unforum

[B__Lukey]

 Looking for a helping hand

[Oriza]

You could try Eldritch Errors. We're at a sort of lull-- we just finished the third part of the ARG, so we are taking a break. You can catch up by reading various manuals and things that you can find in the EE forum.

Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

[B__Lukey]

Maybe..... i'll have a look once i'm home.

Ill try and explain more clearly.

What I want is to be able to start an established game from the trailhead and have the same experience that someone who has been playing for months had.

Example: I had a look at this is my milwaukee and it appears somewhere near the begining people received faxes.... now I imagine if I played it as if i was the only one to discover that trailhead I wont receive a fax... forcing me to rely on other peoples experiences. It seems alot of games have certain points of no return where you cannot start playin before those points in the game.

Thanks for the reccomendation. Will look into it.

[thegreatpablo]

I could be wrong and there could be some out there, but due to the nature of many ARGs, I imagine you might have some difficulty in finding one that wouldn't require you to receive e-mails/chats when they were originally sent out or be involved when certain events unfolded.

[krystyn]

B__Lukey, I wish you luck.

Part of the charm of ARGs is that they almost always rely on community interaction and collaboration as a part of its narrative development and discovery.

So, while I will not say that an ARG such as you seek is not possible/hasn't happened/is not findable, the single-play model isn't always extant on the web (see Jamie Kane: http://www.bbc.co.uk/jamiekane/ ), or in complete, playable form (see The Beast: http://cloudmakers.org/ ).

There have been some attempts to archive major pieces of some of these ARGs (like Arghive), but over time it's become apparent that whatever trademarks this genre happens to include, real-time community development is a huge part of the process.

So, having said that, and feel free to disregard this next bit: my advice to you is to refrain from thinking of threads here at the Unforums as 'cheating.' In fact, web search engines like Google are your friends, and using wikis, trails/guides, and other resources are there just for the purpose you describe. These experiences are not generally meant to be 'solved' or discovered by one person: there is often so much disparate information wrapped up in the narrative in so many different ways that it pretty much requires a collective to work together and eke out greater meanings.

But! I still wish you luck. I think you can jump right into This Is My Milwaukee right now, in my opinion, and you might even be a hero, because it looks like we're still missing a piece or two of the puzzle that might move us forward in the narrative. So, come on over whenever you like!

[notgordian]

This should also help. 10-minute experience, quite awesome.
Eagle Eye Freefall

Other things that would give you the kind of experience you're looking for: Cathy's Book, Cathy's Key, and (soon) Personal Effects Dark Art for book-based experiences.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[ndemeter]

Skeleton Creek would probably be on the list as well with Kathy's Book.