Spring MouseAdventure 2009

[MovieBoy]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Ok, so what was with the Double Time Penalty on a "Jump Start" (skipping the entire quest) if done in DCA? If that was part of the rules (and I assume it's in the written rules somewhere), wouldn't it have been along the lines of fair play to announce that when the annoucement was made about a Jump Start incurring a 40-minute penalty?

Logically, teams might not want to jump to the jump start unless they really need it, i.e., more likely later in the game than earlier. In fact, it was clearly announced that Jump Starts (and Roadside Assistances) could not be used in the last half hour of the game. Since the last third of the game was in DCA, I really think it was a low blow not mentioning that time penalties are doubled in DCA.


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Here's the part where everyone assumes I've got nothing nice to say. So let me reiterate, the quests were clever, fun, took advantage of exploring the Resort in depth, and rewarded intimate knowledge of the Resort. Playing provided for a really good time. I've done tons of mouseadventures, and this was among the good ones.

The sticker that sealed the Speed MouseAdventure portion in DCA said that all penalties were doubled. This was a necessary evil for a couple of reasons, but the biggest was because this was an elimination of envelopes, as you completed quests your odds increased on guessing the correct envelope. In the interest of rewarding teams who worked the quests (weather actually doing all the work or brut forcing them or reverse engineering them) over teams that just wanted to guess and rip open envelopes, we needed a big enough penalty and the easiest way was to double them.

We couldn't really say anything about this at the start because of the format of the game. In the race format, teams don't know where they are going and must strategize quest-by-quest. We couldn't say, penalties are double for your last 5 quests, because how would you know?

I'm glad you enjoyed the game. This was the first race style I worked on and this format is quite a bit harder to figure out and keep the quests fun and interesting.

I'm still chuckling about you holding the envelope up to the sun to see if you could read it. It was one of the first things I checked for because that's what we would have done. What did you decide on for the Detour? It was a kick to hear teams discuss the merits of one over the other.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by MovieBoy

I'm still chuckling about you holding the envelope up to the sun to see if you could read it. It was one of the first things I checked for because that's what we would have done. What did you decide on for the Detour? It was a kick to hear teams discuss the merits of one over the other.

We did that too, even though we knew we wouldn't be able to see anything. We also love DCA MA central being in the Farms area. Easy to spot, centrally located.

When we were heading back into DCA a woman stopped us to ask if we knew where the wine tasting was. We were in the depths of a discussion and I pointed over to the wine area saying "I think it's over there". What I wanted to say was "does it look like we've been drinking or that we need a drink?". But that would have been rude.