What to run

We start with something we want to run. 

There're at least 20 people who get involved in running/writing mandala games at various points. A game can be written and run by any of those people or by other interested people who join in. 

 We’ve been looking at running another Sci Fi LRP for a while now, but haven’t reached ‘critical mass’ for any particular sci fi project. That is, we've got a lot of ideas, but need the right people to get involved in order for us to actually start running something. 

The original idea and the final game often have only superficial resemblance, but without people buying into the original idea the final game will never happen. Having said that, a lot can be done by one person saying 'I am running this!' and booking a site or writing a plot. 

For years we ran high end sci fi and I suspect we will go back to this. We like an immersive environment and a dramatic rules system. That is, the players do what is dramatically appropriate. We’ve rarely strayed from these two points. We like writing for the look and the atmospheric moment rather than writing a game that is played to win. It's all about the emotions.  

As we’re costume and props makers we tend to aim to have high quality props and costumes at our events. This is probably also cheaper and easier for us that it is for other event organisers and we have the resources to be able to do it. We already run a mask making workshop so making a few masks isn’t a major problem. 

We're trying to write events that come in on budget. We have a spreadsheet that tells us what to charge. For Sci Fi we can charge what we need to. Whilst we have a large pile of stuff we've bought from previous events we've generally concluded that each event has to pay for things to add to this. 

Our last event was a low budget game called ZapFest. We wanted to run something 1950s b movie sci fi style. We ended up running actor LRP. It went down quite well. Next year we're running Jurassic LRP. Hopefully we'll shortly find the right site to run something more in keeping with our roots. A well propped, well written, 24 hour time in plot rich game in an immersive setting with elements of terror.

For now I'm just enjoying writing for something a bit lighter. :)