September 2007 Archives

Since the final production touches are falling into place for Book 2, it's time for us to start shutting up here at Schmeldritch (except for the occasional post about what amazing packages we're receiving from you!) I warned you that these interludes weren't very long.

 

We are absolutely psyched (and probably psycho) about what we have in store for you next. After all, if we aren't driving you absolutely paranoid about things going bump in the night by Halloween, we'll have missed a golden opportunity. Some of the team, though, think we might have finally gone too far, that our production plans might be too outrageous for rational minds to consider!

 

We're going to ask some people to take October 26, 27, and 28th off from their jobs and families and travel somewhere remote and inconvenient? And some of them should even bring backcountry gear for a day even deeper in the wilderness? All so that they can have the most immersive weekend horror experience any ARG has ever dared contemplate? Madness! We've gone too far! Storytellers were never meant to fiddle with such things! We should seriously consider insuring the participants' lives against the potential of death by fright!

 

It's too late. The train has already left the station.

Today's mail brought the total number of packages up to 16, and also brought along a new high-water mark for package from the farthest away (Kiwis in da house!) The package was almost too pretty to open, but we have obligations, don't we? Choice! Art of a darker sort (nightmare?) also came in from this side of the pond as well. Click in to see more. We're going to start getting self-conscious about how creative all of you folks are!

There have been whispers floating around for days that something truly frightening was waddling its way towards us. I heard people were already placing bets. *gulp*

When it arrived today it looked like a duck, and it quacked like a duck, walked like a squid, and smelt like KLOO! Red origami cats? Green origami dog? Cryptic note? Time for some puppetmaster kung-fu combo moves!

 

Maybe it was something in the odd expression in the faces of the cats that seemed suspicious. Maybe Providence's floppy ears were arranged just a little too jovially. Or maybe it was the hint that something was right under our nose. KLOO? How do I make a spoiler tag on this blog?

Since the last roundup, another seven strange packages have arrived on our doorstep ... each more disturbing than the last. That makes an even thirteen so far!

Eldritch-induced carpal tunnel? An Art voodoo doll? A painted nightmare that stares back at you through the package (click to see the reveal)?

The scariest thing is that I've heard rumors that something truly wicked this way comes. I can hear the heavy footfalls of the postman, dragging his heavy burden down the sidewalk. You folks continue to amaze us. And scare us. Just a little.

As promised earlier, Jim has whipped up a second track of exquisite corpse -- "Calls to Marie" also features another mix from John Vanderslice's "MGM Endings" (this one a track called "They Won't Let You Run, Pt. 2".) Speaking of which, J.D. and I caught John's show last night here in Orlando and he's gone interactive ... somehow we ended up in an 80-person sing-along on the street outside the show at 11PM. You owe it to yourself to check him out if he's coming to your town.

Eldritch Errors Soundtrack
Track 1 - "The Providence Nightmares" (16.45 MB MP3)
Track 2 - "Calls to Marie" (5.7 MB MP3)

Imagine a scene in your head. I'm sitting in some large conference room with some ad agency representing some client. I fire up my Powerpoint and explain my strategy to use unspeakable horror and some of the darker emotions in the artistic palatte to tell a story about the risks we don't pay attention to. I get to the slide where I'm supposed to make the argument that helps them sell more LimeWidgets. I click "next" and there is nothing but a blank slide, mocking me and my stupid idea.

Then I wake up and remember that the heart of independence is that I don't have to get anyone's permission to do Eldritch Errors. I don't have to have a sponsor. I don't have to convince someone of the marketing efficiency of the storyline. In fact, if I really think my idea is any good, I should be able to figure out how to wring a return on that investment myself inserting LimeWidgets, GrapeWidgets or brand new SchmeldritchWidgets I come up with myself.

