The Escape?

The goal of The Escape? is to get four different Prison Guards drunk enough that you can escape, by bribing them with their favourite types of homemade mixed drinks. We'll be calling these Bootleg Beverages - your products.

Each Bootleg Beverage can be mixed from two Mystery Moonshines - these are your essential ingredients. A fresh supply of these basic and essential ingredients will be smuggled to you every 8 hours or so, beginning right now, until you've received your fifth resupply.


But the Prison Guards don't just want any basic Mystery Moonshine! They only drink the more sophisticated Bootleg Beverages, which are produced whenever two Mystery Moonshines are mixed, in the proper conditions. We've replicated these conditions perfectly in a new thread in your Confessional titled "Toilet Bowl" which shall operate as your cell/laboratory for the duration of this Episode.

You'll receive all your Mystery Moonshine dumps in that thread, every 8 hours or so. You'll also use it to mix any two of your Mystery Moonshines, whenever you like, by posting the following:


replacing A and B with two different Mystery Moonshines you currently possess and wish to use as ingredients.


A Crew member will then let you know what kind of Bootleg Beverage your chosen ingredients have mixed into. We won't be online constantly, but will be checking in enough that you'll shouldn't have to wait more than two hours for a response. You may mix as many Bootleg Beverages as you want - or can - at any time. But note that when each new set of Mystery Moonshines drops into your cell, we will also make a public post listing all drinks mixed in the last 7 or 8 hours since the previous drop (without specifying who mixed them, or what ingredients were mixed to produce them).


Once you've mixed your Bootleg Beverages, you can also Gift them to the Guards who patrol your cell block. To do so, post:



in your Toilet Bowl thread, replacing X with the name of a Bootleg Beverage you have mixed but not yet given away, and replacing Y with the name of a Guard.





Each Guards can have one of three reactions to being bribed with a Bootleg Beverage Gift:

Thankfully, you've been locked in your cell for long enough to overhear every mundane discussion between the four Guards, and you know their preferences in illicit drinks.






At the final deadline, 38 hours and, five sets of Mystery Moonshines drops from now, it will finally be time to Escape!

The number of Cigarettes you receive from each Guard in this time frame will reflect how well you have impressed them... and how drunk you have made them. Comparing your Cigarette coup to those of the other Inmates (players) will help you score on the Inebriation Index for each Guard, and earn you Cigarettes as follows:



In the event of a tie for the number Cigarettes gained from a particular Guard, the players involved will split the points for the next two placements combined.


So for instance, if the Bootleg Beverages given to one of the Guards yielded these totals:
Then the Composter would win 5 points from this Guard. Flaw Runner and Sex designer would gain 2 points each (half of the 3 for second place and the 1 for third place, combined). Doom Operator and Made Up Artist would gain no points. And Special Defects would lose 1 point.



All four Guards will have their Inebriation Index points allocated exactly the same way, and your scores for each Guard will be added (or subtracted) together.


Your goal is to achieve the highest possible score overall, because 38 hours from now,


They will remain imprisoned, and will be forced to compete in a one-on-one duel to the death, in the form of a Spoon-Fight. At the end of which one of them will be leaving the Game for good, and joining the Mob of Critics (*shudder*).




We here at Goes Wrong ORG have done extensive research on how different Mystery Moonshines mix together to create a wide variety of Bootleg Beverages. When we asked the BBC what their preferences would be among our mixed drinks, they looked confused, alarmed, and found an excuse to leave early. Surely this is because they lack knowledge of alcohol and not because the following description of Mystery Moonshine Mixology is utter nonsense written by someone who can afford to consume perhaps one (1) Rum & Coke annually.

Because this is a diverse and multicultural penitentiary (unlike the BBC Disciplinary Board), the eight Mystery Moonshines available are:



And because the means of obtaining these Mystery Moonshines in a maximum security facility are unpredictable, you should not expect to receive the same ingredients every time, nor even the same number of ingredients.


Whenever two different Mystery Moonshines are mixed, they produce one of these seven Bootleg Beverages:



When the Crew approves your mixing of two Mystery Moonshines, they will tell you the results of a simple taste test - whether your Bootleg Beverages is Dry, Sweet or Bitter. And you will be able to clearly see whether it is Clear or Dark. Blue Label is also an option, and it is a perfect neutral that bears none of these qualities and is good enough to sell even outside of the black market.


You should have noticed by now that the key to escaping successfully is knowing how to combine Mystery Moonshines to produce the perfect Bootleg Beverage for each Guard. So you might be wondering, how is it possible to know the outcome of mixing any two ingredients?

Here's how: each Mystery Moonshine corresponds to a unique chemical formula that determines how it will mix with another Mystery Moonshine.


