I’ve been following trackbacks from the various articles mentioned here. I found the one for Jack Mottram’s submit response blog. Is the story you get from the email supposed to be about what happened to him at the station?

Then, later, this:

I created a twitter account to follow Jack Mottram…I hope this wouldn’t be considered stalking….this is what his last post said:

Anyone else reading/playing We Tell Stories? http://tinyurl.com/2vckou - http://icanhaz.com/cluez

Wonderful! For a little while, I became a character in a game I’m playing myself!

I resisted the temptation to play along, placing myself inside the ARG as an unofficial hybrid player-character. But only because I’m so easily identified as a real person, and most players would instantly assume that Six To Start, thorough as they are, probably wouldn’t write seven years’ worth of weblog posts or somehow insert a decade of journalism into the press in order to create my backstory.

Though I wonder if this sort of trick been tried before? I’ve never followed any other ARGs, only reading about them after the fact, but it strikes me that recruiting demonstrably real people to play characters would be an interesting move, adding to the level of difficulty and longevity of the game.

As well as being six stories by six Penguin authors, We Tell Stories is an ARG, designed by Six To Start, set to be launched once the six interactive fictions have all been published over the coming weeks. There are, though, already some little ARGish clues peppered through the map text of the first story: the addresses of container companies, prominent mentions of easily-visited places (various rooms in the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh for example), and a ‘phone number: 020 8133 8141.

I rang, and heard this:

Hello, Alice?

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I need your help.

I have a story to tell you, but it will only make sense in the right place.

If you stand face to face with the statue of John Betjeman in St. Pancras station, ring this number: 020 7193 3154.

Then I’ll be able to explain more.

As luck would have it, I’ll be in St. Pancras Station tomorrow morning…