ESCAPE THIS PODCAST Game Master’S Notes

ESCAPE THIS PODCAST Game Master’s Notes

The notes below are a guide for game masters. They contain all required information to run the specified room, including: All room items All puzzles and solutions All correct (and some incorrect) player actions Full room introduction and conclusion Additional notes and tips

Do not read these notes if you intend to play the escape room; there are spoilers everywhere.

These notes are for people playing the rooms with friends, family, enemies or strangers. These notes are not to be used to create recordings, videos, or other media featuring the escape room. If you want to use these notes to make something cool or creative, please send us an email at [email protected] to let us know. These notes are free. If you paid money to obtain these notes, someone was being very rude to you. I’m so sorry.

The bar

Notes

If it comes up – and it well might – players do NOT have their own phones during this room.

Our special Patreon donor for this episode is Scott Weiss, who has very generously elected the wonderful Molly to take his place as a character in the room. But because I have this power, Scott, you can have a tiny cameo, too. Thank you so much for your support.

[Secret GM note: the pool table puzzle means your players' maps will be VERY important. If you want, it mightn't be the worst idea to draw one yourself they can reference.]

Introduction

You're tired. You're cold. You're a little bit wet – but that's just from the rain, thankfully. You've been sitting in this gutter for hours, your hands in cuffs, waiting for the police to let you go.

It's totally unfair. They're clearly making an example of you. All you did was find yourself unable to get past the bouncers at Magnetic, the best bar in town, and decide that the best solution was to sneak around the back and 'accidentally' break a window and climb in through the bathroom. Okay, not your best idea. Especially since you know nothing about breaking windows properly and ended up getting stuck as you tried to clamber over glass shards. The police were called, and now you've been waiting for them to hand down your sentence for so long, the bar's closed.

The policeman finally approaches you and tosses back your confiscated licences. He gives you the glare of a man who has seen this sort of thing so many times, he's almost annoyed at how predictable you were. “The breakage and the trespassing are going to come out to quite a hefty fine. Possibly even jail time if you have any priors. You don't, do you?” He eyes you suspiciously.

After you respond, he pauses for a moment. “On the other hand, there is one way this could all go away. A favour for a favour. How would you like to do a little investigative work?”

He explains what he means. Apparently, this bar, Magnetic, has staff that are suspected of being involved in the fencing of illegal goods. The evidence is all circumstantial but very damning. The police just need something concrete – the illegal goods themselves, recordings, proof of shady meetings, whatever. And they're certain the proof is somewhere inside the bar.

Since this might be your only chance to get inside Magnetic, you agree. And this time, you don't have to go in through a window. The place is totally empty. You take a look around: you've entered through a door in the centre of the south wall, and directly to your left is a bin. Off in the near left corner is a pool table, and in the bottom right corner is a DJ booth. The upper left corner has a roped-off couch, a VIP 2 area. Between this couch and the pool table is a pinball machine and a dartboard. Against the centre of the north wall is a single table with empty glasses stacked on it. Most of the right wall is taken up by the bar, but towards the upper corner you see a box labelled 'lost'. Suspended from the ceiling in the very centre of the room is a disco ball. And finally, attached to each wall, you see a funny little black box. You aren't sure what it is, but it looks like something to do with lighting.

Right as you're about to get started, the policeman's phone rings. He groans and says, “I have to take this. You... look around, but don't do anything stupid.”

Stupid? You? Honestly.

Observable items

Bar: There's nothing of note on top of the bar except for a single coaster. It doesn’t move, like it’s been glued to the surface, but written on it you see the words, DRINK OF THE DAY. Underneath the counter are shelves packed with clean glasswear, and behind it is a cabinet with bottles of every kind of alcohol and non-alcohol you can imagine. Posted on the wall behind the bar is an enormous cocktail list.

Bin: You take a look inside the bin. Surprisingly, there isn't any rubbish in here: what there is, is a stack of driver's licences. Confiscated for being fakes, maybe? Ah, yes: there's a piece of paper taped to the side of the bin that says, “Reminder: hold licence to bright light to test authenticity”. Well, you don't need a bright light to see that there are things wrong with these licences. Some have cartoons instead of photos, licence numbers without enough digits, birth dates in the 1700s... you're not surprised they got taken. On another note, there is one other item in the bin: a CD single of 'Stairway to Heaven'. Oh, wait; it’s just the case, not the CD itself.

