Setting the mood

[Allison Wonderland]

I am desperately trying to make my Vampire LARP more vampire-y without going the way of the cheap pseudo-velvet tablecloths and candelabras. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, really, it's just that it doesn't suit my game.

Can you come up with helpful suggestions to make a fairly bright (and even sunny) and smallish room with folding tables into a muted and oppressive chamber in which you can almost smell the paranoia?

Even better, can you think of cheap ideas that don't look cheap?

(And can anybody in the UK suggest somewhere that might sell those folding wooden screens?)

[Eggwhite]

You say it's a fairly bright room - are you able to block out the light at all? It's difficult to get dark and oppressive when you've got bright shiney sunlight coming in...

Also, if it's well lit with flourescent overhead lights, the best bet is to try and get rid of them. They light they produce is very bright but also very diffuse and makes it very difficult to create any kind of mood at all, and it's generally best to try and light the space with something else. I've had success in the past with some cheap and cheerful table lamps, which were bought for something like a tenner a pair. Two pairs was enough to light a moderately sized room... Three pairs would probably do for a small hall, if you can space them fairly evenly around the place. It gets you away from the velvet tablecloths and candelabras, and changes away from the bright overhead lights.

There's a bunch of other things you can try, but that's probably the most straightforward lighting based one.

[Eggwhite]

Also, I don't know where you can buy wooden screens, but you can make pretty decent theatrical style mockups for not too much money - a few bits of 1" x 1+1/2" timber, a few nails, some cabinet hinges and a bit of canvas or sheeting (or even paper) and you're there. Lighter than wooden ones, too, so easier to transport.

With a bit of careful placement of light you can get some nifty unsettling back-projection images as well. If you'd prefer to avoid that, buy a bit of leathercloth or somesuch and cover the frame in that instead of canvas or sheeting. That'll block most of the light and with a few upholstery nails you can get something that looks like it's come from an old wood panelled office (or, if you can't get upholstery nails, drawing pins make a fair visual replacement).

[Levi]

Go minimal?

Get lamps - candleholders, oil, battery-powered, whatever. Put them in various places - and dress up those surfaces just a little. Then turn out the other lights. Now as for dressing surfaces up, think props. Old books, weird crap, whatever. Stuff that feel right to you.

It's worked for me.

[Redfeild]

You say it's a fairly bright room - are you able to block out the light at all? It's difficult to get dark and oppressive when you've got bright shiney sunlight coming in...

.

I know people that would say that IS oppresive. I'm not one of them. I'm a morning person.

[Redfeild]

Go minimal?

Get lamps - candleholders, oil, battery-powered, whatever. Put them in various places - and dress up those surfaces just a little. Then turn out the other lights. Now as for dressing surfaces up, think props. Old books, weird crap, whatever. Stuff that feel right to you.

It's worked for me.

This is what my group used to do till we got the semi permanent location on the second floor of a local restaurant. The atmosphere sucks, especially when you have country music bands playing down stairs. But most people come for the play not the atmosphere. That being said, there is something to be said for atmosphere. A crappy location with good atmosphere could be remembered as a great game. But there is also some thing to be said for being able to place an order for a hamburger and beer!

Some thing that has worked for me in the past is Christmas lights. I believe you guys call them fairy lights in the UK. If you go with just one color like plain white you can get a dim but fairly well lit room. Some of the bars in my area do that. Just do not over do it and try to stay away from the multi colored lights. Multi colored lights are good for Changeling though.

Be careful with your candles. Some people like to wear flowing gowns and such that could get them lit up like Michel Jacksons doing a soda commercial. Keep candles in obvious places extinguishers handy.

[James Holloway]

So, let me describe the venue in some more detail. It's a long room with windows on either side. We can roll down shades on those windows which are slightly translucent. It has a set of track lights on the ceiling and sconce lights on the walls. Last session, we only used the wall lamps, which combined with the light coming through the windowshades to create a kind of dim, yellowy glow. It was pretty nice -- certainly better than the previously rather clinical atmosphere.

The way we set it up, we have a table running crosswise at the head of the room and two running down its length on either side -- imagine a medieval hall in terms of the table layout. There is a certain amount of jockeying over who sits at the "high table," despite the fact that it's never officially been named as the important one. Rows of chairs also run down the walls.

