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As a producer, I tend to think of Eldritch Errors as a machine with two modes: burn and coast. When the production is in burn mode during a Book, it costs more to keep Eldritch healthy. When we come into an Interlude, that cost goes down ... but if you coast too long you'll lose too much of your momentum. When Eldritch is in burn mode, I have budget goals for what I want to keep the expenses to each month in addition to GMD Studios' standing team. Budgets can be horribly boring, the mere mechanics of implementing ideas, but they can also be where you find the best "bang for the buck" approaches that make an idea a success.

What follows is intended primarily for other interactive storytellers or those really interested in the mechanics of what makes Eldritch work behind the scenes from a budget perspective as an independent production. It isn't intended as a tutorial or a comprehensive budget model. It is just one producer's notebook about ways to think about how budgets -- of live events, especially -- can become useful tools for both qualitative goal setting and for making small budgets look bigger than they are.

Independent artists have a long, fine history of stealing production value from the real world for little or no expense, a technique that works equally well for producing an independent film as it does for producing immersive experiences like ARGs, LARPs and Eldritch. It requires a certain tolerance to risk and an attitude best summarized as being willing to ask for forgiveness instead of seeking permission. If you wanted a firmer risk test, it might be "could we cease and desist if someone asked us to, and would that limit most of the liabilities of trying this wacky idea?" If the answer is "yes" -- even if that cease & desist might come from an Attorney General or Microsoft -- you might be in a position to steal some production value from the real world as well. Here's two ways we did just that in Eldritch, one involving a psychic in New York City and the other a storage facility outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

One of the few downsides of staging an event inside a public storage facility is the lack of electricity in the units. Apparently that (at least in part) is to help prevent crystal meth labs from setting up shop (may I also suggest you avoid using in-room coffee pots in hotels?)

Without power (or with very limited power), our major concern was lighting, and our experiments with glowsticks seemed to produce the most reliable results. The designs for the central set piece, an altar, began to morph to serve as the light source for the rest of the room. Our preliminary tests the week before (pictured here) gave us enough confidence to skip electric lighting altogether. Inside, we show you the how-to steps.