Henry (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tahnan) wrote,@ 2008-01-23 04:02:00 |
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That Mystery Hunt Thing
I've been resisting writing about the 2008 Mystery Hunt because I've been waiting to see the answers to some things, as well as the overall structure. But, well, it strikes me that I don't want to wait too long, so...
I feel a little pre-empted by Qaqaq's observation that "post-mortems generally focus pretty heavily on the criticisms", because it's true, I'm probably going to end up sounding critical. So let me start by saying that by and large I enjoyed this hunt; there were a whole lot of puzzles I liked. (A few highlights: "What Incarnation...", "Our Unfortunate Aunt Edith", "X2". Also "Cluesome", for being amusing, clever, and short.)
And I have to give a lot of credit to Palindrome for stepping into that much-pondered but never-attempted area of puzzles not grouped by meta. Well, "never attempted" is strong--I gather that, before my time in the '97 Hunt or so, there was something like that. The Monopoly Hunt kind of had that, except that while the puzzles weren't given to you by meta, grouping them into sets was straightforward (after either a single insight into how the dice worked, or else more or less immediately upon solving a puzzle).
And...yet. It's not that I didn't enjoy this year's Hunt; I did. But it felt a little...lackluster, somehow. Here's the thing: if your Hunt is gorgeous but the puzzles are deeply flawed (as, sorry, y'all, hate to say it, but as a number of the Time Bandits puzzles seemed to be), it'll be hard to enjoy. Good puzzles are crucial. But at the same time, solid puzzles without a strong theme are, well, kind of just a bunch of puzzles. And unlike any Hunt since (again, I hate to say it, but) 2001's Hunt of Horrors, I just didn't feel drawn in by the theme.
Part of that was a problem in graphic design. From the Hunt Overview, all you had were a bunch of checkboxes indicating puzzles, with no clue what puzzles they were. From the "little black book" pages, again, you had links to the puzzles but no idea what puzzles they were without clicking through or at least mousing over. This made it very hard to find any given puzzle: if someone said, "Can I get your help on 'Propaganda'?", finding it wasn't easy. And, conversely, when you were looking at the puzzles, you had no way of knowing where it was from--which meta, of course, but that was inherent to the structure, but also no idea which of Dr. Awkward's contacts it corresponded to. The overall effect was that it was very hard to tell where you were in the Hunt, not in terms of how your team was doing, but in a more literal (though metaphysical) sense of where on the map you were. Compare this to previous hunts: look at random puzzles from 2004, 2006, 2007, or even the rather minimalist 2005. The puzzles tell you what round they're part of; and you typically don't have to look very hard to find out, because the graphic design and, often, the thematicity of title or subject indicate it as well. This year's hunt just didn't have that.
Why does that matter? In general, I just didn't really feel very engaged in the story, and that sense of being lost on the metaphysical map of the Hunt contributed. Dr. Awkward had been killed and we had to find his murderer...well, OK, I guess, but I didn't feel emotionally invested in it. (Not like saving the Earth from an insane meteorologist, or helping Chris-Morse-in-a-dress get her inheritance.) To be honest, there was a reason that, in 2003, we picked "the boss you just met gets assassinated" as the fake theme--we wanted something that wasn't utterly boring ("corporate culture") but also something that people wouldn't be sorry to learn wasn't the real theme. But, all right, I was willing to go along with it to determine who killed the good Doctor. Except that, once we were underway, we kind of just had a bunch of puzzles. There was little or no flavortext--that's not a problem in and of itself, since puzzles in the 2007 Hunt also often lacked flavortext (though they did always have a really funny description in the "this isn't a clue" banner), as did the puzzles in 2005. But there was also no discernable plot. Take X2: were we interviewing Horst Bantak and getting a hint from him? were we investigating him? were we...I don't even know, really. We were kind of just solving a puzzle.
So that was the big thing about this year's Hunt, and why I started by saying that "I enjoyed it, and yet": I did enjoy the puzzles. I just had a really hard time connecting with the Hunt itself.
There were other, little annoyances. There were miscommunications: we were explicitly told that we should be looking "first and foremost" at contacts' names to sort them; in fact, at least two groups (Bantak/Foy/Leather/etc. and Eva S./Di Puco/Maia Lian/etc.) had huge grouping clues in their email addresses. There was the frustration that, once an address-book group's dossier had been given to teams, we didn't seem to get anything at all out of solving their metapuzzle (compare Normalville, where you still needed to know the actual power you got from the "normal" metas, or Spies, where meeting with an agent got you not only the next round but also a piece of information you'd need at the end).
That said, I also have some (small) sense of the trouble that Palindrome had bringing the Hunt together at all (and one Palindromian mentioned a few rather particular obstacles), and I'm genuinely grateful to them for running it as well as they did. Seriously, thanks, guys. Best of luck to y'all in the 2009 Evil Midnight Bomber hunt and the 2010 II&F Hunt.
