Treasure Trap and LARP

Conor Kostick

Prompted by a delightful look-back at Treasure Trap by a current LARPer (albeit through a clean-cut Blue Peter filter), I’m going to write about my memories of working at Treasure Trap, 1982–83. This is not a history: I’m not going to fact check or match my memories against sources. This is not an attempt to claim Treasure Trap as the origin of LARPing: probably there were similar live action role playing game systems evolving everywhere D&D was popular (although perhaps none with a magic system and certainly no others were commercial). No, I’m writing to remind those of us who were at Treasure Trap of how much fun it was, and to make anyone else who reads this envious that they missed out.

The Ideal Castle for LARPing

Peckforton Castle, Cheshire, is not an authentic medieval castle. Rather, it was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century by Lord Tollemarche, a Cheshire farmer and aspiring aristocrat. Although many of the defensive features of the castle feel authentic – the narrow arrow slits through which only the best aimed bowshots can hope to hit their target, the ditch surrounding the walls, the imposing gatehouse – the orientation of the stairwells is a giveaway. In castles whose owners prepared for life and death struggles, the stairwells corkscrew downwards anti-clockwise, so that a right-handed warrior standing above the invader has room to swing a sword or axe, while the soldier invading the castle is restricted.

Modern then, yet with looks that made it the perfect location for a fantasy world into which we could escape. Crenellated towers emerge just above the treeline, Peckforton rises from a Cheshire plain whose main other feature is a sandstone crag that supports the fang-like ruins of Beeston Castle. If Peckforton is a Disney style of castle, more about decoration than the science of war, then Beeston was the opposite, all grim functionality.

When you arrive at Peckforton Castle, you drive up a steep, forested path from the gatehouse. I tried to cycle this road once and, although fit, couldn’t manage without having to dismount. The woods there are full of pheasants being bred for the shooting season, and as you looked out of the car window, you’d invariably hear one flutter among the trees with the distinct cracking beat of their wings. At the top of the steep road, you emerge from the treeline onto a bridge across the ditch and an arched gatehouse. For a moment, no matter how bright the day, you are in a very dark and foreboding tunnel. And then you are through to the courtyard and light and grandeur and you’re thinking, ‘Can this be true? Can this wonderful castle really be my playground?’

Treasure Trap and LARP Rules

I first went to Peckforton Castle late in 1981. My friends and I were regulars at Chester Wargames Club. At that club were a mix of historical re-enactors, who enjoyed tabletop battles recreating moments from the English Civil War or the Napoleonic Wars, and fantasy role players. I was very much among the latter, playing first edition D&D, with the DM alternating. I tried Runequest, like so many, being introduced via the Apple Lane scenario, but I didn’t like it so much as D&D because the whole evening might be spent on just one fight and there was consequently less role playing. Where Runequest had a definite advantage over D&D was in the realism of the combat. In D&D at higher levels it really comes down to who wins the initiative roll. Moreover, you have just one block of hit points, so you are either up or down, you can’t be limping or nursing a broken arm. The Runequest character sheet had an outline picture of a body, with hit points for each location. This made it a much better starting point for creating a LARP system.

The Origins of the Treasure Trap LARP

Steve Duke was one of the main figures at the wargames club: always full of energy and enthusiasm, my main memories of him are of his laughter. New members were made welcome by Steve and he was very inclusive. I hadn’t known him long before I was playing in his Runequest campaign and also in a multi-player fantasy wargame that was a bit like a postal campaign in that we gave in our orders each week and found out the results the following. He outsmarted me in that game. If Steve was willing to get involved in a project, especially one concerning games, chances were that it would be a success. So Rob and Pete were lucky to connect with Steve when they arrived at the games club with an extraordinary project in mind.

Pete had been playing D&D with his eldest son, John, and they had discussed how to convert the game into one where they could get away from the table and dice and play it for real. I thought my dad was awesome for buying me the Dungeon Masters Guide that let my friends and I start playing AD&D, how much more amazing to have a dad that would take such an idea – which we now call LARPing – and try to make that real.

I knew nothing of the background work of how Treasure Trap was set up: the gathering of investor funds; the rental of the castle; the design of the branding and rules (many of which did not actually feature when Treasure Trap went live). I was only 17, and I was lucky. I could have all the fun of the place and none of the anxiety over finances when it failed to make a profit.

My friends and I were first involved when we were asked to come playtest the system, which of course we did with enthusiasm.

For the adventures at the castle, there were an assortment of well-prepared props: Goblin helmets with fangs had little red diodes so that it seemed their unblinking eyes were looking at you in the dark. A huge polystyrene boulder was perfect for traps, either ones that swung the sphere at you in the dark or just simply bounced down the stairs. Dry ice was used to fill corridors with mist. Weapons were made with plastic curtain-rail cores, around which foam was strapped with silver tape. Shields were wooden. There were also glowing strings for traps and a variety of fireworks.

