Ethereal Endways

[This page is out of character.] Thanks for playing in Doctor When! Here's the folks who brought it to you. [expand all]

The Core

The gang of idiots who stuck through the whole thing from beginning to end. These only give a general overview of what our areas of expertise are; but everyone here's done a little bit of everything in this game!

Allen Cohn: Allen's been the visionary of this entire affair from day 1. He provided initial ideas and was thrilled to have all these brilliant, talented people improve them, build on them, and invest their awesome creativity to create something far greater than he ever could have imagined. He also authored a few puzzles, was lead writer for the script, and directed the videos. For the last few months, Allen has been tirelessly writing staff instructions, organizing teams and volunteers, and been the "public face" of our event. That and he makes food, too!
Sean Gugler: Sean stepped up and took on the thankless of role of Puzzle Time Lord, trying to stitch together a wide variety of puzzles and authors and somehow make it all organized. He's been our voice of enthusiasm, always making the project move forward and bringing his extensive Game experience to adapt to this unorthodox "story-driven" variant. A few months before game day, we still had significant holes in our puzzle schedule; places where the plot required a puzzle there but nobody had written one. Sean took all of these on -- and you probably can't tell which puzzles were written in the last week, can you?
Wei-Hwa Huang: The number of puzzles that Wei-Hwa didn't have some sort of involvement in could probably be counted on the fingers of one finger. In addition to demanding near-perfection on every puzzle, he's also responsible for running the websites (which, in addition to the public-facing sites and GROSS, also includes a large wiki and a bug-tracking database), archiving digital versions of everything, and putting his graphic design fingerprint on nearly everything. Yes, that does include the badges.
Erik Stuart: In addition to managing all our finances and designing more puzzles in the event than anyone else (the few thousand co-keypads and chronomentometers from Wei-Hwa don't count), Erik has been also been the steady voice of reason throughout the organization, often calm when the rest of us are clouded with emotion. Not only have he and Melissa sacrificed their house for the last few months to act as GC central storage (and for years before that to work as GC meeting), but he's also done the lion's share of printing and collating and organizing things into envelopes. Most people misuse the term "lion's share" to mean "simple majority"; but not here.
Melissa Wilson: Some Games are all about the puzzles. If you've played in Doctor When, you know that we're more than just puzzles -- and every bit of "more" couldn't happen without the help of Melissa. Location scouting. Costume. Make-up. Props. When disagreements flared up because of conflicting personalities in different aspects of the theatrical management, Melissa was always there as a competent diplomat. All this stuff just sort of happened magically and seemingly flawlessly, because Melissa was just so awesome that she didn't need any help from the rest of us.

Special Thanks

Todd c Hartman: Todd did something that no one else could possibly do -- build the amazing time machine set. Todd spent many sleepless nights building the modular set that would have to work for all three acts. In between set construction he managed to find time to supervise the filming, organizing the lighting, and adding visual effects to the videos, as well as sneaking out some time to do some Photoshop work for all of the "modified" classic paintings in the Act II Art History puzzle. This puzzle hunt would be a shadow of what it actually ended up being without Todd's unique artistic contribution. In addition, Todd and his crew is assembling a documentary from footage shot during the event.

Crew

Lily Tsay: Lily was one of the production assistants for set build, as well as an assistant shooter for the documentary.
John Bagoye: John is Todd's partner and helped him build and design the time machine sets. He also acted as set supervisor during the first weekend and assisted with other aspects of design.
Christian Hoobyar: Christian was the Director of Photography and Camera Operator for the video shoots, as well as Assistant Editor on the videos. He also worked as a cameraman during week 2 for the upcoming documentary.
Mike Janney: Super Duper Duper Crew Helper
Mary Johnson, Shawn Johnson, Crissy Gugler, Lauren O'Rourke, Ron Dees: Set Crew and other stagehands
Charlie Wilson: Provided a bunch of sound equipment
Nathan Lively, Stephanie Lau: Helped out with the video shoots

Cast

Alex Cave as Elizabeth "Buffy" Vanderbilt: Alex portrayed Buffy, arguably our most complex and interesting character, and definitely enduring the most make-up changes. Also, the only actor who had to get "slimed" multiple times in front of a crowd of strangers, right before a quick costume change!
Kristina Kenney as Catherine Lucille Chronos: Kristina is our Catherine Lucille Chronos, whom in the early drafts was an evil mastermind but then quickly became a character of her own. She coyly refuses to tell us if she really did pose naked for Salvador Dali.
Dan Kurtz as Wesley When
Sean Gugler as Tiresias the Janitor
Sunil Patel as the school photographer at the science fair
Michelle Le, Rico Bachinelo, Athena Saxon as "the cool kids"
Wei-Hwa Huang, Erik Stuart, Allen Cohn, Melissa Wilson, Elena Melendez as Christmas Party Faculty

The Inner Party

Those who took on multiple tasks and made multiple contributions to Doctor When. Awesome folks.

