Alright so I have followed ARGs. I have read about ARGs and I took part in creating puzzles for one. For my final I decided I was going to create an ARG from scratch which was extremely fun, but I think I did it slightly off. I followed all of the instructions I received on the final for creating an ARG. I also followed the rather formulaic method of having an issue of an oppressive entity that the protagonists are trying to over through and combined with the other ARG plotline they are on a quest to find their imprisoned loved ones.
So far so good, I have a working plot line. Yet, as I started to make the puzzles and figured out how my main character, Dr. Guerrero, was going to ask for the players’help. I had an epiphany. See Dr. Guerrero’s wife and daughter are being held hostage by this king pin who is obsessed with finding seven indigenous relics that could resurrect his dead love. In order for Guerrero’s family to be safe and eventually be returned to him, he must decipher ancient riddles that explain the use of the artifacts. Guerrero starts a blog which he calls for any one and everyone’s help in deciphering the texts. He also encodes messages asking for help.
Now, parallel to this story is the one of Patrick, the leader of the Resistance group that is trying to take down the Kingpin’s regime and is trying to find their disappeared family members. They are stealing information from the Kingpin’s lair and they recruit Guerrero once they make sure he can be trusted. They are trying to find the prison that the King Pin, Shriver, is holding their family members in, and all the maps and information they steal from Shriver are coded so they need help breaking the code.
At this point, this is where it diverges from regular ARG plotline; see the players have to figure out puzzles from Guerrero trying to decipher the artifacts and rituals as well as the Resistance’s puzzles to find the prison, but they must race against each other. Now, I am not sure if I should have players playing themselves or have a group a players just helping Shriver’s cause while another separate group helps the Resistance.
The stakes are Shriver needs a large blood sacrifice in order to complete these rituals and he plans to use the prisoners. Also, he plans to use Guerrero’s 17 year old daughter’s body to resurrect his dead fiancé’s soul in, if the frozen body of his dead love won’t work for the ritual. Now, the Resistance doesn’t know exactly what the heck Shriver is up to but they know form what Guerrero is telling them that it would involve a massacre of their loved ones.
Now how the end can go is another problem. I don’t what to kill everyone off that would be the worst ending ever, but I do want to reward those who finish first even if it means that the Shriver group wins. So I figure that the Resistance and Guerrero won’t be able to save everyone until the very end of the ritual were Shriver is about to order a kill hit and sacrifice the girl? Or maybe the Resistance and Guerrero don’t save anyone. They believe that they are defeated, but Shriver gets what he deserves because Guerrero didn’t translate one of the rituals right and a giant cosmic curse that kills him most horribly. Yet, with some loss to the resistance group and the imprisoned family members.
If the Resistance wins than they storm in during the middle of the ritual save their families and beat the crap out of Shriver as well as defame him in every form of media. Shriver will go to jail. Everyone is happy, but they artifacts are still out there.
My ARG goes against the norm of ARGs because you have a happy ending and potentially unhappy ending. It all depends on which group wins. This element of competition against the players will be an interesting element to see played out in a community based game system. I guess there would have to be two forums one for shriver and one for the resistance. There might also be a bit of sabotaging between the groups, I am not sure though if people would do that but it’s a possibility. It would definitely be interesting to see how this ARG would play out.
