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Public Transit Reality Game
Corngood writes "Like Pacmahattan, but with streetcars. Toronto designer Joel Friesen has created a giant game of tag using cell phones and Toronto's public transit system. Live Action Scotland Yard (L.A.S.Y.) is a giant game of hide and seek. One guy tries to hide by using the subway system while three or four other people have to find out where he is by the clues he leaves and the dispatchers phoned in instructions. The game starts this Saturday the 23rd, he's looking for more players. It's free, promotes public transport, and there will be beers afterwards."
If the guy decided to give out fake clues
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Its an activity taking place in Canada. The part about having beer afterward is implied.
No, thanks.. I'm too LAzY to play it.
Sorry, this sig is beneath your current threshold
Just have six beers and get over it :)
In this new and quite popular reality-based game, various stories are re-submitted to the editors of Slashdot in an attempt to out-dupe your opponents!
reat idea..
Since it is 'Live action' though would be good to come up with a way to get away from the 'turn based' concept of the board game and move towards a more real-time based game.
Would also be interresting to incorporate clues as to mr. X's whereabouts instead of completely revealing the location.
Would also be good to reduce the person at HQ to one or two people who relay the clues to the detectives to alow more people to be out in the field.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
Is it just me or does anyone else find games fun because all you need is your thumbs?
I have bad legs (was born with a club foot etc. and had a lot of surgery to fix it, but still not perfect) and find things like this and DDR more painful then fun.
So for some people who can enjoy them, WTF is the fun in stamping on pads or riding trains?
I like muppets.
Wow, hide and seek with cell phones....
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
Good to know.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Boss: So, Mr. Jones, What did you do on your lunch break?
Mr.Jones: Well, a couple of my coworkers and I played this really cool game of high-tech tag!! I was AWSOME!!
Boss: I See. {ahem}. Do you know you're an adult, Mr. Jones?
Mr.Jones: Yes, I know it sounds dumb, but it was really REALLY FUN!
I don't think anyone would go if it weren't for that.
Thats not really a new idea.
I did that almost ten years ago with a youth group on munich's public transport system.
Though we weren't using cellphones then (of course) we all had telephone cards and coordinated thing via phone booths.
Of course the limitation of only being able to call after stopping in a station slowed the "capture" down significantly.
The winner will be the first one who makes it to Mornington Crescent.
this is awsome. i spent many years of my youth enjoying scotland yard. a truly fantastic game; get the boardgame or get the recent OS independent python implmeneted London Law free computer game remake (as mentioned on slashdot).
the down sides:
- cell phone reception in the tube: ass.
- planting RFID clues will get you shot as a terrorist.
- (generall) RFID lacks sufficient range to be truly useful for this
it'd be much cooler if you could start tagging the real world & leaving markups on things. subways, unfortunately, while one of the coolest places to do this, are also some of the most likely to get you shot on sight for being a terrorist.
myren
This is NOT the time for (deliberately) anomalous behaviour on public transit.
But I don't have a cell phone anymore. Anyone want to loan me one?
How long will it be before one of these player, just trying to have fun, will be arrested for suspicious behavior around public transportation? The times we live in are sad.
Free beers? That's an importnat factor in the decision tree.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Or maybe it's just me. I feel like a game like this catching on around the tech world is really a bad idea. In the wake of terrorist bombings on mass transit and cellphone detonation scares, its kind of like playing soccer in a field of landmines....
Boss: Something is happening here. But you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?
If you lose a son you can always get another, but there's only one Millenium Falcon. -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
for a bunch of hosers to their spend time and their parent's money putting the wunnerful public mass transportation system to (good?) use. If you want to generate good publicity for mass transportation, justify the expense of it.
beers before it.
Introverted, suspicious-looking people acting strange on public transportation. What a wonderful point in history to do this! Maybe the next game should have something to do with box cutters and airplanes.
This is based on a reasonably enjoyable board game.g ame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_Yard_board_
virtual reality won't let you know what it really smells like on a bus...
sometimes that's the best (worse?) part.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I was in the Bronx yesterday and someone had just finished up a live game of Unreal Tournament,...oh, maybe it was just a driveby shooting.
