Scenario

In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado marched into a remote area north of the Aztec and Toltec in search of the fabled seven golden cities of El Dorado.  However, all that he and his men discovered were peaceful Hopis living in adobe villages.  After looting and raping the Hopis out of sheer disappointment, the Spanish left.  Periodically, expeditions returned--just in case there was gold to be found after all.  

The Hopis, of course, lived here before the Spaniards came and weathered their recurrent depredations.  As a People of Peace (the meaning of the word "Hopi"), the Hopi never fought the Spaniards but signed a treaty with the representatives of the King of Spain.  Missions to convert the Hopis to Christianity were led by Franciscan friars starting in 1629, although these missions met with little success.  Never ones to take a hint, the Franciscans continued to send friars to the Hopis.  Legend says that it was a Franciscan who discovered gold on a nearby mesa sometime in the 1780s.  It didn't take long for others to hear of his discovery and for some enterprising Spaniards to build a mine there.  They called the mine the El Dorado.  

For several years, the mine produced a respectable annual amount of gold.  The vein wasn't broad, but it seemed to continue deep into the mesa underneath a natural network of caves. Maybe it was only to be expected that the further into the caves the mine pushed, the more the workers found the eerie sights and sounds of the mesa's caves unnerving.  Perhaps the men were on edge to start with, knowing that the Hopis had preferred death to defiling the "sacred ground of the mesa" when the owners attempted to forced them to work as slave labor. Whatever the cause, there were wild reports of unbelievable occurrences--many of the workers maintained that the mine was haunted.  

But the mine, or the mesa itself, must have been unstable.  One day, there was a horrendous collapse.  Dozens of men were killed.  Those who survived said the mine and everyone in it were swallowed by the mountain. The Hopis were said to have attributed the disaster to the vengeance of the Old Ones. In time the weather erased the external evidence of the mine, and the precise location was all but forgotten.

Eventually Mexico won its independence from Spain and the Hopis' territory became part of Mexico.  In 1846, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred all the land north of the Rio Grande--west to the Pacific Ocean--to the United States of America.  

In 1877, Hank Wetherill settled in the Little Colorado River area with his family to start a cattle ranch, the Rocking W.  With a deed authorized by the United States government, he owned several thousand acres, but of course his cattle ranged for many miles off his land.  This led to a few unfortunate incidents with the Hopis, when the cattle damaged the Hopis' crops, but for the most part the Wetherills and the Hopis have been able to avoid conflict.

It is now October 1881.  Hank died two years ago, and his widow, Martha, runs the ranch with her sons.  A few weeks ago, old Elijah Whately, a veteran of the California Gold Rush, showed up at the Rocking W Ranch looking to purchase some supplies.  He said that he had a  map which would lead him to the location of the long abandoned El Dorado mine.

Tonight is the night Elijah and others will investigate the truth behind the legends of the El Dorado mine.

 

Game Elements

Live-action roleplaying games, or LARPs, come in many shapes and sizes.  This particular game was conceived as a cross between a "haunted house" environment and a boxed murder mystery style of game. It is designed to:

