Watching the new Jenny Nicholson movie, and it's a million hours long, so I'll have to split it between days.
But it's really got me thinking about how you design a mass LARP for visitors that takes several days.
A visitor isn't a dedicated LARPer. So how much can they be trusted to get into a role? How much activity can they do?
Obviously they can't be allowed to change the progression of the wider story - there's simply too many visitors so it needs to be mass produced. So what play?
The two hours of the video I've watched so far show the experience as mostly passive.
I think that's not a great idea.
Now I know a few theme parks have experimented with self-driven "passive LARPing" like collecting stamps and getting quests and stuff.
I think that's probably the right way to do it, but you do have to be careful with scheduling. There's only so many actual actors, so if any acting is required, that's a problem.
You also can't really encourage anything that depends on two guests working in tandem in any significant way.
Even if it is for something completely optional, you just can't risk some asshole getting super upset that a random kid didn't successfully complete a gimmick quest with him.
It's a really interesting, delicate set of design constraints.
I think if I was going to run a two day long Star Wars LARP for people, I would largely make it about self-driven semi-group events. That's my instinct.
For example, a lot of folks probably want to be Jedi. So you'd have several rotating events where visitors can learn about the Force or whatever, and essentially earn stamps.
The key is creating a throughline, and I think that's where having actors matters.
See, people are going to have different schedules, and in many cases friends and families are going to be stuck together at different times in different configurations.
So I think the basic idea is that you have these fun events that serve to introduce you to in-world characters and opportunities, but you also bring some stuff with you. Documents you stole, force powers you learned, that kind of thing.
AFTER the event (or during a break), you act on that stuff to advance your personal line.
But that can't require an actor. The actors can help to facilitate, but it has to be something that can be done more or less on your own.
Maybe something like a minigame on a console, or scanning a code on some paperwork, or tricking a defense screen or something. Using a magic force power.
It has to be largely done solo because the actors are BUSY.
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