Players are ‘hired’ by a US intelligence agency. Your initial assignment digs up what you are told are just odd connections to Ukrainian organized crime. A few coded messages later, and your boss suddenly goes missing. Contacted by a mysterious stranger, you’re told it’s all connected – you’ve stumbled onto something your boss didn’t want you to see. Before the call suddenly cuts off, he tells you that the evidence is hidden on the ‘net behind a series of riddles.
Immediately after the phone conversation, your team receives an unambiguous message from your former boss – a picture of the person receiving the call, framed by a rifle sight.
Following the trail left by the (now presumably dead) contact reveals financial exchanges, phone calls, and intercepted Morse code messages that indicate your boss was secretly working, alongside a former KGB contact, for a Russian oil conglomerate. The goal was a series of destabilizing attacks on the oil infrastructure in Azerbaijan. While blaming the attacks on ethnic conflict in the region, the bombers would shut down a competitor’s pipeline and make the Russian company billions.
After solving all the riddles and collecting the evidence, teams were invited to a ‘secure location’ for debriefing – a spy-themed party off campus with passwords required for entry and a silent figure in a trenchcoat and fedora guarding the door. Three teams made it through with a fourth running out of steam close to the end.
Winners:
1st place – teh Team
2nd place – Stupidhead Jerkface
3rd place – Allegedly Participating
Costume prizes at the closing party:
Yassar Arafat; the post-coital Bond Girl; and Kip, for wearing his team’s entry password on the back of his shirt.
Materials:
- Website of the org for which the players are supposedly working.
- First riddle left by the contact.
- Piece of evidence left by the contact.
- Faked news article that helped fill in the plot.
- Interpol report on the man who killed the contact. Provided as background to entertain teams that had finished early and spur those lagging behind. More than a few typos, and that’s a couple of the game planners (we won’t say which ones) in the photos. (PDF – 160K)
Fun Facts:
Within two weeks of the game’s close, British Petroleum announced the successful completion of their pipeline through Azerbaijan.
At least three players responded to the initial ‘welcome to your job with US intelligence!’ email saying they did not remember applying for the job and were worried that the government had confused them with someone else.