What we'd really like to be able to do is break the space up into smaller units. Next session, we're going to experiment a bit with area lighting for that purpose, putting small lamps on some of the tables to create more brightly-lit spaces in tha darkish room. The screens are for the same purpose; we'd like to break up the space a bit to prevent the scattered small groups from forming a single large mass.

We should probably do something about the art, too -- there are paintings underneath the wall lights, and while some of them are OK, some of them are a bit cheerful.

A smaller anteroom serves as an OOC area, and also leads to the main bar and the restrooms. That's a tricky one too. I'd like to do something there.

We're going to be running an Awakening LARP in the same venue starting soon, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how much we can change the set between games in order to create a different atmosphere.

[James Holloway]

Be careful with your candles. Some people like to wear flowing gowns and such that could get them lit up like Michel Jacksons doing a soda commercial. Keep candles in obvious places extinguishers handy.

Yeah, I don't think we can do candles. I'm pretty sure the pub wouldn't go for it, for fire safety reasons. Some kind of small battery-powered light inside a decorative lantern maybe for the tables. Hmmm.

[Eggwhite]

If you're going for battery powered lights, hunt around and find a few cheap LED torches and experiment with butchering them into some kind of tablelamp arrangement. They're usually pretty cheap, although a bit pricier than normal torches... but their saving grace is that the batteries will last a lot better. I've been using an LED lamp base for ages, and I've been able to leave it on for eight hours straight several nights in a row before it starts to dim.

The colour might not be great, but rigging some kind of lamp shade or filter will usually sort that right out. As a torch they'll have a reflector of some kind that directs all the light forward, but either getting rid of that or redirecting the light with a shade or second reflector will usually go a fair way to rectifying that.

[Ambrogino]

Quite a few pound shops atm are doing push on half globe torches 2 for a pound. they're fairly light, so you can tend to affix them to things with (removable) doublesided tape or (colour)-tak.They're also small enough you can put them in thin cloth bags to get light muted by the colour of the bag.

[James Holloway]

Quite a few pound shops atm are doing push on half globe torches 2 for a pound. they're fairly light, so you can tend to affix them to things with (removable) doublesided tape or (colour)-tak.They're also small enough you can put them in thin cloth bags to get light muted by the colour of the bag.

Something to look out for when Allison's in York, then!

[Allison Wonderland]

Wow, thanks for all the tips everyone! And please do keep them coming.

[invisible_al]

Get some large rolls of black, red or another dark coloured material and hang them on the walls/windows. Gaffa tape can useuall attach them to the walls without damaging them when it comes off, careful here and experiment to see what you can use and what is acceptable to the management of space.

Also try making up some heraldric banners, for Vampire LRP grab the symobols and paint them on burgundy banners with say gold paint or similar.

Another thing you can do is create smaller rooms using the tables and chairs to mark out walls, we did this all the time in a big university hall with a stage, build a building layout with tables. Peoples suspension of disbelief can work with this with minimal problems.

Oh yeah and lighting is the key if you have to use electric lamps, point them at walls or down at the floor so the light is reflected.

[NERO Aeon]

Just a few things that maybe I missed in my skimming of the longer posts:

Is this setting a modern day vampire setting? If not then I can certainly understand you wanting to change the look to something more period. As noted, lighting is one of the fastest ways to do that. Electric candles work great, as do table lamps.

If it is a modern setting vampire then I can still understand you wanting to change the mood, but I will note that every modern vampire game that I have been to seems to omit one small detail - it's a game set in current day. There is nothing wrong with floresant lights - the Brujah may be able to see in the dark just fine, but the tremere might just get all whiney and want the bright lights back on.... I realize that this may not be what your players want; they would prefer to have things dark and brooding, as this is the atmosphere that reflects their inner vampire.

The post about the country bar - I would think that a haven on top of a country bar is perfect. Have you been to a country bar lately? Where I live they are pretty packed ALL of the time. No one would ever expect the vampire haven (the coolest of cool) to be on to of a country bar ... and there would be many delicious light snacks at the ready just downstairs.

I guess my point is, there is no reason you can't use/justify what you have - at least until you get something you like more. When you have a setting in modern day I find it hard to see why you would struggle against the modern setting all around you.

I realize that the intent of the question was to get suggestions about how to make changes and not to question the changes, but the cheapest way to get something done is to use what you have.