There are certainly advantages to getting someone to say "yes" because frequently the question they are answering is "will you give me money to do this wacky thing that we think we can convince you will work?" It also means that someone else's goals become central priorities in that new collaboration ... which begs the question: if we didn't have to incorporate other goals, what would be our priorities for establishing our own goals?

When we put out the call for creativity last week, we knew we were asking for it. It is, of course, completely appropriate that the first package to arrive would contain a Cu-Thule-loo challenge coin (smells like a clue!) We've also had a comic book, some creative expressions, and a bribery attempt as well! I shudder to think at what the mailman might bring next week to top it. I'm happy to update everyone that after the first week, we've received six requests for challenge coins (so don't panic if you were afraid the rush would hurt you if you haven't already sent in an SASE.) Five of those have gone back out in the mail already. Muwahahahaha!

Shared nightmares were a major theme of B.A. Saint-Feline's journey in "The Providence Prophecies," and participants emailed and called in their own nightmares (both real and imagined) to B.A. continuously as the nearly five-month story unfolded. We used a service called JConnect to manage the phone calls -- part of that service includes voice mails emailed to you as MP3s. Hundreds and hundreds of MP3, each more frightening and disturbing than the last.

GMD Studios Lead Developer Jim Rhoades took on the task of starting to craft all that audio into an exquisite corpse, a collaborative narrative of "The Providence Prophecies" (at least a part of it) as told through the dream calls. A lot of cataloging and editing later, he had reduced it to a chilling 12 minutes plus extended audio collage of atmospheric crafting courtesy of the wonderfuly deconstructed remixes of John Vanderslice's in "MGM Endings" (a free download from John's site) -- catch him on tour now (I will on Monday.)

Pieces of this are going to end up in other places (including the new Eldritch Errors site redesign), but the "extended remix" is just for fans: consider it the first installment of the Eldritch Errors Soundtrack (and not the only installment you'll get before the interlude is over.)

Eldritch Errors Soundtrack
Track 1 - "The Providence Nightmares" (16.45 MB MP3)

Independent artists have a long, fine history of stealing production value from the real world for little or no expense, a technique that works equally well for producing an independent film as it does for producing immersive experiences like ARGs, LARPs and Eldritch. It requires a certain tolerance to risk and an attitude best summarized as being willing to ask for forgiveness instead of seeking permission. If you wanted a firmer risk test, it might be "could we cease and desist if someone asked us to, and would that limit most of the liabilities of trying this wacky idea?" If the answer is "yes" -- even if that cease & desist might come from an Attorney General or Microsoft -- you might be in a position to steal some production value from the real world as well. Here's two ways we did just that in Eldritch, one involving a psychic in New York City and the other a storage facility outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

During the initial pilot, we were purposefully mysterious about exactly what Eldritch Errors was. Most of our need to define it initially was motivated by making sure that fictional threats weren't mistaken for real threats. Now our need is motivated by helping new participants and the press make sense of what Eldritch Errors is, which requires a little more finesse and a little less mystery. The first 8 questions in the new "frequently asked questions" list we're building focus on the basics:

As has become tradition in the Alternate Reality Gaming community, we will be joining the players for an IRC chat about the experience. Of course, anyone with interest in the project is welcome to attend and we hope that you'll be able to make it.

The chat will be held Monday, September 10 (yes, that's tonight!) at 9:30 PM EDT / 6:30 PM PDT in #stfeline on irc.chat-solutions.org. If you don't have an IRC client, you can connect to that server through both unfiction and ARGNet. For more information, check out this unfiction thread.

We're really excited about finally getting to chat without the curtain coming between us, but as this is only an interlude, there will be many questions that we cannot answer. We do hope that you will understand and not throw virtual tomatoes at us in return for the inevitable winks and dodges. Don't worry, if we can't discuss it, it just means that you'll get your answer in a far more exciting way. There's still plenty of interesting things to talk about and, I'm sure, some of the discussion will go on to inspire future posts here at Schmeldritch.

We hope to see you there tonight, and we'll link to the log of the chat from this message after the fact. 