Black boxes: There are no identifying words or markers on these boxes at all. They're just plain, shiny black. If there's a way to get them open, you can't see it. All you have is your sneaking suspicion that they're related to lighting.

Cocktail list: It's a huge list. There must be at least fifty drinks described here, with a full list of ingredients. It's not an instructional recipe for bartenders, just a rough guide for customers, so it doesn't go into detail about amounts of ingredients or anything. Here's an example:

MANHATTAN Rye whiskey Sweet red vermouth Angostura bitters (Garnish: Maraschino cherry Optional rim: orange)

Dartboard: It's a normal dartboard as far as you can tell, with several darts sticking out of it. The darts seem normal, except each one has 'cL' painted on it. [Show players supplementary dartboard image; GMs, be familiar with the scoring rules of darts.]

Disco ball: This isn't one of those old school disco balls that just hangs from the roof and sparkles; sure, it is still mirrored so it will reflect, but it's also electronic. It 3 doesn't spin and properly shoot pretty lights unless it's turned on.

DJ booth: It looks like a fancy yet idiotproof setup. Everything is labelled so you know exactly what each button, switch and dial does, and there's an input for anything from iPhones to USBs all the way to vinyl records. Taped to the front is a handwritten sign saying, “Sorry we can't play S2H. We've had complaints about backmasking.” [If players get truly stumped by what this means, you can hint or outright say that it's when a message is secretly recorded into a song and can be heard when it's played backwards. But it might be better to let them guess.] The one thing this station doesn't seem to have right now is music. Must be stored somewhere else, or the DJ must take it home every night. Whatever the reason, there's nothing here for you to play.

Door: The door itself is normal, but there is one thing you didn't notice as you came in (because the door itself was in the way): on the wall right by its hinges, there's a small keypad of letters. You can't see what it controls.

Empty glasses: There are about a dozen glasses littered over the table, all of them empty except for a few dregs and the little garnishes that you don't actually eat or drink, and the decoration around the rims (like, sweet drinks often have a sugar rim, but tequila often has a salt rim, or sometimes bartenders get creative and use chocolate or coffee or something).

Lost box: Apparently the only thing that gets lost in this place is phones. There are dozens, dozens, of mobile phones lying in here.

Pinball machine: Not only is it working, it's flashing a message of 'FREE GAME!' This is your lucky day!

Pool table: It's s standard-sized rectangular pool table with six pockets (one in each corner and one each at the midpoints of the long sides), with all the different-coloured balls scattered across the surface. There are no cues in sight; you must have to pay to get those.

VIP area: Until some cleaners get in here, you don't really want to be a VIP. This special area is just a single booth, and it's been very well used. It's dirty and sticky, the seats are scratched and worn, and there's a pile of used, scrunched-up napkins in the middle of the table.

Actions

Bar – placing a random glass on the Drink of the Day coaster: Nothing seems to happen. Maybe there's more to it than that.

Bar – pouring a grasshopper cocktail with the correct measurements (3cL of each of the main 3 ingredients) into a glass and placing it on the Drink of the Day coaster: Once you're sure you've got the correct ratios of ingredients, you pour them into a cocktail glass and place it on the suspiciously-stuck coaster. Once you've finished pouring it all in, something strange happens. A tiny flash of green light appears under the glass's base, and the coaster... depresses into the counter. It's a secret switch! You wonder if it was something about the weight and the colour of the drink that activated it. You wait, unsure what this has done, when from somewhere 4 else in the room you hear a small whirring noise. You look around, and you see the little black boxes on the walls are opening! And now that they're open, beams of laser light are shining out of them. Two of them shine out a red beam, one shines a yellow, one green. Unlike the disco ball light, these ones don't move around.

Bin – after turning on disco ball, holding up 'fake' IDs to its light: The fact that the disco ball is rotating makes this a bit frustrating, but you hold the IDs up one by one and let the bright light catch them. You aren't a bouncer, so you aren't certain what you're looking for, but it becomes clear right away. Literally. The first ID you try goes positively see-through under the light. You're sure a real licence isn't supposed to do that. The second one you try does exactly the same thing. In fact, every single one fails the test... except one. One is either real, or a much better quality fake than the others. You look at it closely. It belongs to someone called Molly, and the thing that looked fake was the fact that its licence number is 8613 9014 3168. That's only 12 digits instead of the usual 16. However, there is space for four extra digits at the end... maybe the licence is real and they were just worn away.

