I sometimes compare going to the MIT Mystery Hunt as entering a completely different world. I was never a student at MIT, so while others may walk around the campus bringing back memories of classes taken, friends made, and frantic studying, I walk around the campus identifying how different elements of the campus were used in puzzles in the past, along with places that were important to me personally. It really feels like playing an ARG – the buildings are being used for something, but I see the hidden meanings. Then, I travel home, and I have to return to the real world.
But this year, I’ll be returning to a very different world than the one I left. We all will.
It’s been hard to focus on anything puzzle related for the past couple months. Before November, there was the existential dread of what was about to happen. I tried to keep my hopes up, but I feared for the worst. When the US Elections happened and the results came in, it took a while for me to get out of bed. It wasn’t a surprise. America is racist and will vote for that above all else. However, the Republicans have been calling for tons of laws targeting transgender individuals, up to a speaker at CPAC calling for the eradication of transgender individuals. As a trans woman who doesn’t really have the option of hiding, this is horrifying. I’m not going to pretend that I was in a good headspace earlier in this year either for other reasons, but this has been weighing on my mind for a while.
It’s hard to write puzzles with that existential crisis looming in your head. It is hard to focus on solving puzzles when your mind wanders to wondering if you will have access to medicine. It is hard to be creative at all when you’re worried about still not having a job and whether or not even if you get a job if you’d be allowed to keep it. What’s even the point of going up to Cambridge this year? Shouldn’t I be preparing for whatever is going to happen after the Inauguration?
However, I’ve not fallen completely into despair – there are a couple things keeping my attitude up even in this time. Over the past year I have really delved into Blood on the Clocktower, and play multiple games a week. The games are quick, have tons of variations, and the main mechanics involve talking with other people. It is a social game with lots of supportive communities. But most importantly, it’s a game I play, face-to-face, with people in-person and online. I have friends I see on a regular basis. Friends I talk to outside of my specific hobby. I’ve made connections with people who I care about and who care about me, and I can honestly say that it’s been a while since I’ve done that.
Therein lies the exact reason that it’s important to go to Cambridge. Even if I never solve a puzzle or my performance is worse than previous years, I’m going to see tons of people whom I am friends with. People who care about me, people who like me, people who have voluntarily spent hours with me in classrooms as we contemplate some of the weirdest problems. I am going to see so many people throughout the weekend and give out so many hugs (if people want them). I’m going to get lost in a weekend where nothing matters except for weird metapuzzles and unusual events. It’s a moment that brings up my spirits, which is something I drastically need, even if it’s for something as silly as Mystery Hunt.
Wrapping it Up
Shortly after the 2016 election, Crystal Frasier wrote the introduction to Assault on Longshadow, a Pathfinder Adventure Path instalment. It is a piece of writing that I come back to time and time again and frequently makes me cry. While the piece is written for tabletop roleplaying games, many parts of it apply to all sorts of other hobbies. I’d like to leave you with the final bit here, titled “The Game Must Go On”.
Attending college in the winter home of a traveling circus (it’s a long story), I learned that the phrase “The show must go on” dates back to nineteenth-century circuses. It was seen as disrespectful to both your audience and your performers to end a show early because of unexpected calamity. People need a sense of stability and levity to recharge, and among the violence and warfare and philosophical clashes that marked so much of the nineteenth century, the common people needed something, anything, to feel stable and sacrosanct. The entertainment industry here in America thrived during national crises like World War II and the Great Recession for exactly this reason.
Whatever reason you play tabletop games—whether for fun or escape or empowerment or to explore identity—you create community and stability for those around you. A hobby can seem so inconsequential, even petty, in the face of difficult times, but that sense of shared identity is an important piece of what makes us human and gives us the strength to endure. Share what humanity you have to give, and help lift each other up.