QUOTE
(Absinth_Minded @ May 24 2005, 11:15 PM)
Macbeth: You've turned modern, rainy Seattle into medieval Prague? May I ask how one goes about doing that?
Macbeth: You've turned modern, rainy Seattle into medieval Prague? May I ask how one goes about doing that?
Absinth_Minded is quite right: Seattle is a very young and aggressively modern city, even for a relatively young nation like the United States, so recreating the Dark Medieval here poses somethng of a challenge. Here are the basic steps our troupe takes to set our stage for the time period.
First, we cut ourselves some slack. An exact recreation of the early 13th century, or even the WoD version thereof, isn't possible on our budget and time schedule, so we don't try. Instead we attempt to suggest the Dark Medieval in many ways, and to emphasize some important aspects of the age.
Costuming: Our players' costumes run the gamut from highly accurate, hand-sewn 13th century garb to off-the-rack early Renaissance doublets and gowns. And that's okay, because we're just trying to suggest the age, so we're prepared to accept some anachronistic or even fanciful clothing for the sake of ensuring that everyone is wearing some kind of costume. We also keep some spare simple costumes (and a stack of NPC character sheets!) handy for the occasional friend or spouse who wishes to join us just for one game.
Stage Dressing: We try hard to eliminate as much of the modern era as possible from our game site. It's not possible to hide every aspect of the current time, but we get very close. Our current playing space is almost devoid of decoration, and that makes it easy to cover modern objects like lamps and pianos with squares of fabric. We hang decorative fabrics on the walls and cover tables with dark cloth. The Prince character sits on a "throne" constructed from a folding camping chair hidden under a luxurious faux fur "skin," flanked by a pair of tall black plastic pillars. We turn the lights as dim as we can and play by candlelight, and for background music we have CDs of Gregorian chants and CDs of tunes played on authentic medieval instruments, and even some recorded sounds of horses hooves clopping on cobblestones to simulate "the world outside."
Little Touches: We set aside a section of the game space as a designated Out-of-Character area, and encourage players to go talk there OOC if they must rather than breaking character in the middle of a scene; that helps us preserve our illusion. And we keep a large map of medieval Prague handy so that characters can refer to it when discussing events of the night, the better to suggest that they are residing in a medieval city.
~Macbeth


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