Ya know, I just have this vision of 20+ geeks trying to recapture their lost youth by arranging to meet in the woods and play hide and seek. Maybe staying home and playing on the C64 all day long as kids really did have a negative effect on us, just like our mothers told us it would.
How we know is more important than what we know.
BlindMan: What the hell is so great about being able to interpet various intensities of light?
damnit.
If we cannot engage in hijinx on public transit, then the terrorists have won!! We cannot let them win! LET TEH HIJINX BEGAN!!!!!!!!11111onehundredeleven
Will the game include piss? Last time I was on the subway there was a lot of piss, and it wasn't all mine.
What happens when a city transit system is invaded?
It gets rather surreal when you play both on the same day. Scotland Yard does that a lot -- they even get paid to play it!
Whereupon he is mugged by three or four people and has his cell phone stolen.
Two years ago I was at an IDSA student conference in Boston with my classmates. The building they held the conference in was about 15 stories tall, and there was a lightboard on one of the walls that said which floor each elevator was on. We tracked down two walkie-talkies and did this basic premise. One person would get on the elevators and have a 30 second head start, one person would then follow with a walkie talkie, and a third person would stand at the lightboard with the other walkie talkie, trying to lead the chaser to the runner.
We had to make additional rules to make it possible in a reasonable amount of time, you couldn't send the elevator to a floor without actually being on it, or get on the same elevator twice in a row. We also made the floor with the conference on it off-limits.
If you ever get a chance to play a game like this I highly reccomend it, especially if it's inappropriate for the situation.
So, thoroughly jet lagged, I decided to do all of the touristy places in London -- St Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Piccadily Circus, etc -- using a day pass to the Tube.
I would go to a station, pick out some name of some destination I had heard of, pick out a route, board a train, and off I would go.
This method would take me smack dab in the middle of all of these places, but of course I had no idea how I had gotten there because all of the travel was under ground -- I would just materialize in one or other scene out of a tourist guidebook in the manner of a Star Trek transporter just beaming me there.
It was a bit disconcerting because one would pop out of the ground and it took a while to get one's bearings. And like Kirk telling his compatriots "remember where we parked!", it was helpful to remember how to get back to the Underground Station.
Toronto's system is VERY expensive for $2 a trip leg you don't get much for your buck, take houston for example the $2 day pass lets you trip houston from pole to pole all day long, 24 hours since you start using the pass, THAT is value THAT is alternative transportation THAT makes sense
As a former torontonian, and someone who still has a copy of the board game kicking around, I think this is a great idea. The rules they posted are pretty reasonable granting real life versus a game, so I will certainly check it out to see how it went.
More Caffeine. NOW
Well, I would think that anybody playing would already have a month pass, so it isn't going to cost them anything extra. I doubt that anyone from say NY would fly up to Teranna, to play this retarded game. I know that US beer is bad, but not That bad...
Oh well, what the hell...
even I found that was in bad taste
If you just took anything I said seriously, read it again.
do the subway bombings come in the original or are they sold seperately in the expansion pack?
All be wearing their official Slashdot sponsor shirts. Like duh!!
Quack, quack.
(sorry thats all)
Quack, quack.
Didn't they play this on 7/7?
"Public Transit Reality Game"
Reality game. That's just 'game' then.
What next? "Children Play 'Revolutionary Plague Re-enactment' Reality Game"?
Lets see how the public react to suspicious characters skulking round the subway system with cellphones.
Why didn't you just call it 'hide the terrorist'.
How about I drink all the beer then give totally random directions . The object of the game is to see whats happens first . Will I pass out or will the players give up ?
Unless you want to go to jail.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
...until a cop shoots a participant dead, thinking he has a real gun...o well...
All you ass-clowns who keep talking "Oh the terrorists," you've just let them win! I mean comeon, when a grown man/woman can't play a nice game of tag with cellphones and beer, what's wrong with this world?
>
> promotes public transport
>
Why would you need to promote public
transport? Are you saying that not
enough people are using it? Presumably
if enough people are using it, you
wouldn't need to "promote" it.
Let's say, for the sake of an argument, that you were right -- that the chance of being harmed by a 3rd party while playing this game on account of being mistaken for engagement in terrorist activities were a substantial one.