As for the game system, the key idea was that the monsters would put dye on their weapons, so that there was an objective, measurable way to determine who was injured or dead. After fights, the referee who had been lurking at the fringes of the party would come check the players and let them know the damage they’d received. This system allowed some nuance according to the threat posed by the monster. Common monsters like goblins and orcs used red dye, which did six hp of damage; a mummy, however, might use white dye, which did twelve hp of damage. Armour mitigated damage, so for example leather armour subtracted four, meaning a warrior in leather only took two hp per common hit. Even better, a mage who had cast Plate Protection would take none at all. White dye, however, would get through this armour and quickly kill the player. It was a massive difference. No wonder a note of real alarm would sound in the voice of a scout running back to report to her friends, “it’s got white dye!”.

The range of damage from dyes went Red: six, Orange: nine, White: twelve, Black: twenty-four, while Blue was poison and Green was paralysis.

In the long run, dye left interior walls of the castle covered in streaks that can be noticed even today, long after the property has been converted to a wedding event location. It was an expensive solution to resolving LARP combat because we needed far more dye than was initially apparent. 

Supposing you were a monster waiting for the party to come to your room. The players might be close enough that you had to be ready for a fight and put the dye on your weapons. Yet it might actually take them ages – most parties were of the slow and cautious style – to actually get to your door. During that time, you’d have to keep recoating your weapons or the dye might be dry and all your patient waiting would turn out to be for nothing.

Other than the innovation of using dye to resolve live action combat, the Treasure Trap game system stayed within the usual genre bounds. On launch day 1982, your choice of character was between warrior, magician, lorewarden or thief. As you levelled up you got more hit points in each body location (especially if you were a warrior), or more spells, or spell-like abilities as a thief.

For two or three months my friends and I had the run of the castle, which was surprisingly complex in its interior, and it took a while to learn all the possible routes from one tower to another. Armed with padded swords, we played no end of games, such as a glorified hide and seek, with combat taking place when we found each other, or capture-the-flag type scenarios; or just took pleasure in each other’s company, resting on battlements, looking out over a wide blue-green landscape.

Magic, Treasure Trap and LARP

My friends and I helped make a promotional video (what a treasure that would be to see again). Unfortunately, it was filmed with a blue filter that made all the indoor scenes too dark for its intended use. And we helped iron out some of the questions about how the game would run, such as how to allow magic to work and keep spells balanced. The goal was to allow encounters to flow as freely as possible, so spells like Magic Missile really were missiles thrown by the caster, with the monster briefed in advance as to the consequences of being hit. Glue was a popular third level spell and again, it worked because the monsters would know that it affected up to eight HD and had a certain area of effect and they would act stuck or remain free according to their on-the-spot calculations. In general, Treasure Trap worked as well as it did because those monstering were experienced in how spells would work against them and understood their briefs. After all, another time, they would be the players and in turn would rely on monsters responding properly to the spells cast against them.

One spell we probably shouldn’t have allowed was the innocent looking second-level spell Jump, because the only way to make the magic happen was for the referee to shout, ‘Freeze’ and then move the person on whom the spell had been cast to the place where they were jumping. Not only did this interruption in the middle of a fight break the immersive experience, it also turned a modest second-level spell into something like Teleport, with disastrous consequences for certain encounters. One quick Jump of a warrior to behind the back of a lumbering boss and the battle was over. Black dye or no black dye.

Even before moving to live and work in the castle full time, from October 1982, I was helping referee a lot and I remember being very anxious about the responsibility – I was just eighteen – of writing a level three dungeon, which was needed because of the accumulation of players at level two.

As befitted what was then the highest level adventure in the castle, it had a backstory. The goal was more sophisticated than the straightforward treasure seeking missions of the Basic, and the Level One and Level Two dungeons. A magician had dabbled too deeply into the search for eternal life, becoming a lich, with all their former intelligence turning evil. This lich, resident at the top of the tallest tower of the castle, had obtained the hair and clothes of a prince in order to create a doppelganger in the prince’s image. The longer the doppelganger lived, the weaker the prince would become. Eventually the prince would die and be replaced by his evil twin. The mission then was to break the curse.

In planning an adventure, it had become clear to us all that logistics around monstering had to be the uppermost consideration. If the volunteers for monstering couldn’t be supplied with dye, tea and coffee, spliffs, etc. or avail of toilet breaks, then the monster might be stuck in a very tedious and uncomfortable location for a long time while waiting for the party to get on with things. So smart dungeon design was to plan back route access to the later stages of the dungeon, ideally so the same volunteer monsters who died early on could re-costume themselves and appear again soon after. That way even a few volunteers could make the adventure viable.

Although the climax of this adventure was a fight with the lich in the Racquet room of the top tower, I couldn’t make it a simple assault on the tower for that reason. The poor lich would be stuck there for hours waiting for the party to arrive. So the adventure began in the maze of corridors around the base of the tower. There was a quirky feature I used: a small spiral staircase that opened into an utterly black corridor. If you went along that corridor to descend the far side, you’d probably miss an open trapdoor above you. Into the small space above the trapdoor I placed a ghast, the role usually being a fun one for the monster because we managed to keep that trapdoor a secret a long time and surprise parties with the ghast dropping among them.

