Sometimes the makers of alternate reality games want to do something special for their players, and have an event instead of the usual gameplay. These require much higher player involvement while they last, enough that the players should be warned about it ahead of time.

Most developers try to find in-game ways of doing this. We did this with the RUMI and Boat Poker events. A player says "Hey, something big's going down on Friday, try to be around at 7pm, okay?" For most events, this works just fine. But what if you're planning something bigger? Something that people might have to ask for days off work for?

The folks making Eldritch Errors took a rather straightforward approach to this problem, by posting it directly to their out-of-game blog, Schmeldritch. This is a good solution because it gets the information out that something's going to happen, but there's no burden of knowledge on their in-game characters so they don't have to worry about fitting the announcement in, plot-wise. They haven't said where the event will be, but past experiences plus this recently released map suggest northern Virginia, so players in that area know to be prepared.

And while we're on the topic of mentioning future happenings in out-of-game blog posts, I find it oddly apropos that the Schmedlritch post ends with "The train has already left the station."