Creation
After the success of Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll, it was clear that I had to write another murder mystery. The difference was that my daughter Julie was on her way. She was born midway through the creation process. That changed the dynamics of my writing time and process, as I learned what it took to be a father.
I had some time. I was laid off from my job just after I came back from parental leave. In one quick chop, the company I was working for shed half of its employees, the start of a downward spiral it never recovered from. This gave me precious time when Jules was an infant, made it easier for the two of us to learn about parenting and to divide the chores, and also left me a little time to finish this game.
The Treaty of Berlin was created on "Harriet", my original Mac (which grew into a MacPlus with 4 megabytes of memory), using MacWrite. It's hard to believe that so much text came out of such a tiny screen! The game files have been converted and upgraded several times since then.
At least five generations of machines later, this website was created, by hand, on "Vortex," my latest iBook. I wrote the HTML and CSS by hand, just because that's the easiest way for me to make web pages I like. I used jEdit, a Java-based editor to edit all of the HTML and CSS.
The first runs
Billerica, Massachusetts, September 1987
Billerica, Massachusetts, November 1987
Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll was a hit, and people wanted more. There were a lot of people just waiting for a chance to play. With an infant at home, we played there. It worked, even better than we expected. There were so many wonderful bits.
The game runs loose
With success, there was interest from others who wanted me to run the game for them. That wasn't practical, so I wrote up detailed instructions for novice party organizers, offered my service to help in the process. In order to playtest those instructions, I gave the game to my friend Eric Patacchiola, to run at WPI. It rocked there.
Worcester, Massachusetts, unknown
When that worked, I had the confidence to offer the game on the Internet. I sold a couple of copies of the game and helped those people set up their own runs. People had a lot of fun. I paid for the printer ribbons and paper I used.
unknown, unknown
unknown, unknown
unknown, unknown
The Chicago connection
One of the people I met on the net was Gail Freedman. She'd been writing mystery games for the public, in a different style. She was intrigued by what I had, and so she bought a copy.
Champaign, Illinois, unknown
The Chicago crowd took the game to new and unexplored places. They had a blast. It started Gail and Dig writing games more in the style of The Treaty of Berlin. It started a great friendship.
Illinois, unknown
Illinois, unknown
They ran it twice more before...
The Intercon Insanity
Intercon 12.5, October 18, 1997
Intercon 12.5, October 18, 1997
By the time Intercon 12.5 rolled around, I was an old hand at Intercon. I hadn't run a game there, and so it seemed that The Treaty of Berlin would be a good fit. The problem was that there were more people who wanted to play it than would fit in a single run. That's when I was convinced of one of the more insane game-running efforts I'd ever make. Gail and Dig Freedman would co-GM it with me, and we'd run two games, in parallel.
It was nuts, but it worked. I'll never do that again, though!
More Chicago runs
Inverness, Illinois, November 23rd, 2002
Inverness, Illinois, January 25th, 2003
Gail and Dig continue to build a great LARP community in the Chicago area. All you have to do is check out their website to see how much LARPing they do. When they had enough new people who hadn't played before, rerunning The Treaty of Berlin was a natural event.
What's next?
There aren't any runs currently planned, but 2007 will be the twentieth anniversary of this game. Now that's an amazing concept! The game is still eminently playable and a lot of fun to run. Who'd have thought it?