Tutankhamun: Evil Under the Egyptian Sun

This time last week I was in Egypt. Or at least, a thinly disguised Retford pretending to be Egypt as part of the annual weekend freeform. This year it was Tutankhamun: Evil under the Egyptian Sun and I played Rudolph Valentino. So how did it go?

Tutankhamun is set at the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1923 - and as you can expect it’s a game full of archaeology, pharaohs, curses and magic. And also a bunch of Hollywood types making movies. As Rudolph Valentino, I was playing one of the movie people.

Tutankhamun: Evil under the Egyptian Sun was written by Fi and Paul of Mystery in Mind. They wrote and ran Masquerade, a game set in 1762 Venice back in 2011, which was also a lot of fun.

Highlights

Making movies: As I mentioned in my 2018 Shogun report, performing in theatre in a freeform is a bit of a challenge for me. It’s really a long way outside of my comfort zone - so I’ve only done it once.

So when I wrote on the casting form that making movies was something I would be happy to do in Tutankhamun, I wasn’t really sure what I was letting myself in for. As it turned out, what I was letting myself in for was laughing - a lot.

As Rudoph Valentino, I got to star in three movies. One of them even one the inaugural Egyptian film awards. (I can’t remember which one - they all became a bit of a blur. That may be because they all had a very similar plot, and my character fell in love with Aziza Amir, played by Penny, in every one!)

Return of the Pharaoh: Me being stabbed by my adviser,
played by Alfred Hitchcock (played by H)

The movies were made using an iPhone with the Silent Film Studio app. The director booked the camera (iPhone) out, and worked out the story. We then shot our film and recorded what we wanted on the captions, and then handed it back for the GMs to splice together.

The results were hilarious - and the app made it really look like a 1920s silent movie, with cheery piano music, wobbly projection and everything. Best of all, the movies meant that I could share some of what I had been doing over the weekend with my family - normally they only get to hear about my adventures.

Rick O'Connell (Graham)and
Lady Evelyn (Suey) who accompanied us
into The Tomb of Five

Tomb of the Five: The GMs had done a serious amount of work on props and scenery for Tutankhamun. Unfortunately, as a movie person, I saw almost none of it. My character sheet had no interest in tombs and Egyptology - but luckily, some of the people around me did.

It turned out that my wife Natacha Rambova (played by Nickey) had a sinister reason to go on a dig, and despite her trying to keep me from it I found out about it. Good job I did, because she was short of funds but I had enough to completely fund the dig.

So we went on our dig where we went into a tomb, took the artefacts and then had to escape from the sand piling in all around us. It was most perilous! Finally, once we were out of the tomb we were then shot at by mysterious thugs.

The tomb was set up really nicely, and we needed to cut away the artefact from a mummy prop holding it, using scissors representing an ornate knife (which I stole).

That was my only archaeological adventure - other players encountered moving mummies and zombies and all sorts of other craziness.

Murder! Unusually for me, I was not playing my usual good guy: I was a murderer. I had three murders in my past, and I knew they would catch up with me. (More on the investigation rules below.)

On Saturday Natacha questioned me about cyanide that she had found (she didn’t know that I had already used it to murder two women). We had a lovely scene where I tried to explain (badly) what was going on, and she became increasingly frantic as she found out the worst. (Well, what she thought was the worst - I didn’t tell her all of it…) Amazingly, she stuck by me.

Happily married: Rudolph and Natacha.
(Until she shot me in the back.)

Agatha Christie (played by Clare) caught up with me on Sunday and I was dragged away for execution. When it came time to be executed, I tried to escape and was shot like the villain I was. (To my surprise, my wife was one of the people who shot me. That’ll be true love, then.)

GM-driven scenes: I enjoyed a few scenes with the GMs and NPCs.

