Scotti demonstrating his confidence in the safety of his design of a tall, perhaps stable structure.
Steve showing off part of the walls he constructed.
Malonys #3 and #4 assembling.
Mural work by Eliot and Anita.
Jill in the early stages of turning a cardboard box, masking tape and chicken wire into something awesome.
Don landscaping the Yucatan jungle.
I woulda never guessed in a million years that group requests would be running over 80% male right now for Indy-freaking-ana Jones, given that MOONBASE—Alien, fercryinoutloud—was nearly evenly split.
It will be interesting to see what the final ratio is, in a couple days when the dust from registration settles.
I can see my week stretching out before me now: the Slidey Puzzle that is getting dozens of people with group preferences and date limitations sorted into groups of ten on specific dates.
This is NOT the funnest part of Whately prep.
Ok, we KNEW that losing Saturday Night Of Halloween Weekend was going to cause difficulties with scheduling. [Liz, you had better never question your uncle’s love for you.] Saturdays always fill up the quickest—we understand that for many people Friday nights just aren’t feasible (we have an amazing percentage of players who travel more than 100 miles to come to Whately). And Saturdays have the advantage of all day to prep. These are all reasons why we charge less for Fridays. 
This year our schedule only has 4 Saturdays (not counting the playtest). As of 11pm Monday, here’s what people have asked for:
- 10/6: No requests
- 10/13: Two separate requests for the entire run, plus another pair for whom this is the only possible date.
- 10/20: A request for the entire run.
- 11/3: A request for 6 spots in this run.
We have 6 Fridays, though:
- 10/5: No requests
- 10/12: No requests
- 10/19: Somewhere between 5 and 10, still in flux.
- 10/26: It’s Halloween Weekend, yet no requests.
- 11/2: A request for 3 spots.
- 11/9: A request for 2 spots.
We also received a request for a run on any Sunday in October, from friends who have jobs where they work Friday and Saturday nights. Given the price of plywood, this is pretty likely to get added.
Those are just the folks who’ve contacted us about dates. The really exciting part starts when registration opens Wednesday.
I’m not allowed to post any images that will give any props or plots away. So you’ll have to take my word for it that seeing this working got the minions all excited.
Ian adding paint to a Prop in progress.
Maggie and Aggie sanding, with Don supervising, and more odd marks on the driveway.
Being chased by Mayan villagers with pointy objects looking for sacrificial victims is so much more enjoyable when shared with friends!
Way back in the dawn of Whately, we opened registration without much prior warning, and within a day or so, had sixty registrations listing the dates each person could play and the people they hoped to play with. This led to us spending a day sitting at the dining room table with sheets of paper labeled with dates and post-its with players’ names, trying to put together runs that would make the greatest number of players happy.
The next year, we sent out a “Registration Opens in A Week!” type announcement, giving the following instructions:
That year, we learned that we should have asked groups to contact us BEFORE registration, because we ended up with several large groups all waiting to play Halloween weekend. So now we add:
Up until Meddling Kids, every Whately held an even dozen players. Mayans holds exactly 10 (no bogus spots for hopefully-stealth-NPCs this time ). We are once again having players start as two separate groups of characters–we know it’s nearly a cliche by now, but we keep finding nifty plot things to exploit with two groups. We nearly went for three groups this time, but that was too crazy even for us.
But that doesn’t mean we haven’t upped the crazification factor for this Whately. This time, player groups can choose to turn the game into a two-session event, by having a “planning session” before their run which will allow them to pool their knowledge and prepare for the expedition (this includes doing some puzzles beforehand; if you don’t opt for the planning session, the puzzle results will be props that exist in game). Details are on the About the Game page on the website, so I won’t repeat them here. The ramifications for group coordination is that you should also be discussing whether your group are interested/have the time to do a “planning session”. Since each of the two groups will be doing separate planning sessions, that should also be discussed, although that’s of much greater importance if your group is filling a run or has more than four players. [Groups will either be both 5 players, or one group of 6 and a second of 4, based on casting preferences and planning session considerations.]
To recap:
- Coordinate with your friends your preferred/possible nights to play.
- If that’s 4 or more people, email us with your players and date preferences ASAP so we can head off any big-group-collisions.
- Discuss people’s interest in doing the optional “planning session.” [Final decision won’t need to be made until after casting is sent out, but knowing your general preference will help us schedule dates.]
- Make sure that everyone in your group knows to register starting September 12th, what dates to indicate and what group to specify on the form.
. . . lightly turns to thoughts of Whately.
The proof of which is odd paint marks on the driveway.