bulletFocus on interaction with the environment.  As in a “typical LARP”, each player will receive a specific character to play, with a character sheet detailing the character's pertinent knowledge and their relationships with the other characters.  However, once players reach the mine, they may not spend much time resolving character inter-relationships.  Instead, the focus of the game will be exploring the mine and solving the various "puzzles" within it, using the characters' combined abilities.  
bulletHave a theatrical, "horror movie" feel.  At least, a "cheesy horror movie" feel.   We won't know until the game runs whether the "scary parts" come across as frightening or humorous.  However, since Hammer Horror is one of our inspirations, we'll be true to it in either event!
bulletBe immersive.  Players will actually be exploring a (simulated) abandoned mine, and will discover the extent of the gamespace as they explore.  There will be LOTS of tunnels to explore, as well as the usual secret doorways to open and passages to traverse.  
bulletResolve combat with "GM-Sanctioned Mayhem Only (TM)."  There will be no actual combat in this game.  This is a non-contact sport!  If two characters decide to duke it out, grab a gamemaster (GM), who will determine the outcome.  If you wish to effect another character's demise, you must discuss it with a GM before any attempt is made.  Please realize that such requests are highly unlikely to be honored, since the GMs will be basing their answer on the effects of a character's death on the game overall, including the enjoyment of the player of your hapless victim and whether the character has vitally important abilities or knowledge.  [In which case, you really don't want them dead.  Trust us.  Not while you're still trapped in the mine.]
bulletBe mechanics-light.  Every effort has been made to keep the game as "real" as possible.  There will be no item cards, there will be no dice, there will be no hit-points.  The GMs would like to be as unobtrusive as possible.  Of course, there will be some effects that we will have to fudge because we don't have either the budget or the technology to pull something off.  We will inform players of the conventions that we've devised beforehand.  As an example, we might ask players to treat hanging fabric walls as if they were actually stone.  Or we might tell players to pretend that the cache of dynamite they found has just exploded (as opposed to actually blowing up our home and/or friends).
bulletComplete lack of emphasis on historical accuracy.  Which is not to say that there is nothing historically accurate in the background or plots of this game.  It's just that, when we had a choice between being accurate or telling a Ripping Yarn, we went for the Ripping Yarn every time.  This game belongs in the realm of pulp fiction, the penny-dreadful, and the dime novel.  However, we actually DO know what parts of the back story are accurate and where we left history behind, so, if you're dying to know after the game, we'd be glad to tell you.  Oh, and we know NOTHING about geology and gold mining. Our geologist friend moved to Colorado.

Game Logistics

Some things for Whately this year will be a little different logistically.

bulletPlayers will meet at 7pm at a nearby restaurant: there will be six players meeting at Famous Dave's on Dundee and Rand while the other six players will meet at Famous Dave's on Barrington and Schaumburg.  We are still trying to determine whether to include the price of dinner in the game fee.  Your team will have in-character information to discuss over dinner.
bulletBoth teams will arrive at the "abandoned mine" (i.e., our house) as closely as possible to 8pm. 
bulletSome locations in the mine will be affected by the outside temperature.  Please dress accordingly.

In case you were wondering about this "Whately thing". . .

Quite by accident, Dig & Gail have developed a tradition of annual Halloween games, titled "The Curse of Whately's [something that starts with 'M'--preferably two syllables]".  Four years ago, we ran Frank Branham’s The Curse of Whately Manor--a fun game inspired by Hammer Horror and other classics of Cheesy Horror.  Before those runs were even finished, we had the lunatic idea of writing our own Cheesy Horror-inspired game, building a haunted-house-like interactive gamespace. Thus was the "Whately concept" born. To date we've explored an Egyptian tomb, a Lovecraftian asylum, and Dracula's crypt, sliding backward through the genetic cesspool that is the Whately family tree.  We opted for prequels rather than sequels: each game has taken place ten to thirty years before the previous year’s game.  While sometimes that creates brain-bending exercises for us in trying to keep the Whately family history internally consistent (yeah, we know--our major inspiration is Hammer Horror and yet still we waste brain cells on "internal consistency"), it results in two positive effects:

  1. We aren't tempted to try to plot around the results of the previous year's game.  This is important because, based on the actions of the players, the ending can be wildly different from run to run--falling into three broad categories: Evil Was Soundly Defeated, Evil Was Decisively Triumphant, and Everyone Died Horribly.  Very hard to plot a consistent follow-up for that spectrum of endings.

  2. First-time Whately players aren't at a disadvantage.  If you're a little concerned about jumping in to the fifth event in a series, you shouldn't be, because these are really only related thematically.  (In the Whately universe, after all, those other games haven't happened yet.)  That being said, you can see photos and comments from three years ago on the wrap-up page for The Curse of Whately's Mummy.