• The resurrected corpse: I found myself watching the local acting troupe (led by Mohammed Beyoumi played by Nick) try to resurrect a corpse. The corpse was played by Paul (the GM/writer) but as it came to life (with a nice jump-scare) the ritual was interrupted by Harry Houdini (Colin) who denounced it all as a hoax. I decided that I wasn’t sure what I had seen.
• Ambushing Ludwig: Ludwig Borchardt (Nathan had an incriminating document that he was using to blackmail Alla Nazimova (Lise). So a group of us (myself, Alla, Natacha, and Rick O’Connell (played by Graham) decided to ambush him to beat him up and get the document. This didn’t go according to plan, and ended up with Ludwig fleeing and being rescued by his arch enemy Biggles (played by Matthew). I was spectacularly useless, being distinctly outmatched by everyone else.
• Fighting Daniel de Saulles: But I got to beat up Daniel de Saulles, played by David (who spent the weekend playing NPCs), who turned up to exact his revenge (he blamed me for the death of his brother, who had actually been killed by his ex-wife who I had had an affair with so I can sort of see where he was coming from). We had a short brawl in which I was victorious and at which point the red mist descended and I was about to kill him when Charles “Wag” MacDonald (played by Sam) pulled me off him. (Valentino was described as having “a bit of a temper”. Well, yes.)

Not so good

There were a few things that didn’t work quite so well for me.

I, murderer: I was fine with having murder in my background - I knew I was going to get my comeuppance by the end of the game (and I ended up with a satisfying death scene as I mentioned above).

But, I also hated my ex-wife Jean Acker (played by Jenny). She had caused me such pain in the past that I wanted her dead. In fact, my main reason for being in Egypt was because I followed Jean and wanted to kill her away from the American authorities.

I’ve played villains before - but in the past they have wanted power (occult or political) and didn’t care who they trampled on to get it. I don’t think I’ve played someone who’s main motivation was simply revenge before - and I didn’t find it very easy.

As a result, I found it difficult to interact much with Jenny. I was supposed to hate her, and I’m a bit too reserved to chew the scenery. And Jenny herself is too nice to really hate, which didn’t make it any easier. So we had mostly separate games - if she appeared I generally made myself scarce, or scowled at her.

And of course I didn’t kill her. On Sunday, as I escaped my execution I lunged at Jean in a murderous rage and died in hail of bullets.

Goals done by Friday: Apart from dealing with Jean and keeping my past a secret (!), I was pretty much done with my character goals by the end of Friday evening. So I spent Saturday making movies and going on a dig as mentioned before. But while I had a few slow spots on Saturday, none of them were bad enough for me to need a random encounter (more on that below).

Hiding the budget: The props were great. Fi and Paul had set up a wonderful Tutankhamun’s tomb, with dog statues and a chariot - and of course a sarcophagus with a mummy. But, it was tucked away in a side room which meant that it was hard to see. I only saw it on Sunday just before they had to take it all down to make space for lunch.

It seems a bit of a shame that they couldn’t have put it somewhere a bit more public so that everyone else could see more of it, although I do realise that some unsavoury types were stealing artefacts from it which would have made that a bit tricky.

Unwrapping the mummy: On Saturday there was a timetabled event for a public unwrapping of Tutanhamun’s mummy, led by Lady Evelyn Herbert (played by Sue). Lots of people gathered, expecting something dramatic to take place. The mummy appeared, a lovely prop all bandaged up, and Sue did an excellent job of narrating her way through the unwrapping.

The Mummy (thanks to Charlie for letting me use her photo)

But nothing happened. No sinister omens, no strange lights, and definitely no mummies coming to life. Which was a shame, as that’s what we were all hoping for.

Doing things differently

Fi and Paul did a few things differently to most weekend freeforms, and I think some of them could easily be adopted.

A cashless society: There was no cash in the game. Everyone had money (I was fairly well off) and it was noted on our character sheets. The GMs trusted us to manage our money ourselves - we simply amended our totals as required..

I wasn’t aware of any cheating, and it was nice to be trusted. It also sent a message as to how important the GMs thought that money was in the game - not very important.