Black boxes – after activating the lasers, following their beams around the room: Some of them bounce off the disco ball, making them difficult to follow, but you do your best. The two red beams finish at the empty glasses' table and the pool table, the green hits the lost phones box, and the yellow goes down to the door.

Cocktail list – looking for cocktails with mint, 3 ingredients OR a biscuit crumb rim: You scour the list for anything that fits, but the problem is you find too many. At least twenty drinks on here fit the criteria you're looking at.

Cocktail list – looking for cocktails with mint AND a biscuit crumb rim: Now that you have two criteria, narrowing the list down is much easier. In fact, there's only one drink on here that matches both mint and a biscuit crumb.

GRASSHOPPER Creme de menthe Creme de cacao Fresh cream (Rim: biscuit crumb)

DJ booth – playing record from the pool table: You sit the record in place and get it spinning. And it works! You don't recognise the song, though. The lyrics are abstract but uninteresting. The singer's voice is a bit weird.

DJ booth – playing record from the pool table backwards: Refer to conclusion!

Door – inputting password FEVER into the keypad: The keypad chimes, and suddenly, white light floods the room. You've turned on the disco ball! Wow, it's slowly spinning and shooting powerful beams of white light in all directions. It might be fun while the place is full of happy drunk people, but right now you just want to cover your eyes.

Empty glasses – sniffing the glasses for one that smells like mint: You don't feel wonderful about smelling other people's dirty glasses, but... you do it. You get a variety of scents, some appealing, some less so. Only one of them smells like mint – a cocktail glass with a biscuit crumb around its rim. Must have been a dessert drink.

Lost box – searching for any un-password protected phone: It takes a bit of searching, but finally you find one whose owner wasn't so concerned about security. You get to its home screen with no issues. If you go through this phone, you don't find anything of interest on it.

Lost box – using un-password protected phone to call the number from the VIP area: You dial the numbers and hit call, and immediately, one of the other phones in the box starts ringing! You pick it up and try to open it, but sadly, this one is password-protected. It needs a four-digit code.

Lost box – unlocking password-protected phone with pin code 4109 from the licence pattern: The phone unlocks! You search around on it for any suspicious messages or pictures, but don't have much luck. There is, however, a single recording saved on it that was made tonight.

Lost box – playing the phone’s recording either normally or through the DJ booth: You press play and listen. The background noise is extremely loud, so you struggle to catch words, but you do your best. You hear a female voice:

“All according to plan. Your bouncer took the licence. Don't worry, I'm not actually Molly, it's just the codename. Now I'll leave this phone behind so you can hear this...”

She keeps talking, but there's too much screaming for you to hear. Someone's playing darts in the background, and they have a lot of spectators. “Oh no, terrible start!” you hear. Then, “Was that a twenty? A twenty?! Oh... no, just missed!” Then, “Wow, how big a coincidence is that!”

Then there's a dismayed cry. The woman's voice returns, “My drink! You've spilled my drink!”

Then you hear a man: “I'm so sorry. I'll go to the bar and remake it right away. A drink of the day, was it?”

“Yes. Do you mix drinks better than you play darts?”

“For you? About the same.”

Then the recording stops.

Pinball machine – playing a game: You start playing, and it's fun! You spend a good ten minutes on it and achieve a score of 21,500 before getting game over. You feel pretty good about that until a screen pops up: the high scores screen. It shows you the top five scores and the names of the people who achieved them (maximum three letters):

TIF: 3 MILLION DEB: 2 MILLION IVO: 2 MILLION BEN: 2 MILLION REG: 1 MILLION

Wow. These scores are so high, the machine stopped calculating and just started rounding off. 6

Pool table – placing balls in pockets, red in the top centre, green in the top right, yellow in the bottom centre and red in the bottom left, as indicated by lasers: Once the last ball goes in the pocket, you hear a clunk come from the very middle of the table. Nothing's changed on top, so you look underneath. On the underside of the table, you see a section of the wood has dropped down, revealing a secret compartment. You crawl under and reach inside, and pull out an unlabelled vinyl record.

VIP area – unfolding the used napkins: They're really wet, so this is not fun, but you go through all the napkins just in case. They're all blank, except one. Written in what looks like lipstick is a message. It starts with the name ‘Scott’, then it has a mobile phone number, then 'xox call me!’

VIP area – sniffing the napkins: Every single one of them smells minty.