Later on was a troll’s liar and a classic boulder trap, all preliminaries to the region controlled by the lich, the start of which was marked by glow string and the lair of a spiderbeast: a person in a spider costume nearby with eight-point blue dye on their hands. If anyone touched one of the strings they became paralysed for five minutes, and the spiderbeast would try to stealthily close in and kill them.

What kind of person came to LARP at Treasure Trap?

Treasure Trap had opened to the public in spring of 1982 and it quickly gained a strong response among gamers. Most of the people coming were in their twenties. Several bodies of students moved to create societies to support visits and also to continue the role-playing back on campus between visits. There was a broad range of people coming to the castle, including people wearing garish colours in the style of Duran Duran or Adam Ant, but the overall tone of the place was much darker and much more metal than life outside of Treasure Trap.

If I say that Peckforton Castle became a sort of anarchist commune it might give the impression of the castle becoming a centre for a kind of hippie revival: true, you could sometimes hear Pink Floyd and Genesis being played in the recreation areas and yes, some people at the castle were stoned most of the time, but the tone of the place was more one you would associate with AC/DC, Rainbow and Sabbath than prog rock. In short: Treasure Trap attracted a disproportionate number of headbangers. A commune of sorts, but not one with a common goal of universal love and happiness but rather that of creating an immersive fantasy RPG. And when the regulars lay about in the Knights’ Room, passing around joints, it was not a contemplation of the coming of the Age of Aquarius that was in our thoughts but it was simply that we were having some downtime between sessions of trying to battle each other and give each other the most intense experiences.

Treasure Trap was self-regulating with almost nothing by way of what could be termed governance structure. People came and stayed in rooms wherever they chose, the restriction being the obvious point that no one should sleep in an area that might need to be prepared for an adventure the next day. Rule changes evolved in agreement between the staff and experienced players. Soon there sprang up new player-designed schools of magic (each colour based), new character classes and player-created guilds, such as the Warriors of Grosmandred (a guild for fighters, created by David Hughes).

There was an overarching hierarchy within the fantasy world in which people created characters and lived but even that was fluid. Pete – as King Sebspa – ruled the castle and the lands around it with his queen (I can’t now remember his partner Diana’s game name), with his sons as princes. As leader of the Blue Magic Guild, Torfald the Blue, my game character, had amassed a fortune by offering to lend members of the guild magic items ahead of their adventures in return for ten percent of their treasure. Players wanting to earn Stells, the in-game currency, could do so by taking shifts at the gatehouse, where they would greet new arrivals. Lacking anything better to do with my hoard, I paid the gatehouse captain (Ian) double the usual rates to be loyal to me and gave him a large fund from which to subvert any other guards he thought would be willing to take bribes.

One night, I was woken by Ian with the news that events had developed rapidly and that all the guards were ready to move and I should act right away as some of the main rebels had a long drive back to Durham ahead of them. I came down to the great hall to see a standoff. One or two royalists (more conservative types of person, as it happens, no headbangers these) were shouting about a plot to unseat the king while being hemmed in by the rebel guards. I found Stuie, checked one last time he was up for the revolution and made an announcement to the effect that henceforth King Sebspa was exiled and that Stuie was king. The bribed guards all cheered but crucially, so did most of the onlookers.

With brazen policies that drew laughter from those not invested in the old order, Stuie announced a doubling of the guard’s pay and the appointment of Tim Pollard’s Samurai character as Marshall. Once Tim came and took his place beside Stuie, I knew we’d succeeded. With every new earldom and high office we created on the spur of the moment we cemented another loyal high level character’s support and drew another round of ironic laughter and cheers.

After the revolution, Pete, who had been watching a little uncertainly came over to me. “Exile huh? What does that mean?”

“It means we want you around for banquets and stuff. Just let Stuie act the king during the day.”

Pete just shrugged and left us at it.

A potentially serious threat to the self-regulating nature of Treasure Trap was posed by the possibility of it attracting trouble in the form of genuinely violent people, criminals even. Hells Angels had muscled in on the west coast hippy movement of the 1960s and there was potential for this to happen to Treasure Trap. Moreover, we did have our own Hells Angels.

Treasure Trap and the Local Aristocracy

Ogg and Mrs Ogg (Monica) set up a cosy den in one of the lesser travelled corridors of the castle. Mrs Ogg had two claims to fame: one being that she could skin up while riding pillion on a bike; the other of being able to bake extraordinarily hallucinogenic chocolate cake. I can vouch for the latter.

One weekend four of my friends from Huddersfield came down and the five of us bought a slice each. “Don't mind the taste,” said Ogg, “And remember, you won't feel much for about an hour. But then....”