Investigating crimes: I was interested to see how the criminal investigations worked, partly because I had murder in my past, and partly because I had contributed some ideas to Fi (based I think on this article I wrote a couple of years back). Tutankhamun had a few ideas that I liked:

• Crimes were investigated using crime sheets, where the evidence was kept.
• Evidence itself was scattered throughout the game - items, witness statements and the like. They were stamped “Evidence” to make it clear. (I started with two myself!)
• The level of evidence needed varied depending on the severity of the crime. As a major crime, murder needed six pieces of evidence.
• If a player committed a crime during the game, they were asked to complete a crime sheet so that the GMs could track what was going on, and also allow the investigators to catch up with you.

Overall I think this was a success. I’m not sure how many of the in-game crimes were solved, but at least the possibility was there. It also meant that I knew what to do when my hotel room was burgled - I complained to the hotel staff and they investigated. They didn’t find anything out unfortunately, but at least they were able to check.

I want to find out from the investigator characters how they found the system - I may end up updating my old article.

Random encounter: Sometimes you can find yourself with not enough to do in a freeform. We have the paperclip rule for players to signal to other players that they are looking for help (and I came across someone with a paperclip this time - and duly tried to bring them into our game). But for Tutankhamun the GMs had a random encounter, which I gather would be tailored to you. While I was very tempted to find out how they worked, there was always just enough going on that meant I didn’t need a random encounter.

NPCs: The GM crew included two people doing nothing but playing NPCs. These worked really well, and I can see them being used again. (I’ve talked previously on the Freeform Games blog about using unused characters like this, but I’ve not actually done it.)

I can imagine Tombstone working with a couple of people playing NPCs to be shot, robbed, beaten up, tried and hung all weekend.

In Tutankhamun, the NPCs played some significant characters - as well as Daniel de Saulles (who was significant to me but nobody else) they also played the mysterious Mr or Ms Wolf.

Tailor-made characters: Fi and Paul use the casting information when they write the characters, which means you get the kind of character you asked for. This seems amazing to me - as Tombstone took five years between starting and its first run.

One downside of Fi and Paul’s approach is that they run their games only once. That’s a bit of a shame - I’d love to see Tutankhamun run again (I’d like to see the Egyptology side of it if nothing else) and I’d love to play in Masquerade again.

And finally…

And now we're back to normality and the day job. It's only been a week, but already Tutankhamun seems a long time ago...

Rolling dice

I’m currently running an Achtung! Cthulhu one-shot using Fate Accelerated. Our heroes are investigating a legend about three ancient crowns protecting the Normandy coast that the Allies need dealing with before the invasion.

I’ve noticed that when I’m running a game, I don’t roll dice all that much. I’m almost not engaging with the rules at all - we could be playing pretty much anything. I’m sure I’ll use the rules when we come to the exciting action scenes, but not yet (the players are still gathering information).

So the times I am rolling dice is to answer a player question when I’m not sure of the answer. Or when it doesn’t matter.

• Is there a phonebox nearby?
• Does the town have a museum?
• Have I been here before?
• Can I see any cats?

I normally just roll 2d6 and use my judgement. A high roll works is good news for the players, a low roll bad.

Sometimes I ask the players to roll...

Yesterday, the players sourced a copy of the Necronomicon, and when they saw it one of my players asked “As a published medieval historian, have I seen this before?” So I asked him to roll.

He rolled -4 (four minuses - the worst roll you can get in Fate). Heh heh heh.

So I explained that yes, he’d seen this book before - in his dreams. When he was younger he had had recurring nightmares involving an old book (this one) that stole his life essence and prematurely aged him.

And they’ve got to take it with them...

Levelling up?

I was listening to an old episode of the excellent Grognard Files recently (episode #3, all about Traveller) and Blythy, I think, criticised Traveller for its lack of an experience system. I think he said (I was driving at the time so my memory might be wrong) that for many players character advancement and levelling up was really important.

