Serenity LRP event 19: Signal

"Welcome to event nineteen.  Of four."

Despite being intended as a short spin-off from a Stargate game, Serenity LRP has proved remarkably durable.  This event, 'Signal', was the 'season finale', where an ongoing plot that started at the event where I first started playing (which also happened to be the current plot writer's first event as plot writer) reached its climax.

At each event there has been a broadcast from a pirate radio station calling itself the Voice of Truth.  The setup for this event was that the Voice of Truth was asking for our help.  This saw us fly our ships down onto a cortex relay and fight our way through a multi-level complex before finally locating the Voice of Truth and enabling one crucial broadcast.  One that we, the players, do not yet know the contents of.

This game was pretty much a masterclass in how to run a larp.  If you know Firefly, you know the kind of characters people play, and it didn't matter if you were a fighter, mechanic, medic, cortexer, companion or pilot, there was something in this event that made your skills critical.  I did have moments of feeling rather bored, but this is entirely my own fault for making a character who can't do much besides fight, and each time it wasn't long before I got the chance to be useful again.

Set dressing is one of the stand-out features of Serenity LRP for me.  Games take place on scout campsites, usually ones I've been to many times before, so making me feel like I'm actually on another planet is going to be a challenge.

The main building played the part of each of the five floors of the underground complex.  Each time we changed floor, the sequence went:
All leave via door A.
Head down a tunnel (actually a series of tents and gazebos, all superbly set dressed as infirmaries, maintenance rooms, drug labs, etc.)
Walk through a large open space, beset by reavers/snipers/automatic laser weapons.
Reach the next lift (actually a gazebo)
Enter the building again via door B.

By which time, the building had had its level number signs changed and the furniture rearranged.

Some suspension of disbelief is always required, of course.  It rained quite a lot over the course of the weekend.  We, the players, put the fact that we were getting rather wet in the large open areas down to a faulty fire suppression system and condensation dripping from the ceiling.

Sunday morning was slightly delayed by outside circumstances.  Specifically, a group of cub scouts arriving on site ready to go on a hike, just at the point when the game team were trying to set up the horrific experimentation lab full of corpses and brains and other things that cubs themselves are probably OK with but which their parents might have objections to.  Someone had told them that since they weren't using the site itself, only meeting there, they didn't need to tell the site.  Someone is going to be getting a major chewing out for that one.

Once the site was free of impressionable young people who shouldn't be exposed to larpers with assault rifles, we were able to begin the final assault.  By this point in the event I'd already been shot, stabbed, gassed and irradiated.  I was now able to add 'fell off a bridge'.

If you've seen Serenity, and remember that bit near the end where Mal is racing the operative to Mr Universe's transmitter and there's that bridge with the massive fan spinning underneath?  That bridge.  Luckily my friends were able to pull me back up.

A fitting finale to an amazing season.  My character has been left with new traumas (fear of heights being the main one) but a sense of optimism, and I can't wait to see what Season 2 is going to bring.