Looking Ahead to a 2026 Play Event [decided: Great Play Marathon]

[otistdog]

The Great Play Marathon option is still in the lead, and I’m still thinking about how to structure this event. It would certainly be possible to construct the field using player-supplied games – that might help both to stimulate discussion and to ensure that every player has some games on the field that make for interesting goals. Players would be encouraged to submit games that they think others would enjoy as well as games on their own to-play lists.

Some polls to help firm up the picture:

I would prefer that games in the pool be selected from…

• the top 3% of all games, including those with only a few ratings
• the top 10% of games with at least 5 ratings
• games submitted by players

[For reference, you can a sample of 30 games drawn from the two randomized options above: top 3% version and top 10% version.]

For my purposes, having 54 games in a 9x6 field is…

• too many games
• an OK number of games
• not enough games

If the field is 9x6 as shown above, I would most likely choose…

• a short course of 6 games (1 crossing between long edges)
• a medium course of 9 games (1 crossing between short edges)
• a long course of 12 games (2 crossings between long edges)
• a “free running” course of as many games as I feel like

Given the number of games I’m thinking of playing, I would want the marathon to last at least…

• 2 months
• 3 months
• 4 months
• 6 months

This event would work best for me during (choose up to two)…

• winter
• spring
• summer
• fall

EDIT: As Warrigal notes below, listing seasons is ambiguous with respect to calendar time due to the differences between the northern and southern hemispheres. Please assume northern hemisphere periods for each season, e.g. winter = Jan-Mar, spring = Apr-Jun, summer = Jul-Sep, fall = Oct-Dec.

[Warrigal (Garry Francis)]

I have zero interest in any of this, but I get really annoyed when Americans assume the whole world lives in America or, in this case, the northern hemisphere. In my part of the world, we don’t have fall, we have autumn, and our summer is your winter. Please replace seasons with a range of months so that everyone has a common understanding of what you’re talking about.

[otistdog]

Well, it looks like this is something that is in workable shape, so it will be time to put it on the calendar pretty soon.

Per present plan, the event will run May-July this year, with a field of 54 games. I was trying to put together the field earlier, but I ran into some incorrect data issues (e.g. commercial games without their license fields set appropriately) that had to be fixed first.

I also had an idea about how to improve the chance of finding a good course through the field as a player, via putting similar games next to each other instead of just laying them on the grid in random order. The idea was to create a kind of “terrain” to the field. An attempt to do that by hand wasn’t very satisfactory, but FLACRabbit volunteered to put together something to do the layout on an automated basis, and early results are promising (though limited by the available data).

Following is a roughed-out sample field to demonstrate the non-random field concept. (Note that, as with previous samples, this is not what the actual field will be for the event.)