Chris Boyd (a/k/a PaperGhost) and Wayne Porter are Sentries in a very real sense of the word. Capturing a taste of what their experience is like when they track down malware and the people behind it was part of the inspiration for the Sentry Outpost and what horrors might be waiting out there for you to discover. In the right circles, their exploits are legendary -- not only for revealing whole new types of threats, but also for the sense of snarky humor with which they document those discoveries.

Wayne has been a close friend and collaborator for years in all manner of strangeness, and one of the side benefits has been a ring-side seat to the stories of some of what they've uncovered. I was always struck by similarities between their process as malware busters and what collaborators in an immersive narrative piece like Eldritch had in common ... and the subject of their research? The stuff of nightmares, but also an important collection of cautionary tales about the unintended consequences of some technological choices. How deliciously diabolical to have him involved in building fictional versions of the real threats he (and many others) hunts.

One of the few downsides of staging an event inside a public storage facility is the lack of electricity in the units. Apparently that (at least in part) is to help prevent crystal meth labs from setting up shop (may I also suggest you avoid using in-room coffee pots in hotels?)

Without power (or with very limited power), our major concern was lighting, and our experiments with glowsticks seemed to produce the most reliable results. The designs for the central set piece, an altar, began to morph to serve as the light source for the rest of the room. Our preliminary tests the week before (pictured here) gave us enough confidence to skip electric lighting altogether. Inside, we show you the how-to steps.

Working at GMD Studios is at best unusual and frequently downright odd. Mike Ferraro, our new assistant producer, got more than his share of odd in the last few months.

His first day at GMD Studios started something like this.

"Hey, Mike, welcome aboard. See that box of padded mailers over there? Yeah, the one sitting next to that box of strange coins, fragments of painting and all that sealing wax. I want you to drive them up to the Cassadaga Post Office and mail them all out. Oh, you've never been to Cassadaga or seen the Spiritualist Camp? Don't worry, just follow signs. Take this camera and shoot lots of pictures, we might find them useful later."

When the strange packages that launched Eldritch Errors started appearing in people's postal mailboxes, there was speculation about how we got those addresses. Were they the addresses of players of our prior games? Were they the addresses of players who asked to receive things? Were there collaborators feeding us sekrit information about people? Every bit of speculation was wrong, the truth is far more disturbing.

We duplicated the techniques that junk mailers have been using for more than a decade, fueled by the over-abundance of data you might have left floating around the Internet about yourself. We began by selecting a series of traits: people who had played alternate reality games; people who were intrigued by the mythos; people who had specific technical skills and domain expertise we thought participants might need; people that would not run from a strange package in their mailbox. Through these traits, targets began to emerge and we were able to take closer aim. Those that lept into view tended to have certain things in common: they had a strong online presence and a blog or website with domain registration that we could track. Following those footprints led to interesting details about the targets, such as an online alias, their hobbies, how many kids they have, what they do for a living, their favorite movies -- the kinds of details we could use to customize their letters and interaction for maximum creepiness.

Creepiness. A question that we are constantly faced with is how people, ourselves included, confront horror and the unexpected. When we look at the monsters lurking in the shadows, do we look him in the eye or do we take ourselves out of the moment and look at the situation from above? It was an interesting start to the game to watch individuals staring the monster in the eye while the collective removed themselves from the situation. From above, it made it easier to sleep at night believing that the packages arrived based on pre-approved means and that it was just the launch of some game. To turn an oft overused phrase, this is not just a game and, from within, the story is far different.

So the lingering questions are: if our fictional characters can figure out how to reach out to your mailbox without resorting to "psychic means," do you think other people (with less entertaining goals) are already doing that too? What is the relationship between what you share online, who becomes interested in you, and what's waiting for you in your mailbox each day? How is your physical presence tied to your virtual one and how does your presence feed the collective consciousness?

