List of Locations

Varga’s Office: The manager’s office at the radio station. Varga is a shady, slimey kind of a guy. He’s usually cheap, but he also imagines that he’s a sort of gangster kingpin, so he’d want his office to be impressive. Probably dominated by a big desk, maybe a big window. He’s also got a forged diploma that he’s really proud of -- he might have that mounted on the wall. There’s a radio on the desk. One exit, which leads to the lobby.

HQ: An archetypal hardboiled PI’s office. A desk with a big leather chair, and maybe a Venetian blind casting a shadow across it. Maybe a little shabby, but homey. Possibly there is a cat who has made herself comfortable somewhere. Mills also hangs out here, and she’s into tinkering with radios, so there are some half-disassembled radios laying out where she was working on them. One exit, the door to the street.

Lobby: The lobby of the radio station. The station is a government building, and they tend to be fancy, but it’s run by Varga, who is a cheapskate, so it’s not as nice as it could be. There might be a desk or a podium here where the night guard could sit. There’s a radio speaker mounted on the wall like a PA system. Three exits: one leads to the manager’s office, one leads to the equipment room in the basement, and one leads back out to the street. (Since there’s going to be a character standing in the foreground of this space, the exit to the street can’t be exactly in the center of the frame.)

Equipment Room: The room in the basement of the radio station where the engineer works. She has a work bench that’s littered with stuff -- tools, vacuum tubes, radios in all states of repair. She also makes a hobby of taxidermy, specifically stuffing dead birds and sometimes fitting them with small radios so that they can “talk.” There are such birds perched all over the place in this room. All in all, the effect is very disconcerting. Two exits, one leading upstairs to the lobby, and the other leading to another room in the basement, the crime scene.

Cafe: A small cafe across the street from the station. Maybe more like a diner. Not terribly fancy. Maybe some stool at the counter, or some booths near the windows. There’s a pot of coffee on, and a radio behind the counter to provide some atmosphere. One exit, out to the street.

Crime Scene: A small room in the basement of the radio station. There’s a big machine here full of complicated-looking dials, panels and wires. There’s a chalk outline splayed out on the floor, where the body was found, and some blood stains that were not cleaned up well enough. One exit, back into the equipment room. [Here’s the thing about this location: not a whole lot has to happen here. The above locations are all tied to specific characters or scenes. Only one scene happens in this room, and it could be moved to another location. But players who have tested the game found it weird that they couldn’t visit the crime scene, even though the point of the game is talking to suspects, not looking for fingerprints. So it seems that it’s important to players that this be a location they can visit. That said, if it was necessary, this location could be cut, and it wouldn’t make the game unplayable.]

Street: The section of the street that connects locations in the city. Similar to the fantastic city scape you already did, but ideally a bit closer to the ground. Less emphasis on towers and skyline, more on the street, tram lines, and ground-level entrances of buildings. Three exits: one to the HQ, one to the radio station, and one to the cafe. [I’d really love to have a street location with a different image than the previous one, which we’ve been using as the title screen. However, if it comes down to it, it would be possible to cut this location or use that image as the background.]

First Episode Opening Cinematic

The opening cinematic is audio played over a sequence of four images. Here's a breakdown of the script with descriptions of the images and references for them, intended specifically for Kelly, who'll be doing working on them.

Image 1

Fade up from black to show New Chicago from a distance. Chicago is a different city than it was at the turn of the century. It was badly damaged during a bombing campaign thirteen years ago, but has since been rebuilt. Downtown, lots of skyscrapers, connected at high levels by wide bridges. The wealthy live in the sky and get around on these thoroughfares, via horse-drawn carriage or automobile. Below them, and outside the downtown area, the poor live closer to ground level and travel mostly by cable car throughout the city. Everywhere, radio towers sprout from the architecture.

News Announcer: ...accident was caused by a loose wheel on the Army truck. Police expect the highway to be open by tomorrow morning’s rush hour. In other news, the mayor announced today that new restrictions on the Citizenship Passport System will go into effect immediately. Only holders of Level 7 clearance and above will be allowed within the downtown district after 5:45 p.m. Lower clearance levels will be subject to interrogation and incarceration.

Here's the real-world Chicago from a distance. I'm imagining something like this for the wide angle on the city -- like, an aerial view from this distance, or maybe a little closer. But I'm not sure that's best. If some other perspective seems better, run with it. We're really just trying to introduce the city as a character.

I'm including some other city shots that I like that are from different perspectives, mostly for style / atmosphere reference.

Image 2

Now we get closer, actually into the city. Nestled between mid-sized office buildings a single-lot “radio plaza” -- a miniature city park built around a public speaker tree which blares the official, national radio station twenty-four hours a day. There’s supposed to be grass around the concrete, but it isn’t very well taken care of. This is the sort of park where drug deals will be going down in a few hours. Maybe there are some kids loitering around a park bench. We can see, in one of the adjacent buildings, a single lit window looking over the park. There’s a woman’s silhouette in the window.

News Announcer: Unconfirmed reports of a death at NNWC are currently being investigated. A security officer has been murdered by a member of the Underground and police are closing in on the suspect as we speak.

I guess what I'm talking about is a "vest-pocket park," repurposed in this world to broadcast propaganda and news throughout the city.

I was imagining it from something like this kind of angle, too, although I found a good style reference photo that takes it in a very dramatic direction.

