's Catt Nap
Snnnore... Wha? Huh?
You wake up in confusion. You are slumped on the shiny vinyl seat of a booth at C.C. Catt's, that famously fun and garish family restaurant and pizza pie parlour. But something's wrong. It's dim in here -- only the emergency lights are lit. And everyone's gone. A minute ago you were surrounded by old college friends and screaming kids. Now you're alone in a dark, silent restaurant. You can hear the fan, your own breathing, and a faint high-pitched beep.
You turn on your phone. 4:57 am on Christmas morning? What on earth? You look around wildly and try to piece events together.
Tonight was your traditional Christmas Eve pizza dinner with a couple of old college friends and their kids. Your own family stayed home, begging off with ambiguous cold symptoms and last-minute wrapping.
You must have had one too many Long Island Iced Teas and dozed off. Then your old "friends" thought it would be funny to leave you here to sleep it off. That sounds like them. Why do you still hang out with these people?
Once you'd been abandoned, because you were sitting, or rather lolling, in the back booth behind the animatronic stage, the staff, in a hurry to get home to their families, missed your table entirely. Indeed, the table is still strewn with fragments of pizza, sticky glasses, and crushed napkins.
Your neck hurts, your head throbs, your mouth tastes awful, and you're locked in C.C. Catt's on Christmas morning, with only an hour or so to get home before the family starts waking up and all hell breaks loose.
You open your phone to text an explanation, an apology. The screen lights up, then suddenly goes black. You try again; it shows you the red "no charge" symbol. Damn. You were hoping to get a new phone for Christmas.
Okay. Think. You need to get out of here. That soft beeping is probably the restaurant's alarm system. You can see a red light flashing high above you in the cavernous restaurant space. You could just set off the alarm and wait, but then the police would come and the delay could go on for hours. Better to break out and run. Or maybe you can figure out a way to shut off the alarm. That shouldn't be so hard. The password's probably on a piece of paper around here someplace. You can give that a fair chance and then if necessary just peel out of the parking lot and speed away like the thief you are emphatically not. Maybe leave a note to explain what happened? Ugh. What a start to Christmas morning.
You rise unsteadily and stand at the end of the table, looking around the restaurant. The main space is filled by empty tables with chairs upturned on the tabletops. Beside you is the stage with the gigantic, oddly menacing, four-piece animatronic animal band. Across from you is the dark maw of the ball pit. To your left is the pizza counter, with some abandoned pizza still lying on its shiny black surface.
It takes you a minute, as you take stock of all you see, to realize what you don't see.
You don't see a door.
{RF}
The scenarios are authored by Dani Siller and brought to life by Dani and Bill Sunderland, who Does Voices, playtests, and produces.
Escape rooms are not my go-to kind of game -- they are (? seem to be?) primarily puzzle boxes in cool settings, and I like something more emotional and cathartic -- but Dani is great at creating these stories-in-a-bottle, and the hosts and guests have a lot of fun working through the scenarios. I've just been listening to the Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory doppleganger Escape Roompa-Loompa. (The link is to Episode 2 in the series, but if you know the books or film, you'll know exactly where you are.)
(A propos of nothing in particular, a guest also mentioned the new-to-me term "haunt," for an interactive horror experience. I like that a lot.)
In a cool and generous move, the show makes its scenarios available for free if you want to run one yourself.
My creative brain is coming to life again, and of its own accord it began to write an escape room scenario. I find it's best to let my brain do what it wants, so I sketched the scenario and puzzles in today during a long walk along the west shore and a sojurn at Denny's.
(This is all a bit ironic, since while I love the idea of puzzles and ciphers, I am not very good at solving them.)
You Are Invited
This is your invitation to playtest a very rough escape room scenario. I have not written one before, and I am still feeling out how the form works.
To playtest, all you have to do is to leave a comment with what your character does next. I will comment with the response text, and you can go on from there as far as you like, or until I realize something doesn't work and have to redraft.
When you're done, or as you go, you are welcome to comment with ideas for elaborating or clarifying puzzles or other room elements.
I think this would probably be considered quite an easy escape room to anyone familiar with them. The puzzles are (I think?) pretty transparent. A diversion rather than a challenge?
If you're not familiar with escape rooms (as I am not, really, except through the pod), it's customary to start with a detailed examination of the room and its contents. You're looking for puzzles to solve rather than more open-ended challenges -- "figure out the key code," not "win over the security guard.
It's much more about puzzles and setting than character or story, and the setting's primary function is to provide clues about how to solve the puzzles. (I think. As I say, I am new to this. Any escape roomers (escapees?) out there?)
Comments will obviously contain spoilers, though the details may vary as I develop and improve the language of the scenario. Also hopefully I think of a better title?
(I made this a Christmas scenario to create some quick stakes -- invoking familiar genre tropes seems to be a staple of the format, a shortcut to understanding the task at hand.)
The Scenario: Long Winter's Catt Nap
Snnnore... Wha? Huh?
