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Topic:
The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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BIEREN
Registered:
Oct '05
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 1:40pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th - Registration is full!
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jawajames posted:
for those who raced in the Kessel Run, congrats to those who correctly finished...
i'd love to hear honest feedback on what you thought was best and worst about the race.
I liked it. My team, "11 Parsecs", came in third. It was real fun. I'm back home in CT and my legs are killing me.
-----signature-----
"But, it was so artistically done."
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 2:03pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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If we knew we could've done team names, I wanted to name mine "The 12 Parsecs"
Great job, and I'm gonna have to go with, specifically, that Hutt finger question. That was just annoying. Although, it did lead to perhaps the best moment of the Kessel Run for me. Because of the section of a massive amount of math that had to be done with every single trivia question being right, and my team being off on the Hutt finger thing, and the other master's teams having similar difficulties, we started to group together for info trading and checking to make sure we were correct on everything. We got up to 4 or 5 master's teams working together until someone brought up the Hutt finger thing and said they had a book that listed a Hutt as having 4 fingers, not three.
Going through the math quickly, I saw that we finally had a number that not only looked right, but when I took the number and converted it into letters (each pair of numbers being 01-26 in a long number), I looked up to everyone else, said "Masters, we're going to Ackbar" and one of the guys on another team immediately asks "Are you sure this isn't a trap?" It was hilarious.
And all in all, finished 3rd on master's only about 10 seconds short of finishing 2nd, so can't complain much, it was a blast.
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jawajames
Title: President & CR
San Diego FF
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 2:39pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Lowbacca_1977 posted:
If we knew we could've done team names, I wanted to name mine "The 12 Parsecs"
Great job, and I'm gonna have to go with, specifically, that Hutt finger question. That was just annoying. Although, it did lead to perhaps the best moment of the Kessel Run for me. Because of the section of a massive amount of math that had to be done with every single trivia question being right, and my team being off on the Hutt finger thing, and the other master's teams having similar difficulties, we started to group together for info trading and checking to make sure we were correct on everything. We got up to 4 or 5 master's teams working together until someone brought up the Hutt finger thing and said they had a book that listed a Hutt as having 4 fingers, not three.
Going through the math quickly, I saw that we finally had a number that not only looked right, but when I took the number and converted it into letters (each pair of numbers being 01-26 in a long number), I looked up to everyone else, said "Masters, we're going to Ackbar" and one of the guys on another team immediately asks "Are you sure this isn't a trap?" It was hilarious.
And all in all, finished 3rd on master's only about 10 seconds short of finishing 2nd, so can't complain much, it was a blast.
have a look on the right side of the photo and you can see all 4 fingers on Jabba:
-----signature-----
Coming to Comic-Con - July 24: Supercolossal Fan Race get more details at http://www.sdrocketrace.com/ Prophet of the Church of Waru. "Jawajames, can I have your girlfriend? Please?" - TalonCard and my eye just fell off...
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Darth_Tofu
Registered:
Mar '02
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 2:49pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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This was one of my favorite parts of the whole convention. I had so much fun figuring out the puzzles with my friends and "briskly walking" around the convention center. Excellent job to the planners!
suggestion: How cool would a t-shirt that says "I made the Kessel Run" or something similar on it be?
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Some people are like a Slinky ... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 2:51pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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I examined the Gentle Giants Jabba afterward.... 3 fingers. Sideshow's Jabba, three fingers. I've accepted that officially speaking its 4.... but of course, this also explains why our Prequels guy had said 4 right off the bat.
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jawajames
Title: President & CR
San Diego FF
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 3:06pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Lowbacca_1977 posted:
I examined the Gentle Giants Jabba afterward.... 3 fingers. Sideshow's Jabba, three fingers. I've accepted that officially speaking its 4.... but of course, this also explains why our Prequels guy had said 4 right off the bat.
interesting. probably the ROTJ jabba did have 3 fingers, and then by the prequels they added a thumb. similar to how ESB yoda appears to have 3 toes, then AOTC yoda has five (two of them face don't face forward).
-----signature-----
Coming to Comic-Con - July 24: Supercolossal Fan Race get more details at http://www.sdrocketrace.com/ Prophet of the Church of Waru. "Jawajames, can I have your girlfriend? Please?" - TalonCard and my eye just fell off...