Conclusion

You've heard of secret messages being inserted backwards into song lyrics, but you've always been pretty sceptical. But as you reverse the song on the record, and it takes on that warped sound that all backwards recordings get, there's no doubt about it: there are words in this. They're in the same female voice as the one from the phone.

“Monday, 1pm. The McDonald's on Bollard Street. Hand the cashier named Eric the Molly licence and he'll give you the money.”

Well, there's the evidence you were looking for. You can tell the policeman everything he wants to know. Because you're a good, upstanding citizen who's learned the error of your ways. You wouldn't take the licence to that McDonald's yourself and take these criminals' money. Never.

GM's explanation

If you play a round of pinball, when you inevitably lose you'll be shown the high scores screen. The top 5 scores are listed: 3 million, 2 million, 2 million, 2 million and 1 million. It must start rounding off once you get to the millions. Now, look at the winners' names: they're all made up of 3 letters, and their scores tell you which letter is important. Take the first place scorer, TIF. With their score of 3 million, this tells you the third letter is the important one. Continue this with the other names gets you an E, V, E and R, spelling the word FEVER. This is the code for the keypad behind the door, which turns on the disco ball.

The disco ball flashes quite brightly, so not only does it blind you, it's enough to shine on the IDs from the bin to see if they're fake or not. Hold them up to the light one by one, and you'll discover that only one of them is real. Kind of strange that someone's actual ID got mixed up in this bin of fakes. Maybe this person is worth investigating.

Now, let's go over to the VIP area. All the napkins on its table are used and wet, but if you unfold them you'll see that one has a phone number written on it. Hmm, if only you could call it! Well, rummaging around the box of lost phones, you're sure to 7 find one that isn't password-locked. Use it to call the number, and one of the other phones in the box will ring. This one, however, needs a password. Luckily, the ID of your suspect contains a number pattern in its licence number, which will give you a four digit solution: the licence number is 8613 9014 3168. As you know, in this state/country/universe, licence numbers are supposed to have 16 digits, so 4 are missing. Perhaps you'll notice the first and the third groups of numbers on this licence are mirror images of each other. The final four numbers – and the password for the locked phone – are the mirror image of the second lot of numbers, 4109. Now you can unlock the phone, and listen to a recording that's recently been saved on it.

You hear on the recording that your suspect spilled her drink; that means that the wet napkins in the VIP area are covered in whatever she was drinking. You can only get a minty whiff off the napkins, which isn't enough information to know what she was drinking, but if you smell the empty glasses on the small table (gross), only one of them will smell minty. And the rim of this glass has a biscuity crumb on it. Mint plus a biscuit crumb rim? According to the cocktail list, that must be a grasshopper. Excellent; now you know what drink to make.

The one problem is the cocktail list is more for customers than bartenders, so it doesn't tell you how much of each ingredient to put in. For that, you'll need to think back to the other part of the phone call: the dart game. The bartender was throwing, and he said he plays darts like he makes drinks. Using your suspect's reactions to his throws, you can figure out which three darts are his. Coincidentally, they all scored 3 points. Put these together with the three ingredients of the grasshopper (3 centilitres of Creme de menthe, 3 of Creme de cacao, and 3 of fresh cream), and now you've got a complete recipe. If you know what to do with it.

Under the bar, there are of course stacks and stacks of clean glasses. And on top of the bar, there’s a Drink of the Day coaster that doesn't move. It's stuck in place – because it's actually a pressure switch that activates the laser lights. Once you correctly make your suspect's drink, pouring it into a glass and putting it on the coaster will give it the perfect pressure to get the lasers going. From the four black boxes, different coloured lights will shoot across the room, some in straight lines, some bouncing off the disco ball. One will end up pointing at the empty glasses table, one at the lost phones, one at the door and one at the pool table. In other words, the top centre, top right corner, bottom centre and bottom left corner.

Now, hopefully the colours of the lights will hint to you that this relates to the pool table, because the places these lasers point to correspond with its pockets. Place a ball of the matching colour in each pocket (red in the top centre, green in the top right, yellow in the bottom centre and red in the bottom left), and a secret compartment will open up under the table! In here you'll find an old school record, which can be played at the DJ booth. Not only can it be played, like any good record, it can be played backwards. (This is hinted at by the note on the DJ booth and the case of Stairway to Heaven in the bin.) Doing so will reveal the details of where the stolen goods will be hidden – great! You can tell the police! Y'know, if that's what you want to do...