Live Games

Cassandra 23: the idea was simple. A group of friends and friends of friends were invited to create a fictitious persona, or character to play. That character had at some time in their life been subject to a paranormal event of some sort. They were given a 30 page file of rules, and were allowed to choose skills, distribute points etc etc to create this persona. then they were told to dress as that person.

Having supposedly been recruited by a top secret project, cassandra23 they were then summoned to meet in a prestigious hotel in a town on the other side of the country from where they lived, and conduct a paranormal investigation which took betwwen 9 and 36 hours. They had toy props issued, attended a briefing, and then drove all over the county attempting to unravel the mysteries, and often dying in the attempt.

There were 7 games in all, and one of my players Peter Clark (aka Alex Rothwell) wrote up what happenned from his characters perspective for several of them which you can read here - and I hope you will!. We used up to 20 locations a game, and in total over 40 different people were actors who the players got to interact with.

The Cassandra23 series used FantasyFlight Games Cthuhlhu Live rules, and was created by myself and Polly Draper. Ironically it is probably my finest acheivement, and kept me from work for the whole of 2000, the games being spaced about two months apart for preparation of the 40 page scripts, cast training, prop building, etc, etc. Miracolously the cost to the players was never more than £20 and a tenner for most of the games.

I have many times thought about adapting this for as different medium... but always my final words at the end of episode 7 haunt me -

'I will never, ever, ever, do this again...'

Last Flight of the Albatross: this was the website for agame I ran at Fallcon, a roleplaying convention in Oxford in 2001. espite appalling organisation on my part it ran quite well...

cj x