Brockhurst: my new Downton Abbey larp

[breakinglight11]

With Intercon approaching, larps percolate in my brain. And, as a gift for my beloved inwaterwrit who is chairing this upcoming Festival of the Larps, I have committed to writing my first four-hour solo game since The Stand to run this April at Brandeis. It will be called Brockhurst, and it is a WWII period game set on an English estate in a world similar to that of Downton Abbey. I'm a big fan of the show and I've wanted to write a game after its style for ages now, so I am delighted to bring this to life.

I am shooting to capture the tone and charm of Downton Abbey. It is, of course, basically a well, if occasionally exquisitely, written soap opera. It succeeds on the strength of its characters and the fascination of its milieu. I am hoping to do the same, creating an interesting cast of about twenty or so that gets to play around in this engrossing world, with all the social customs, trapping, and attitudes of an English estate during the WWI period.

I am approaching it similarly to how I approached the writing of The Stand. In that game I took familiar character archetypes of the Western genre-- the drunk sawbones, the troubled half-native, the guilty lawman, the nun with the past, et cetera --and spun them off in a direction you might not necessarily expect, and it worked out well. I got a lot of great storytelling out of that. For Brockhurst, I am taking things that you have come to love as a fan of Downton Abbey and other similar period dramas and taking them off in new directions. There will be many characters that clearly have analogues on the show-- you might say, for example, that Lady Claudia Bellamy is "the Mary Crawley" character --but they will have a different trajectory than the figure that serves as their inspiration.

I think it has the potential to be a ton of fun. I hope you'll come out to play it! And Festival is taking bids and needs them ASAP, so I hope you'll also bring out a game of your own to run. The Festival bid form is here if you're interested!

Comments

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Oooo...I heard good things about "The Stand." And Downton Abbey is a terribly guilty pleasure.

I might be able to get citabria out to Festival, based on this. Can't wait to tell her.

(vortexofchaos and I have already made a bid for Festival.)

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Glad to have your interest, and hers! And thanks so much for the bid, we're so happy for new interesting games! Tell your friends we're looking. ;-)