Really?

As I've said before, I cut my roleplaying teeth on Traveller. I was a science fiction fan, so I bought a science fiction RPG. I wasn't inspired by fantasy and so D&D passed me by. (I do remember buying the Monster Manual and enjoyed reading that - but I don't think I used it.)

From Traveller I went pretty much straight into Call of Cthulhu, and from there to GURPS.

None of those games have "levels". Yes, there's a little bit of skills improvement in Call of Cthulhu and I imagine there is some in GURPS (but I can't remember it now). But there's none in Traveller (well, there's a tiny bit, but the basic premise is that you don't improve).

The reason for this is that your characters in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and GURPS start out competent. They don't start out at "level 1" - they already know what they're doing.

So I never got into the whole "levelling up" thing.

One-shots not campaigns

There's another reason I never really got into levelling-up: I mostly played one-shots.

I can't ever remember playing in a long campaign, where levelling up was critical. I think the longest I've ever run a single game was for about 8-10 weeks when I ran Call of Cthulhu that ended up being several scenarios mashed together.

Even when we were starting out and I was at school, we still didn't play campaigns. I can't remember much about my games back then, but I'm pretty sure that we liked to mix things up. We all took turns GM-ing and we never settled down into a long campaign. Character advancement wasn't on our radar, and it wasn't something we missed.

So my experience of roleplaying has been playing and running one-shots. (And even a scenario that may take a few sessions to play though is still a one-shot. But in my head, Masks of Nyarlathotep is a very lengthy one-shot, so I might not be the best to judge.)

Really?

So for me, the play was (and is) the important thing.

And when I hear people like Blythy say that players like to level up and that character advancement is important to them, I have to wonder if that's really true.

Or is that just me?

Monster of the Week again

After a bit of a hiatus since last year, my occasional online RPG group started up again this month, with me running my Monster of the Week one-shot The Seeds of Doom (which I’ve talked about previously here and you can download here).

The game went really well. Neither of my regular players were familiar with MotW (or any PbtA games for that matter), but they took to the playbooks like ducks to water. They chose a Flake and an Initiate. They decided their previous case involved the giant toad of Wigan, which sounded appropriately weird.

Last time I ran MotW I had some problems with the rules in that I wanted to roll for attack - this time I seemed to have overcome that block and was much more comfortable with describing what was going to happen and asking “What do you do?”

The players ran around and investigated the mystery and generally had a good time.

Feedback is good

I did note that the players were a bit too keen to shut down NPCs. I would throw helpful NPCs at them, but more than once they blocked them. That was a bit tricky, as it meant that information I had planned to give them via NPCs I had to manage in a different way.

I did wonder if that’s because players like to think that they’re in control, and aren’t keen on receiving help, but it was a shame as I like to run games with lots of NPCs.

Anyway, I shared my concerns with one of the players between sessions. I don’t know if that helped or whether I adjusted my play accordingly, but the problem seemed to go away in the final session.

Some other thoughts

• Once or twice I suggested that the players imagine that they were in a tv show, and it was okay if not everything was gritty and realistic. Normally when I run a modern-day game (even my Other London games) I try for a more realistic actions-have-consequences style of game - and my players know that. This time, I encouraged my players to be more proactive by making them imagine they were in a tv show and that seemed to work.
• I was a bit worried about them meeting the monster early, but I realised that they were unprepared and it was tougher than they were expecting, so it was fine.
• I still really like the way MotW handles NPC motivations - that worked really well as a simple shorthand for what they would do (often be a victim and need rescuing). MotW does the same thing with locations, but I didn’t find that to be as successful, except where I used the woods as a maze to hide the monster.
• I included a cut scene! Possibly my first. As our heroes were driving their gully sucker up to the lighthouse I cut to a scene showing the monster at the lighthouse menacing some teenagers. I should do that more.
• I bought a new gaming headset that’s much clearer than the old one I was using. However, the over-the-ear cups are so good that I can’t actually hear myself talk through my ears. I can hear myself through bone conduction, but I sound really muffled. That took some getting used to.

