I think a clear purpose and/or rules for yourself are very helpful in writing both systems and individual events - certainly since I've started doing this it's helped me alot.  I'm interested to hear who else has done this, what their rules were and how successful it was.  As Matt P said on the other thread - please avoid the blandness of 'the game should be good' rules...!  I've stated how well (I think) I dealt with these aims and whether I felt I achieved them.

As a side note, the players knew very little about the event's theme (I relied on rep and hassle to get players and crew), and I hadn't communicated all of this clearly - though had implied much of it in the brief.

For 'The Project' game that I ran:

1. No Time In/Stop/Freeze etc calls, play should flow without pause.  This should include throughout the night, and the moment a player/crew member enters the site they should be there IC, with all of their belongings IC

2. No stat-based skills, characters should be seem real, nothing should be represented by fake mechanics (other than combat) - if players want to achieve something, they should *actually* do it

3. Combat should be hard and fast and have the illusion of being real

4. Props should be real and working, they are exactly what they look like, no area should be OOC

5. Players shouldn't need to talk to refs or get ref calls - the entire system should be explainable in all it's complexity (or lack thereof) in under a minute or two

6. The first event should cost less than £30 per player, with indoor accomodation and food supplied - the event should never make a loss

On our first event, I felt we achieved alot of this.

1. The 'walk-on' style worked well, we'd even insisted players travelling together OOC had to drop other people off down the road so they'd come in separately.  We IC picked players up from the local train station etc - we got good feedback on this.  We had one Time Freeze, called by an enthusiastic crew member - it lasted for a couple of seconds, and was utterly unneccessary.  I went mad after the game, interestingly only one player remembered this happening - so it can't have been too damaging.  Still, that's a technical fail (damn!)...though events 2 and 3 were both run without any such stoppages. MARGINAL FAIL.

2. Character creation was by IC CV - players were told to 'just pretend' they knew about things their characters were expert in, and to respect that the same would be the case for other players.  We were worried about how this would work, but as it turned out, people played it really well.  We deliberately avoided tasks like computer hacking etc to keep this nice and easy.  TOTAL WIN.

3. Combats were rough and tumble fist-fights (only one over the whole weekend), and players were instructed that generally, a soldier will beat and accountant in a fight.  People played this well, but it was only marginally tested.  Event 2 was more combative, and this worked very well.  MARGINAL WIN.

4. No weapons helped us alot with this, and even the musty old Tome was scented to smell old.  On later events we started using prop weapons (axe, hammer, toaster etc) and fake blood (really good stuff though) to represent real things.  TOTAL WIN.

5. Not one player asked for a ref call.  After the game, a number of players fed back that on the odd occasion they wanted one, they'd deliberately held back - and felt more immersed as a result.  The rules were a paragraph or two in total, and due to the very freefom nature, very easy to understand.  The hardest part was assuring people there really weren't any stat rules.  A few ref calls were made during 'supernatural happenings' but they were made not requested.  TOTAL WIN.

6. We ran for £20 per player, and made a loss of £20 - but that was due to me buying booze for the crew, so I see that as a personal gift rather than an event loss (oh, how I hate to fail...)  We did supply food and drink with bunk beds for players - though the timings for food was poorly managed on my part, people were fed.  The price went up for event 2 (better site, more props, better food served at better times - no loss and some reusable props). MARGINAL WIN.

I'm not sure how useful and/or interesting this is for other people - but I'd love to hear your experiences, and what you think of mine...