Lovecraftian stag do, help please?

Community Game ideas
#1

Hi everyone

Not sure if this is the right place to come for this request, I’m wanting to plan a murder mystery weekend for my friends stag do. Not til late 2012, but I’m taking my best man duties seriously :smiley:

I have recently moved back here from the UK where I did larping. Most memorable one was a fantastic Lovecraft themed event held at a manor house (that bit might be tricky here…) and wanted to do something similiar, and not a watered down cluedo dinner! The reason I thought I’d post it here is because I thought it might be of interest to other larpers in the area (New Plymouth) or further afield even, to pop along and join in / help out and make an actual event out of it (maybe volunteer as monsters/villains/refs and generally make it more realistic as the other guests won’t be seasoned larpers) in return for free accomm (2 night event?) and joining in the fun etc. Not sure. There just seems to be not much of the ole murder mystery things going on here.

Anyhoo, any thoughts or advice etc (especially if anyone knows of good accommodation that would be self contained, suit the theme, have plenty of bedrooms etc) please post back.

thegreyteacup

#2

Hello!

What an awesome idea. Depending on dates I might be keen to come help out.

I’m not familiar with New Plymouth and don’t know your budget, but this place looks awesome: puritawa.com/index.html - unfortunately it’d probably be much too expensive to book out the whole thing.

Do you have the game written already, or are you using one that’s already published?

#3

Hi,

I’m down in Wellington rather than up in New Plymouth, be really interested to find out if there are Larper sorts up in that area.

I don’t know about the possibility of finding accommodation up there that would suit your purpose, fingers crossed you find something great, because the best bit of advice I can offer is to run a game to suit your venue. If you can’t find a manor house, perhaps (if the weather is good enough in late 2012 in New Plymouth) run a game based at a camp site. Or whatever cool, private, venue you can find.

The other thing I’d consider is tailoring your game for your audience. If they’ve never Larped before two days (or even nights) might be a big ask. Potentially it might be better to run something from early evening to a big climax all in one night whilst the enthusiasm levels are high. That leaves you with the rest of the weekend to talk about how much fun it was.

Good luck with it and look forward to hearing how it goes!

#4

Just wanted to say, you’re an awesome best man! (I’m a huge Lovecraft fan, so I think this sounds fantastic)

I can’t give better advice than what Bryn has said above - tailor your event to suit your audience and resources.

#5

Cool concept! There are a lot of colonial houses around New Zealand that might suit, just a matter of finding something available to rent in your area that suits your budget. Getting people to dress up 20s or Victorian and to stay at a historical venue will probably help get them in the mood.

As folks have said, a full weekend may be a big ask. It takes a huge amount of activity to fill a weekend, much more than you’d think if you haven’t run a larp before, especially if it’s a player-vs-environment type game where the players are basically responding to stuff that is thrown at them. You don’t want people sitting around twiddling their thumbs, and if your players aren’t larpers or actors then they probably won’t fill blank hours by roleplaying with each other in character and creating conflict with each other (even tabletop roleplayers aren’t in the habit of doing this).

One of the mainstays of Cthulhu stories is that there is a principle investigator (the narrator), and over the course of the story his companions die around him, showing just how dangerous the situation he’s in is. Something in that direction might work quite well for your event, as you’ve got the groom as a central person. If you wanted your event to be more scripted (and therefore easier to run) than the average larp, then you could plot out a series of nasty events that will happen to the groom’s companions over the course of the event, building up the tension. The people who are dying would be in on it, so that it could happen dramatically and you could use special effects (for a simple example, they could chomp down on a blood capsule and have foaming blood come out of their mouth). Those who die could then help you portray whatever the monstrous thing the groom is up against is. Probably best to leave the groom with one or two companions right to the end if you go this way though, being left with no friends on your side at all wouldn’t be fun for most people.

I’ve run a horror game in this style once. The pre-briefed players who died off ended up as zombies, and as the game went on the surviving players were more and more surrounded by zombies who they had to lock out of the house - it became quite survivalist. One nice feature of that game was a seance early on. One of the planted players forced the ouija to spell out hints about the mystery, and then he got “possessed” by the spirit and did the blood foaming from the mouth thing. The players had to figure out the mystery of the house that was causing people to become zombies and fix it, all the while fighting them off. The key to zombies is having someone do zombie makeup for them when they turn (take them away somewhere to do it), and training the players to walk and groan in an appropriate manner.

