To Our Dear Friends,
Menhirs Fate Event 3 is just a few weeks away, and we can’t wait to see you all again!
You’ve worked tirelessly to bring an incredible experience to our community. We’re so excited for our fellow crew and players to see the improvements and innovations the teams have been working on – thank you so much for your efforts.
Menhirs Fate is a story we’ve built together: a growing community of dedication, passion, and imagination. Today, we’re sharing some important news about the future of our beloved game – and how we intend to keep creating amazing experiences together.
The Fate of Bygrave Woods
Our upcoming MF3 at Bygrave Woods is fast approaching, and unfortunately, it will be the last event we run at this site for the foreseeable future. With the current size of our event and the ballooning costs associated with maintaining this relatively high-maintenance site, our beginnings have presented a significant financial challenge.
Despite our best efforts, we’ve yet to reach a size that comes close to breaking even. The actual costs of running Menhirs Fate at Bygrave have exceeded both our initial forecasts and projections shared by the site team. We’ve done our best to see out the year at Bygrave – giving the event, our crew, and our players the time and space to grow – but those rising costs are now putting the long-term future of Menhirs’ Fate at risk.
To continue running, we must change sites – more on that below.
Despite the cost, we’ve chosen to press ahead with MF3 at Bygrave, once again incurring a significant loss. Why? Because our crew, our players, and the incredible hard work of our community mean too much to us to cancel or compromise the experience. We truly believe in honouring your commitment with our own – even when it’s tough.
We’re doing everything we can to increase ticket numbers and are working on additional promotional and supporter options. More on that to follow.
MF4 at Beautiful Weston Park
We’re thrilled to announce that MF4 will move to the beautiful Weston Park, near Birmingham.
The grounds of this stately home are vast – it may be hard to believe, but thousands of LARPers can be sequestered far away from both the public and the house itself. Among great trees and open meadows, we believe you’ll feel more immersed than ever before.
The site features forests, an ancient quarry, and many other exciting elements for storytelling – with excellent accessibility too.
This location was recommended, tested, and approved by our friends at Curious Pastimes. Thanks to CuPa, the Weston Park team understands what LARP is and what to expect. Everything we do at Bygrave, we can do at Weston – and likely more, due to fewer licensing and agricultural restrictions.
The layout, licensing, and security at Weston also result in significant cost savings. Based on current attendance, this move will make us far more financially sustainable – reducing cost pressures and protecting your stories and investment in the game long-term.
If MF4 goes well, Weston Park has already offered us the opportunity to use the site for all events next year. We genuinely love it and believe it offers many improvements over Bygrave Woods.
While Weston Park is arguably better connected than our current site, we recognise that it’s about two hours from Bygrave. We know many of you have invested time and effort based on our current location, and we’re truly sorry that we can’t afford to finish the year there. Let us know if you have significant logistical challenges and we will do our best to help!
As a young and developing LARP, it’s possible we may move again in the coming years – but if so, we’ll do our best to provide much more notice.
Your Continued Support
Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Your support at Event 3 not only helps continue the story we’ve created together, but also helps secure the future of Menhirs Fate.
Let’s make Bygrave Woods’ final chapter truly unforgettable – and together, open an exciting new page at Weston Park.
With love,
Alex, Chris, Ross, Kitty, Nick and Johnny
We have a public release with this information and more going out tomorrow evening. Please wait until then to talk about this outside of our crew. Thank you!