list of games shown

A1	 Skybreak!                                          	 William Dooling                          	2019
A2	 The Lonely Troll                                   	 Amanda Walker                            	2022
A3	 Chlorophyll                                        	 Steph Cherrywell                         	2015
A4	 Coloratura                                         	 Lynnea Glasser                           	2013
A5	 Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World             	 Jedediah Berry                           	2015
A6	 Delusions                                          	 C. E. Forman                             	1996
A7	 Horse Master                                       	 Tom McHenry                              	2013
A8	 Animalia                                           	 Ian Michael Waddell                      	2018
A9	 Winter Storm Draco                                 	 Ryan Veeder                              	2015
B1	 Cut the Sky                                        	 SV Linwood                               	2025
B2	 Three-Card Trick                                   	 Chandler Groover                         	2016
B3	 Absence of Law                                     	 mathbrush                                	2017
B4	 The Moonlit Tower                                  	 Yoon Ha Lee                              	2002
B5	 Slouching Towards Bedlam                           	 Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto      	2003
B6	 Child's Play                                       	 Stephen Granade                          	2006
B7	 Make It Good                                       	 Jon Ingold                               	2009
B8	 my father's long, long legs                        	 michael lutz                             	2013
B9	 Beneath Floes                                      	 Bravemule; Pinnguaq                      	2015
C1	 The Grown-Up Detective Agency                      	 Brendan Patrick Hennessy                 	2022
C2	 Robin & Orchid                                     	 Ryan Veeder and Emily Boegheim           	2013
C3	 The Bat                                            	 Chandler Groover                         	2024
C4	 Eat Me                                             	 Chandler Groover                         	2017
C5	 Sunset Over Savannah                               	 Ivan Cockrum                             	1997
C6	 Savoir-Faire                                       	 Emily Short                              	2002
C7	 Kerkerkruip                                        	 Victor Gijsbers                          	2011
C8	 The Play                                           	 Dietrich Squinkifer (Squinky)            	2011
C9	 Harmonic Time-Bind Ritual Symphony                 	 Ben Kidwell and Maevele Straw            	2016
D1	 Stuff of Legend                                    	 Lance Campbell                           	2020
D2	 Lady Thalia and the Case of Clephan                	 Emery Joyce and N. Cormier               	2025
D3	 According to Cain                                  	 Jim Nelson                               	2022
D4	 Sundown                                            	 Charm Cochran                            	2024
D5	 Perdition's Flames                                 	 Michael J. Roberts                       	1993
D6	 City of Secrets                                    	 Emily Short                              	2003
D7	 Tavern Crawler                                     	 Josh Labelle                             	2020
D8	 Kinophobia                                         	 Bruno Dias                               	2025
D9	 My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition                      	 Naomi Norbez (call me Bez, he/they)      	2023
E1	 Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight             	 Drew Cook                                	2025
E2	 Hildy                                              	 J. Michael                               	2024
E3	 The Wizard Sniffer                                 	 Buster Hudson                            	2017
E4	 How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title  	 John Ziegler                             	2023
E5	 Alabaster                                          	 John Cater, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizab 	2009
E6	 Dr Horror's House of Terror                        	 Ade McT                                  	2021
E7	 The Good Ghost                                     	 Sarah Willson, Kirk Damato               	2022
E8	 Type Help                                          	 William Rous                             	2025
E9	 Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head               	 The Hungry Reader                        	2023
F1	 Charming                                           	 Kaylah Facey                             	2018
F2	 Zork                                               	 Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, 	1979
F3	 Illuminismo Iniziato                               	 Michael J. Coyne                         	2018
F4	 A Beauty Cold and Austere                          	 Mike Spivey                              	2017
F5	 Tristam Island                                     	 Hugo Labrande                            	2020
F6	 Vain Empires                                       	 Thomas Mack and Xavid                    	2020
F7	 Moments Out of Time                                	 L. Ross Raszewski                        	2001
F8	 free bird.                                         	 Passerine                                	2023
F9	 Hunting the Ripper                                 	 Will11                                   	2015

[Hidnook]

@otistdog

The idea was to create a kind of “terrain” to the field

Can you elaborate on that? Seems like an interesting concept.

[otistdog]

Sure! It’s not really complicated – the idea is just that games which are similar to one another are placed closer together on the field.

For example, in the mockup layout, the games The Lonely Troll, Chlorophyll and Coloratura all feature non-human protagonists and are all in a row. Similarly, Savoir-Faire, City of Secrets and Alabaster are all written wholly or in part by Emily Short and are close together. The cluster made up of Zork, Illuminismo Iniziato and A Beauty Cold and Austere is a trio of old-school parser puzzlers.

The theory is that those drawn to the common aspects of a particular group will be able to more easily chart a path through those games. Conversely, for those who don’t like the common aspects, that particular group of games will be easier to avoid. In practice, how useful the idea is will depend on the type of course chosen and the way the clusters are oriented on the field, as well as on personal preferences.

[otistdog]

FYI, I’ve set up the official event page.

I’ve also been running various simulated generations of the field to see what the real one might look like.

A logic mistake affects some of my estimates above: I added two numbers with different filtering criteria to get the figure of 10,700 games with fewer than 5 ratings. Using the most recent IFDB backup data, the correct value is around 11,500 games, i.e. a little over 75%.

I’m seeing 15,133 total games known. Of those, 12,324 are (according to license and genre data) non-commercial, non-adult, non-flagged games that meet the basic eligibility requirements. Of those, 9,007 have fewer than 5 ratings (i.e. a little less than 75%).

This leaves a total of 3,317 games in the initial eligibility pool. The top 10% of those by adjusted rating is a group of just 332 games, as opposed to the 454 used for the above sample picks. Because the contestants in the Free IF Playoffs were highly-rated popular games, the reduction in the pool size increases the frequency of previously-appearing games in the sample sets. In a set of ten sample runs for which I counted them up, the average fraction of repeat games was 23.33% (i.e. 12 or 13 games out of 54).

For comparison purposes, I did the same 10-run tests with eligibility pools of the top 12.5% (i.e. top 415 qualifying games) and top 15% (i.e. top 498 qualifying games). For those, the average fraction of repeats was almost identical, both rounding to 17% (i.e. 9 games out of 54). I think the “long tail” pattern of player picks from the People’s Champion Tournament contributes to that, but it could just be coincidence.

Note that those are just averages, and the actual result can vary quite a bit. The top 10% study samples ranged from 10 repeat games to 16 repeat games, and I know that at least one that I looked at before doing the study had 18 repeats – a full third of the field. Also, on occasion I have seen some significant clumping, e.g. a half dozen games from the Little Match Girl series, or an unusually large number of games from the same author.

[otistdog]

To give a better idea of how the terrain-based layout would work in general, here’s an example of it applied to the top 54 qualifying games. If you wanted an “all the hits” field, this is what it would look like (using Dec 01 2025 data).

The process is stochastic, so any given run may produce a somewhat different arrangement, but the main clusters tend to be stable. I’ve fixed a bug or two and am satisfied that it’s working pretty well.

An idea that occurred to me is to have wildcard squares. This would be a small subset of squares (4 total) that would allow a runner to choose any game at all when entering them. For those looking to clear some items lingering on their to-play list, this would create an opportunity to do so. For those looking for undiscovered gems, this might add some to the mix. The wildcard squares would be laid out in a pattern that makes it relatively easy to include them regardless of your course type.

[otistdog]

So far only four people have been hardy enough souls to sign up without seeing a finalized field!

I’ve run some more trials on sample field selection at various top N% levels, and the results are… inconclusive. It seems to me that the best method of choosing a field is to make it democratic. I’ve pulled a sample from each eligibility pool (top 10%, top 12.5% and top 15%), as follows:

key to option A

A1	 31st March, Midnight.                                    	 Prof. Lily and Kastel and Nitori         	2024
A2	 Spring Gothic                                            	 Prof. Lily and Kastel and Lacunova and N 	2025
A3	 Rescue at Quickenheath                                   	 Mo Farr                                  	2024
A4	 the sea god                                              	 christine mi                             	2024
A5	 Trouble in Sector 471                                    	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2022
A6	 The Temple of Shorgil                                    	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2018
A7	 Heretic's Hope                                           	 G. C. Baccaris                           	2019
A8	 Known Unknowns                                           	 Brendan Patrick Hennessy                 	2016
A9	 Hansel et Gretel - La Revanche                           	 Corax                                    	2018
B1	 Vespers                                                  	 Jason Devlin                             	2005
B2	 Midnight. Swordfight.                                    	 Chandler Groover                         	2015
B3	 Heroes                                                   	 Sean Barrett                             	2001
B4	 So Far                                                   	 Andrew Plotkin                           	1996
B5	 The Mulldoon Legacy                                      	 Jon Ingold                               	1999
B6	 The Wand                                                 	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2017
B7	 Sub Rosa                                                 	 Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy             	2015
B8	 Ataraxia                                                 	 Lauren O'Donoghue                        	2022
B9	 Dark and Deep                                            	 Amanda Walker                            	2024
C1	 Delightful Wallpaper                                     	 Andrew Plotkin ('Edgar O. Weyrd')        	2006
C2	 Lost Pig                                                 	 Admiral Jota                             	2007
C3	 Textfire Golf                                            	 Adam Cadre                               	2001
C4	 Off-Season at the Dream Factory                          	 B.J. Best (writing as “Carroll Lewis")   	2021
C5	 Risorgimento Represso                                    	 Michael J. Coyne                         	2003
C6	 Worldsmith                                               	 Ade McT                                  	2016
C7	 Chuk and the Arena                                       	 Agnieszka Trzaska                        	2019
C8	 4x4 Archipelago                                          	 Agnieszka Trzaska                        	2021
C9	 Nested                                                   	 Orteil                                   	2011
D1	 Death By Powerpoint                                      	 Jack Welch                               	2018
D2	 Metamorphoses                                            	 Emily Short                              	2000
D3	 Tethered                                                 	 Linus Åkesson                            	2018
D4	 I Am Prey                                                	 Joey Tanden                              	2023
D5	 Blighted Isle                                            	 Eric Eve                                 	2007
D6	 The Elysium Enigma                                       	 Eric Eve                                 	2006
D7	 Forsaken Denizen                                         	 C.E.J. Pacian                            	2024
D8	 A Dark Room                                              	 Michael Townsend                         	2013
D9	 Summit                                                   	 Phantom Williams                         	2015
E1	 Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917                         	 Autumn Chen                              	2025
E2	 Firebird                                                 	 Bonnie Montgomery                        	1998
E3	 Babel                                                    	 Ian Finley                               	1997
E4	 Cannery Vale                                             	 Hanon Ondricek (as Keanhid Connor)       	2018
E5	 The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton                            	 Hanon Ondricek                           	2020
E6	 Assembly                                                 	 Ben Kirwin                               	2023
E7	 Neon Haze                                                	 Porpentine and Brenda Neotenomie         	2015
E8	 Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost (expanded 2019 version) 	 Briar Rose                               	2019
E9	 Lost in time                                             	 Gerardo Adesso                           	2017
F1	 Turandot                                                 	 Victor Gijsbers                          	2019
F2	 The Fairy Woods                                          	 rosencrantz                              	2014
F3	 Bronze                                                   	 Emily Short                              	2006
F4	 Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom                          	 S. John Ross                             	2007
F5	 One King to Loot them All                                	 Lancelot                                 	2023
F6	 Delve!                                                   	 BerkaZerka                               	2017
F7	 Day of the Dead--One Soul's All Souls Procession         	 Shadowdrake27                            	2019
F8	 The Little Four                                          	 Allyson Gray (as 'Captain Arthur Hasting 	2025
F9	 Murderworld                                              	 Austin Auclair                           	2025

key to option B

A1	 Hibernated 1 - This place is death                           	 Stefan Vogt                              	2018
A2	 Plasmorphosis                                                	 Agnieszka Trzaska                        	2022
A3	 Gaia, Živa, Jarilo                                           	 Harkness (as Formless)                   	2020
A4	 Spring Gothic                                                	 Prof. Lily and Kastel and Lacunova and N 	2025
A5	 Lore Distance Relationship                                   	 Naomi "Bez" Norbez                       	2020
A6	 Yes, Another Game with a Dragon!                             	 John Kean                                	2000
A7	 Color the Truth                                              	 mathbrush                                	2016
A8	 Pirate's Plunder!                                            	 Tiberius Thingamus                       	2010
A9	 Humbug                                                       	 Graham Cluley                            	1991
B1	 En Garde                                                     	 Jack Welch                               	2018
B2	 The Axolotl Project                                          	 Samantha Vick                            	2013
B3	 Cactus Blue Motel                                            	 Astrid Dalmady                           	2016
B4	 Making dumplings                                             	 Autumn Chen                              	2024
B5	 A Paradox Between Worlds                                     	 Autumn Chen                              	2021
B6	 The Edifice                                                  	 Lucian P. Smith                          	1997
B7	 A Rope of Chalk                                              	 Ryan Veeder                              	2020
B8	 Honk!                                                        	 Alex Harby                               	2023
B9	 Fallacy of Dawn                                              	 Robb Sherwin                             	2001
C1	 One Eye Open                                                 	 Caelyn Sandel (as Colin Sandel) and Caro 	2010
C2	 Brain Guzzlers from Beyond!                                  	 Steph Cherrywell                         	2015
C3	 Birdland                                                     	 Brendan Patrick Hennessy                 	2015
C4	 Invisible Parties                                            	 Sam Kabo Ashwell (as Psychopup)          	2014
C5	 Rover's Day Out                                              	 Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman       	2009
C6	 Fail-Safe                                                    	 Jon Ingold                               	2000
C7	 Metamorphoses                                                	 Emily Short                              	2000
C8	 Violet                                                       	 Jeremy Freese                            	2008
C9	 Forsaken Denizen                                             	 C.E.J. Pacian                            	2024
D1	 Nightfall                                                    	 Eric Eve                                 	2008
D2	 Draculaland                                                  	 Robin Johnson                            	2016
D3	 Walker & Silhouette                                          	 C.E.J. Pacian                            	2009
D4	 Ollie Ollie Oxen Free                                        	 Carolyn VanEseltine                      	2013
D5	 Nested                                                       	 Orteil                                   	2011
D6	 Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home                       	 Andrew Plotkin                           	2010
D7	 The Dreamhold                                                	 Andrew Plotkin                           	2004
D8	 Lost Pig                                                     	 Admiral Jota                             	2007
D9	 Gestures Towards Divinity                                    	 Charm Cochran                            	2023
E1	 DOL-OS                                                       	 manonamora                               	2023
E2	 Bogeyman                                                     	 Elizabeth Smyth                          	2018
E3	 A Murder in Fairyland                                        	 Abigail Corfman                          	2020
E4	 HUNTING UNICORN                                              	 Chandler Groover                         	2014
E5	 Epitaph                                                      	 Max Kreminski                            	2016
E6	 EYE                                                          	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2025
E7	 The Wand                                                     	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2017
E8	 Lady Thalia and the Masterpiece of Moldavia                  	 Emery Joyce and N. Cormier               	2023
E9	 Final Selection                                              	 Sam Gordon                               	2006
F1	 LIDO                                                         	 Elizabeth Smyth                          	2021
F2	 The Saltcast Adventure                                       	 Beth Carpenter                           	2024
F3	 An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You F 	 Mandy Benanav                            	2024
F4	 The Chinese Room                                             	 Harry Josephine Giles and Joey Jones     	2007
F5	 Stay?                                                        	 E. Jade Lomax                            	2020
F6	 Ascension of Limbs                                           	 AKheon                                   	2020
F7	 The Vambrace of Destiny                                      	 Arthur DiBianca                          	2023
F8	 Delve!                                                       	 BerkaZerka                               	2017
F9	 The Ebb and Flow of the Tide                                 	 Peter Nepstad                            	2006

key to option C

A1	 Cat Petting Simulator 2014                                   	 neongrey                                 	2014
A2	 Draculaland                                                	 Robin Johnson                          	2016
A3	 Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma                           	 Juhana Leinonen                          	2010
A4	 Miss Gosling's Last Case                                     	 Daniel M. Stelzer                        	2024
A5	 Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917                             	 Autumn Chen                              	2025
A6	 Swigian                                                      	 Mathbrush (as Rainbus North)             	2017
A7	 Tales of the Traveling Swordsman                             	 Mike Snyder                              	2006
A8	 Moon-Shaped                                                  	 Jason Ermer                              	2006
A9	 The Plant                                                    	 Michael J. Roberts                       	1998
B1	 Fingertips: Fingertips                                       	 Michael D. Hilborn                       	2012
B2	 His Majesty's Royal Space Navy Service Handbook              	 Austin Auclair                           	2023
B3	 Reflections                                                  	 Tristin Grizel Dean                      	2021
B4	 The Little Match Girl 5: The Hunter's Vow                    	 Ryan Veeder                              	2024
B5	 New Year's Eve, 2019                                         	 Autumn Chen                              	2022
B6	 Pageant                                                      	 Autumn Chen                              	2020
B7	 Turandot                                                     	 Victor Gijsbers                          	2019
B8	 A Murder in Fairyland                                        	 Abigail Corfman                          	2020
B9	 Moondrop Isle                                                	 Ryan Veeder, Nils Fagerburg, Joey Jones, 	2024
C1	 Save the Date                                                	 Chris Cornell                            	2013
C2	 A Witch's Word                                               	 RainbowStarbird                          	2017
C3	 Future Threads                                               	 Xavid                                    	2017
C4	 The Bones of Rosalinda                                       	 Agnieszka Trzaska                        	2022
C5	 First Draft of the Revolution                                	 Emily Short, Liza Daly and inkle         	2012
C6	 The Kuolema                                                  	 Ben Jackson                              	2023
C7	 Messages From the Universe Graveyard                         	 KADW                                     	2024
C8	 The Missing Ring                                             	 Felicity Drake                           	2019
C9	 You                                                          	 Carter X Gwertzman                       	2024
D1	 KING OF BEES IN FANTASY LAND                                 	 Brendan Patrick Hennessy                 	2013
D2	 Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom                              	 S. John Ross                             	2007
D3	 4x4 Archipelago                                              	 Agnieszka Trzaska                        	2021
D4	 The Mary Jane of Tomorrow                                    	 Emily Short                              	2016
D5	 Pytho's Mask                                                 	 Emily Short                              	2001
D6	 Starry Seeksorrow                                            	 Caleb Wilson (as Ayla Rose)              	2015
D7	 To Spring Open                                               	 Peter Berman and Yoon Ha Lee (as Two-Bit 	2015
D8	 CYBERQUEEN                                                   	 Porpentine                               	2012
D9	 The Axolotl Project                                          	 Samantha Vick                            	2013
E1	 The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer                     	 P.B. Parjeter                            	2025
E2	 Reference and Representation: An Approach to First-Order Sem 	 Ryan Veeder                              	2016
E3	 Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates                         	 Victor Gijsbers                          	2023
E4	 The Anachronist                                              	 Peter Levine                             	2016
E5	 Worlds Apart                                                 	 Suzanne Britton                          	1999
E6	 Junior Arithmancer                                           	 Mike Spivey                              	2018
E7	 The Curse of the Scarab                                      	 Nils Fagerburg                           	2020
E8	 Ravine                                                       	 Joanna Berry                             	2018
E9	 Lore Distance Relationship                                   	 Naomi "Bez" Norbez                       	2020
F1	 Good Bones: A Haunted Housewarming                           	 Leon Lin                                 	2023
F2	 Dragon Fate                                                  	 Kris Schnee                              	2016
F3	 The Saltcast Adventure                                       	 Beth Carpenter                           	2024
F4	 Faute De Servo                                               	 Jack Welch                               	2018
F5	 Der Angstbaum                                                	 Jens Bojaryn                             	2002
F6	 The Owl Consults                                             	 Thomas Mack, Nick Mathewson, and Cidney  	2017
F7	 18 Rooms to Home                                             	 Carolyn VanEseltine                      	2015
F8	 Filaments                                                    	 FibreTigre                               	2003
F9	 Bill Belichick Offseason Simulator                           	 Jon Bois                                 	2015

Look them over carefully, and vote for whichever one(s) offer one or more workable paths to you. (Note that you can vote for one, two or all three.) Whichever one wins the vote will become the official field. Voting for a field implies that you’ll be registering if that field wins, so be sure to pick out a color code for your runner’s icon if you’re voting.

I’m ready to be a runner for field(s)…

• A - drawn from the top 10%
• B - drawn from the top 12.5%
• C - drawn from the top 15%

[otistdog]

There are a number of people who voted for the Great Play Marathon concept but haven’t officially signed up and haven’t yet voted for one of the options for the field. @AwesomeAdam12345, @Encorm, @Jade, @jwalrus, @Melisande, @Piergiorgio_d_errico, @severedhand, @smwhr: What are your thoughts?

For those who have already signed up and/or voted for one or more fields, have you worked out any potential courses that you’d like to share?

I noticed that on Field A, there are a couple of paths rich in classics: column 2 and row B. Each has some interesting detours available via diagonal moves if you’ve played some of them already.

[otistdog]

UPDATE on Field Option C: Thousand Lives requires registration of an email address to play, so it doesn’t meet the qualifying criteria. It has been replaced by the next game on the randomly-sorted list for that field, which is Draculaland. The field is otherwise unchanged.

[severedhand]

I aspirationally opted for this event, especially compared to the other ideas at the time, but I’m unlikely to have time to think about it or participate.

-Wade

[jwalrus (Adam Biltcliffe)]

@otistdog

There are a number of people who voted for the Great Play Marathon concept but haven’t officially signed up and haven’t yet voted for one of the options for the field.

I’m most drawn to field B, but you requested people not sign up unless they’re committing to register for the event, and I’m not yet sure enough what my work-life balance is going to look like in May to do that, so I’ve just been watching for now.

[otistdog]

I’m glad to see that people seem to be finding it easy to chart courses through more than one field option. The field arrangement program seems to have done a lot to improve that aspect. (Thanks very much to @FLACRabbit for writing it!)

Option C is very much in the lead right now. I’ve already done some sneak peeks of games on the various fields, some of which turned into just playing all the way through – how about you?

[lpsmith (Lucian Smith)]

I feel like if I ended up with enough time to do this (which I would hope I would–it sounds fun), I would choose games completely at random. I think I’d do a ‘free run’, where I would roll to pick my opening game, then roll to go a random direction, then repeat until I ended up in a dead end. It might be a fun challenge to play and review games, trying to hit a dead end before the deadline.

[otistdog]

Wow, graphical course plots! And with the potential courses already shared, it looks like there will be plenty of criss-crossing.

A quick compilation of the “interest score” for each game in Option C, based on the number of people publicly planning a course through the game so far:

Score	Game
3.00	The Owl Consults
2.83	Worlds Apart
2.50	Miss Gosling's Last Case
2.50	Starry Seeksorrow
2.00	A Murder in Fairyland
2.00	First Draft of the Revolution
2.00	Messages From the Universe Graveyard
2.00	Pytho’s Mask
1.50	Draculaland
1.50	Dragon Fate
1.50	Faute de Servo
1.50	Future Threads
1.50	Pageant
1.50	Ravine
1.50	Reflections
1.50	The Anachronist
1.50	The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer
1.50	The Plant
1.33	Junior Arithmancer
1.00	18 Rooms to Home
1.00	Der Angstbaum
1.00	His Majesty's Space Navy Service Handbook
1.00	Last-Minute Magic
1.00	Moondrop Isle
1.00	Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917
1.00	Swigian
1.00	The Axolotl Project
1.00	The Bones of Rosalinda
1.00	The Little Match Girl 5: Hunter's Vow
1.00	The Mary Jane of Tomorrow
1.00	The Saltcast Adventure
1.00	Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom
1.00	Turandot
1.00	You
0.83	The Curse of the Scarab
0.50	4x4 Archipelago
0.50	Bill Belichick Offseason Simulator
0.50	CYBERQUEEN
0.50	Fingertips: Fingertips
0.50	Good Bones
0.50	KING OF BEES IN FANTASYLAND
0.50	Moon-Shaped
0.50	Reference and Representation…
0.50	Save the Date
0.50	Tales of the Traveling Swordsman
0.50	The Kuolema
0.50	The Missing Ring

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

I see The Missing Ring on the bottom of that list. Just popping in to say don’t sleep on it, readers! It’s a really solid game, great to share with a classroom or group. Never recommended it to someone without them saying “that was fun, I liked that” or something similar. It’s chill, low-key, not a flashy game but just a well-put-together mystery game set during a family gathering.

[Lionstooth]

Seconding the recommendation for The Missing Ring! It’s a really charming and thoughtful game. I’ve played it before and I didn’t think a replay would be a good use of my planned route, but I’ll put it forward for players who haven’t tried it yet.

Editing to add: for other recommendations among the low-ranked, Good Bones and Reference and Representation &c are both fun. CYBERQUEEN is… not fun, but worth playing.

[EJoyce (Emery Joyce)]

C is the easiest grid for me to plot a course on that doesn’t hit games I’ve already played, but (although I voted for it) I am perversely a little sad that the leading option is the only one that doesn’t have Forsaken Denizen on it, because I always want to encourage more people to play Forsaken Denizen.

[otistdog]

OK, the poll for selection of the field is officially closed, and option C is the winner. I’ve updated the FAQ accordingly.

We have 10 registered runners, plus several more people who have expressed an interest in the concept but not yet officially signed up. (I’ll be joining as a runner myself, but only after everyone else gets a chance so I get the last assigned number.) Registration will remain open until April 30, so chart your course, pick your color and join the fun!