Ellen Juhlin: Ellen is our sound and audio genius, mixing and mastering every aspect of sound design and editing for our event. Even if you don't remember the amazing sound effects in and around the time machine, try rewatching the videos with the sound muted and see how good things look then. Ellen also managed to procure us some of the best sound equipment for the live parts of the game. In addition to supervising and mixing the Faculty Christmas Party puzzle, she joined the core team for the last few months of the game and was very useful in testing last-minute puzzles.
Dan Kurtz: You all know him as the portrayer of Wesley When, but in addition to that high-profile job, Dan also wrote all the software for the View-O-Scope CDs, as well as coding the Peach Frontier website and designing the Ethereal Endways website.
Dwight Freund: Coming up with puzzle ideas until the end, Dwight was responsible for the concept and the first few versions of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure as well as designing and seeing all of Core Dump 1 from beginning to end, including drafting his daughter into threading all of those circuit boards. He also portrayed some of our more interesting supporting characters during the event: Mister When, Crazy Tracy, and the Locker Hallway Hall Monitor.
David Greenspan: Master of two puzzles: Particle Zoo and Core Dump 2, the latter of which required camping long hours in front of the TechShop laser cutters. In addition, he coded the Trenchwood website and was the main phone staffer during the late hours of Act II.
Justin Graham: Justin joined the Doctor When crew when the first call for volunteers went out in 2009. He took over the job of playtester management when we couldn't convince anyone else to do it. It took him nearly a year, and many iterations, to come up with a usable concept for Art History, but he did it (we then re-did of lot of that work, but oh well). He also was an excellent GC phone staffer during Act I and on site helper during some of Act II and III.
Trisha Lantznester: Trisha faithfully stayed on GC throughout most of its early speculative times and is the main reason for Catherine finding her actual voice (before that it was just a bunch of guys writing placeholder text, can you imagine?) She also developed the entire plot premise and outline for Choose Your Own Adventure as well as writing about half of the book. On game day she portrayed Doris, the irascible lunch lady.
Thomas Snyder: Thomas only joined us after the full-system playtest in February but then proved his worth by picking up innumerable small tasks. He fleshed out and designed the Restaurant Coupons optional and tirelessly picked up a lot of volunteer shifts in Acts I and III. Also, he checked and re-checked many of our puzzles thoroughly for small errors, and did a lot of last-minute printing for us.

Big Contributors

Ken Chaney: Ken was responsible for one of the oddest tasks ever -- building a device that could plausibly look like a 1986 high school science fair experiment combining Diet Coke and Mentos. He also lent us a Ms. Pac-Man machine.
Dave Shukan: In addition to designing the Faculty Christmas Party Puzzle, Dave did the irreplacable task of printing every single copy of the high school newspaper. This is not as easy as it sounds -- you try printing on newsprint and see how far you get. We even broke his printer!
Crissy Gugler: Staffed some locations over the midnight hours and managed to give her husband enough free time to hang out with us.
Ben Hansen: One of the toughest jobs -- editing all the green-screen and movie footage to create the Calibration puzzle (that's the one with all the movie clips). Also, coming up with the Trenchwood logo!
Rigel Stuhmiller: Our artist behind the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book and the "So You Want to be a Time Traveler" pamphlet. She also designed the Trenchwood and Peach Frontier websites.
Acorn Pooley: Designed and created the portable tachyon detector and did some rewiring for the archway Todd designed.
Doug Banks: Designed Fabric of Time.
Eric Lindstrom: Designed the first draft of Yearbook and "Heisenberg Compensator".

Helpers

Sandy Stuart (Erik's Mom): Drove Erik to Gilroy at 8:40 on Friday, cut out QTV ropes, did irreplacable last-minute tasks on GC.
Vera Yin: Ride-along for the Playtest
Lisa Launer: Decorator of Cookies
Walt and Liz Wilson (Melissa's parents): Pick-up truck supplier and costume consulting.
Delia Athey: Made the cakes for the end party.

Early Adopters

Folks who didn't stay on GC until the end... but still helped us through the tough times.

DeeAnn Sole
Lisa Long
Shoresh Alaudini
Alexandra Dixon
Jesse Morris

Testers of CRAP

Many testers died in our experimental labs to bring you this hunt.

Danny Arbeiter and team BWHITE
Nick Baxter
Paul Chou
Han Chou
Dave Glasser
Tyler Hinman
Drew Hoskins
Kiran Kedlaya and Alina Bucur
Darby Kimball and the Disobedient Children
Derek Kisman
Sean Lip
Chris Lopez
Jeremiah Lee
Dan Mullowrey
Jon Perkins
Dan Rosart
Kathy Wood
Jason Zhuang

Gracious Hosts

Natalie Ferrari, Highlands Elementary School administrator
Jeff Schwartz, Highlands Recreation Center supervisor
Dorian Clair, Dorian Clair Antique Clock Repair, 1301 Sanchez Street San Francisco, SF
Joe Freund's home
Mr. Smith, Smith Clock Co., 2799 Bush Street, SF
Noisebridge hackerspace
Danielle Engleman, The Long Now Foundation, Fort Mason Center, Building A, San Francisco, CA
Cathy Frazier, Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio
Sports Basement, 610 Old Mason Street, SF
Stephan, Schroeder's Restaurant, 240 Front Street, SF
Clocksmith, 806 El Camino Real, San Carlos
Computer History Museum
Vinyl Solutions Records, 151 W. 25th Ave., San Mateo
Nancy Woods' Office Atrium, 20 Park Rd, Burlingame
Val Sarabashyan, Kaffeehaus, 92 E. Third Ave., San Mateo, CA
Peninsula Clock Shop, 2440 South El Camino Real, San Mateo