This is the story of a Waypoint event which has, due to the sheer scale of the bad luck thrown at it, been affectionately referred to as 'The Scottish Event' by quite a few people. The event in question was Narcissus Unveiled, which actually ran on the 12th - 14th of May, 2006 at Borwick tavern in Newtown, Wales but which was intended to have been run a long time before that and at a completely different location. Several different locations and several different times, if I am being exact about it.

 

I am posting this here because I believe that the tale of the problems this event faced may be familiar to at least some event organisers and form a lesson for others into the old maxim - if anything can go wrong it will go wrong.

 

Narcissus was written as a Sci fi event in the mould of old Doctor Who episodes. In particular, we wanted an event where the players ran round endless tunnels being chased or chasing a small number of very hard to kill monsters. The Dalek episode of the new incarnation of Doctor Who is a good archetype to think of, with shades of Alien and Predator thrown in. For that we needed tunnels. Ideally, as the IC location was a nuclear bunker, we needed a bunker. And therein lay the first obstacle to success.

 

There are very few indoor LRP sites in Britain. Certainly ones that are available for use all weekend by LRPers. You can hire kelvedon hatch for a couple of nights so long as you are out of site before the public turn up. There was Leeds indoor site and still is the Shadowkeep in Burnely. There are caves used by some groups but they don't really say 'bunker'. We considered Shadowkeep but for reasons of our own, which I won't go into, decided it was not suitable. Leeds indoor site was a possibility and we seriously considered taking a trip to view it and possibly making a booking but then the curse hit... Leeds indoor site closed down due to the landlord deciding they didn't want to rent to LRPers any more.

 

The lack of a decent, readily available site put plans back a lot, but all was not lost at this stage. Thanks to the fact that one of the refs was a member, we had a foot inside SubBrit, an organisation of people who own or are otherwise interested in bunkers of all sorts. Our man on the inside reckoned one of the bunker owners may be persuaded to let us use their bunker for LRP. Not just us, but open it to all LRP therefore providing an excellent indoor site. So, he posted in their e-mail list asking if anyone knew of sites available for weekend hire and got a fair few responses.

 

But the curse was not finished yet...

 

One site near Preston was vaguely interested in letting us book them and looked promising. However, by the time we got back in touch with them to discuss terms we found out they'd sold the place in the meantime. Others we contacted ended up in similar situations - the site being sold or otherwise not available. The culmination of this came with the Defense Archives site - a cold war bunker near Hull up until recently used as an archive for a lot of MoD paperwork and other things. The curator of the archives seemed willing to let us use it for a weekend so long as we were aware that certain areas were totally out of bounds. We went up for a visit and it was PERFECT. Consider this: two floors, lots of rooms, all painted a plain white. Lots of places for monsters to hide in. Lots of secret ways in and out for monsters to sneak round OOC. Looks vaguely like an office block except underground. It had the perfect 'Sci Fi monster hunt' feel to it as well. Even the echoes were IC. Add to this 50 bunks, a kitchen, showers, central heating and other mod cons. The only thing we would have had to have done to it to set dress it would have been to build a fake wall in one of the corridors to allow the players to use the bunkroom (which was on the lower floor) while still maintaining the lower level as being 'locked away' from the players until they had cracked the secret code and broken into the secret place behind the door. Building a fake wall would have been easy. As it was so perfect we said 'Yes, we'll take it!' The archivist said great, I'll sort things out. I'll need to get approval from higher up... And that is where the curse came into play. The MoD said no...

 

Foiled again we looked at other options. Sub Brit were still providing leads but they all led nowhere. We'd already made tentative event plans based around getting the Defence Archives on a particular date and even announced them to the players. Now we couldn't run that event there. We instead made a last minute booking at Warren Oak scout camp in Ledbury, renamed the event 'Reflections on the Abyss', stole some elements of the Narcissus plot which worked without a bunker and wrote some new plot to bulk it out a little. The event finally ended as a fairly decent interactive with some combat based around a secret cabal (including NPCs and PCs) finally revealing itself to the world while at the same time defeating an age old enemy. It worked well but Narcissus still needed to be run because there were elements of the plot of that event, elements which required a bunker, which had to run for some of the plot elements of the campaign to progress in any meaningful way.

 

The quest for a bunker finally came up with potential gold quite by accident. The Portly Pixie were closing down and selling most of their accumulated kit including monster masks, weapons, props and costumes. As an event organiser I saw the chance for a bargain and so bimbled across to Nuneaton to see what they had on sale. I'd never been there before but I knew they had an indoor site. It was only when I got there that I realised that the indoor site was actually a set of WWII munitions stores - basically above ground bunkers. A little tweaking and Narcissus could run at that site! So I talked to them about a booking and they said they were willing to hire the site out and were considering it long term now that they were not running their own events any more. They even got so far as to produce a set of booking forms and hiring rules. We made a provisional booking for May 2006 and I rested easy thinking that the event was going to run at last.

 

However, things quickly changed. The Pixie found that they were not getting very many bookings and despite a plea from me on Pagga trying to stir up interest, found that they were forced into a position where they had to close the site. The farmer who owned the land was offered a lucrative deal by a company to use the site for storage full time. For a short while there was a chance that we could still use the site - the Pixie were certainly keen to honour existing bookings, just not take any more, and there were still 2 building free which was enough for the event. However, soon after that the other two buildings got hired as storage.