And about an hour later it did kick in, while we listened to birdsong, with our backs to the south wall of the castle, feeling the sun radiate from the stones. I remember going inside to play Defender. There was an arcade machine in the hall and I knew how to backspin a 10p coin so as to get 50p’s worth of credit. Playing the game that day was incredible. Each time the laser was fired it slowly burnt its way across the screen: the sound was terrific, a gritty swoosh like that of a high-speed aircraft, but with a phase modulation. And if I hit a green alien it would disintegrate with a wet pop. Incredible, it was like the alien was a jelly. Accelerating the spacecraft, I could almost smell the gasoline from the burners. Simply for the joy of the sound, I fired the laser to the riff of Smoke on the Water. The game lasted forever. Yet strangely my score was only 950, not far off the worst possible.

No one else wanted a game. It was all too much.

By the afternoon all five of us were flat on our backs in the Knights’ Room. Everyone else came and went, discussed whether we were okay and brought water. I was more than okay; I just couldn’t be bothered explaining myself.

Eventually, time began to move at a more usual speed. Music, put on by the more active people in the room, ceased to be so ornate and labyrinthine. Sleep came as a relief. I had been getting tired of the magic roundabout spinning on the roof. What kind of business lets its staff spend the afternoon in this way? The best kind, obviously. The kind without a manager to give you a hard time. I’m normally a diligent worker and was a bit shamefaced when I next saw Pete, but he didn’t make an issue of it.

For some time, I had felt Ogg to be an ambiguous character. Since I had moved to live in the castle, I would hear his bike coming and going at all hours. From Thursday to Sunday night the castle was busy. But Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays were usually very quiet, with just the staff present. This was with the exception of Ogg, who would often be around mid-week and whom I saw just after dawn one morning crossing the courtyard with two dead pheasants over his shoulder. When he became aware of me watching him, he just gave a cheeky grin.

It turned out though, my reservations were mistaken. Ogg and Mrs Ogg had a parental affection for what we were doing at Treasure Trap and were looking out for us.

One quiet evening a van arrived with a drum kit and I went to speak to the guy who was unloading it.

“You here for the debs?” he asked me.

“No. I work here. What’s a debs?”

"You know. Tuxedos and dresses. Rich farmers from all over Cheshire getting pissed out of their heads and planning future marriages."

"This is happening tonight?"

"Yeah. Didn't anyone tell you?"

No one had told us. Maybe Pete had known there was a clause in the lease that allowed the venue to be used as a debs. Maybe there was no such clause. The fact was that the youth of the local aristocracy were about to descend upon us like the suitors to Odysseus’s home.

We hurriedly took all the weapons, armour, etc we could find and put them in a large hall that connected the staff bedrooms. Then we painted big signs with red paint: KEEP OUT. We stuck these to the doors of our area and around the Tavern, where the few players that were present were advised to move around the castle in pairs and to hold Mike’s wooden practice swords.

More vans arrived, with beer, wine and catering equipment. I kept well away, occasionally looking out of the window at the courtyard. Around nine the first of many Range Rovers bounced over the drawbridge. Laughing and obviously excited, two young couples in evening dress got out and entered the main building. Their driver turned the Rover around and left.

Before long there was a queue of traffic. Vehicles worth tens of thousands of pounds did their circuit of the courtyard like a motor show display. Below me, through my feet, I could feel the steady rumbling of the band. The higher pitched sounds of young people enjoying themselves grew louder.

Despite this tone of merriment, I didn’t feel safe in going to bed and nor did John Middleton – about whom I will write shortly – we were out in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of drunk youths below us.

Just after midnight the door to the hall that John and I were in was opened, bringing a sudden invasion of sound from the party.

“Oh, terribly sorry. Wrong door.” A young man with a public-school accent swept back his long peroxide fringe.

Behind him a girl giggled. “Is that them?” she asked in a loud whisper.

Her escort smiled apologetically and pulled the door shut. But both John and I resolved to stay up all night if necessary. Her remark had been ominous.

The party only showed signs of abating at four in the morning, when the first departures took place. The band had ended some time earlier, but a disco was still causing the floor to shake to its bass beats. Red, green and blue flashes of light flickered around the interior castle walls.

It seemed that the party might pass off relatively harmlessly when the door opened again. It was Blondy and his girl. This time he was with a large group of lads looking like a rugby scrum and whose fierce expressions said they were up for a fight.

The Keep Out sign was tossed onto the floor in front of us.

“Hey, the hippies are still up.” Blondy was drunk but his gaze fastened on John's.

“We've heard all about you.” His girlfriend added. “You bikers; you've ruined the place.”

They came further into the hall. It was strewn with props for the dungeons which they laughingly picked up and threw around.

Under his breath, John whispered to me, “the best bet when dealing with drunks is to say nothing. Don’t give them an excuse for starting a fight.”

But these offspring of the local landlords were intent on trouble as they came further into the room, picking up our gear and throwing it around. I stood up and took several steps backwards.

“This is a staff only area. Go back downstairs.” John’s voice was loud but measured. It was no good though.

“Who are you to order us about?” Another lad spoke up quickly, forestalling any wavering among his peers. He was tall and strong, with a wide collar that was unbuttoned and hair styled in an army cut. “This is our castle. You haven't even paid the rent you owe.”