More MotW

Happily, both my players enjoyed MotW and would like to play more. So I’ve promised to run another adventure. I need to read up on the in-between moves first though.

But before that I’m running Achtung! Cthulhu which I’m looking forward to.

Patient Zero

As far as roleplaying games go, in my group I was patient zero. None of us had heard of roleplaying before I saw an advert in Starburst #22 and #23 (the ones featuring The Empire Strikes Back in 1980).

We were all science fiction fans though. I discovered science fiction mainly through 2000AD. That introduced me to Star Wars (I remember seeing photos from Star Wars in what I’m guessing now was the 1977 Summer Special and thinking “wow - that looks incredible”.) Then I read the novelisation that same summer, and I didn’t look back. I must have read the Star Wars novelisation three or four times before I finally saw the film.

(I didn’t realise at the time that the novelization was written by Alan Dean Foster, but I’d started enjoying his novels as well. I remember seeing the NEL edition of Bloodhype, with the great Tim White cover in the school book fair. I bought that and that led to The Tar-Aiym Krang, Orphan Star, The End of the Matter and Foster’s many other Humanx books. I’ve re-read some recently and they’re a bit uneven, but back then I wasn’t as critical and I loved the sense of wonder.)

So I was a science fiction fan, and so Starburst was what I read.

Then I saw this advert….

(I tracked this down online - you can find old issues of Starburst here. This is from Starburst #22)

This is the advert that led me into roleplaying. I can’t remember if I bought Traveller directly, or if I first ordered a catalogue from Games Workshop, but in the summer of 1981 (so a year after I first saw the advert) I spent £5.95 of my pocket money and ordered the Traveller’s iconic little black box.

Now what?

We weren’t quite sure what to make of the Traveller basic set, but I invited my friend Rob over to try it out. We rolled up characters and tried out the combat system.

Rob then bought Double Adventure #1: Shadows & Annic Nova. He ran Shadows for us, while I ran Annic Nova. Annic Nova is just an empty spaceship and not at all exciting. So I invented a bunch of rival adventurers to create some conflict and had a running battle through the corridors of the Annic Nova.

And that is how, for me at least, it all started...

2019 in games

How is it already mid-January? Perhaps I should have started this a bit earlier...

Never mind the politics, how was 2019 in terms of games?

Freeform Games

2019 was another good year for Freeform Games. Sales were up 13% on 2018 which was great. Amazingly, we’ve doubled our sales since 2014, but I’m taking that with a pinch of salt as 2013 and 2014 were low points: we’re only 38% up on 2011.

(The difference is down to Google. If I remember correctly, there was an algorithm change in 2013 that hurt us badly compared to the previous years. A reminder of how vulnerable we are to factors outside of our control.)

We only had one new game this year - and that was simply a Christmas version of one of our older games. It was a bit too late to have much of an impact in 2019. I’ve written more about our year on the FFG blog, here.

Freeforms

2019 started well with Death on the Gambia (which I ran and wrote about here) followed by The Torch of Freedom (in which I played the Russian ambassador and wrote about here).

Death on the Gambia

Torch was followed by Peaky in April, where I co-wrote Tea at Longbourne and played in The Circus of Wonders and Shadows and Seeds of Humanity (more on Peaky 2019 here).

Tea at Longbourne was a delight to write and seemed to go down well with the players. It has been played again since and I look forward to taking it out for another spin.

Unfortunately Peaky was my last freeform of 2019. I had hoped to get a Leeds freeform group going, but I’m really bad at that kind of organising. And I had hoped to meet with the Liminal Dreams crew in Huddersfield, but I’ve not managed to do that either. Maybe in 2020 I can get my act together, but judging by my past performance, that seems unlikely.

