September, 2006

Emperor Norton is often described as San Francisco's first eccentric character. A businessman who lost his fortune attempting to corner the San Francisco rice market in the 1850s, he later reemerged in 1859 declaring himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. For the next twenty years he repeatedly issued proclamations, printed his own money, and was recognized with importance across San Francisco by its citizens. He was given free seats at local theaters, meals at restaurants, and continually supported, along with his two stray dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.

Beginning in August, 2006, Emperor Norton returned to San Francisco. Under the handle "ricebaron", he began posting proclamations and musings on Craigslist. Then on a late August night he covered San Francisco's Financial District with printed proclamations asking his citizenry to rise up and join him in fighting modern injustices.

Norton directed his readers to a blog where he began conversing with his subjects and asking them to perform specific tasks and actions. Throughout the fall of 2006 clues led readers to locations across San Francisco to collect documents, posters to distribute, as well as objects objects and small token rewards.

Simultaneously a group dubbed The Council For American Liberties began contacting players and advising them to not interact with Norton, explaining that he was a mentally unstable individual who was in danger of harming himself.

James Marr and I wrote and operated this alternate reality game as social experiment to see if we could group players into two factions and then create a self perpetuating game world where the players took ownership of its storyline and continued without our direct involvement.

We were able to identify the real identities of many of the players and used that information to tailor the game play and story for our players. This peaked in September when we learned that one of the players would be attending the Tokyo Game Show. And as luck would have it, James and I also were planning to attend during one of our frequent work trips to Japan. We quickly moved the story to include a dead drop of a folder with secret instructions and had Norton inform his subjects to recover the hidden folder at the Tokyo Game Show. While successful, our player paniced at the specific, targeted change in the game and then publicly dropped out from playing.

We wrapped up the game in late September or early October 2006, after leading our players through several adventures across San Francisco to locate signs, buttons, and other hidden artifacts. While we never fully completed the storyline we intended, we leared a great deal about operating a live game that reacts to its players. And we had a blast doing it.