Midnight Madness X.

[angledge]

This weekend, I am playing a new game. This game is called Midnight Madness.

Now you know as much about it as I do.

OK, OK – I actually know a little bit more than that. MMX (so called because this is the game's tenth iteration) is a species of urban game/alternate reality game. The name & idea seem to have come from a 1980 movie, Midnight Madness.

I have recruited an eleven-person group to form Team Heliotrope (all teams must use a color for their name, a detail that matches the movie). Our players are: hotpantsgalore, katieledge (who told me about this game in the first place), chaosvizier, marasca, a new acquaintance named petit_chou, & a bunch of non-bloggers. So far, all we know is that the game will start some time on Saturday night. The boundaries of previous MMs have been defined as Houston Street, 34th Street, & the East & Hudson Rivers - BUT games have left those boundaries, too. The basic form of the game seems to be a scavenger hunt. We will be given a starting point & there we will find a puzzle. Solving that puzzle will lead us to the next clue. Onward, until someone wins.

I only have three communications channels with the game operators (called "GameControl", another detail from the original movie). First, there is an MMX messageboard. Currently, the messageboard contains mostly smack-talk & speculation. Other than the messageboard, I have received two emails from GameControl. One let me know that my team registration had been accepted. The second message contained instructions for registering my cell phone & a team password with GameControl’s text messaging server. So... really, we know next to nothing.

But we're excited! One member of our team has played several other urban games before but the rest of us are complete n00bs. The MM website has messageboards from several previous incarnations of Midnight Madness, & some of those games lasted all night & took teams all over the city. I counted 13 possible team names in the chatter on the messageboards - we could be facing a large field. We will be armed with nothing but cell phones, maps of the city, & our wits.

Wish us luck.

Edit: new email from GameControl. We're starting at 8:00 PM somewhere in Riverside Park! They will email us a map tomorrow. Squee!!

Comments

[angledge.livejournal.com]

...I've been wanting to play!

We're allowed up to twelve players....

If you do it again, I'd love to come up if I could make it.

The organizers say this is the last time they're doing it.

[effrontery.livejournal.com]

Ah, my mom's here all weekend, or I'd totally be into coming up. Oh well, hope it's a blast and can't wait to hear about it!