Among the contents of the strange packages that launched Eldritch Errors were both a coin and a postcard promoting B.A. Saint-Feline. The coin is actually something special: it is modeled off the tradition of "challenge coins" used in the U.S. Military to prove membership and rank in a unit and to engage in drinking games! We plan on using a lot of different challenge coins in the series (and not just because we really like drinking games.)

So the coin you've seen so far is best described as a participant coin: they will always be bronze in color, be extremely limited edition, and be intended to end up in the hands of a participant in that Book of the story. More specifically, you might call this the "The Providence Prophecies" participant challenge coin (as it proves your participation in one very particular Book, the first.) We only made 100 of these coins this time, and we have 45 left here at the end, each one guaranteed to summon at least a few crickets. What do you have to do to get one? Mwahahahahaha ... first, you click to read more.

No project as complex as Eldritch Errors ever comes together without a brilliant team. That team is also expected to labor in obscurity until the fat lady sings. So I can't think of any better way to start out Smeldritch than to make sure that the incredible crew that made it a reality gets to take at least a quick bow. So, in alphabetical order, the team that brought you:

"Eldritch Errors: The Providence Prophecies" (April 2007 - September 2007):

Therés Andersson (translator) / Swedish translations
J.D. Ashcraft (GMD Studios, producer) / logistics & story development
Chris Campbell (GMD Studios, developer & artist) / web, art & prop development
Clay Chiment (writer) / pre-launch Stu Ronomi
Brian Clark (GMD Studios, creator/producer/writer) / Howard Philips, Arthur Lydney, "Exu", "Spukhafte"
Andrew Cowan (GMD Studios, technical lead) / web, MUD and server infection development, "Icculus"
Don Cramer (Meme Science, malware technical expert) / Lucky 5 tray app development
Dave Currie (artist) / the nightmare painting & D.C.'s sketch
Nicko Demeter (writer/technical expert) / Bryce Droher
Mike Ferraro (GMD Studios, assistant producer) / props, locations & logistics, "Cultist #5"
Steve Grant (conceptualist) / pre-launch story development
Lisa Hope (GMD Studios, assistant producer) / props & logistics
Tammy Kearns (GMD Studios, producer) / logistics & story development
Jackie Kerr (producer/writer) / Alan Camacho, Jennifer Pike, Kevin Cosby, post-launch Stu Ronomi
Wayne Porter (Meme Science, malware technical expert) / story development, application manager
Jim Rhoades (GMD Studios, developer & artist) / web, art & prop development
Ralph Srouji (translator) / Arabic translations
Brooke Thompson (creator/producer/writer) / Marie Kim, B.A. Saint-Feline

In October 2006, we started laying our plans for an episodic, immersive narrative experience: a thriller about security, nightmares, suffering, hopelessness and Pandora's boxes all rolled together through the lens of H.P. Lovecraft's "weird fiction" legacy. In April 2007, Eldritch Errors launched with a flurry of strange packages, cryptic Craigslist ads from a goth psychic plagued by nightmares, and a bickering community of Internet security experts. By the time you encounter this blog in early September 2007, we'll have reached the end of the "first book" in this on-going series, "The Providence Prophecies," and be entering the "first interlude" -- the less narratively intense breathers in between books.

Schmeldritch is something that happens in between the episodes of Eldritch. It is an opportunity to share some tidbits from behind the scenes and some "how to" tutorials for other immersive narrativists dissecting the production. It is a place to discuss intent and theory with the participants, the audience and the broader community of other experimental storytellers. We have a substantial two-year arc sketched out for Eldritch, so there will always be a huge number of topics that we choose to keep tight-lipped about (we don't want to ruin any surprises.) What we post here at Eldritch, though, is meant to stimulate discussion (don't be shy at striking up conversations with us in the comments!)

Interludes aren't particularly long, though. And once the interlude is over and the more intense action starts unfolding again, Schmeldritch will be a quiet place until the next interlude.