I think the things that players have brought up the most as a good point was the excellent roleplaying on the part of th NPC's and the players.

Plotwise I think we did okay. This was a real new venture for me cos I normally do very story driven plots, but BB is very much player driven. Indeed the main plot was being pretty much ignored at one point and in the end still didn't get solved. Having said that no-one seemed to mind much as there was plenty going on. So we found the idea of write about 20 or so plots, throw them all in and see which ones people run with worked quite well

The Undersider (IC newspaper) was a really good plan, and helped introduce a lot of the plot and main NPC's, as well as being a fairly entertaining read and having more world background in

The players really made the event though. We were expecting people to turn up with a few bits and bobs to trade, but people were setting up stalls with literally hundreds of bits of junk to trade. That aspect worked really, really well, so we are grateful for players for all their efforts in turning the market into the market

Our Arena worked well. Having it there meant that anyone who wanted to fight could, but everyone knew that it was highly unlikely they would be "forced" into a fight. Giving people the option of entering combat only if they wanted to was probably why we had such a large female turnout (9 out of the 29 players)

The bad sides / lessons learned.

We really do need to make sure we leave ourselves more than half an hour to set up. Especially when theres a group already in the room and faff and don't get out of there straight away. Would mind but it was a Tai Chi class and they were al peaceful and quiet but we were paying for their room!!!

I certainly need to delegate more. I know I'm bad at it but there were things that didn't get done (i.e putting stickies on loads of stuff) simply cos I said I'd do it and never got round to it

More communication between the NPC's is kinda essential. I almost went in as an NPC not realising that someone else had taken the role and was already in the room. We nearly had 2 Mad Ira's wandering around

Think there was also a problem with a lack of available refs. So we're looking at making sure there is always one ref available at any one time.

The rules system needs re-hashing. Its fine as a basis but needs work.

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez

Looking forward to the next game! *Bounce*

______________
PD: Formerly: "Gentleman" Jig, of the Wayward Scholars. Briefly: Jingo, of New Bantustan. Soon: TBA.
Serenity: Ben Su Tiao.
White City : Orpheus DuValle / Elias Vincenzi.
RL: Dom Carroll, Firecat Masquerade.

The book is inspiriation certainly but we are running it in Brighton Below and not London Below so there might be a few minor things we changed. I think we stayed fairly faithful to the book though

We're just putting the final pieces in place for the 2nd event to be announced. Watch this space

P.S. Moderator. I think all bar the first one of these posts needs to moved to the Event review section

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez

1) Characters - We're going to be quite strict on having character submitted before the date. At the last event we had people turning up on the day with character ideas, and we certainly didn't have time to go through them when we were setting up. Have a stock of pre-generated characters already there ready  for late arrivals

2) NPC organisation: The last event had a number of key NPC's and about a dozen or so bit parts (traders coming in selling water, or books or old clothes). These werent particularly allocated to anyone, just a "if you get a spare moment". Did almost mean that we had two of the same NPC out "on the floor" though. Going to monitor that one carefully

3) The Kit room - With all the costume changes the kits room got very messy very quickly and finding important kit or props became difficult. Looking at having each costume in a box, when you take it off, put it back in the box, so you know where to find it. And make sure crew use the bins rather than leaving wet-wipes / beercans etc on the table

4) Changing space - We tried to keep everyone out of the main rooms for the start of the last game which mean 40 people were crowding into a small space trying to change. Didn't help so we'll open the upstairs room as a changing area for the next one

5) The police - May warn the police that we're doing it this time. Last time another (unrelated) incident lead them to our door

6) Plot - Condense the amount of story led plot. I don't normally run larger scale player led plot, but we did find that people were doing their own things for the most part and the "main story" plot got lost in amongst it. We're going to tone down the amount of "You have to....." to allow people to do their own thing more

7) Rules - The rules have been amended to take out as much as possible anything that requires a referees intervention. Things liek putting stickies on items are now much more the players responsibility, which frees up ref time

8) Refs - Looking to have a minimum of 1 OOC ref at all times. Though it breaks the atmosphere a little it is pretty essential

9) Room - We've booked the room and have insisted that no-one is in it before us, so that we get the full amount of time required to set the place up

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez