Treasure Trap was a live action role-playing game

Live action role-playing game

A live action role-playing game is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world, while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may...

  established at Peckforton Castle

Peckforton Castle

Peckforton Castle is a country house built in the style of a medieval castle. It stands in woodland at the north end of Peckforton Hills northwest of the village of Peckforton, Cheshire, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building...

 in Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

 in April 1982. Various splinter groups broke from the original system, some retaining the Treasure Trap name, and helped to shape the later British LARP scene.

Peckforton Castle

The original Peckforton Castle game was a fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 game run by business partners Peter Carey and Rob Donaldson. The group ran events mainly over weekends, but also some week-long adventures moving across country and ending at the castle.

The venue gained fame when it appeared on the popular BBC television programme Blue Peter

Blue Peter

Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...

, with two of the show's presenters, Simon Groom

Simon Groom

Simon Groom is a British Producer & Director, best known as a former presenter of Blue Peter.Groom was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and was brought up on a farm in Dethick, which he often visited for Blue Peter reports...

 and Peter Duncan

Peter Duncan

Peter Duncan is the name of:* Peter Duncan , former Blue Peter presenter and former UK Chief Scout* Peter Duncan , Scottish Conservative Party politician, former Member of Parliament...

, playing the game. Shields with the show's ship logo on them were made for the occasion. When working as a local news reporter, Ben Elton

Ben Elton

Benjamin Charles "Ben" Elton is an English comedian, author, playwright and director. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV....

 once also presented a programme from the castle and took part in an adventure.
As in most role-playing games, players would assume an new identity (or character) during the game, each character having certain skills and abilities which were recorded on cards. Characters might join a guild, which was essentially a character class

Character class

In role-playing games, a common method of arbitrating the capabilities of different game characters is to assign each one to a character class. A character class aggregates several abilities and aptitudes, and may also sometimes detail aspects of background and social standing or impose behaviour...

, giving them access to a particular set of skills. Players could progress through the guild hierarchy as their skills developed.

Players would play the game in costume, ranging from basic hessian tabards for novice players to armour such as chain mail

Chain Mail

"Chain Mail" is a single by Mancunian band James, released in March 1986 by Sire Records, the first after the band defected from Factory Records. The record was released in two different versions, as 7" single and 12" EP, with different artworks by John Carroll and, confusingly, under different...

 for experienced players whose characters had gained game wealth (measured in Stells) in previous games to be able to afford its purchase. Conventional weaponry was restricted to padded or rubber weapons and wooden shields, although more unconventional weaponry was also allowed, such as tennis balls or dye-filled eggshell

Eggshell

An eggshell is the outer covering of a hard-shelled egg and of some forms of eggs with soft outer coats.- Insect eggs :Insects and other arthropods lay a variety of styles and shapes of eggs. Some have gelatinous or skin-like coverings, others have hard eggshells. Softer shells are mostly protein....

s used to represent the spells thrown by a wizard character.

The game scenarios were created by referees, who would also explain the games' objectives, which might be such things as rescuing someone from a group of hostile monsters. Players would attempt to complete the objectives in small groups (parties). The monsters in each scenario would be played by group members who were not currently adventuring. The referees would follow the adventuring players at a discreet distance, carrying paper "Battle Boards" on which they would record combat scores between adventurers and monsters. The monsters were instructed in how to attack adventurers "in character", including falling down "dead" if they were inflicted with a fatal injury. Referees would count points based upon coloured markings left upon the adventurers' costumes, left by the monsters' weapons, which were coated in dye (actually poster paint) for this purpose, with different colours signifying different amounts of damage, or the presence of acid, poison, etc. Game play would continue until all the adventurers were killed or the objectives were achieved. Irish author Conor Kostick

Conor Kostick

Conor Kostick lives in Dublin where he teaches medieval history at Trinity College. He is the author of many historical, political and cultural articles. Epic was his first novel and was awarded a place on the International Board on Books for Young People Honours list for 2006 and on the Booklist...

, then a teenager, was one of the system's designers.

Health was measured in Life Points, both total and per each body location (head, chest, abdomen, legs and arms). Weapon damage affected both of these and armour reduced this damage. This system was heavily influenced by the RuneQuest

RuneQuest

RuneQuest is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1978 by Chaosium, created by Steve Perrin and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of Glorantha. RuneQuest was notable for its original gaming system and for its verisimilitude in adhering to an original fantasy world...

table-top role-playing game.

Peckforton Castle itself was built in Victorian times, which made it perfect for its new purpose because it looked like a newish castle. It had great halls, towers (one of which was burned out accidentally during a game), and underground tunnels, and was big enough so that several different adventures could be going on simultaneously, and players could play several adventures without getting to know the layout too well. The facilities were not great, however. Mice roamed freely, many of the dormitories had no beds in the early days, there was almost no water supply for washing and the toilets were famously dire.

Other Treasure Trap clubs

Although the original club closed in 1985 (as a result of financial problems as well as losing access to the Castle) many of its attendees formed their own games, clubs and societies around the UK, frequently adopting similar rules and settings, and sometimes bearing the same name of Treasure Trap.
Durham University

Durham University

The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

 Treasure Trap was founded in February 1983 with the aim of helping members travel to Peckforton Castle. When the original Treasure Trap folded, members began running day-long adventures in the woods around Durham using the original Treasure Trap system. The society remains active as of 2011, with over sixty events a year. Locations used by the society include Maiden Castle

Maiden Castle, Durham

Maiden Castle is an Iron Age promontory fort in Durham, England. It is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.-Location:The Victoria County History describes the location of the fort as follows:An earlier description gives more detail:...

. While often stand-alone events, modern adventures are sometimes interlinked with the ongoing plotlines running in the Interactives, the society's other weekly event. The rules system has undergone many profound changes since the society was formed although it is still recognisable as a descendant of the original Treasure Trap.

Cambridge University Treasure Trap was founded in 2002 by ex-members of Durham University Treasure Trap who had moved to Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 and wished to continue the hobby in the local area.
Birmingham University Treasure Trap was also originally formed to help students attend Treasure Trap at Peckforton Castle. When the original Treasure Trap closed, Birmingham Trap members continued to run their own games in the local area, adopting the same rules and some of the setting. Lacking the luxury of a castle, Birmingham Treasure Trap would typically run single-day events consisting of two adventures, often twice a weekend. Popular sites included the Lickey Hills

Lickey Hills

The Lickey Hills are a range of hills in Worcestershire, England, eleven miles to the south-west of the centre of Birmingham near the villages of Lickey and Barnt Green...

, Kinver Edge

Kinver Edge

Kinver Edge is a high heath and woodland escarpment just west of Kinver, about four miles west of Stourbridge, and four miles north of Kidderminster, and is on the border between Worcestershire and Staffordshire, England. It is now owned by the National Trust....

, and the University campus. Due to declining membership, Birmingham Treasure Trap stopped running events in 2002, and the society was formally closed in 2005, although former members still occasionally get together to run events using the game system.
Other spin-off organisations which existed to run live-action role-playing games included Spirit of Adventure, Labyrinthe and others.

External links

• Durham University Treasure Trap (spun off in 1983)
• Cambridge University Treasure Trap (spun off from Durham in 2004)
• Labyrinthe (spun off from Treasure Trap 1984)
• Forever's Destiny (formerly Flights of Fantasy/Nothing Ventured, spun off from Treasure Trap in 1986)
• Film of the original Treasure Trap game on YouTube
• YouTube clip of Ben Elton's Treasure Trap experience