I've been resisting writing about the 2008 Mystery Hunt because I've been waiting to see the answers to some things, as well as the overall structure. But, well, it strikes me that I don't want to wait too long, so...
I feel a little pre-empted by Qaqaq's observation that "post-mortems generally focus pretty heavily on the criticisms", because it's true, I'm probably going to end up sounding critical. So let me start by saying that by and large I enjoyed this hunt; there were a whole lot of puzzles I liked. (A few highlights: "What Incarnation...", "Our Unfortunate Aunt Edith", "X2". Also "Cluesome", for being amusing, clever, and short.)
And I have to give a lot of credit to Palindrome for stepping into that much-pondered but never-attempted area of puzzles not grouped by meta. Well, "never attempted" is strong--I gather that, before my time in the '97 Hunt or so, there was something like that. The Monopoly Hunt kind of had that, except that while the puzzles weren't given to you by meta, grouping them into sets was straightforward (after either a single insight into how the dice worked, or else more or less immediately upon solving a puzzle).
And...yet. It's not that I didn't enjoy this year's Hunt; I did. But it felt a little...lackluster, somehow. Here's the thing: if your Hunt is gorgeous but the puzzles are deeply flawed (as, sorry, y'all, hate to say it, but as a number of the Time Bandits puzzles seemed to be), it'll be hard to enjoy. Good puzzles are crucial. But at the same time, solid puzzles without a strong theme are, well, kind of just a bunch of puzzles. And unlike any Hunt since (again, I hate to say it, but) 2001's Hunt of Horrors, I just didn't feel drawn in by the theme.
Part of that was a problem in graphic design. From the Hunt Overview, all you had were a bunch of checkboxes indicating puzzles, with no clue what puzzles they were. From the "little black book" pages, again, you had links to the puzzles but no idea what puzzles they were without clicking through or at least mousing over. This made it very hard to find any given puzzle: if someone said, "Can I get your help on 'Propaganda'?", finding it wasn't easy. And, conversely, when you were looking at the puzzles, you had no way of knowing where it was from--which meta, of course, but that was inherent to the structure, but also no idea which of Dr. Awkward's contacts it corresponded to. The overall effect was that it was very hard to tell where you were in the Hunt, not in terms of how your team was doing, but in a more literal (though metaphysical) sense of where on the map you were. Compare this to previous hunts: look at random puzzles from 2004, 2006, 2007, or even the rather minimalist 2005. The puzzles tell you what round they're part of; and you typically don't have to look very hard to find out, because the graphic design and, often, the thematicity of title or subject indicate it as well. This year's hunt just didn't have that.
Why does that matter? In general, I just didn't really feel very engaged in the story, and that sense of being lost on the metaphysical map of the Hunt contributed. Dr. Awkward had been killed and we had to find his murderer...well, OK, I guess, but I didn't feel emotionally invested in it. (Not like saving the Earth from an insane meteorologist, or helping Chris-Morse-in-a-dress get her inheritance.) To be honest, there was a reason that, in 2003, we picked "the boss you just met gets assassinated" as the fake theme--we wanted something that wasn't utterly boring ("corporate culture") but also something that people wouldn't be sorry to learn wasn't the real theme. But, all right, I was willing to go along with it to determine who killed the good Doctor. Except that, once we were underway, we kind of just had a bunch of puzzles. There was little or no flavortext--that's not a problem in and of itself, since puzzles in the 2007 Hunt also often lacked flavortext (though they did always have a really funny description in the "this isn't a clue" banner), as did the puzzles in 2005. But there was also no discernable plot. Take X2: were we interviewing Horst Bantak and getting a hint from him? were we investigating him? were we...I don't even know, really. We were kind of just solving a puzzle.
So that was the big thing about this year's Hunt, and why I started by saying that "I enjoyed it, and yet": I did enjoy the puzzles. I just had a really hard time connecting with the Hunt itself.
There were other, little annoyances. There were miscommunications: we were explicitly told that we should be looking "first and foremost" at contacts' names to sort them; in fact, at least two groups (Bantak/Foy/Leather/etc. and Eva S./Di Puco/Maia Lian/etc.) had huge grouping clues in their email addresses. There was the frustration that, once an address-book group's dossier had been given to teams, we didn't seem to get anything at all out of solving their metapuzzle (compare Normalville, where you still needed to know the actual power you got from the "normal" metas, or Spies, where meeting with an agent got you not only the next round but also a piece of information you'd need at the end).
That said, I also have some (small) sense of the trouble that Palindrome had bringing the Hunt together at all (and one Palindromian mentioned a few rather particular obstacles), and I'm genuinely grateful to them for running it as well as they did. Seriously, thanks, guys. Best of luck to y'all in the 2009 Evil Midnight Bomber hunt and the 2010 II&F Hunt.