.1% of) the ambient risk to be a huge strech, btw: Remember, the things we hear about in the media are extreme outliers. They happen only to very small numbers of people -- and there are a lot of people in the world (even just the areas covered by 1st-world media), such that incidents which one hears about in the media even with substantial regularity still will quite frequently have a almost-nil probability of happening to you or I as individuals. Consequently, I find it much better (and healthier) to live a life without such fears.
Let's say that this risk were 3x the ambient risk level of folks spending time outside in the city (muggings, automobile accidents, etc). I think this is an outrageously exaggerated number, but I'll grant it to you for the sake of this argument.
Now: Do you consider it worthwhile to walk around outside? I do -- indeed, I used to spend time going for long walks in the supposedly "bad parts" of San Jose, CA at night, and presently go for walks at night near my home in Austin, TX (which, while not in a particularly bad part of town itself, happens to be rather near some relatively high-crime-rate areas -- certainly, onesuch is within the range I walk in). Of course, this is a personal assessment: How much are the exercise and mental-health benefits worth? Certainly, you may not consider such worthwhile -- but would you say that walking around outside in an urban area at night violates common sense?
Now, if it's not inherently unreasonable for me to walk around town three nights after dark, is it somehow more unreasonable for me to spend one day playing a game with other members? Certainly, this game would have substantial benefits -- as an opportunity to meet people (thus, mental health and socialization benefis), an opportunity to become better acquainted with my city's public transit system, and also a chance to get some exercise. Is it untenable to evaluate these benefits as on-par with those of three of my evening strolls?
About why I believe 3x (or even
WHO CARES!
If this thing comes to New York City, I'm in.
Reminds me of a game from uni. All players would give the game controller a photocopy of their ID card, and receive someone else's. Your aim is to locate the person and their movements, advise the controller how and when you plan to "kill" them (e.g. water pistol on exit from class in room X at time Y), and collect whatever cards they're holding. Mark their card to show they're out.
Winner holds all cards in the end.
It was co-ordinated using (pre-Internet) email, but these days the options are more flexible.
Of course the university's administration tried to ban the game.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
I see alot of people going, "You'll go in jail! OMFG!!!1", but they neglect to notice that this will take place in Canada. And that makes everything all right, because Canada doesn't have the resources to randomly bust people for looking shifty and being Arabic.
On wich state of drunkness you have to be, and go OMFG REALITY GAME OF Toronto's transit system !!! ?
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
Maybe I should make sure he doesn't hide in the Minneapolis subway: the tunnel under the airport for the city's single passenger rail line.
From the TTC website:
Unlimited* one-day travel on Saturdays**, Sundays and statutory holidays from the start of service until 5:30 a.m. the next morning, for a group of up to 6 people:
2 adults alone, or with up to 4 Children/Youths (Youth = *19 years of age or under). or
1 adult alone, or with up to 5 Children/Youths (Youth = *19 years of age or under).
More info at http://www.toronto.ca/ttc
There's no place like localhost
More german games on /., excellent. There are two versions of Scotland Yard. The original:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/438
and a New York version, now out of print:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/534
If you think board games haven't changed much since you were a child, check out the geeks' Top 50:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/top50.htm
Modern german games are soooo much better than Hasbro.
If person X has three different modes of transportation available to utilize, a bonus card to make one secret move at any time, and is informed of the detectives' positions at *all* times, then how can they possibly catch him?
Reminds me of the "Assassins" game we used to play back in High School. Basically a live action role-playing game where the GM would assign targets and innovative ways of ways of "killing" them like shooting them with a water pistol or planting some device which represented a bomb in their locker or whatever.
Of course, nowadays high schoolers would probably get sent to Gitmo for playing such games. Back then it was against the rules but you were only risking detention, and that only contributed to the fun.
http://www.streetwars.net/
although quite a different game, it does involve having a bunch of people from 1 city play it, probably people you've never met or heard of. a bunch of these city-wide games have emerged recently.
HD Trailers
thankfully I was too busy reading the book to read slashdot
Someone should spoil their party and organize a public GTA-like game in the same day :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
if cell phones worked on the toronto subway system
Can't wait until people start telling the authorities there is someone suspicious running around hiding. Might be a terrorist plot...
~Gildas
sounds weird for me.... seeing someone leaving clues. but the beers afterwards is a nice idea!