Vaguely related; I’ve just come back from a Whisky tasting (hmmmm) and the room we were in had perfectly mundane lightbulb style lamps with perfectly mundane shades over them - and no other lighting. It gave the room a nice “half-lit” feel and minus the modern furniture it would have passed for (non flickering) candlelight quite well
Viperion
Corflute would be sourceable for free after election time… Which is coming up.
But I do suggest considering the fridge boxes. They are already folded and ready to go. A lot less work than building something out of corflute. And generally free from the cardboard bins outside places like Noel Leemings. But the sizes are what they are.
You can also occasionally find those light that have fabric films that sit above the bulbs and the heat causes them to flicker a bit like candlelight. I have only seen them as wall mounts but somewhere there must be a free standing version.
I will investigate.
I don’t think the room in question has any power points.
Extension cable from the kitchen, tape it to the floor?
Put lamps on the tables and you can apparently buy flickering flame bulbs for about $12 each. I am happy to chip in for 3-4 of those if it helps with the atmosphere.
Lots of cool ideas, hurrah!
But, as we’re getting down to crunch time here, I guess I’m looking for a confirmed show of hands from people who are keen to:
For $45 we could get 24 LED “tea light” candles. This is less than $2 per candle. Batteries included, and you can replace the batteries (though no idea how much those cost): trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pa … 393284.htm
Oh, the internet tells me batteries are $12 for a pack of 36. You need 3 per tea light, so there is an ongoing cost, but these tealights are way cool!
I’d be keen to have a meet-up somewhere central this week with anyone who wants to officially volunteer to help me get the tavern up and running. As I live a few min from Motu Moana I can also drive down during the week and check out the room in question for power points, etc…
So who’s in? Lemme know now so we can make plans to meet!
As a slightly different approach - rather than try and cover the whole wall with something new, what about focusing more on the decoration? At the end of the day, the Crimson Moon is just a big tent. They mask the fact by filling the place with hanging “curtains”, shields, occasionally an antlered deer skulls, random tapestries. It’s not so much the wall itself, but rather what’s on it that makes the place feel like the inside of some grimy pub.
Lighting - not just for the tavern - is usually done with some form of electric candelabra or other, powered via car battery and inverter, so that could always be an option for you guys too.
Yeah, that’s why I suggested getting volunteers to make a bunch of pendants.
I’ve got about 20 scarves/saris/wall-hangings I can bring as a start, but it won’t be enough…
I’ll put my hand up to assist in the setting up of the Tavern on the Friday during the day. Let me know what time to meet on the friday & where (i’ll be in Akl for thursday, depending on time, I could be either close to the scout camp, or somewhere in Manakau or Sylvia Park on friday morning.
I found a couple of photos of the upper hall, which I think is the one people are talking about here. Could GM type person confirm if this is the hall where food is going to be served during the game, (in which case will need lots tables and chairs for everyone) or not (bring on cushion options …)
Last I discussed it with Muppet and Tigger, meals were going to be served in the old crew room (the big hall past the Keep where we play the flagships at Chimera), but all IC socialising, drinking etc was going to happen at the top hall. The reason for this is that the old crew room is the only place big enough for 120 people to have a sit down meal under a roof.
Thank you for the photos Hannah.
Thank you for the confirmation, Anna.
(Gosh that rhymed!) Ok that makes it a lot easier if we can use that space purely as an IC drinking/hanging out area. Cushions could be a great idea if we have one corner designated for them.
Has anyone got cushions/bean bags they could loan for the use of the game? You’d not want anything precious as drinks may get spilled on them. I can bring all my available ones and see if Norman has room to bring up the ones we used for Al Shir-Ma.
Sorry to be doing this but I have only been following this thread on and off. Set dressing is something that I definitely tried to do last game but was unable but two things - no way to put up material or such on walls without causing damage to the existing building and not enough lighting that wasn’t light blubs. The lighting problem is easier to fix.
What is the conclusion on the best way to put up set dressing from experience and discussion?
Who has or would like to put their hand up to help create set dressing for Teonn?
With the players becoming crew idea - Personally I think this is something that works well when you have a large number of players ie. over 300. My question would be how do they handle the logistics of this in England? I’m assuming here that they plan it out and are organised to ensure a smooth change over.
I don’t think the numbers matter so much as the ratio of payers:crew
If you have 30 players and 10 crew (ratio 3:1 in player favour) it may still be really useful to be able to do a scene for 10 of the players with 20-30 crew available, changing the ratio to 1:2 or 1:3 against the players.
Because at the end of the day, any battle where you’re outnumbered by 2:1 or 3:1 FEELS like a big battle 
I’ve volunteered to set dress the tavern, which will be the lower room (kitchen) in the upper hall (where players are bunking). I understand that kitchen won’t be in use.
I visited the room earlier this week and have some ideas that I think will make for an improvement on how it looks now. I got a lot of volunteers to help set up the room, but only one able to help me with the actual production of made-to-order props (thanks Hannah) but she’s understandably busy with the Troupe (which I consider high priority set dressing as that adds so much to the game).
So I’m going to do the best I can as a single entity, but have some confidence that I’ll be making something pretty neat! 
But I’d definitely consider it a “phase one” attempt.
My hestiation with this is that you need a game ready to do this for instance we would have to say something like ‘Ok everyone going to do this thing stay in character, otherwise you are now crew’. The logistics of organising this and making it work is still a huge undertaking.
In the UK at the game I played in the players are divided into factions, of which there are (I think) 8 roughly equally sized are told this weekend you will be required to crew from x o’clock for two hours, all report here. That seems to work just fine.
I’d suggest that you split everyone into two equal groups, how you decide who and how is your call.
Then write on their player packs when they are expected to crew. My suggestion would be pick two from first thing Friday night, first thing Saturday morning or first thing Sunday morning. That way people can do their duty and get back to playing their characters.
(Oh and thanks to everyone who is involved in making the tavern happen that’s awesome )
One way to handle this would be to have a big PC group “leave town” and become NPCs. For example, the pirates might volunteer to NPC for two hours on Saturday night. They “leave town” on business after dinner. They report to the crew room, where they are kept in their own space. Their equipment is stored carefully in a reserved location so it doesn’t get mixed with the crew gear. They are re-costumed and given simple NPC roles. They fight. They come back and re-costume as their PCs and the group “returns to town” from the business they have concluded.
The key points would be:
[ul][li]The GMs are dealing with big groups of players, not individuals, and the player groups are self-mustering. [/li]
[li]The players have a space set aside for them for their gear and briefing. [/li]
[li]The player group volunteers for a specific time period, so that the GMs know when they’ll have a boost in NPC numbers.[/li][/ul]
I see I’ve been beated to the punch by Bryn.
That’s basically how it works The game Bryn was at was set on a war-front, with the reason for a given faction’s absence being “manoeuvres on the front line”
Most people tend to bring extra “monstering” costume, predominantly plain black (though some bring full suits of armour just for their monster slots), and use their own spare weapons if needed or just swap with a friend. It has the advantage that players-being-crew turn up for their crew slot dressed and armed, rather than having to faff around kitting them and wasting precious time. Basically self-mustering as you suggested, but more so.
The big advantage to all this is as Derek suggested - group specific plot gets to be laid down with higher crew numbers, and more crew means more things to talk with or kill. We’ve actually seen it done before with SWVH; Redemption, the first night where those already at Grunwald effectively took a crew role for that opening scene