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 3:15pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Yeah, thats what I've been figuring now. One of the other teams was having someone say they were seeing all the pics of Jabba (OT I beleive) have 3 fingers, but a source had said 4.
Point was also raised that 3 fingers would be easier for puppetry purposes.
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Karma
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 3:19pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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I joined a team after they'd started racing, so my knowledge of all the stations is limited. The blue and red boba and vader puzzle....I still haven't figured out how that was supposed to have worked. When I looked though each lens, I could still see all the colored circles on the page, none of them were blocked out. We eventually solved the puzzle's answer (location of next clue) through a process of elimination. That, and I followed another team who left the area to the Wayne Gretsky statue.
Most of the following clues were done through the process of elimination as well. You could figured out, on the math puzzle, that the next location's "character" ended in one of a handful of possible letters. From there, you could eliminate answers based on the number of letters in the characters name. We narrowed it down to two places, and the first place we checked had no contact present, so we went with the other one and were correct. We didn't do any math at all.
We did have fun on the ship identification puzzle, where we talked one of the Barnes and Noble reps into letting us take one of their Vehicle guide books to look at.
I think a lot of teams got hung up on the next to last puzzle (HK-47), I saw a lot of teams milling around the Mayor plaque looking for the contact who wasn't there. We did that until we figured out the actual answer.
I thought the locations of the contacts was very well planned out....not too far out of the way, not too obvious at the same time. Endor was particulary appopriate.
I would have liked to have had the last stamp not be at the check-in table. THat was kind of anti climactic.
I don't know how the Kessel run was beta'd, but I was wondering if there was a way to have multiple correct paths....for example, not every team that finishes would have taken the same route, just as an element of surprise. Like, there is more than one possible correct answer to one of the riddles. You have to pick one, go there, and get your next clue. The subsequent clues are of the same difficulty, but different. And so on. But they all lead you back to the final clue.
The only thing I would have changed is perhaps needing to give the next checkpoint a correct answer or code to recieve the stamp. It was easy for teams to simply follow other teams to the next checkpoint without having really solved the puzzle (I did it once).
Overall I thought the Kessel run was a really awesome idea....will they have something similar at GenCon in August? I'd love to help out if there was....
-Karma
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"There is no spoon"
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 3:36pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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The masks you needed to read each line of dialogue with the proper mask.... with vader's, you'd look at the letters that were circled in blue, for fett you'd look at the letters circled in red.
When my team finished that and it said to find find Lando's assistant and we go "Lobot" we turn around and there was a costumed Lobot walking behind us not more than 5 feet. It was weird.
I loved the HK-47 one....we were struggling until I just sort of gasped and just went "its an h" and we then checked the list and realised what we were looking for. It was a great trick, I thought.
And I think some of the best moments were when we were racing other teams to spots....both the hurry to the finish line and to get to one of the questions where my team and another were both walking as fast as possible down one of the hallways, and I distinctly remember someone, I can't recall who, saying "I'm on the leader"
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ArchFaith
Registered:
Apr '07
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 11:46pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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As someone who entered in the Jedi Master category, I was really surprised by the difficulty of some of the questions! My best friend and I have been SW geeks for ten years, and we thought that we would be able to do decently well in the Master category. I guess we were wrong...the very first Master clue (doing the word puzzle) was easy-ish, so we thought we'd do pretty well. Unfortunately, we got tripped up on the podracing questions (didn't have any laptops or reference books with us) and went off on the wrong path. We decided to quit after that, since we hadn't seen the Vader Exhibit or the R2D2 rooms yet.
I really wish that the organizers had provided some sort of guidelines as to what questions would be appropriate for each skill level. I think me and my friend would have gone with the Knight level if we had known the difficulty...
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/29/07 11:50pm
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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I recall that they put a few, in here at least, to indicate difficulty. We didn't use references except for the math bit of the run, but we had 3 people on hand by phone... and i mean, you're surrounded by nerds. theres that bit too.
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ArchFaith
Registered:
Apr '07
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Date Posted:
5/30/07 12:37am
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Haha, well yes. Though we didn't really want to bother people by asking them...and also, my friend is a bit passive and not very competitive, so that didn't help matters! XD
Oh well, next time's a charm!!
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/30/07 12:39am
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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And I forgot... we did use the crowd at one point, walking by the star wars in 30 minutes line and asking a question out loud till someone yelled out an answer.
Thank you star wars in 30 minutes line!
