I was reading back on an old journal post about Sea, and saw I'd mentioned how I wanted it to be authentic Steampunk - that is, to make sure that steam was an integral part of the ship, and have all the props built around steam as a power source.
Then I was told the Nautilus was a nuclear sub. Then Kyle started reading the book again, and realized the ship was actually electrical. Plain ol' boring electrical. Well, not boring for THEM - Arronax marvels that Nemo has found a way to use electricity as a lasting, multi-use power.
So, while there are amazing, never-before-seen items of incredible wonder aboard, they're all run by electricity. That's all well and good, but to spice things up, we decided to write in a plot device that also allowed for the use of power crystals to run some thing on board. This was, we could use some cool LEDs and cultivate a little bit of sci-fi feel to the Nautilus.
I've shown the lamps for Comm Ops before, but Gogas recently outfitted them with LEDs, so here's a little video of them in action.
Please bear with me as I explore the Wonderful World of Co-Authorship Of A Blog. I want the players/STs to be able to either add to my posts, or post on their own - so far, we're still at Gogas just being able to leave comments. I'm pretty much pressing every button to see what happens. But, in the interim - read the comments; Gogas wrote a lot about the more technical aspects of the projects mentioned.
How neat is this?? Gogas found a cabinet, and turned it into a key cubby. I'm going to get some more keys, and we'll mount it somewhere central and voila! Keys for the various ship rooms.
For this game, one of the characters is our dedicated cook, and the galley is a legitimate post/station on the ship. Bailey, who plays our quartermaster, researched recipes that not only fit with the time period, but also Nemo's notion of dining only on the sea's bounty. While we won't be THAT strict, most of the meals will include seafood.
Bailey also expressed a desire to make eating more upscale. The Nautilus is a high class vessel, after all, and she wanted the dining experiences to reflect that. This includes a High Tea, room service, and one night of formal dining. It also inspired Gogas to gather a plethora of silver chafing dishes, a beautiful table-runner, and plenty of lovely servingware. Here's a couple photos from the hoard.
Below is the menu she's prepared for formal night. Click to enlarge.
While we'd love to be able to make the bridge book-accurate, it'd require knocking down walls of the house, so we've had to make some compromises. Even so, there's some really, really cool things in the works.
First of all - we needed a 'view screen' window to allow us to see where the ship was going. Which meant we needed something to simulate being under the water. I did some searching and found a couple ocean games that were okay but not great. Gogas, as usual, then went out and found something perfect as well as insanely complicated to acquire.
Japan made a game called Aquanaut's Holiday, but it never had a US release. Gogas found the trailer and showed it to me, and we both agreed it was perfect.
Shame we didn't have it here, eh? So, Gogas ordered the game from Japan, then spent a whole weekend unlocking everything so that we could travel through it in sandbox mode. Undeterred by the fact that the game was in freakin' Japanese, he found a YouTube video that walked through the game step by step with someone translating it into English, and used that as a reference to play it.
With the sea now around us, we needed a way to sail the ship. Again, Gogas went over the deep end (hur), and decided to build a bridge that would be fully functional for our pilot.
That meant using rotary encoders to translate the PS3 controls to a mouse, then wiring THAT to bridge controls. Ultimately, it would allow the pilot to use a ship's wheel, ship's telegraph and dive gauge to actually control the game - he'd turn the wheel, shift the gauge, and the viewscreen would show the Nautilus diving, turning, speeding up and slowing down through the ocean.
The construction is still in-progress, but here's a look at one of the controls:
Along with the pilot's station, the bridge will have seating, map cubbies, and a gigantic map covering one entire wall.
As game nears, there'll be lots more updates and pictures, but this is an intro.
For the comm station of the Nautilus we wanted to have something really functional without sacrificing too much realism. One of the things people used a LOT in our last game was Comm Ops; they loved sending and receiving messages, and we depended heavily on it for video and audio plot devices. Problem is, the last game was set on a spaceship, so it was super easy to do a computer station with a futuristic sci-fi look at feel.
Although the Nautilus is electrical, we didn't want to just set up a computer and monitor and be done. So, Gogas designed a Comm Ops that had a steampunk-y, Victorian feel.
He bought a thermal printer (you know, the kind receipts are printed with in stores) and programmed it to print Tweets. This way, the STs can use their phones or iPods to tweet a communication and it'll print out like a tickertape.
Painting the printer box copper and adding small buttons and gauges will give it the steampunk look we want.
For longer messages, and for sending communications, we're still using a computer. But we'll be turning the monitor and keyboard into something a little more Verne-esque. Gogas is getting his inspiration from Jake von Slatt's jaw-dropping projects. Still in the first phases, he's been experimenting with painting the monitor and using lamps as power sources:
He'll also be designing a Flash program that will make the monitor's display look more like paper and scrolling text, and have the interface a lot more anachronistic.
Gogas soon discovered that there were untold amounts of treasure perfect for this game to be found in thrift stores - and immediately went on a buying spree. In other posts, I'll actually detail some of the things he bought and how they're re-purposed or upcycled (gah, I hate that word) to serve our needs but, for now, I simply enclose a couple of pictures from the spoils of thrifting.
This is the blog for all the behind-the-scenes action of Sea, a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea-inspired LARP.
The purpose of the blog is not only to document all the tech and prop stuff that goes into the game, but also to serve as a how-to for people who might find some of the projects interesting, to offer expository into the creative process as well as to chronicle the game for the players to look back and remember.
The content will be contributed by the Sea players, and largely by myself and Gogas, the game's designer and tech guru.
