Even though these sections of the forums don't seem to be the most frequented, perhaps someone out there will have some advice for me
Recently I've gotten it into my head that I'm going to run a Silent Hill*-style game, as part of a larger, ongoing LARP campaign. I've run these module-type events for this LARP before, and they've generally followed a "What if?" type of plot (i.e., What if all the characters were high school students? What if they were all living out Tim Burton movies?). They've been well-received so far, so I am encouraged to continue. They've all fallen around Halloween, and it seems by happy coincidence I may have the opportunity to run another one this year. A random comment by one of the players about the current state of the game world put me in mind of Silent Hill (funny where inspiration comes from, isn't it?). Silent Hill creeps the bejeesus out of me, and would make a perfect setting for a module run at Halloween. Even if I can't run it as part of this game, I may write a Silent Hill LARP just for the fun of it.
But, my dear fellow LARPers, I have a conundrum! While we all know that the writing is what really makes a LARP, something similar to Silent Hill would also need to rely heavily on atmosphere. Sure, I can dim the lights and put some bloody props on the tables, but the more the players can be reminded that they're not in a ghost town but in a hall or convention space the more it hurts the LARP. It's very hard to scare people with slowly building creepiness if they can walk over to a corner and see the hotel's pretty floral wallpaper, or see over the "wall" made with chairs to the other side of the hall when they're supposed to be feeling increasing isolation. I could get away with things like a few airburshed posterboards of a city skyline and a model town for TimBurtonLand, but that's just not going to cut it for Silent Hill.
What I would love to do is chop up the space into several distinct areas, and maybe do something like I've seen with fabric "walls" hanging off light wood/pvc pipe frames that I can set up and move around as needed. The games make fantastic use of sound to set the stage, and I've bribed two friends of mine into helping with the monster of a project that is setting up the sound equipment. I'm not really sure where to go from here, though. I'd love some help with constructing fabric walls, ideas for other things that would be keen in the scenery, or even just stories from people who have run horror-themed & scenery-heavy LARPs. While i don't have a huge budget, I don't care if ideas or advice involve expensive things; I'm generally pretty clever at scrounging and building things on the cheap ;-) And possibly one of the best things about designing scenery for a Silent Hill LARP is that it doesn't actually have to make geo-spatial sense. It's not uncommon in the games to, say, descend underground into a bloody labyrinth, open a door in a cafeteria and end up in an outdoor courtyard. The map may say "hospital on the other side of town from bar", but if they're next to each other it won't actually make a difference, or indeed have any negative impact on the immersion of the players.
Here are some game images from the games & movies to give those of you who aren't familiar with Silent Hill a general idea of how the town looks:
http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/previews/screens/silent_hill2/silent_hill2_1b.jpghttp://img.game.co.uk/ml/3/3/1/7/331701ss1_502w.jpghttp://www.dignews.com/admin/screenshoot/silent_hill_origins_art_04.jpghttp://yannick.fleurit.free.fr/GameDesign/Camera%20Screenshots/Silent%20Hill%202.jpghttp://wallpapers.new-years-screensavers.info/movies/Silent_Hill/Silent_Hill_wallpaper11.jpg* Wikipedia for Silent Hill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill TLDR: A ghost town draws people in and forces them, through clever use of puzzles, monsters, and a very small handful of other people who may or may not be real, to confront the demons of their past. The town is often considered to be on the border between life and death. The movie that came out a few years ago is not canonical to the storyline of the games; nevertheless it's a great inspiration for the atmosphere I'd like to achieve, and typical of the kind of storyline the game protagonists go through, only without all the bad camera angles and necessity of having gamefaqs.com bookmarked.