More reference images, just from a stylistic standpoint.

Image 3

Inside the office. Mills is standing at the window, smoking a cigarette and listening to the broadcast. Rick is at his desk, with his feet up, listening to nothing in particular. There's a cat on his desk -- maybe he's paying attention to her.

News Announcer: Dateline, Los Angeles -- Lewis B. Mayer, the top man at MGM has just had more sour luck. Only recently Mr. Mayer recovered from injuries after falling from a horse. Today, his machine tangled with a truck. One badly damaged ankle. In Mexico City, Peggy Fields, the ex-Follies Girl, will file for a Mexican divorce from A.C. Blumenthal. The Actress has settled for $135,000 net.

This is Rick's office. He's a Private Eye, so this is primarily a place of business. He's doing well enough, but it's not a fancy office or anything. Maybe a little small, but he's comfortable in it. Pretty bare, though. He don't have a lot of fashion sense.

I'm imagining the first image laid out kinda like this, with the two characters just sort of relaxing.

These are references for the sort / size of office I'm talking about, although these are maybe put together a little bit nicer than Rick's.

The phone rings over black.

Rick: Yeah?

Brief pause.

Rick: Standard rate. Where? [...] OK.

Image 4

Same office, from a different angle this time. Mills is still standing by the window, but now she and Rick are looking at each other -- engaged in conversation.

Laid out more like this:

Rick: We’ve got a job.

Mills: Finally. What’s the scuttlebutt?

Rick: Something happened at NNWC.

Mills: NNWC? As in, the station?

Rick: Yeah.

Mills: So there was a murder.

Rick: Don’t know.

Mills: Don’t know? You just accepted it without asking what type of job it was?

Rick: They’re paying.

Mills: Maybe we can spend the money on decorating your office.

Rick: It’s fine.

Mills: It’s dark, acrid, and smells like cat.

Rick: We’re heading to the broadcast tower.

Mills: Maybe some mirrors to lighten the room.

Black.

Radio Annoucer: We’ll continue after this commercial message from Arduina Vacuum Tubes.

That's the opening. Here's a little more detail on the characters.

Mills:

Rick:

RickPuncher!

A prototype.

Play it.

Bill

Writer's Meeting Notes 9/26

Today we talked about the character chains for the first episode of content, and fleshed out the characters a bit more. We also briefly talked about what the expository introduction of the episode looks like, and what sorts of environmental narrative we might be able to fit in there.

Intern's Chain

Means: Trained by the Resistance in electronics and circuitry.

Motive: Hired by the Resistance; Adding coded static to the broadcast; Pushed past Mr. Body trying to escape.

Opportunity: He stayed after work; He broke out before morning.

Conclusion: It was an accident; He killed Mr. Body.

Other Guard's Chain

Means: Operated radio equipment during the war.

Motive: His wife was having an affair with Mr. Body.

Opportunity: He was on duty that night. (FALSE: He was soused at a bar all night; the Engineer clocked him in.)

Conclusion: He murdered Mr. Body.

Station Manager's Chain

Means: He was schooled and certified in electrical engineering. (FALSE: His degree is from a radio college; he knows nothing about electronics.)

Motive: He was trying to collect an insurance payout.

Opportunity: He has the keys to the building; he came to the station in the middle of the night.

Conclusion: He murdered Mr. Body.

Engineer's Chain

Means: She's professionally trained in electrical equipment.

Motive: She was trying to fix the faulty equipment; Mr. Body startled her while she was working.

Alternative Motive: She's crazy.

Opportunity: She's there all the time. (FALSE: She clocked out well before the incident occurred.)

Writer's Meeting Notes 9/19

I was taking notes last week, and I do not take notes nearly as well as Simon, but here's the whiteboard from our discussion about the plot of our first episode.

In short, a security guard at a private radio station fell to his death sometime in the middle of the night. The man's family is holding the station owner financially responsible, and the station owner is demanding that his insurance company pay out, as per his policy for death on the job. The problem is that the police officer in charge of the investigation has ruled the death a simple accident, and the insurance company isn't paying up. So you've been hired to prove that the man's death wasn't accidental.

Megagame Digital Concept

This is a digital version of the basic overarching gameplay, as tested in the Mama Bear and Bluebird prototypes. There's no content in it yet, but you can see most of the pieces there. The important one is the theory puzzle, where you can see there have been some changes. Theories are now categorized as part of the means, motive, opportunity, or conclusion of a chain, and therefore have a more logical flow. Here's a link to download the SWF directly.

Photos from Bluebird Playtest

Playtested the second iteration of the mega-game today in class with Mark and Sean. Notes and thoughts are coming; first, here is the playtest in pictures.

I read out the response of one of the characters to the investigators' probing.

Here is the setup of theory cards that I pulled from as the players discovered more information.

Sean and Mark discuss their strategy regarding the logic-puzzle portion of the game.

The investigation's Big Board, reflecting current theories and topics of interest.

Sean and Mark try to shed light on the complicated relationships between characters.

Here's a small part of the whiteboard space I used when putting together the prototype.

I thought this playtest was enormously helpful. It illuminated some of the serious problems with this system and helped define an appropriate scope for the content. It also raised a number of questions about how the cooperative action between players will work when the prototype is taken into the digital realm. (Thank you, Elizabeth, for taking pictures during the test.)