The web site of this LARP has good video.[1] They did a very good job on this.
Here's the prep material for players.[2] It's intense. 48 hours with no breaks.
It's hard to scale location-based entertainment.
Disney tried the Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel, but it was a dud. Too expensive - $5000 or so for 2.5 days. It was a LARP dumbed down to Disney park customer level.
Lots of mini-games, not much coordinated activity.
That's about how this sort of thing usually goes. Keeping everybody on script in coordinated activity is tough. I was involved with steampunk conventions, pre-COVID. Those took elaborate prep, but there was no all-player coordinated event.
The US has some events like this. Wasteland Weekend. The Society for Creative Anachronism. Military reenactment groups.
There are immersive theater-type events that can scratch the same itch, although they tend to focus much less on participation than LARP events like this. The Starcruiser is probably much closer to poorly-executed immersive theater than live action roleplaying. Really well done immersive theater can be incredible - Sleep No More in NYC is one of the most mindblowing experiences I've ever had (although it closed earlier this year). Legitimately felt like I was stepping into a David Lynch movie every time I went. It only had limited, somewhat improvised audience participation with the actors.
In my experience, the best immersive theater experiences find very clever ways to make the atmosphere work. In Sleep No More and other Punchdrunk shows, all of the guests are given masquerade masks to wear, the venue is fogged, and the lighting is dim. The dim and foggy atmosphere hides stuff that would otherwise take you out of the dreamlike 1920s noir setting of the show - that the other guest walking next to you is wearing a graphic tee, for example. The masks cast the audience as a shuffling horde of vengeful spirits haunting the characters for the sins they commit throughout the show - so when you see a big crowd following a character, it doesn't instantly feel at odds with the setting the way I imagine seeing a 5 year old in a Pokemon t shirt on the Starcruiser would.
Interesting, I remember from I was young there was tons of fantasy LARPing in Russia. There was a subset of people (easily found in Youtube videos) who were into it due to some combination of making historical-looking armor and weapons, and then drinking and fighting with said armor and weapons with few rules and high probability of injury.
There were also tons of people that would LARP for the story/role playing focus, with wooden swords and tennis balls for fireballs, at very, very low cost. The former derisively called them "curtain people" (занавесочники) based on their cheap-ass costumes. Isn't the whole point of LA-RP is that you RP so production values shouldn't matter?
It definitely sounds like it does work for some or a majority of people but some fall hard through cracks in the game setup. Even those who had successful trips had contradicting advice for what you MUST do to make the game work, it does seem to revolve around getting on an track pretty early and following it in the app.
Other spots Jenny's experience broke just seem like the game falling apart. Like getting invited to an event at a set time, getting there a little early and finding it's already over. Maybe they ironed that out later but that's a rough thing to have happen.
Thanks for that. Does sound interesting, I wonder if Disney will try something else similar or if they're going to run far away after they had to close Starcruiser.
I would desperately love to do something like this. Either as a participant or as an organizer. Honestly, if anyone wants help in my local area (denmark) or remote help organizing web stuff or part design/3d sculpting for 3d printers id be happy to donate some time.
I had heard of similar things in the UK, fantasy stuff. and also Evermore park in the US which was like an even more ambitious theme-park sized one that had a continuous ongoing story.
I'm in the US and they don't do this kind of thing often, but if you're interested by Odyssesus then nordic larp scene will totally be your jam, and honestly I'm jealous.
If there's anyone in Seattle doing this kind of thing, say something!
OP here! Denmark has a very strong larp scene with a lot of young people involved due to the popularity of larp for children and at schools. I’m not sure if there’s anything on the scale of Odysseus planned but the skills certainly exist.
Also the article mentions that the Larp mentioned here directly used an Open Source relative (competitor?) to Artemis named EmptyEpsilon: https://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/
Artemis Tom is cool and deserves the revenue and has a lot of cool scenarios and stuff out of the box. EmptyEpsilon is when you start to need more customization, down to source level, and GM tools. (The article mentions a lot of what this Larp did was not heavily automated and somewhat directly in EmptyEpsilon's GM tools.)
My remote hope was that something like spontaneous organization could form here in the comments :P but honestly i'm aware this kind of thing requires years of putting yourself out there making smaller events, building up etc. But I've not really ever been in this world, it might be nice to know someone with a bit more experience to guide me, or hear about something already going before diving into organizing something myself
Looks like they are. Why don't you start responding to comments exhorting the person to do what they're already doing in the very comment you're responding to?
There is a blog post from the Software lead of the project written after the 2019 runs, which eg. includes a list of all the software's. Some of them were expanded for 2024 runs as well as few new ones added. https://www.spatineo.com/odysseus-a-story-about-survival-usi...
It's hard to scale location-based entertainment. Disney tried the Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel, but it was a dud. Too expensive - $5000 or so for 2.5 days. It was a LARP dumbed down to Disney park customer level. Lots of mini-games, not much coordinated activity.
That's about how this sort of thing usually goes. Keeping everybody on script in coordinated activity is tough. I was involved with steampunk conventions, pre-COVID. Those took elaborate prep, but there was no all-player coordinated event.
The US has some events like this. Wasteland Weekend. The Society for Creative Anachronism. Military reenactment groups.
[1] https://www.odysseuslarp.com/
[2] https://www.odysseuslarp.com/blog