Tabletop RPG

I ran four tabletop roleplaying games this year:

• In Whom We Trust for Cthulhu Dark at GoPlayLeeds (GPL).
• https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-aurors-fate-accelerated-scenario.html, a game of hunting dark wizards set in the world of Harry Potter, using Fate Accelerated. I ran this twice - once for Megan and my nephews, and once at Furnace.
• The Bone Swallower, an Other London game using Fate Accelerated.

I played D&D, Liminal, Fate Accelerated, Dragon Age and a homebrew fantasy heartbreaker that I can’t remember much about. These were all at Airecon, Furnace or GoPlayLeeds.

Fate - my tools of the trade

Unfortunately my semi-regular online group fell away due to scheduling conflicts, but hopefully we’ll pick it up again.

In 2020 I’m hoping to run The Aurors at GPL, and maybe something a bit different such as Hillfolk. I’ve also got an Achtung! Cthulhu! one-shot brewing, so maybe I’ll get that done for 2020. I’m also hoping to do more tabletop with Megan and the family.

New RPGs for my collection in 2020:

• Liminal: Created by Paul Mitchener and featuring some stunning artwork by Jason Behnke, Liminal is a British urban fantasy (think Neverwhere, Rivers of London, Ultraviolet and the like) game that ought to be right up my street. The only reason I don’t like it more is that it’s a little too close to the Other London games I’ve been running recently. (I’m also not a huge fan of the system, but that’s my reaction to learning something new than anything being particularly bad about the system.) I backed this in pdf form on Kickstarter, and I probably need to get my hands on a hard copy so that I can read it properly. (I find most RPG pdfs very tiresome to read on my tablet.)
• Mouse Guard: I won this in the Furnace raffle and read it on holiday. The system looks intriguing. It’s based on Burning Wheel, and the games are split into GM Turns (much like normal RPGs) and Player Turns (which are similar, yet different). I can’t quite see how it works, so I feel I need to play it before running it. Not sure how it works in a one-shot though. I’m indifferent to the background - I’ve read a couple of the comics but I’m not inspired by them.
• Fate of Cthulhu: I Kickstarted the pdf of this. The setting appealed - in the future Cthulhu has arisen and you are sent back in time to prevent it happening. So Terminator v Cthulhu. Not sure when I will get to run it, but never mind, it’s not taking up any shelf space. (Unlike Liminal, I was okay reading the pdf of this - the Fate books are formatted such that they’re pretty easy to read on a tablet.)

New RPGs for 2020 will include Fiasco and Trilemma Adventures, both of which I Kickstarted and haven’t arrived yet.

Boardgames

I played 187 boardgames in 2019, so one every other day on average. A lot of these were solo games as the rest of the family isn’t quite as excited about boardgames as I am… My top three most-played games were Villagers, D-Day Dice and Pandemic Legacy Season 2.

Villagers is my game of the year, I think. I Kickstarted it in 2018, and it turned up in May, just in time for me to take on holiday. We all enjoyed it, which means we’ve played it a lot. We have barely dipped into the expansions yet.

D-Day Dice is another Kickstarter, which took two years to arrive. I may have over-invested in it, as I already had the first edition (which I have now given to a good home). DDD is a push-your-luck resource management game, and plays really well solo. I usually win, but I enjoy the thought and strategy involved.

I played through Pandemic Legacy Season 1 in 2018, and I almost completed Season 2 in 2020. I have just the last game to play. I think I prefer Season 2 because of the way the board so drastically changes (and I found Season 1 to be a bit of a drag in the 6-9 month section). However, I haven’t quite been motivated to complete Season 2, which probably speaks volumes. It’s possible I’ve had enough of Pandemic for a while.

Games new to the Hatherley games library (all of them Kickstarters this time) include:

• Villagers and D-Day Dice, as mentioned above.
• Rival Restaurants arrived just before Christmas, and has a nicely chaotic trading system. Seems good with at least four people, although some of the abilities seem a bit unbalanced. I’m not sure how much I like this, but Megan likes it which is good. It’s maybe a bit light, but I probably need to play it more.
• I haven't played Brexit: The Real Deal yet. I backed it in impulse. I ought to play it at some point.

