Most unusual circumstance or location in which you’ve gamed.

I’ve run and played RPGs in a variety of unusual locations over the years. I have, in years past, taken the Greyhound to Gen Con which works out to a three day trip. One year, encountering other gamers on the bus, I ran a D&D game that lasted for most of the trip. We added players and lost players depending on connections and such, but had a rollicking good time and even managed to entice some new players. Maybe they jumped in because what else are you going to do on a bus for hours and hours? But hopefully they had fun and kept playing.

I’ve run games while camping, and I always find those to be a heck of a lot of fun. Sitting around the campfire is great for playing fantasy games, as well as setting the mood for horror/Cthulhu games. Back in my Living Greyhawk days, a group out of Calgary organized CampCon, a weekend of Living Greyhawk and camping in the Rockies. It was a great time, and especially educational for players who thought you could just toss a blanket on the ground and sleep in the great outdoors. And the mountains being the mountains, it was also an education on why you might want warmer clothing when camping (snowstorm in July? Don’t mind if I do, Rockies!).

For a brief time I was involved in a vampire LARP, and we were lucky enough to have the empty three floors of an office building to play in. We had a large boardroom set aside as the Prince’s throne room, and different offices assigned to each clan as their territory. It made for some interesting situations, and the team running the game did a great job making up the space for various special events inside the game.

Among the many odd places I have gamed or run games, where perhaps we shouldn’t have been: a church belfry, a disused water tower, an empty light-rail station, steam tunnels under the local university (I know, how derivative!), steam tunnels under West Edmonton Mall (with occasional pauses to play hide-and-seek with Wandering Security Guards), an abandoned hospital, and a defunct and desanctified church. That last was especially creepy, and perfect for the horror game I ran. It was a rural church, down a road lined with semi-leafless trees (it was autumn), and a bell which rang at random moments as the wind blew through the belfry and caught the clapper rope. Everything about the location screamed “horror movie”, and crouching in the centre of the room with a rickety table and flickering lanterns only enhanced the mood.

What’s the oddest location you’ve gamed? Let me know in the comments.