 

It was panic stations now. We had a date announced and even leaflets out to advertise the event. But now there was no site. The curse had now closed 3 sites to LRP - Leeds indoor site, the Bunker in Hull and the Portly Pixie site. We were scared to book anywhere else in case it happened again. In a drunken stupour one night at a party, several options were discussed. At one point a bank was offered. An actual bank, in a high street. Apparently it still had an old fashioned vault in the basement. It was being renovated for  sale and was possibly open for hire.

 

But we decided against the bank, cool though it would have been. Far too many issues - where to sleep, where to park. As time was getting short, the event date looming, we needed a site which was available at short notice. A bunker was now out of the question. We needed to think fast and work out a site which was available. In the end, compromises had to be made in terms of the plot. No bunker presented a major obstacle until one of the ref team came up with the 'Wrath of Khan' idea.

 

The Wrath of Khan idea worked like this: We divided the site we used into two areas. One was a basic field with a stockade in it in which we set up a small encampment of IC tents. This was where the players were meeting IC and where most of the IC interaction between players and NPCs was to take place. A phys rep was to be set up to show the players where the entrance to the part of the bunker which was open could be found.  A short distance away from there was a phys repped hatch which was the entrance to the locked part of the bunker. Part of the plot was to try to find out what was behind that hatch. Further away, another part of the site was to represent the area behind the hatch. This was an area with a building in it. The idea was that the area behind the hatch was actually a terraformed cavern with a complete ecosystem inside it - hence it looks as it does - including a fake day/night cycle and plant/animal life. It was called the Wrath of Khan idea because it resembled the cavern seen in that film (the experimental genesis effect cave). It was not ideal but it was the best we could do and it did work. Certainly the players didn't argue SOD at any point, possibly because they all understood the problems behind the whole affair.

 

So, the site problem was solved (eventually). However, the curse was not finished...

 

Crew were a problem. In hindsight it was probably not the cleverest feat of organisation to plan to run on the same weekend as NWO and Song of Steel. Especially as many of our regular crew also crew and play those systems. This meant we ended up with very few crew.

 

Now, anyone who runs an event knows that your crew numbers can vary a little as you go through the run up to the event. Some drop out, new ones turn up and so on. Your final crew numbers and composition may bear no relation to the original list. You expect that and plan for it. However, I think this situation was unusual. At one point we were down to 3 crew, including myself. No way to even consider running an event under those conditions. I managed to force that up to 8 with advertising on various lists and some well placed pleas to friends. Then the attrition happened. One crew member got offered casual work which he couldn't refuse on the Saturday night of the event. A crisis not only because he was a central crew member and ref but also because several other crew and a lot of useful kit was supposed to be coming with him in his car. We managed to sort out transport for the crew (thanks to the wonderful TrevorD and Gareth for offering lifts) but had to sacrifice the kit - including a canvas tent we were going to use in the encampment. Another crew member came down with a lung infection the week of the event and was advised not to leave his house for a good few days and so couldn't make it. On the day of the event, I then get an e-mail from one of the perm crew saying that he's been told his afternoon leave has been cancelled because they are short staffed and he may not be able to make it at all due to having to work overtime. Finally, the biggest blow came as the crew member earmarked to play the critical NPC - the IC host of the event who was supposed to kick off and direct the IC meetings - got in touch to say that he'd been called into hospital with Salmonella. Yes, Salmonella... So, two scuppered by work related issues and two struck down with infectious diseases. One of them a critical NPC. Can you see the curse yet?

 

So the final tally was 5 crew, including myself. Big kudos to the ones who made it because they pulled together like troopers and worked hard to make the event work - doing the work of twice their numbers. Especially Russ and Chris who did most of the 'random mutants and gribbleys' work- including some excellent, entertaining mutants from Chris and the wonderful cyborg by Russ. That side of the event was well in hand. Players also volunteered to help - taking short stints as crew when asked. Big thanks to all of them as well. However, we still had the problem of the missing critical NPC...

 

On the way to the event I started considering alternative options. Finally hit upon the one we used - sabotage. The NPC in question had been poisoned by someone looking to scupper the meeting. I told one of the PCs with the relevant background that, as she was treating him for this 'mystery illness', he told her that she had to take over and chair the meeting. Put a player in the spot, far more entertaining than an NPC running the show.

 

Oh, and as a final insult, it rained. Not drizzle, real thunderstom cloudburst rain. And it only seemed to be doing it over the site, no where else nearby seemed to be getting wet. But I think that was the final last gasp of the curse because after that everything went perfectly. In fact, the rain was even a good thing because while it did make the site wet, muddy and slippy it also provided a wonderful post storm mist which rose up *just* at the critical point in the plot as the hyper-spatial gate opened and the monster stepped through to face the players...

 

In all, it was a lesson in how things could go horribly wrong but also a lesson in how perseverance combined with imagination and lateral thought can overcome most problems. I'd advise any event organiser to perservere, even against the odds, and keep trying.