New game to the collection in 2019

I’m not planning to buy any more boardgames in 2020, I think I have enough. I am expecting Oceans (another Kickstarter) to arrive at some point soon, and I may get rid of some to make some space. And maybe there will be gifts…

Other games

As usual I played a bit too much World of Tanks Blitz in 2019, and I created two treasure hunts.

Overall

So that was 2019. 2020 will be more of the same. At this point in the year I am not expecting to buy more games, but we’ll see.

2019 Treasure Hunts

When we grew up we always had treasure hunts at Christmas - and in time my parents handed to me the baton of coming up with an annual treasure hunt.

These days I only tend to do them when we are at home for Christmas, as I usually base the clues on things that are around the house. So this year we were at home, and this was our treasure hunt...

what3words.com

The key to the treasure hunt this year was what3words.com. This website has split the earth into 3x3m sectors, each with a unique identifying address. It’s great for places that don’t have a proper address (some parts of the developing world) or if you need to be rescued from somewhere remote (on a mountain, say). Everyone should have the app.

Our garden is big enough that it is split into numerous sectors, so it’s great for a treasure hunt as well.

The first clue

The first clue was in an envelope that I put under the Christmas tree along with all the other presents. Inside was the following:

Honeybee door handles
Key cupboard
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Gnomeo and Juliet
Window seat cupboard
Guarded by a wooden redcap
Matilda
Elves Lego

These are all clues to locations around the house. So the first clue refers to a cupboard which has honeybees on the handles. In each of the locations was a further clue, in one of four groups.

Clue Group A

This consisted of two clues: a series of empty boxes that need to be completed like a crossword, and a QR code to what3words. (It turns out you can create your own QR code really easily.)

The other three groups of clues filled in the words.

Clue Group B - solution to word #1

This consisted of two clues - another set of empty boxes and a set of clues along the lines of:

1 - How many birds flying over Dunstanburgh Castle?
2 - Port of Ness artist
3 - Number of windows on Megan’s study door
4 - How many copies of the Road to Huisinis are there?

And so on.

The answer to the first clue is in a picture we have of Dunstanburgh Castle that hangs in our kitchen - there are eight birds, and “eight” is the word needed. The second letter is highlighted in the grid, and that's the first letter of the word needed for Clue Group A, above.

Clue Group 3 - solution to word #2

This consisted of three clues:

Harry Potter and the...

A QR code which read “page-letter”


And this:

764-1
202-5
486-3
84-2

The idea is to find the first letter on page 764 of a certain Harry Potter book (the letter “t”), and so on. I made it a little harder by not specifying which Harry Potter book - but only one of them has 764 pages (The Order of the Phoenix) so it wasn’t that hard.

(And I should say that these are the versions that we have - the clues may not work for all copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.)

Clue Group D - solution to word #3

This was just a picture of a bar of soap.

Putting it all together

Typing the three words into what3words identified that the treasure was in our garden shed.

It took about 20 minutes to solve, and as usual took much longer than that for me to prepare. The technology was a bit tricky, and didn't work first time (neither Megan nor Mrs H had used either QR codes or what3words before, so there was a bit of a learning curve there).

But that didn’t matter, I had a lot of fun doing it and I had fun watching the hunt being solved.

Recycling on New Year's Eve

My brother was due to join us for New Year's Eve, and a couple of days before he asked if I could prepare a treasure hunt. He was providing the treasure (thankfully), and I thought I would use the same structure of hunt. I changed the location of the treasure, but used the same basic approach.

I changed the picture clue to an Enigma code (created using the splendid Enigma Simulator App), with the following four clues:

Enigma Simulator App 


K Railway, 5 printing groups


Rotors: EFGH


DNYGB XPTF