Red LRP

This weekend I attended an event run by Red LRP. Red Letter Day was based in 1994, and we were playing people who were attending a Red Letter Day event in Leicester. It was a close to modern day horror event run by people who have a style I like. So I booked. 

Friday was good. We timed in at the pub (The Fieldhead in Markfield) who decided we were loud and gave us a conference room to stay in so that we could be loud and not scare the other customers. This was good. 
I approve of starting in pubs as it keeps players away from site and, especially for modern day events such as this, lets them time in naturally and drink and eat as they want to whilst the site gets sorted and people arrive who've been stuck on the hell that is Britain's motorways on a Friday night. 

We had a band (Flying Kangaroo Alliance) which was also amazing. Midnight hit and I was stood just outside of the main room and the screaming and applause were less applause and more screaming. We had dead people, a doctor who wasn't a doctor and then refused to go to bed for several hours whilst we started working out what was going on, talked to the police, found the flayed remains of a body in the woods etc.

We found books with secret codes in them and information about us.
I think at some point we managed to get into a building with a darkroom which had photos of several of the characters in it.
Nothing blatently paranormal had happened. 

I got to bed about 3.40ish, and was woken by a phone call at 6.37 (they had phones, these were used to communicate with the refs, to call in game emergency services, to book in game taxis, to call family members and other contacts etc) I can't remember exactly what the call was about. 

During the course of the next morning we were making trips to locations we found out about from the books, and also chose to visit the head office of the company that had set this up. The later trip involved breaking into someones house and stealing their computer, a lot of files, a skull and some books. We also said hello to the cat. 

The main room was now flooded with information and some of us were left chasing people around the woods whilst others went on an extended linear in the real world that involved phone calls at abandoned service stations, breaking into hotel rooms, and into cars in public car parks as well as visiting a shrine to a dead character in the middle of Leicester. 

We gained some more dead bodies at this point. A religious order that had been trying to help us, but were pretty rubbish. 

By this point we'd worked out that we were meant to be being sacrificed for the sake of our families and that we'd been sent here to die. From midnight people scattered, there was a lot of hiding and panic and then we stood in a well lit hut while a thing walked in to suck out our insides and hang our skins on a tree to die. We can't leave site because there are armed police keeping us there. We somehow managed to kill her whilst only losing one more of ours and the survivors gathered in the main hut to work out what to do now. After a while we concluded that sleeping was the answer.

The next morning we tried to leave site, and couldn't. That was disconcerting. We were planning to happily walk to Nottingham and we were stuck, unable to leave. I managed to get stuck in a building with 6-7 surviving players (others were outside) whilst Baal tried to convince us to complete the deal and unfortunately got to close to a man with an axe. My character left this world being deafened by a god who I suspect eventually got his way. 

It was a brilliant weekend and I'm still a wee bit shattered. 

Things I really liked:

Skills - we had one each, and all of them could be used. Mine was photography, someone else could shoot guns (one player could use a gun effectively) another could research, another could pick locks etc. They all worked quite well. I loved having the darkroom so I could do the things I should be able to do. 

Futility - I couldn't work out what to do so I hid in a bush. I was scared and useless enough that it seemed like the best option. It worked. 

Atmosphere - None of us trusted people (until I got to close to a man with an axe). They concluded someone was  bad because he ran off into the dark at the same time as me and I wasn't there when he returned. They thought he'd killed me. 

The real world - The linears were amazing. Breaking into cars, and houses and hotels. Going to local locations and actually using them added so much to the game. It was really good.

There are many others - these are the main 4.

There were some bits of plot that felt less finished than they could have done. It made it a really good game instead of an outstanding one. However, I would like to sign up for the next game now. I'm really glad I played this one. :)