Now they ignored the props and all moved in. John backed away slowly and we shared a look.

The question was whether we should bolt for it and use our knowledge of the castle to escape them in dark corridors. But I intuited that this was what the debs crowd wanted; I could already imagine their cries of “Tally Ho!” and did not think the chase would end well for this pair of foxes.

“You are turning this castle into a home for losers.” Army haircut stared at John, challenging him to reply. “You're scum.”

“Please leave,” I tried to have a matter-of-fact, reasonable, tone but everyone in the room knew this moment was far beyond reason.

"No," said Blondy. "We're not leaving and you can't make us.”

A prop forward-sized son of some earl or other stamped on a pile of orc helmets for emphasis, breaking one to pieces. There was this consideration too, I knew that if we left a huge amount of invaluable Treasure Trap equipment would be smashed.

Blondy looked at Army haircut. “Shall we?”

"Shall we what?" Ogg had come into the far end of the hall, from behind me, and had issued the challenge in a voice I’d never heard from him before. A voice that leaned over you like an immovable mountain.

“Trash the lot of you bloody hippies.”

Ogg laughed and drew a large Bowie knife which he turned as he advanced, making sure everyone saw it gleam in the light of the bare bulbs that lit this hall.

“God almighty. He's got a knife.”

As a group the partygoers shrank back, Ogg appreciably closed the gap and his look of determination was unambiguous 

“Let's get out of here,” said the girl pulling on Blondy's arm. That was all the excuse he needed.

“He's mad, he really will stab us.”

They broke, pushing and even punching each other, they hurried from the room. Walking past John and I, Ogg followed them to the door and watched from the top of the stairs until the noises below had faded.

Then, Ogg looked over his shoulder at us, with a pleased expression. “I'll stay here if you like.”

"Yeah thanks. Want a drink?" asked John, going to the fridge and coming back with three cans. “It won’t be too long before dawn.” John handed a can to Ogg with a respectful nod, then passed the other to me.

In the courtyard below a ragged column of upper-class partygoers stretched across the courtyard like a defeated army.

John Middleton at Treasure Trap

I must have only intuited at the time what I can see now with hindsight that John Middleton, game name Moonjackal, was a really unique person in respect to his outlook on the world. He very rarely spoke about himself, so even after months of living with him, I had only pieced together that some years earlier he had travelled through America and come home, ‘the long way’. What was unusual about John was that he was fascinated by other people and in particular whether the persona they projected would survive a stress test. He loved nothing more than creating that stress test and watching the consequences. And I shouldn’t give the impression he was trying to expose fake heroes from real ones or anything like that. He was not agenda driven in that way. It was more that he looked at humanity with the detachment of a man watching a dozen ants on swirling leaves, curious to see which would survive the prospect of drowning.

Over the course of several weeks during the bitter winter of 1982, on evenings when the castle was empty, John and I played a campaign wargame based on the war in Vietnam. I was the Americans and John played the Vietnamese. Tactically, it was easy for me to win each scenario. I just had to time the napalm strikes correctly. So night after night I racked up the victories. But I also kept a notebook in which I wrote down the made-up names of my lieutenants and sergeants. Every night I’d have lost one or two, requiring me to make up new names and backstories for the replacement officers. And this was the part that interested John. He’d take the notebook and browse it after the session end. By the conclusion of the campaign, the US had won the most points. But not one of the junior officers who began the campaign made it to the end and John was very pleased with the game as a result.

It made John happy when Treasure Trap players were enjoying themselves and he was always tinkering to try to give them new surprises. This is especially true for the high-level characters who loved a challenge. Thanks to John they got magnificent experiences such as when he secretly designed a Balrog costume that emitted jets of real flame. John also obtained a PA system so that monster’s arrival could be heralded by suitably intimidating fanfares of sound. It was John’s idea to cover the floor of a room in green chalk, so as to make a poison trap for those whose feet later showed traces of the chalk.

Being eight or so years older than me, John’s musical tastes were more toward The Doors and Jefferson Airplane than the more recent records I was buying, though he was perfectly happy for me to put on Moving Pictures and Signals. One afternoon I was saying how much I liked White Rabbit and he told me that when in America, he’d heard a tape with an early Grace Slick recording, which he thought was even better than the Jefferson Airplane version. The next time I was in Chester, I went to Penny Lane records and asked the staff about this. They were able to trace and order The Great Society, Live at the Matrix, which I bought and gave John for his birthday. We spent many a happy afternoon afterwards just listening to that record and watching motes of dust dance in the blocks of sunlight that came into the staff hall on a clear day.

Given his interest in observing people at their most extreme and his disinclination to make any kind of intervention or reprimand, John was a kind of anarchist. A black flag kind, one with a nihilistic streak. His character explains something about why Treasure Trap was the way it was, in that he allowed everyone the freedom to do whatever they were inclined to do: for better or worse. Mike Heywood, the arms instructor (every player had to have training in how to pull blows), didn’t intervene on matters outside of weapons safety and Rob Donaldson, the co-founder, and only other staff member present full time, enjoyed the hedonism and the fantasy world as much as any player. So there really was no traction to be found by those conservative figures who occasionally surfaced with plans to clean up the castle and have it run on a more regular, drug-free, hierarchical basis.

