Author | Lightnews

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 6d

I'm at the Hackspace today to support our Repair Café.

East Essex Hackspace @eehackspace.bsky.social · 6d

Repair Café today at the Hackspace until 13:00.

A picture of the outside of the Hackspace on a bright autumnal day. We have our flag up outside.

3

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 7d

I have blogged about one of the props I made for our recent LARP project. Not perfect but it ended up having the desired effect and now we're past the event I may go back and sort out the rough edges I can see. Notably the acrylic is taped, not properly fitted.

blog.arcanium.london/2025/10/look...

Looks like love at first sight to me

Building interactive props for LARP (live action roleplaying) with Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other 'maker' staples.

blog.arcanium.london

1 4

Reposted by Nick Reynolds (he/him)

James Bloodworth @roguecolonel.bsky.social · 7d

Eclipse : A Retrospective

This will be a Retrospective lookback at the Eclipse LARP as organised by Chaos League. I attended the third international run of this game that took place in Poland between September 5th to the 8th, 2025. All photos are by the author unless otherwise specified. Please…

Eclipse : A Retrospective

This will be a Retrospective lookback at the Eclipse LARP as organised by Chaos League. I attended the third international run of this game that took place in Poland between September 5th to the 8th, 2025. All photos are by the author unless otherwise specified. Please note I do discuss parts of the game that could be considered spoilers, if you have not played but intend to then please read no further.

criticalpathsite.wordpress.com

2 1

Reposted by Nick Reynolds (he/him)

Simon Brew @simonbrew.bsky.social · 10d

I've had a few quiet notes of support from people at other publishing companies about this. But there's also a fear of calling Google out, for fear of the power it has. I get it, but it's pretty lonely out here.

Film Stories @filmstories.bsky.social · 14d

Google's search results are, sadly, damaging lots of websites. What does #Google actually want? And is it what a human being would want?
filmstories.co.uk/features/oka...

Okay then, Google: tell us what to do | The future of entertainment websites

Google's search results are, sadly, damaging lots of websites. What does Google actually want? And is it what a human being would want?

filmstories.co.uk

5 13 37

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

It's all canon now.

1 1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

I look forward to more Chum Dynamite and their tales of "conservation work".

1 2

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

I expect to be back next year because I like the people and it helps that the journey to site is manageable. I may have to think about my next skill choice carefully. Do I lean into becoming mechanically more effective in combat or pull back and respec the character completely, which is allowed.

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

Where I'm struggling is that there is boffer combat and I suck at that. I'm playing a scout and with a dearth of combat characters mine has the vague outline of one so I got pulled into it. I tried my best but don't have the skill focus or the hard skills so I whiffed and whiffing sucks.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

Everybody is welcoming and it's a very queer and neurodivergent accepting environment if that's important to you. Less mobile people have the alchemy/crafting/translation games to work with and if you don't want to go out and be active there's seemingly more than enough to do.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

You're rewarded for going out of the camp: there's stuff to find and scope for small group linears through a kind of teleportation mechanic. I had some of my best fun of the weekend on one of these engaging a noisy NPC to keep them away from the characters who were trying to do something stealthy.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

Play style is highly co-operative and as the writers have a TTRPG background there are subsystems that interact in interesting ways and a token economy. A bardic performance might give you a boost so it encourages 'doing your thing' without effects stacking absurdly.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 12d

This weekend I was back at Deamlands for my final LARP of the year. I'm still enjoying this: it's giving me a little bit of almost-fantasy LARP without being too caught up in a huge world as each episode is largely self-contained.

My LARP character Emneth: an anachronistic mix of Flecktarn camouflage clothing and black fantasy armour pieces. On my head are bone coloured horns and I'm carrying a bone styled sword.

1 1

Reposted by Nick Reynolds (he/him)

Nigel Auchterlounie @n-auchterlounie.bsky.social · 19d

"IT ABSOLUTELY WILL STOP!!!"

16 250 500

Reposted by Nick Reynolds (he/him)

Adrian Bowyer @adrianbowyer.bsky.social · 16d

Come on everyone! If we all pull together as a team we can make this rhyming slang internationally universal.

Adrian Bowyer @adrianbowyer.bsky.social · 17d

Jackson Lamb heading to the bog: "Methinks a Donald is in order."

4 6 5

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 16d

As I watched the episode I just naturally parsed it without realising they'd done it.

1 1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

I'm a bit spent so I need a break from "making/writing LARP stuff" but thankfully the next episode of "Cyberpunk: A Life on the Edge" isn't until next October so I've got some breathing space.

I've still got committee work to do for UKLTA but that too quietens down over winter.

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

Anyway I'd like to thank my fellow GMs Simon Barker, James Bloodworth, David Dorward, and Andy Flood, all our crew and players over the years for all the good times.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

It's lived in the grey area between one-shot and campaign LARP. Not frequent or connected enough to be a campaign but also not totally self-contained with events from the first echoing today. Which I think is how I like things but also perhaps isn't what 'sells' in the mainstream UK LARP scene.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

We were doing this all this time because our audience seemed to be enjoying it and I hope we gave them a satisfactory conclusion.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

I don't have any meaningful photos from this weekend apart from this one of the chaos in the crew hut late on Saturday night as I'm about to go to bed not having found time to put my tent up. Or maybe that's the most meaningful one of all.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 19d

So that's it, after starting work in 2019 we just finished the final part of our LARP "quadrilogy" High Frontier: Gods and Monsters. Our first part got postponed until 2022 for obvious reasons but we really have been at this six years.

A scene of total chaos with LARP props and kit spread over tables and chairs

1 1 1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 27d

I desperately want to go but it seems like everything interesting to me has been scheduled for the fortnight before a LARP we're running and we're in full crunch mode to get ready.

1

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 27d

When I first got this, aside from all the safety worries, the toolchain was a pain in the neck so I barely used it. I think I did one project with it. @lightburn.bsky.social really shows how good software elevates cheap tools like this.

Nick Reynolds (he/him) @ncmreynolds.bsky.social · 27d

It's not been touched for maybe seven years but Lightburn just worked with my cheap old diode laser engraver and barring some dull faff with homing it manually I'm good to burn some props once I've done the designs. I'll take it outside for that though because it's going to make nasty fumes.

A square burned in a piece of wood by one of those cheap laser engravers made with similar stuff to 3D printers: 2020 extrusion, stepper motors and a GRBL controller.

1 1

Reposted by Nick Reynolds (he/him)

Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 28d

Okay, so today I ran the dumbest concept LARP I've ever run (and I've run a space combat from the vestry of an old church.)

I built a tank in my garage and put five players into it for three hours while three GMs controlled a computer simulation they could drive through. This was "DuD: CHIMERA!"

The inside of the Chimera's crew bay - three seats for the map table and the vox operator. You can see the gunner's and driver's compartments at the front of the vehicle.

The bay is 66 inches tall - just low enough that none of the players could stand up straight. Enough space to fit, small enough to be really inconvenient.

3 1 19