Peak district - Friday, Saturday and Sunday

We arrived on Friday much later than expected but, fortunately, still ahead of the Tesco delivery bringing supplies for the next three days. Despite all the delays we were first. I received a phone call from ao_lai telling me that he was going to be very late as the traffic was horrendous. Instead he arrived third after davefish (I think).

Entering the place, we discovered that we hadn't booked a holiday cottage but a hobbit hole. Nine bedrooms, two sitting rooms and three kitchens. Below is a picture of the bedroom bateleur and I shared.



And this is the largest kitchen.



The rest of the Con began to appear (lanfykins and shadowjon) then (chrisvenus and quisalan). At which point I started dinner (pasta) followed by fruit tarts and then glowsticks. We finally got an Alistair just before bedtime.

The Saturday was beautiful and a good day to go for a walk. I had company.



In the afternoon the games began - I (pinkvader) was playing in The Goat King's Palace with davefish (2wild4u), lanfykins (happypanda) and quisalan (dizzycat). The blurb was:

"The game has been running for two years. With a fanbase of over a thousand players, more than six hundred puzzles already solved and a bewildering range of topics spanning philosophy, politics, art, mathematics and music Goat Trail is one of the most successful alternate reality games of all time.

As the end draws near, a problem appears. Clues begin to hint that the game cannot be won by the community working together. A small number of selected players will experience the endgame and the rest will get nothing. Although this is very much against the ethos of the ARG community there have been hints of a similar attitude on the part of the creator(s) throughout the game. Public pleas to soften this condition have received no replies.

Time is running out and competition has begun amongst the community. Long held values have been set aside. Multiple groups - maybe dozens - are known to have begun the hunt for the final goal, the Goat King's Palace. May the best team win!

Goat King's Palace is a mystery drama game. The PCs are members of one team competing for the prize... but they are about to discover that winning is the least of their problems and the Goat King's prize is not at all what they expected."

In the first half (Saturday) we (Team Spare Parts):

• Phase 1: Escaped a building within four minutes (by following the Goat King's instructions) - 3rd place
• Attended a social which involved all the lights going out and us spotting the map on the ceiling of the bar - 2nd place
• Chased the goat across the city every ten minutes - 1st place (Hurrah!)
• Phase 2: Ran around the city solving puzzles to get tokens and then played join the dots (five I think)
• Went to the gardens in disguise to get tokens and avoid being photoed (one I think)
• Went back to the bar to consider allocating points to another team (which another team got by using the letter of the rules and setting off the fire alarm)
• Phase 3: Had to hide from the public when we holed up with the other teams in the top five (Weak Excuses, Grail, Bendy Harp and 420) - we got no points as we were found about half-way through.

At the end of the first half we were given a million credits for expenses. I also think we had another token-winning exercise in there - possibly solving puzzles on-line.

Saturday evening was risottos cooked by quisalan followed by ice cream. It may also be the day I got my glitter peacock tattoo from lanfykins.

Sunday was another glorious day - the hottest of the week. Again, I went for a walk, this time on my own.



The second half of The Goat King's Palace took place in the afternoon and things became very weird. Team Spare Parts:

• Phase 4: Made a paper airplane that broke all the rules of physics - 4th place I think?
• Made a child's toy that similarly broke the laws of physics (it really flew) - 2nd place I think.
• The token machines opened and we discovered the prizes were parcel (post to anywhere), key (opens any door lock) and sleep (refreshes in a moment)
• A puzzle exercise to track down people where we got codes from members of the public (five lots of twenty points).
• Next we had the join-the-dots of churches and this ended with a treasure hunt on an island where we got to post 120 points home with our parcel.
• Phase 5: The haunted house. Actually haunted by us and copies of the other teams. This was creepy as some copies drew guns on us and demanded our phones. We eventually locked ourselves away safely and missed out on points, but also on other horrors.
• A competition about making some sort of public performance. We came second by making an exhibition about the Goat Trail so far (paying some people to do it professionally). The winner in this section was Bendy Harp who produced a musical about a sad seal.
• I think there was another round of on-line puzzles in here.
• Final task: One of us was taken away and we had to find him before the Monster did. We placed second.

After all that - we won Goat Trail and were invited to the Palace! Except, by this point EV (another contestant) had told us that the Goat King was actually a rather nasty old man who had raped her mother. We did not know what to expect.

Turns out - we were in a copy of the Earth. The Goat King was actually an engineer who, through a screw-up had wound up in the copy and then decided to stay there and play God. The actual Earth had much better tech than we did and consequently he was able to do things we considered impossible. We arrived at the palace to find his Light and Dark histories (he wasn't entirely evil), his dead body (suicide) and a choice - contact the real Earth, carry on as Gods or carry on as ordinary people. We chose option 1. That was more-or-less the end of the game, but we saw enough going on to be happy with our choice.

Sunday dinner was a roast - much hard work from davefish - followed by puddings (cheesecake and chocolate brownie).

Peak district - Monday and Tuesday

Monday at the Con was outing day. Various options were mooted, but in the end seven of us headed for Poole's Cavern. We paid (technically, Alistair paid and we will pay him back) and then headed in.

This first shot is one of my better ones giving a view of the open spaces inside.



And this gives a closer view of a rock... and a cuddly bunny. It being the Easter holiday, there was a bunny spotting game for the kids - and for us. ao_lai correctly counted 15 in total.



We then had some lunch (mine was a Derbyshire oatcake) before returning to the site to wander through the Grinlow Woods (yes, really called that) to Solomon's Temple.



Afterwards we visited Arbor Low Stone Circle and Gib Hill Barrow on the way home.



We went out to dinner that evening in Cromford. We picked a pub and it turned out to be rather good. I had mushroom risotto and vanilla parfait.

Tuesday I ran Otters Court. This was not a game about a court of otters, but instead the name of a house as my working title, Floating Minds, would have given away some of the plot. It started with a very English family row in a large estate and ended in spook central with a human mind in the internet. The party (shadowjon, chrisvenus and Alistair) were excellent at tackling the difficult family moments, sorting out the body-swapped servants and then coordinating with the spooks. I enjoyed it a lot, although it turned out to be more sequel-hooky than expected.

Tuesday evening was bateleur's tortillas and cake. I think it was also one of the nights when I got to try out the Widow's Walk expansion to Betrayal at the House on the Hill. We played it twice - the first time, Traitor Ox Bellows wanted to be Pope, but we stopped him. The second time my little girl aged the party to death. She was not loved.