Sex, Treasure Trap and LARPing

Speaking of hedonism, sexual freedom was probably also a factor in what made Treasure Trap so unique in 1981. True, any place you bring young people together is likely to be a place of heightened sexual activity, one beyond the surrounding norms. But with Treasure Trap you also had a kind of Vegas effect. People were coming to a fantasy world and escaping the real one. What happened at Peckforton Castle stayed in the world of warriors, mages, lorewardens and thieves and did not have consequences for students, factory workers and civil servants.

Treasure Trap opened before the impact of AIDS became a concern and before the conservative, anti-sex Regan/Thatcher era really took hold. It was probably the last flourish of a post-pill phase of sex in Western society, where a woman on the pill could have unprotected sex on impulse, without risking becoming pregnant.

As to whether sex itself was better in character or not, unfortunately I can’t say. My own experiment in an Aragorn meets Arwen ecstatic moment at the top of a tower one glorious day was deflated by the repeated scurrying of footsteps below us and voices shouting up: “Conor, we see you! Whoo hooo!”

Despite the constraints in regard to privacy, there was a lot of sex at Treasure Trap. And some romance too. Several marriages and partnerships formed forty-years ago at Peckforton Castle have lasted to today.

The Visit of Ian Livingstone to Treasure Trap

Ian Livingstone, the founder of Games Workshop and multi-million selling author of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks was due to visit Peckforton Castle in the summer of 1982. This was a hugely important moment for the business side of Treasure Trap, if we got a good review in White Dwarf magazine, hundreds of new members would want to join.

My friends from Chester came to help with the visit. Experienced monsters were going to be essential here and Pete gave us a pep talk.

“As soon as they enter the castle, we want them to feel like they are in our fantasy world. Everything in character right?” And as the car could be heard coming up the drive, Pete stressed again. “Okay. Okay, everyone, think orc. Remember, you are orcs - horrible right?" He then stood back just out of sight beyond the arch. The first people that Livingstone would meet from Treasure Trap would be orc guards. The plan was that this would be impressive and give the right feel for Treasure Trap: that they were entering a world of real life role-playing.

A car came slowly over the drawbridge, we orcs signalling it to stop. It pulled up and the driver, a thin man with a moustache, wound down his window. The orc leaning in towards him was my good friend Patrick. Everyone inside the car and out waited for him to say something.

“You must be that motherfuckin' bastard Livingstone then!”

Neither Ian Livingstone nor any of his passengers had a response to this. The great man looked more than slightly taken aback.

I was hit hard by a desire to burst out laughing but I managed to suppress the feeling. On the other side of the car my friend Paul had lost it and was creased over laughing. The juxtaposition between the goal of wanting to impress our important guest and that sentence which was completely inappropriate, whether delivered by an orc or not, was funny though and my body was shaking each time I looked at Paul.

“Well shithead. Lost your tongue?” Patrick shook his mace threateningly.

 Oh God. Now my laughter was unstoppable and so was everyone else’s. Patrick looked around at us staggering, laughing orcs dismayed. His face altered between earnest concentration upon his job of being an orc guard and unhappy confusion at this out-of-character laughter among his fellows.

Through my tears, I could see Pete was inhaling deeply and transparently trying to hold his temper. Furiously, he gestured to the bewildered Livingstone to drive the car on through. Fortunately, this early abuse didn’t stop Livingstone giving us a great write up.

Police as LARPers at Treasure Trap

One weekend in 1983, we had a booking from a group of policemen from Stoke-On-Trent. Pete had tried to get a business interest in team building via LARPing. In doing so, he was ahead of his time because modern businesses would love something like Treasure Trap – the sanitised version – for their out-of-company activity.

I was the referee and had expected the monsters to be intimidated by the police and act with restraint. But to my surprise the psychology of the situation was completely the reverse. The policemen were clearly nervous and defensive. They would agonise before opening each door, only to scurry backwards violently if confronted by an emerging monster. They were so slow that despite taking plenty of hits in battle with the orcs of the start of the revised Level Three we had decided to run for them, very little dye was showing up on the post-battle checks. It had dried before the combat.

It was fortunate for the police that their early wounds did not count, because time after time they took damage from allowing the monsters to take the initiative. The police crept through the dark corridors, their three lamps held awkwardly aloft, swinging light and shadow around the confined spaces as though they were inside a ship at sea during a storm.

Eventually the adventure climaxed at the “Racquet Room” in the Round Tower, now decorated with suitable ominous runes and furnishings to suggest the throne room of a lich. Time was not on the side of the police, with the two poisoned members fading fast. Yet they stood captivated by the performance of the lich. He scared them, mocked them and alongside the threatening presence of the evil prince, began to gear up for his attack. I was watching the scene with some pride and amusement when an unexpected note sounded.