#6

Wow! These are all great ideas! I think everyones right about the 2 night thing being too long for un-seasoned larpers. Maybe 1 night, Friday evening (nice dinner etc) get the scene set, stay over the night and finish Saturday afternoon at some point.

This isn’t a game that’s already published, just a loose idea, I thought this theme would be good because it would be low combat for the non-larping guests and suit the bachelor party theme more, however it is true I need to plan my game for my vebue so i guess venue is the first thing to look at - puritawa looks great by the way, thanks for the suggestion amphigori, will fire off an enquiry to them.

ryan paddy, your suggestions are great about the special effects, plotting out nasty events etc…that was on of the reasons I thought I’d invite all the larpers in NZ (ok, maybe not ALL) as I had a rough plan in my head to give ‘real’ larpers more of a script and structured role so the groom and his men would be left trying to figure it out.

Thanks again for your replies, you are all cordially invited to Thomas’s stag do!

(and thanks anna k for saying I’m an awesome best man…I’m actually a female but his longest standing friend so feeling like I have a lot to prove :confused: )

#7

One quick search and I found this: airliehouse.co.nz/house/theHouse.html

Might be helpful?

#8

Definitely a cool premise for a game/stag-do, I’m going to put on my Lovecraft-scholar hat and say that isn’t Lovecraft at all :wink: That is very much the modus operandi of modern horror films. Lovecraft stories typically do not include large groups (normally, it is the investigator/narrator and a friend or two), and very rarely include gruesome deaths. More often than not, the people involved with the protagonist end up going horrifically mad from their encounters with whatever nameless horror the investigator shouldn’t be bothering. A lot of Cthulhu gaming systems have a mechanic whereby drinking alcohol restores your sanity, which might be a goer for a stag do (depends on how drunk you want your participants getting).

For a very Lovecraftian feel, you could try for a psuedo-reality based larp where everyone plays a “horror version” of themselves. For example, his friend Bill will be playing his friend Bill…who is also suddenly well versed in summoning rituals, his friend Max will be playing his friend Max who knows a terrible secret about something plot related, etc. Have the setting as “here we are at X’s stag do”, and a horrible Lovecraftian secret is discovered about the ancestry of the groom, a matter which must be investigated, the strange eldritch creature driven back to nether realms, the curse lifted…otherwise the wedding won’t be able to go ahead! You can use the other guests to hide key information with, and they can ‘sacrifice themselves’ in order to help the groom lift the ancestral curse (and come back to the game as something else). It could add an element of his friends being supportive of the groom and his wedding.

My partner very recently ran fantasy-larp-inspired stag do which took place around Auckland city, but that involved mostly experienced larpers - he might be able give you some advice on how he pulled it together :slight_smile:

#9

Thanks for that Jared, lovely looking place but too small i think :frowning: I’ve done a quick search…found a place called Opunake lake lodge, it’s not very attractive but it will hold up to 32 people so I might take a drive out…

anna k, loving the idea of basing it on his stag do. Stroke of genius. Lots to think about!

#10

There are so few times when I feel it is appropriate to post a picture like this.

But, we are talking about a Cthulhu themed stag party here, so I hope people forgive me. :unamused:

Perhaps, the groom could have a terrible secret and he asks the best man for advice on how to cure his “problem”…

#11

bahahahahaha!

#12

1D6/1D10 SAN loss.

#13

:frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning: :frowning:

That’s -awful- :smiley:

#14

I’m probably misremembering some Lovecraft stories then. I remember immediate companions going mad, but also some deaths especially among unnamed “red shirt” types or servants, or at least deaths in the backstories that investigators uncover. But it’s been a while.

#15

There are deaths, but they don’t happen “on camera”. Lovecraft is all about distance, until the revelation of The Final Horror.

(Sorry, been reading Stealing Cthulhu too much)

#16

Somebody else from New Plymouth, awesome!

I’m not sure if you can book the house at Tupare for events, but it’s a very old fashioned house surrounded by gardens and could work well. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, but if anything else comes to mind I’ll let you know.