You wake up in confusion. You are slumped on the shiny vinyl seat of a booth at C.C. Catt's, that famously fun and garish family restaurant and pizza pie parlour. But something's wrong. It's dim in here -- only the emergency lights are lit. And everyone's gone. A minute ago you were surrounded by old college friends and screaming kids. Now you're alone in a dark, silent restaurant. You can hear the fan, your own breathing, and a faint high-pitched beep.
You turn on your phone. 4:57 am on Christmas morning? What on earth? You look around wildly and try to piece events together.
Tonight was your traditional Christmas Eve pizza dinner with a couple of old college friends and their kids. Your own family stayed home, begging off with ambiguous cold symptoms and last-minute wrapping.
You must have had one too many Long Island Iced Teas and dozed off. Then your old "friends" thought it would be funny to leave you here to sleep it off. That sounds like them. Why do you still hang out with these people?
Once you'd been abandoned, because you were sitting, or rather lolling, in the back booth behind the animatronic stage, the staff, in a hurry to get home to their families, missed your table entirely. Indeed, the table is still strewn with fragments of pizza, sticky glasses, and crushed napkins.
Your neck hurts, your head throbs, your mouth tastes awful, and you're locked in C.C. Catt's on Christmas morning, with only an hour or so to get home before the family starts waking up and all hell breaks loose.
You open your phone to text an explanation, an apology. The screen lights up, then suddenly goes black. You try again; it shows you the red "no charge" symbol. Damn. You were hoping to get a new phone for Christmas.
Okay. Think. You need to get out of here. That soft beeping is probably the restaurant's alarm system. You can see a red light flashing high above you in the cavernous restaurant space. You could just set off the alarm and wait, but then the police would come and the delay could go on for hours. Better to break out and run. Or maybe you can figure out a way to shut off the alarm. That shouldn't be so hard. The password's probably on a piece of paper around here someplace. You can give that a fair chance and then if necessary just peel out of the parking lot and speed away like the thief you are emphatically not. Maybe leave a note to explain what happened? Ugh. What a start to Christmas morning.
You rise unsteadily and stand at the end of the table, looking around the restaurant. The main space is filled by empty tables with chairs upturned on the tabletops. Beside you is the stage with the gigantic, oddly menacing, four-piece animatronic animal band. Across from you is the dark maw of the ball pit. To your left is the pizza counter, with some abandoned pizza still lying on its shiny black surface.
It takes you a minute, as you take stock of all you see, to realize what you don't see.
You don't see a door.
{RF}
Re: The Ball Pit
Date: 2023-01-04 04:09 am (UTC)Re: The Ball Pit
Date: 2023-01-08 03:04 am (UTC)The rectangles appear to be some kind of readout, registering the level of -- something -- from ATTRACT to DISTRACT. The MANUAL OVERRIDE sign seems to label the clear plastic tube on the left of this display. The tube runs horizontal, left to right, and looks about the right size to hold a row of the ball pit balls.
Re: The Ball Pit
Date: 2023-01-09 01:13 am (UTC)...and if the answer is 'nothing,' then one is tempted to also drop the eyeball into the tube and see what happens, just for kicks.
Re: The Ball Pit
Date: 2023-01-11 03:09 am (UTC)however
the orange ball rolls in an oddly purposeful way, as though pulled by a magnet or some other attraction, and settles into a spot near, but not at, the end of the tube. There's about room for one ball after it and -- you estimate -- five balls before it.
The orange ball lights up orange; and with a cheerful "ping" the "C" in ATTRACT also lights up.
You hear a faint rattling sound from the balls above, as though they are shifting in place.
Re: The Ball Pit
Date: 2023-01-13 09:23 pm (UTC)***First puzzle solved!***
Date: 2023-01-17 05:22 am (UTC)You arrange the balls in order in the clear tube, and one by one the letters in A T T R A C T flash on. You hear a loud whirring from above. Balls begin to clatter into the pit.
The balls fill to ankle, then knee height. As the level rises, the bars in the readout light up.
The balls reach the lip of the pit and begin to overflow it, spilling out onto the ledge. An annoying beeping sounds. The whirring slows, stops. The outpouring of balls ceases, a few last balls bouncing onto the foam of bright colours.
The final bar lights up, then the word DISTRACT.
With a metallic howl, the animatronic band creaks into life and begins to "play" "music."
The one-eyed rabbit's head jerks back almost 90 degrees, his toothy jaw working soundlessly. The trapped piece of paper flashes in the glaring stage lights and then wafts gently to the ground.
***First puzzle solved!***
And I think the play test ends there! I can see that there are some logical holes I need to darn in the next bit.
Thank you so much! You are an excellent investigator.
The eyeball was an improvisation, but it is definitely sticking around.
Any thoughts or reflections you have are welcome. I've never tried to run an escape room vs. a more story-themed game before. It's really interesting trying to figure out how to pace the information.
I hope that was at least a little fun.