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jawajames
Title: President & CR
San Diego FF
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
5/30/07 12:58am
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Darth_Tofu posted:
This was one of my favorite parts of the whole convention. I had so much fun figuring out the puzzles with my friends and "briskly walking" around the convention center. Excellent job to the planners!
suggestion: How cool would a t-shirt that says "I made the Kessel Run" or something similar on it be?
Glad you enjoyed it, and it was nice to meet you! It would be cool to have shirts for finishing participants, but alas, it would have completely ballooned our budget to have something like that for every participant (or every finisher).
Karma posted:
...I think a lot of teams got hung up on the next to last puzzle (HK-47), I saw a lot of teams milling around the Mayor plaque looking for the contact who wasn't there. We did that until we figured out the actual answer.
I thought the locations of the contacts was very well planned out....not too far out of the way, not too obvious at the same time. Endor was particulary appopriate.
I would have liked to have had the last stamp not be at the check-in table. THat was kind of anti climactic.
I don't know how the Kessel run was beta'd, but I was wondering if there was a way to have multiple correct paths....for example, not every team that finishes would have taken the same route, just as an element of surprise. Like, there is more than one possible correct answer to one of the riddles. You have to pick one, go there, and get your next clue. The subsequent clues are of the same difficulty, but different. And so on. But they all lead you back to the final clue.
The only thing I would have changed is perhaps needing to give the next checkpoint a correct answer or code to recieve the stamp. It was easy for teams to simply follow other teams to the next checkpoint without having really solved the puzzle (I did it once).
Overall I thought the Kessel run was a really awesome idea....will they have something similar at GenCon in August? I'd love to help out if there was....
Endor's location was indeed appropriate. Having multiple paths within each difficulty level would be cool, but would also be much more time-consuming to verify that you had correctly gone in order when you reached the finish line. having the last clue at the finish line may seem anticlimactic, but we wanted more teams to be able to finish in the alloted time.
As for giving a code to receive a stamp - if you simply followed a team to the checkpoint, you could just as easily spy on them giving the code. it is easy for teams to simply follow other teams - yet you could just as easily follow a team that is going to the wrong place (like going to the Mayor's plaque). Getting to a checkpoint doesn't always mean simply solving the clue - you can follow other teams and trust in their skills, or you can find other ways to beat the clue by realizing the answer must be X letters, so let's visit the locations that have X letters. A good scoundrel knows how to think around the problem.
ArchFaith posted:
As someone who entered in the Jedi Master category, I was really surprised by the difficulty of some of the questions! My best friend and I have been SW geeks for ten years, and we thought that we would be able to do decently well in the Master category. I guess we were wrong...the very first Master clue (doing the word puzzle) was easy-ish, so we thought we'd do pretty well. Unfortunately, we got tripped up on the podracing questions (didn't have any laptops or reference books with us) and went off on the wrong path. We decided to quit after that, since we hadn't seen the Vader Exhibit or the R2D2 rooms yet.
I really wish that the organizers had provided some sort of guidelines as to what questions would be appropriate for each skill level. I think me and my friend would have gone with the Knight level if we had known the difficulty...
I'm sorry to hear that you dropped out so early in the race - I agree with your suggestion that we needed to provide more guidance on what the difficulty levels meant. We did provide adequate warning that teams could use any resource at their disposal: books, internet, cell phones, anything they could find in the convention center (like the Barnes & Noble booth, or all the other fans at the convention). But yes, it would have been better to provide a more concrete way to gauge one's level of mastery rather than solely on a team's self-judgment.
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Coming to Comic-Con - July 24: Supercolossal Fan Race get more details at http://www.sdrocketrace.com/ Prophet of the Church of Waru. "Jawajames, can I have your girlfriend? Please?" - TalonCard and my eye just fell off...
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
5/30/07 2:54am
Subject:
RE: The Kessel Run - "Amazing Race"-type event at CIV - Monday, May 28th
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Oh, am reminded of one thing.... and this is totally in the "beggers can't be choosers" catagory, but perhaps a way where teams get prizes that can be split up better, one way or another? I mean, a team with 4 people getting 1 or 2 prizes is a bit of a tricky situation.
Suggestion on that is that similar competition I've done at disneyland called MouseAdventure gives different prizes point values.... the team gets the points, and then its up to them to figure out how to apply it to the prizes. Just a potential idea... not sure where you guys get the prizes so that is clearly a restrictive factor.
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