We used a great deal more audio than we ever have before (in fact, more audio than I’ve seen used at a LARP event before). Overall, including the radio programmes, we had 36 hours of audio. We had a number of different setups that we used in various places throughout the weekend. All the ghosts... Read more »
“It was more like being within a movie than being within a game.” Rachael Eyre As described in Set Pieces, the finale of the game was a scene of reconciliation between Nicholas the owner of the house and two of the ghosts. The moment that scene ended we did a hard cut to the credits.... Read more »
“The effects were almost literally out of this world.” John Shockley We had a number of set pieces that the Art Department pre-prepared; some were designed to be discovered at specific times or when specific trigger events happened – others were waiting to be discovered. Some of these were part of the ghost effects; here... Read more »
(by Rachel) We were clear from quite early on that we wanted to involve photography in the event. It’s been used in investigations of hauntings since people started taking photographs, so it seemed fitting and I like photography. We also had a fun prop for a 1950s camera, which I use in another game system –... Read more »
(by Rachel) This post is somewhat more difficult to write than some of the others, as the finances were the area of the event that were least successful. How did this happen? Well, when we decided to run this event, we knew it was going to cost a lot to run. Traditionally, LARP weekend events have... Read more »
“…when we discovered that everything that was happening in the house within the game had a reason and that reason was driven by a terrible misunderstanding, [it] ended up being both terrifying and full of pathos for us…” John Shockley The History In 1809, Nicholas Northmoor fell madly in love with and became betrothed to Catherine... Read more »
This was a ghost story, so we needed some ghosts! There was an underlying haunting that drove everything else. That caused other ghosts from various time periods to haunt the house… The Silent Movie Ghost – a silent black and white ethereal girl that flickered into view in dark corridors. The Soldier – a floating gas-masked... Read more »
An old friend – Steve Anderson (@irregularshed) – built a 1950s telephone system for us. I don’t pretend to understand what he did, other than recondition an old 1950s phone (all the way down to putting the correct telephone number on the dial centre). So… a 1950s phone at one end and a long wire... Read more »
We wanted to let the players listen to the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day, and so decided to built several radio sets so they could listen to 1950s programmes. To do this I bought 3 old radios from Ebay and gutted them, putting an MP3 player and speaker inside each. I wired the speaker cable... Read more »
“The pacing was interesting, because there was a structure, a mutually understood structure to the event – it was a family Christmas – and they’d clearly set that out in an in character way. The servants had left us a schedule so that we knew which particular events were going to happen on the Friday,... Read more »