h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My money's on it being like the movie Clue

Okay, sorry. I sincerely didn't know I was doing anything wrong. I did read those rules but I guess I just don't know how these murder mystery things go; I have never been to one. So people don't work together? No teamwork? I see.

Perhaps some of the damage can be undone by yikesing some of my posts? I really don't mind.

Again, sorry.

Clue's awesome.


SPOILER ALERT

But everyone here already knows Mr. Body, so he can't really be the butler.

END SPOILER

Clare, you've not posted any spoilers, don't worry!

You will need to look around, there should be enough descriptions in the rooms before and after to be able to work out the who, how and why. There's nothing wrong with chatting about it, probing each others minds etc, but we will be writing this up for the Post, revealing all the details that might not have come out, explaining any red herrings that there might be, and publishing a list of those who worked it out, and when we recieved their emailed guess, so too much questioning in the threads might help work it out for someone else who sends in their guess before you

I was so wiped out from my forest adventure yesterday, that I couldn't follow events online. But I heard mention of a map - is there one to look at, or do I draw my own plan of the house?

The plan of the house is on the Viewing Gallery page: A87775294

I must have missed that completely last night... I was busy subscribing to threads, I didn't realise until much later that they each hang off a separate room! I hope I have read them all now. I am so deeply impressed with all the work put in here!

Thanks, Pastey, for explaining that. Now I get it. I can be dense sometimes, especially in areas where I have no experience. And, yes, I also am impressed with the work and creativity that has gone into this little game. Thank you all so much!!

Glad you like it

It's the first one of these we've done, we've been finding our feet with it very much ourselves, so really no-one knew how it'd work out

I have nothing but admiration for the effort you guys put into running this event. Sadly, I lost the plot around an hour after it started and found it too difficult and the information too widely dispersed to catch up later. I'm impressed that some people stuck with it though.

Does this sort of interactive whodunnit thing exist already, or were you pioneering this?

I believe we were pioneering it.

It originally was going to be much larger, and next year we may well enlarge it a bit, as we think it'd speed it up, and make it easier to follow and guess.

We've had a few guesses, and there's been some really good ideas come in. In fact someone has *almost* guessed. I'll be writing it all up for the Post, explaining all the clues and the red herrings, before also saying who, how and why.

That's good to know. If you're pioneering this, then you could really develop it into a unique proposition to develop the site.

A couple of observations:

It looked as if you had characters posting the plot in real time, but in an ideal world there's no need to do this. There was no interaction with the audience until the Q&A at the end. All you really needed to provide was a lounge for them to chat in while events unfolded. An automated process could do the work posting the plot, you just need a scheduled time for people to attend a Q&A.

Some people seemed to keep up a lot easier than I did. I applaud them for their enthusiasm and persistence, but you might want to make it a little easier. It would be nice to view all the activity on an additional "Videprinter"-style page, for example (lust label and/or colour-code each posting for the participant and location). Alternatively, you could cut/dice/filter this by location or character to allow easier analysis. Clearly it requires a little technology to make this work, but I don't think it's difficult.

Icy

Pretty much the thoughts we've been having.

What we wanted to do would have started a lot earlier, weeks earlier. And created the characters a lot more, journal entries, etc, so that we wouldn't have the need to do all the introduction stuff. We think that this will mean we'll be able to start the evening straight away at the dinner, or other such event that we arrange, so that it'd be up and running straight away.

We'd thought about keeping the action in one room, and therefore one thread, but that'd then reduce one of the things that makes this unique, that we can have several things happening at once, and it's up to the viewer/reader to follow the action from several different angles at once. Or rather to read the back log.

And I imagine the model could lend itself to activities other than whodunnits, too. It would be interesting to whiteboard a few other ideas. (Maybe you've already done this).

We've not yet, been rather busy

I know the feeling. I have a little man from the village who does my strategic planning.

I found the format ideal, once I'd got the hang of it. I just subscribed to all the threads and just kept refreshing my "my conversations" page. The letters on my F5 key are almost worn off!

But, due to the time difference, I had to go to bed in the middle of it. I haven't solved it at all - I'm useless at that sort of thing - I just see the good in everyone.

Will follow with interest.

Do have a guess though! Send in what you think, it'll help us know what red herrings worked, and what didn't

I'm also glad you liked the format, it really was something we were trying out, and we didn't know ourselves exactly how it would, or wouldn't work until it happened.

I sent in a guess. I am pretty sure mine is one of the wildly improbable ones. I had fun making it up out of the clues though.

Yay! Next year!

As someone who had to follow purely by backlog (and didn't pay attention to the time stamps until halfway through), I will say that perhaps some way to differentiate between separate trips to the rooms would be helpful, though I can't think of any way than separate threads for each trip, which would be a bit unwieldy. Or maybe, once the action is over, a list on the viewing page showing which order the rooms were entered--I ended up just going to Mr Body's entries and reading the rooms in the order in which they were created.