“We’re trapped. There’s more of them behind us!”

I looked at the lich, who looked at the prince, who shrugged. Had the other monsters forgotten their parts? I went out to see. There, gathered on the stairwell, were a bizarre collection of people. Ogg was at the head of a group of ten of the roughest visitors to the castle and they were stood in a tight group saying nothing. Their clothing was a cobbled together combination of biker gear and random monster costumes: making them look like the zombie chorus from the Thriller video.

I felt I should act but didn’t know what to do. Step in and tell Ogg and the others to leave? But that would mean breaking the illusion of the adventure and turning the situation into a non-game battle between bikers and police, with potentially very serious consequences. A sinking feeling in my stomach grew as none of Ogg’s followers would meet my gaze. These were “players” who never monstered or adventured. They just came to the castle for kicks.

Ogg’s face broke into a nasty grin and he tapped his long mace into the palm of his hand.

I felt that somewhere an avalanche gave way.

Ogg walked up to the police, his followers close behind, and with a raging growl took a huge two handed swing of his mace at the nearest policeman. The blow smashed against a shield and knocked the man over with a grunt of expelled air.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” The monsters tore into their enemies.

The lich, the prince and I watched with amazement at the angry blows that reigned down upon the party. The police made some effort to fight back but were overwhelmed by the ferocity of the attack. Strictly speaking the players should carry on fighting unless the referee says something. Wounds and death are determined after the fight. But the fighting would have gone on forever since the monsters showed no interest in anything other than handing out the heaviest strikes they could.

One by one the police gave up and fell down, with the monsters landing extra blows on the prone bodies for good luck. At last it was over. Without saying a word Ogg rested his long-handled mace over his shoulder. With a look of satisfaction at a job well done he strolled back down the stairs, his rag-tag army behind him.

The policemen groaned and one by one sat up. I was absolutely frozen, waiting for the angry complaints. I was sure we were going to be closed down for this. After all, the monsters hadn’t even been using dye. But then a miracle occurred. The police seemed to be too embarrassed to complain.

“Oh well. Were we nearly through it?” asked one.

“Sure… er sure,” I said, “This is the end. Just kill the lich here and the doppelganger would have died.”

“Okay. So we did alright?”

“Yeah, you did very well. Just a bit unlucky with the poison really.”

I couldn’t look at my two friends in case they were grinning, and a sense of amusement spread from them to me. Instead, I pretended to make scores on my clipboard.

“Okay.” A pause from the party leader. “Back to the changing room then lads.”

The Ghost of Treasure Trap

The ghost of Peckforton Castle was said to be that of a cavalier, killed by the roundheads. Odd, perhaps, given that the castle was built two hundred years after the death of the cavalier. But there were extensive tunnels beneath Beeston Castle that stretched towards Peckforton. And there were persistent rumours of hidden Civil War treasure in these, so persistent that three Victorian expeditions had searched the well of Beeston Castle and the tunnels around it.

The ghost had been seen as a pair of black boots, long black boots walking the north wall of the castle. And far more frequently than sightings, he had been heard. The cellars were the focal point for the hard, measured, sound of his stride.

One particular incident sent a shudder through everyone at the castle. A level-headed American was playing the role of a gargoyle in the cellar room at the end of the first level dungeon.

Before the adventurers reached him, however, he gave up on his post and ran into the common room.

“Ware Gargoyle!” shouted a knight and drew his sword.

The monster tore off his mask and waved his hands.

“No. No,” he panted. “Ghost. There was a ghost in the room with me.”

Everyone in the common room looked up. I could see the man was so scared his face was as white as his mask.

“I heard footsteps on the other side of the column.” His eyes filled with tears. “So I called out and then went to look. But no one was there. I flashed my torch everywhere.” He drew a breath. “Nothing. So I thought someone was winding me up. But then it started again. And there was definitely no one there!” His voice rose to a screech.

Pete was at the back of the room and had his chin tipped down to hide a smirk.

A small group of volunteers went to see. Of course there were no strange noises or footsteps now. The story was passed swiftly to everyone in the castle. It was suddenly remembered by previous gargoyles that the room had felt particularly creepy. There was no doubt about it, Black Legs didn't like people in that cellar.

One evening in May I was in the top corridor of the stable buildings, mapping out a route for a new second level dungeon. The sky was dark, sun hidden early by the weight of clouds. As I stepped from the stone tower, into a wooden-floored corridor, the door behind me slammed shut.

A moment after my nerves had calmed, I let out a small laugh. That was the sort of thing that gave the ghost stories credence. Obviously, a breeze must have pushed the door. As I tried to turn the handle to reopen the door a slight sweat broke over my body. It would not budge. Perhaps in slamming shut a catch had broken?

Wiping my hands on my jeans I tried as hard as possible to turn the handle. It would not budge. There was something else too, some subtle change of mood. The day no longer felt pleasant, but uncanny, threatening even.

