Relax — this is a neighborhood game. The Long Hunt is a free community mystery game around Normal Heights. The Normal School didn't actually train spies, and the "network" recruits only in the sense that we'd love you to come play.
What's real:
- The San Diego Normal School (1898) is why Normal Heights is called Normal Heights; it evolved into San Diego State and moved to Montezuma Mesa in 1931.
- The Cipher Bureau (MI-8 / the Black Chamber, 1919–29) was real. It was shut down in 1929. It was not in San Diego.
- The OSS (1942–45) was America's WWII intelligence service, and it really did recruit civilians — teachers, librarians, ballplayers. It did not train them at the Normal School; the school had already moved.
- San Diego's wartime history really is stranger than fiction: Consolidated Aircraft hid entire plants under fake residential streetscapes — canvas houses and chicken-wire lawns on the factory roofs.
- The Aircraft Warning Service (WWII) and the Ground Observer Corps (1950–58) were real and genuinely lovely civic history: volunteers — neighbors, retirees, teenagers — logged the sky in shifts from rooftops and towers.
What's fiction: Station N, the leftover annex, any claim that the Black Chamber or the OSS trained here, the peace charter, the dead drops and safe houses, the good-news relay, the 2026 reactivation — and the Bureau of Beige, which is exactly as real as it sounds.
The mark: the logo is a spyglass on a scroll, hunting for signals. Long seeing (the telescope) and observation notes (the scroll), a reference to the original Ground Observer Corps.
The practical stuff: playing is free. The medallions are 3D-printed holders with NFC tags inside — tapping one just opens a web page; it can't read anything from your phone. We store the minimum needed to run the game (your email and your scores) and your public name is an assigned callsign.
Questions, worries, or a medallion that needs rescuing? DM @starbiedazzlepants.