For instance:
- If one Mystery Moonshine has a chemical formula with a Dry part that is Dark and Little, a Bitter part that is Clear and Big, plus a Sweet part that is Dark and Little.
- And the second Mystery Moonshine has a chemical formula with a Dry part that is Clear and Little, a Bitter part that is Clear and Big, plus a Sweet part that is Dark and Big.
- The parts that match for the Clear/Dark property of both Mystery Moonshines are the Bitter part (both clear), and the Sweet part (both Dark).
- Of these, the only part that has opposites for the size property across both Mystery Moonshines is the Sweet part (one Little, one Big).
- Therefore, the Bootleg Beverage produced will be Sweet & Dark.

Of course, you'll be applying this logic backwards, because you don't yet know the chemical formula for each Mystery Moonshine. So after mixing the two of them in that example, and receiving a Sweet & Dark Bootleg Beverage as a result, you'd know that both of the Mystery Moonshines you combined must have a Sweet part that is Dark, one of which must be Big and one of which must be Little.


There is an exception to this; if all parts of the chemical formula in two Mystery Moonshines are opposite to each other, you will instead mix a Blue Label Beverage.


By mixing more Bootleg Beverages from the different Mystery Moonshines, you'll eventually be able to deduce what their chemical formulae are, and predict what kind of Bootleg Beverages can be formed from all combinations of the Mystery Moonshines. Allowing you to carefully mix specific ingredients in order to create Beverages that appeal to specific Guards, and help you gain enough Cigarettes from each to rise up the Inebriation Index and Escape to safety.






The Escape? Will unfold over the next 38 hours. It will run entirely non-live, with no requirement for you to check in at any particular time (unlike the Food Chain round). But you may want to keep note of when we will be dropping into your Toilet Bowls with more Mystery Moonshines for you to mix:


That last deadline is the only one you absolutely need to remember, because you'll need to finish mixing Bootleg Beverages and gifting them to Guards by that time. But you don't need to be online for it; it's absolutely fine to finish all your mixing and gifting long before that.


You also don't need to be online for any of the Mystery Moonshine drops, or even check in between each drop necessarily. Though the longer you wait and let your ingredients build up, the more you'll have to do/mix/think at once when you do come back. And with the potential delays in Crew response time and our inability to mix everything for everyone in the final moments before the final deadline, we encourage you to please stay reasonably on top of things when you can during the next couple of days.


So if you already have seven Bootleg Beverages sitting in your Inventory, waiting to be gifted to Guards, we won't mix anything more for you. And even if you have an entirely empty Inventory, we'll only mix seven Mystery Moonshine pairs for you at once.

I'll also note here that we highly recommend you keep your Inventory looking as full as possible, with as many Mystery Moonshines as possible left over and unmixed at the end of The Escape?




There is one last aspect of this task which you need to know about, which is that you will be allowed to work together as you mix Bootleg Beverages and deduce the chemical formulae of the Mystery Moonshines... though of course you'll also be allowed to use misinformation to harm one another's efforts to bribe the Guards, if you are that way inclined. Prison is, of course, all about the friendships we sabotaged along the way. Right?

So you are also allowed to Trade your Mystery Moonshines. At any time, you may post in the designated Black Market thread requesting a Trade. Once you have found somebody who agrees to your terms, both of you should make a post that looks like this:



Replacing Z with the name of your Trading partner, and C/D with the Mystery Moonshines you have agreed to Trade. Once both of you have posted the same Trade (and if the ingredients mentioned correspond), the Crew will make the exchange and redistribute the Mystery Moonshines accordingly, as soon as possible. Note that you may only trade one Mystery Moonshine at a time, and must exchange them one for one.


And finally - you will be allowed to PM during this Episode also. However, due to censorship of all communication within the prison, you must be careful not to get flagged and brought to the attention of the Warden, who can and will punish you by making it far more difficult to bribe the Guards.

So your Missives must obey these three restrictions:

1. All Private Missives must contain 100 words or less. You can use a word counter if you wish, but so will the Warden, so consider yourself warned!

2. The Missives must be fully Private and only sent one way. So you can only PM 1-on-1 and cannot use any group PM chains. Each PM will also be logged on the prison records, and when each set of Mystery Moonshines drops we will also announce how many PMs were sent between each pair of Inmates.

3. The Warden does not want anyone conspiring to inebriate the guards! So you may not use any of the following words in your Private Missives; they are keywords that will flag the Warden's attention:







If the above was enough to make your head spin even without having tried any of your mixes, don't worry! We can dive right into the wonderful and chemically correct world of Mystery Moonshines and Bootleg Beverages by showing some practical examples immediately! That will definitely help. But if your head is spinning too much, you can come back and read this later! Or never; this section is purely examples to help understand this brave new world you're stuck in part of.





We know, we know, this is quite a lot to ingest. And will be for the Guards too Please read these Rules carefully, perhaps more than once, and ask any questions you need to until things are clear. It's not vital that you understand everything right at the start; you have time and much will become clearer as you play it out.

So happy mixing, Inmates, and good luck - you'll need it!