I reviewed my other options. At the end of the corridor was a narrow stairwell. Going up the stairs led to the roof, from where I could make my way back into the castle via an entrance into the tallest tower. But that was the tower with the most reports of Black Legs. Going down, however, involved entering a particularly dark chamber and I had no torch with me. If I went that way, I would have to find the door on the far side of the room by touch.

Alternatively, I could refuse to be forced into potentially dangerous areas and could bang on the door in the hope of attracting help from the other side.

Just for a moment - and these thoughts did only take a moment – I allowed myself the supposition that Black Boots existed. For some malevolent reason he had caused this door to close. Did he await me on the roof? His favourite haunt. Or in the dark chamber below? Unpleasant thoughts. Banging on the door wouldn’t work: apart from the fact no one was around, surely it was the way in which doomed characters in horror films set themselves up to be killed.

How would Ripley handle herself? She would have a ton of weapons and take no chances against the alien. Moving silently, listening for those evil distant footsteps, I examined the windows. Aha. There was one that opened onto a balcony, which might allow me to get back in via a window on the other side of the stuck door.

Sometimes the lead latches on the windows of the castle were impossibly stiff. But not this one. With some relief I climbed out onto the balcony. Now I could see the courtyard and the warmth of human lights from the main building. Even better, there was an open window for me to get back into the corridor, the right side of the blocked door.

As I began to cheerfully make my way back down towards human company a thought struck me. I paused, and it wouldn't leave. I made myself turn back and try the door from this side. It opened easily and quietly. I waited. It showed no sign of swinging back to a close, let alone slamming. And honestly, no breeze that day could have slammed shut such a heavy door. Curious.

A second incident was more conclusive.

It was after midnight on a quiet Wednesday night when I finished reading and went to bed. Only John was left in the staff area. He had headphones on and was listening to records.

The route to the Knights’ Room involved passing through parts of the castle which had no electricity installed. I carried a torch but decided not to use it, the building looked beautiful in the moonlight, which was more than bright enough to see by.

My route took me over the balcony at the back of the great hall. I stopped to look at the huge, white rectangles of moonlight, stretched across the floor of the hall and up the walls to drapes and shields that hung beside an enormous fireplace. Across from me, I could just make out a sombre landscape that hung massively on the far wall. The castle was still. Perhaps a hundred years ago some other person had stood in shadow and contemplated the exact same moonlit scene.

Absorbing the moonlit castle for a moment, I eventually left the balcony and stepped onto the wooden floor of a corridor. Halfway along it I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

Though packed at weekends, there were only five people living in the castle during the week and they were all back in the staff area. Maybe it was a new arrival? I glanced down into the silver-grey courtyard, there were no new cars or bikes.

Not moving, braced to run back to the kitchen in search of a knife, I listened intently. No more footsteps. Wait — the hairs on my neck rose — there they were again. But at least they were not moving closer.

On the verge of running back to get a knife and John's company, I managed to hold myself in check. There were other explanations than supernatural ones. A human visitor for example, perhaps a thief? Now that could be genuinely dangerous.

Confident after months of practice and hundreds of games requiring stealth that I could move in absolute silence, I began to close in on the sound, patiently concentrating on my every movement. The steps were not coming from the nearest door, but the next. I approached the room, from which I could still hear the footsteps. It sounded as though someone were stopping to think, or to listen, before they resumed walking back and forth. The room had no electricity, lamps were put in when visitors were at the castle and wanted to bed down on its wooden floor.

Stiff with tension I stood with my back to the wall beside the door. Like a cop in a film about to raid a room. My torch was ready in my left hand. Now! I swung around, kicked the door open and swept the room with the torch beam. I was crouched, ready to spring away and race for my life back towards the great hall.

Upside-down on the bare wooden planks was a large cardboard box. For a fraction of a second the black, frightened eyes of a mouse flickered at me. Then it ran, its footsteps causing the box to boom. Unless I’d have seen it with my own eyes, I’d have never believed it possible for a mouse’s steps to sound so loud. But amplified by the box and the bare floor, this was all the explanation I needed.

The rumours of a ghost and the occasional very creepy atmosphere around the castle made it a perfect place to run a Call of Cthulhu campaign, which I did with John Howard, Andy Bird and a few other players. As the referee, I'd consider it a great success when the players wouldn’t leave the room alone.

Treasure Trap Conclusions

What was the best year of your life? For me, it’s easy to answer that question: 1983, because I spent most of it living in Treasure Trap. Even at the time, despite my youth, I sensed that was something extraordinary, that there was nowhere I’d rather be, that I was lucky to have found the place.

Hopefully, I’ve managed to capture here something of why I felt that way in this post.

If you want to contact me to amend anything or add anything here, please get in touch: conorkostick@gmail.com

There’s a brilliant Facebook group for those who visited Treasure Trap, or relatives of those involved, or just interested people. Apply to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2395287597

Thanks to Pat Molloy and Andy King for permission to post their pictures. All the pictures here have been shared in the Facebook Group but please check for permission if you want to reuse them.