Yesterday we got access to the school that over the next two weeks will be turning into a spaceship. It's the same school we used last time back in 2019 so it should be pretty familiar place. But when I visited the location today I couldn't recognize the place.
Last time I wasn't able to visit the location until later during the build phase. A lot of the schools interior was already hidden behind our props. And I gotta tell you - we really transformed the place. I wasn't either able to attend the final phases of the teardown last time so this was the first time I saw the place (mostly) in it's normal setup.
It's amazing what a bit of ingenuity can do. It does also help that we have an actual budget for this project. I've been on several games where the play location is a school or a similar building and while those weren't that bad and I think the organizers did a good job with the resources they had it still took quite a bit of imagination to forget you're not "actually" at a school.
It's so nice to be part of such a project where you don't need to use your imagination to get into the setting. You can focus all your imagination to playing your character and the game instead. Too bad I'm not able to attend the game itself this time either. The duties running the game just don't leave time for that.