You know how one night larps can often decend into everyone standing around in corners not trusting each other and nothing ever happening because the refs are waiting for the players to either make their own fun or pick up on the stuff they threw out earlier that got ignored?

Brighton Below is not like that. It's pretty much the opposite of that.

The refs seem to take the pleasant attitude that players can always stand around talking _while_ stuff's progressing, rather than instead of it. Likewise the players had created characters who interacted a lot with each other and intermingled so much that my friend is now thinking a map of "Who hates who" would be far more useful than one of where things are. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming OOC too, despite our being late, knowing no-one and having misplaced one of our number. The game then ended with a post-event pub visit, which again added to the athmosphere.

Good Things:
 - Very welcoming athmosphere and easy to get involved in things.
 - Rules were simple, few calls and a lot of effects fitted easily into IC conversation without breaking the flow.
 - Lots of interesting things happening IC
 - The game felt very "in style" for Neverwhere
 - Lots of effort had been put into the plot, props, rules and set up, and it really paid off.

Bad Things:
 - Nothing really comes to mind. My one complaint would be that it would have been nice to have had more set dressing, but that's only a minor thing and I can appreciate that there are often time & site restraints on that.

Things Newbies Should Know:
 - Bring stuff to trade, that's a big part of the game and you'll miss out if you don't.
 - Make sure you learn all the rules, some of the calls are subtle so you need to know what's being meant by what's said.
 - Bring liquid! I was so parched by the end and from talking to people, I wasn't the only one.

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LT - Captain Iolanthe Swan

Riftworld - Jenna Neraid, Clan Sceptre

Brighton Below - Drizzle

But it was good bloody fun.  Could have used oc drinking facilityness.  I actually saw that there was just at the end, bugger.

Other than that.  Good event.  A bit more briefing would be good.  But I heartily recommend it.  The kit was well up to expectations and all the players were very welcoming.

Definitely rousting up enough people to come down and vandalise you again *Fluff*

But if you really *want* to bug Me and are still trying because I didnt put the damm contact field in properly....

Thegamefinisher@yahoo.co.uk

With a few bits of preparation it was an easy enough game to slip into.

Refs were helpful and the atmosphere was great, a market where everybody was haggling over absolute junk was perfectly done.

The rules were unobtrusive and intuitive

A couple of small niggles:

The Game setting seems to be too big for the number of players attending. As an example one of the factions (The statues of the city and those who speak to them) had a rather important role at this event, however only one statue speaker was at the event and she was with the traders. More than a couple of factions are represented by only one or two people or in some cases only by NPCs. (Bird speakers, Statues Speakers, the Preston household spring to mind and I'm not sure I saw any of the Ladies or Juggs, might be wrong.) On the other hand this does give people plenty of room to carve out their own Niche of the city which is very handy.

In my own case I arrived and my faction didn't have anything for me to do, which was a bit of a downer (Didn't stop me from having a great time and fiddling around with other peoples plots, but I can imagine that might disuade some new players). Of course there's only a limited amount of plot in the world so it probably won't be the same for other people.

Andy

PD: Veritas (Smith Eidolon)
LT: Michaelangelo D'Crotez (Militia)
OOC: Andy

Would echo Mariannes post in that it really does help if you've got unk to trade. We weren't really expecting it to be quite as big a thing as it is but I suppose its the Floating Market so trade is what everyone is there for.

Set dressing - We had a lot more with us but had problems in that we weren't allowed up on the balcony to put things like the banners up, and we discovered that gaffa tape stripped the paintwork off the walls, and we didn't want to cause damage. We also had things like gazebos' but again were limited in the amount of time we had for take-down so decided that they probably weren't necessary

Briefing people was difficult as by time in, only about half our booked players had arrived, so we were busy trying to keep things running as new people arrived.

The OOC drinkiness was the back room. Its always been a "bring your own" event. This venue was unusual in that it was a church so they didnt want anyone drinking in the "sacred" areas.

We realise that the game world is quite wide, and the likelihood is that we'll be reducing it in size. The main issue on the faction side is that most people have opted not to join a faction. We do have PC statue speakers and members of the Prestons but they couldn't make it, but with 9 factions and about 50 players "on the books" theres plenty of room in ach of the Factions. May need to make it more worthwhile to join?

Anyway, we do take all constructive suggestions on board and will hopefully have resolved some of the minor issues for the next game

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez