Listen to this episode here.
Here near the end of Dice Exploder's larp series, I wanted to have on Caro Murphy (Galactic Starcruiser) to talk about experience design, and specifically how to think about curating all those parts of an experience bigger and larger than most of us at home will ever have access to. How do you design the set a game is played on? How do you design something for hundreds if not thousands of participants?
And Caro delivered so much more: we get into bleed and empathy and how Caro sees games as an inherently educational medium. Let's get into it!
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take one RPG mechanic and give it a reupholster. My name is Sam Dunna Wald, and my co-host today is Caro Murphy.
Caro is best known as one of the designers behind Galactic Star Cruiser, the big Star Wars hotel experience from a couple years ago. That got a lot of attention, but they've designed a lot more experiences than just the one famous Star Wars thing, and they have a long and storied history. With big ass LRPs and here very close to the end of the LRP series I've been doing on this show. I wanted to have them on to talk about experience design.
What is experience design? Even after this interview, I'm not sure I have a definition that's more useful than the design of everything in an experience something so broad is to be pretty useless, at least for me. But I feel like in comparing LRP P to tabletop games, there's a lot of overlap, right? You're doing a lot of role playing inventing fiction together. It's stepping inside of it, but a certain kind of l RRP has this physicality to it production values. This idea that you're gonna build out the whole fictional world with sets and props and costumes, not just the embodiment stuff I talked about with Kate Hill 10 episodes ago, but more than that, like production around the edges.
And that's what I wanted to talk to Caro about as someone with a lot of experience there. How do you design those things? And we did talk about that, but also way, way more like bleed and empathy and games as an inherently educational medium. Caro has just got so much to share and a lot that us indie TT RPG designers can learn from. So with that, thank you to everyone who supports this show on Patreon. And here is Carol Murphy with Experience Design.
Caro Murphy, thanks so much for coming on. Dice Exploder.
Caro: Thanks so much for having me, Sam.
Sam: yeah, I'm, I'm so used to coming into an episode like this is the very hardcore specific example game mechanic that we're gonna talk
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: gonna be a little bit broader. And so as part of that, I really wanted to set up who you are and what your background is like.
So who are you, what's your background like?
Caro: Yeah. I kind of. Cycle between calling myself a game designer, experienced designer, LARP designer. It depends on the crowd that I'm with to be honest.
So I make experiences that are meant to be played by an audience. Really like people who are not normally necessarily jumping into the actor's seat. But I do a lot of that. So I have been doing LRP design for more than 20 years and then moved into the world of interactive and immersive theater. The most notable project that I worked on was Star Wars Galactic. Star Cruiser. So that's what everybody knows me from, is that particular body of work.
But I do so many other things as well. So yeah.
Sam: I remember you from old episodes of Imaginary Worlds.
Caro: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where I converted Eric into a LARPer.
Sam: I'll have to put those in the show notes 'cause they're also good introduction to, what the heck is l rrp sort
Caro: Yeah. And, and Sam, you're on your LRP conversion path already, so here we are.
Sam: I'm far down my conversion path.
Caro: Incredible.
Sam: I leveraged for the first time in 2018 and I've been trying to do it more and more since, but it's, you know, one of the things that I find daunting about LRP and especially the kinds of experiences that you are making is organizing it. I mean,
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: about organizing and tabletop games when they're just trying to get four friends together and trying to get. 15 people into one room can be difficult. So,
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: I also wanted to start out with like, okay, what are you really excited about right now? Like in your work? Like, what
Caro: Hmm.
Sam: and on the, the frontier for you?
Caro: I think that for me, I'm really interested in the sort of space where LRP and spiritual practice intersect.
Sam: Ooh.
Caro: that's something that I'm really focused on right now. So I'm, working to design some games with a Zen priest. And we're working on designing LRPs for embodying the precepts. So if anybody's in, you know familiar with Buddhism and the Buddhist precepts, then I'm designing LRPs for that.
Because
Sam: can you go into like more detail of example of like what that looks like?
Caro: Yeah. So one of the things that when people kind of are learning about Zen, they learn about the, the precepts and precepts are sort of ideas about the way that dharma or our sort of true nature comes forward as we kind of study and progress more in our, in our spiritual paths.
And it's not like rules or commandments, it's more like these are things that kind of naturally emerge when you're doing this. So like one of the things is like not killing, right? So in the larp you would explore the exact opposite of that, right?
Sam: all right.
Caro: So the LRP is there to like confront you with the fact that you are a human and that you contain multitudes like that you contain both, all the things that make you light and great and beautiful. You contain equal amounts of darkness, right?
So these are important things for us to be able to hold and integrate because if we ignore them, then they come out in ugly, nasty ways. So important for your spiritual development to confront the killer within you and the thief within you and things like that.
Sam: Yeah. Cool. So, um. you recommended we maybe start with this like taxonomy of experiences graph that you sent me, and I think this thing is really cool. It's this chart. There'll be a link that people should pull up because now we're gonna spend 90 seconds trying to explain a chart that is complicated.
Caro: And it's a 3D chart too, so.
Sam: But I would love to hear you do your best effort here to explain what this thing looks like so we can talk about it
Caro: Sure. So when I think about like lots of experiences that fall within sort of this, this category that we think of as immersive, that like we, we have sort of basically a marketing term that's saying this thing is immersive and what that means to people is like wildly different
Sam: massive air quotes
Caro: air quotes. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
Caro: Thank you. Thank you. but what does that mean? Right? So I tried to sort of break it down by, if we look at these different things from slightly different perspectives, then what do we end up with in terms of different sort of categories of experience?
So on one axis you have the agency of the participants, like how much actual say the participants have over what is happening within the world that they are experiencing, right? So do the actions that you take have consequences? And that those don't necessarily need to be supported by any sort of mechanic, right? Like taking an action could still just be having a conversation, but how somebody responds to that conversation within the context of the story and whether or not the narrative changes based on that is an important part of agency.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Caro: Then you have on another axis you have basically how like actually physically immersive the world is like your set and your setting. This is not to say that there is like a hierarchy of that. You can absolutely do a black box game and it can be absolutely astoundingly wonderful and immersive in so many ways,
Sam: And what does a black box game mean?
Caro: Oh, black box, like as in like black box theater. So literally like the room is all black walls and you don't have any props or costumes or anything like that. You just have your imagination and the this, this sort of blank space to act things out in.
And then on the other axis, you have sort of like mechanics or what are the interaction mechanics? Like are there like game systems or rules? Systems that are in place that help people understand how to interact with the world? So for example, there are immersive theater pieces that have no game mechanics whatsoever. But you ca might have a high degree of agency because of how you talk to the the actors in the experience and that might change the flow of things.
Murder, mystery, dinner parties and things like this, right? There's not, maybe not many mechanics outside of sort of like contingency envelopes or contingency happenings, little if then statements kind of thing. But other than like sort of narrative flow mechanics, you're probably not gonna have like a lot in there.
Versus something like an escape room where you have lot, lots of crunchy mechanics, right? You need to solve a series of gates and UNP puzzles and tasks and activities in order to sort of get to the next stage. I,
Sam: Yeah. And I, I feel like the escape room comparison is so interesting because it is, it's like high agency,
Caro: yeah.
Sam: highly immersive. Like I remember doing an escape room where I really did feel like I was in a haunted house. Right.
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: you said, there's a lot of mechanics and also. Not really much story.
You know, like in, in a way, like so much of the media we're talking about here are traditionally like storytelling mediums that escape rooms. Is this interesting sort of addition to the, the conversation?
Caro: Interestingly, there's a big trend in escape rooms right now where they're really going in a very narrative direction. So more and more escape rooms have started incorporating live actors. They've started having much more robust narratives. the narrative set up and completion of the narrative for the participants is much more and more of a focus for escape room creators.
So we're seeing in this like fourth gen escape room wave, like lots of very exciting things that I'm delighted to see.
Sam: Yeah, it does kind of feel like there's a lot of different media that have been evolving. Towards a similar thing that you are
Caro: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: escape room thing, but you also have the LARP tradition and you also have Sleep No More coming out of theater. And it's cool to see different people arriving at a similar place.
Caro: Absolutely. it's cool. And to me it speaks to something so fundamental about our different art forms, which is that these are really mediums for us to connect. And I think that's so beautiful. Like this longing for connection that brings us all together. Like what a cool, magical thing.
Sam: Yeah. So I'm curious to maybe start from. RPGs. 'cause I think that's sort of the like, foundational perspective of my audience
Caro: Sure.
Sam: what really changes in your heart as you are doing like a LRP or doing an escape room or doing some other sort of immersive quote unquote experience to tabletop RPGs. Like how does the, I think of like embodying Actual characters in L rrp being a big part of this. But the way you put it also in a, in an email we had was like in tabletop refugees, mechanics are often representative of action, but in live experiences, action represents
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: And I'm curious to hear you talk about like what that fundamentally does to the experience of someone participating.
Caro: Well, I think one of the things that's very interesting about it is that since it is acted out physically that you have this. Other layer of immersion where you are now sort of joining the physical space because your body is involved in this way, where you're no longer really able to just puppet your character. You're inside of your character. You have to be like moving this character around.
There's this really interesting theory of immersion that was first sort of coined by Moyra Turkington that has to do with sort of like the separation and layers between the role player and the, and their character.
So at the first sort of stage of immersion they call it like the marionette stage where the character's pretty far from you, right? you're pulling its strings, but you feel pretty separate and pretty apart from the character.
Then you have the puppet stage, and this is like a Jim Henson puppet where you've got your hand inside the puppet kind of thing, and now you're a little bit more embodied in the character. You're moving the character around a little more.
Then there's the mask stage where the character sort of like you're wearing the character as a mask, but it's a costume that you're wearing and you're actually physically embodying the character pretty strongly.
And then the last stage is possessing force where you and the characters sort of dissolve and the character has this autonomy of their own that takes over and you become this observer that can do a little directing of what your character's doing, but you're not, you're not playing a role anymore. It's very lived. It's very real.
Sam: That's interesting. I feel like my experience of tabletop games and of LARP sees me sliding between those
Caro: Mm Ooh. Tell me about that. Tell me about that.
Sam: well, I mean, like, I can think of like last night I was playing Eva's bed and
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: this game with a bunch of pre-established characters that you're sort of picking up like you are actors in a play, right? Pregens, I did a whole episode on this. Go listen do it.
Caro: Cool.
Sam: but so I, I remember picking up a character and being very much at that marionette stage to begin with.
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: I'm getting the feel for who this person is. I've been given this premise of like what they're doing and who they're talking to and, and what's going on. And I'm kind of over here watching it and sort of thinking about like, okay, how can I poke and prod at the character to get them to do the, to get the fiction, to do the thing that I think would be interesting for it to do.
And then as we played 45 minutes later, I'm like, in the middle of a scene, someone else, says a thing that happens. I get hit in the face with a pancake and I like, remember seeing this happen like I was watching a
Caro: Mm. Cool.
Sam: being overwhelmed with the like emotional feeling of my character. Like seeing what she or like feeling what she responded
Caro: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: much more, you know, like all the way to mask or something.
Right. And, in l Rrp also, like I've definitely had experiences, I think in LRP with embodiment, you start, or I at least start much further along this track
Caro: Yeah,
Sam: that we're talking about. But I also have had the experience of being like, I'm exhausted, I need a break. I'm getting some water, and I'm back to being Sam for a minute, like,
Caro: totally.
Sam: And then, you know, someone comes and talks to you while you're getting water and it's like, not now, man. I'm not in the like, you know, like, so I don't know. I, I don't know. Yeah.
Caro: Absolutely. I think it's really interesting because for some people there can be such a powerful, transformational aspect of sort of taking on a role. and I think that tabletop and LRP both do this. I think we discover things about ourselves. We have these like hidden talents and like locked away secrets that like the, the secret is that you are infinite, right? And that you have so access to so many personalities and perspectives and ideas and things like that.
But we we sort of locked those things away and I think that the beautiful thing about roleplaying is it dissolves that in this like sort of bath of play where you don't even realize that you're learning new skills, but then you do.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. else I'm thinking about here. I was listened to my other friend's podcast recently, RTFM which did an episode where they were talking about scene based games. And one of the hosts, Max Lander, was talking about how they feel really uncomfortable with scene based games because they don't like to sort of embody a character that way.
They would much rather sit back and sort of observe and, you know, maybe do a dungeon crawley kind of thing or whatever,
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: that also. They're really interested in getting into larp and like are, are really like, excited about that idea and that I, I don't know. I've, I've been trying to think about like what's the disconnect there? Like something about maybe embodiment maybe gives you more alibi to like just be yourself and like have other people assume that you're pretending to be someone else. Whereas like at a table, when you are playing in a third person tabletop game, you are much more explicitly like showing the difference between your character and yourself
Caro: Well, I think that so much of both of these worlds also has to do with like who's around the table with you. Y you know, like, these are relationship based forms. Like these are all dialogic. Like if you're roleplaying, then even if you're roleplaying with yourself, you're still having a dialogue. You know, the, these, like the art form is inherently relationship based.
So I think that who you play with is gonna shape your experience immensely. Like if you're around the table with a bunch of people who are all like, Hey, we're just kind of here to like, roll some dice and eat pizza and like, like laugh and have a good time, then you might have a totally different experience and it might be a great experience, but it might just be like a little more casual than this like deep embodied, like emotional, you know.
Same thing with lrp. Like there are absolutely LARPs where it's just kind of like hanging out in the woods with your friends, smacking each other with a weapon and like that. That's totally cool. You know, like there's room for all of the different types of experiences that people wanna have with it.
Sam: Totally. Okay. We've talked about immersion a couple of times, and every time we've had to put scare quotes around the
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: so I want to talk about the scare quotes. like, I, I understand that the idea of immersion is I think maybe a, loaded conversation in the world of lrp, but I'm curious to hear you talk about, like, what do you mean by immersion and what do you think are like the pros and cons of it if we're taking the scare quotes away?
Caro: Yeah, I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine where she was asking me like, what does immersion mean to you? And that was really the first time that I had thought about it. 'cause I was like, well, you know, it's like a feeling.
Sam: Yeah,
Caro: It's a feeling that you get. And I.
Sam: when you go into your immersed, right?
Caro: Right. And, and I think that that's true. I think that immersion is a feeling and we know when we're immersed and we know when we're not immersed. But I don't know that it has like a really great, robust definition. and I think that that's kind of a beautiful, mysterious thing that I don't want to unpack. Like, I don't want, it's like, I think it's beautiful for it to live in that space of like, well, you feel it.
Sam: Can I maybe ask you this way then? Can you tell me about a time when you felt very immersed and what that moment was like for you?
Caro: Sure. So I think the first time I ever experienced the possessing force level of immersion, I was running a uh, LRP campaign. This was New York City. This was like 20 years ago. And one of the players took an action that I totally wasn't expecting. I was playing her NPC sister and she took an action where she took her father's soul and like released it from this container that it was in, and her father was this evil guy. And I was then like the sister was possessed by the father.
And I don't really remember what happened. I was kind of a passenger watching what happened. But this intense, incredible scene then took place between her and like a bunch of other onlookers who were seeing all this going down.
And it was just epic. Like it was just this spine tingling, like everybody was lost in the moment. Everybody was completely bought into what was happening. It just was super high stakes and felt really, really real.
Sam: Yeah. I feel like I've had that experience and I love that experience. And also that experience I think comes with,
Caro: Bleed.
Sam: yeah, bleed. Certainly. So maybe, maybe tell me about Bleed. Like what is bleed? Let's start there.
Caro: So bleed is a term for when the feelings of a character become real for you, the player. Now this can be extraordinarily positive. It can also be extraordinarily negative. So what we wanna aim for in role playing is a positive bleed, and we wanna try to mitigate or minimize negative bleed, or at least control the circumstances around our negative bleed so that we are understanding what risk levels we are putting ourselves into.
Sam: Yeah. And so what I heard from you talking about your experience of immersion, there was a, a lot of bleed, I think. I mean, I think of bleed in
Caro: A hundred percent.
Sam: sort of. Being something that people talk about sort of post facto, I was as like, you live with bleed, like after the thing has happened, but like I won't make you define immersion this way, but to me maybe like immersion is when the bleed is happening, like one to one. Like in the moment it's like, really dialed up and it is happening right now. And I, I don't know. I guess I'm, I'm curious at like how I, I wanted to ask about pros and cons, but the pros seem self-evident, right? It's like
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: is really cool
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: like that feeling.
Caro: Right. And your brain is learning something like, truly, like that's real. Yeah.
Sam: well, so what do you mean by learning something? Like what do you think you're learning?
Caro: Like our brains don't know the difference between the direct experiences that we have in a simulated environment and in a real environment. So if that feeling is real for their, your character, it is real period. Like you're really having that experience and I believe that all experiences are teachers for us.
Sam: Mm-hmm. So I mean this, this is something that I, I, I believe, but it sounds like you're saying games and these kinds of experiences intentionally can be like learning experiences for I mean, all kinds of fucking
Caro: So many things. Absolutely. Yes, I completely agree. I think that like the space of play is sort of intrinsically educational. Like I think that you can use a playful space in order to learn anything that you wanna learn. I know that I have, like, I've made characters who were car mechanics 'cause I wanted to learn how to fix my car and I didn't have the motivation to do it myself.
So I made a character who did, you know?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Caro: And like, I truly think that that works for a lot of people. Like Yes. I'm a huge believer in the connection between education and sort of this space of non-deterministic outcomes where we get to play.
Sam: Yeah. That's so interesting you talk about learning to be a mechanic because I, I think of it so much for me as like, I love these kinds of games as practicing emotional experiences, right?
Caro: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Sam: friendship or, you know, humility or whatever. And I think like American society at least, is pretty bad at giving people spaces to practice those feelings.
Caro: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sam: it's cool to think that you also could just like, yeah, practice how to peel potatoes or whatever, like,
Caro: Yeah, a friend of mine um, Megan Gardner, is like a LRP education designer, and she has developed LRP educational curriculum to teach stem to middle schoolers with LRP. And it works, you know, it works really well.
Sam: That's cool. Like what are, what are those games like?
Caro: it depends on the game, but I can send you to her website, but if you look up, guard up adventures, like that's a bunch of hard work.
Sam: Well, I'll put a link in the episode description.
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I feel like I've, kind of been like laying some groundwork here for the, like, main thing that I do want to talk to you about is the sort of designing immersive physical
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: This feels like such a big and expansive thing that is most people aren't gonna get to do
Caro: Right. It feels intimidating, right? Yeah.
Sam: intimidating. And also like most people don't have access to a decommissioned battle cruiser to do a Battlestar Galactica larp on, right?
Caro: Right, right.
Sam: there's a, a scale and a budget
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: you have worked at and not many people get to work at.
And I'm just curious about the experience of working at that scale. Like what are you thinking about? Like what are the designable surfaces working at that scale? What components are you thinking about that scale that are just not even in consideration for other, other people?
Caro: Yeah. You would be surprised, like really, like how many of the skills that a tabletop designer has that translate to this scale.
Like, where the leap is, is that instead of thinking about five player experiences or however many people around your table, you're thinking about 30 player experiences or a hundred player experiences or whatever it is, the scale of your production.
But really still, like as game designers, our jobs first and foremost are to be advocates for our players' experiences. So thinking about that and then some of the ways that this scales up is that you can start to kind of generalize certain types of player experiences and then you are like, oh, okay, I can make tracks.
If somebody wants sort of like a, a story of, ness and being like a scoundrel and things like that. Cool. Then we can put them in this sort of track. And if somebody wants to be a hero and like really like fight the good fight, we can put them in this sort of track. And if somebody really wants to like explore their darkness and be a villain, we can sort of put them in this track. So you start kind of thinking about your world setting and you start to kind of peel apart the layers of that.
The difficult part then is intertwining them and braiding them all together. And the stakes, you have to think about stakes in a, in a slightly different way because you can't just blow up your world 'cause
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Caro: not gonna physically work.
So how are you going to make sure that your players do still have agency within that, that your different tracks are gonna play nicely together and that you can sort of put a nice little bow on everything. and different people have different approaches to this, so it's a little bit more like designing for a narrative video game at that scale because you do need to script certain amounts of outcomes when you have an audience that big.
Sam: Yeah. you're talking about like the big jump there being, thinking about scale of participants, and it sounded like one of the ways that you were talking about approaching that is to basically just like chunk them out into smaller groups again on like different tracks.
Is is that like a fair description there or?
Caro: Like, so storylines, so like creating different storylines that people can participate with and like figuring out what the five act arc or whatever that is, to get to the same ending at the same time is so that you can kind of time things appropriately. Pacing is super, super important. Like, and tabletop too, pacing is super important.
But you know, thinking about those elements and how they're gonna tie together.
Sam: Hearing you talk about all of that, you are like talking a lot about logistics, right? Of like how do you coordinate this many people? How do you coordinate the pacing so that they end it about the same time?
How do you like
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: It feels like there's a lot of logistics involved and it does feel like I'm thinking about the video game narratives thing that you were talking about.
Caro: Oh yeah.
Sam: like one of the ways to handle all those logistics is to put people on rails more like you're talking about tracks. And I think of like a lot of the smaller LARPs that I have played, you know, 12 person LARPs, and a lot of tabletop rpgs, one of the selling points is open world. Like, we can go out and do whatever we want. Like that's the thing about d and d That's cool. Relative to video games.
Caro: Absolutely.
Sam: I'm curious if you. you're thinking about that? Like, are you trying to preserve that or is it just a different medium at that point?
Caro: totally depends on the story that you're telling really. Like, so there's a huge difference between like a tabletop one shot and a tabletop campaign game. Same thing in LRP too, right? So, in larp A one shot. Like if you're trying to do what, basically what Star Cruiser did, and you have a one-shot repeatable experience, you're definitely gonna end up with much more like tightly woven narrative framework. And that structure needs to hold, right.
Whereas with larp, you can be very loose. Like if you have a campaign that's much more like a campaign tabletop game.
Sam: Yeah. Cool.
Caro: even their LARPs, what you'll see them sort of like creating story structures around cultures and like certain things that it just, it's the natural tendency for us to sort of like create story frameworks that people then can get invested in.
So even in those, you're gonna basically have tracks of some kind.
Sam: Yeah. How big of a team are you working with of like designers and like people doing the logistics on something like well, I, I wanted to get into this. was asking my friend Jason Morningstar, what I should ask you about. And he recommended I ask you about club dross Meyer,
Caro: Yeah, sure. Club Dross Meyer is not my design. I'm an actor in it and I do some co-directing for it.
So Club Dross Meyer is a fantastic. Amazing immersive theater piece that runs in the Boston area every year. Imagine an escape room and an LRP or an immersive theater piece had a baby, and it's very that.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Caro: So there are interactive characters and lots of puzzles to solve. And the puzzles form like gates. And once you cross a certain threshold, then you like get a little bit more information. So there's like, there is are solutions to club Dross Meyer, and there are different endings to the show based on what people solve or what the audience decides to do. Like. So there is a fairly high amount of audience agency for a playable theater piece.
And it is so fun. It's also like 1941 Nutcracker, like swing time, like war era. It's just so fun.
Sam: Cool. I'm gonna ask you like a bunch of the questions that I just asked you, but like, again, with this as an example, maybe,
Caro: Sure.
Sam: like I would love to hear about like how many guests are coming through the club in a night, and how big is the sort of like design team, the logistics team, like the number of, of performers involved.
Caro: so Claude Sel Meyer has like 150 capacity per night. and then the show runs usually like five or six runs depending on the dates booked and everything like that. So the design team is relatively small, so the design team is a couple of puzzle designers and the like, show writer, show designer.
I should mention who some of these people are because they're awesome. So uh, Kellyanne Fletcher is club Jos. Meyer is her brain baby. Brian Fletcher is her husband. He does a bunch of puzzle designs as well, as well as acting in the show. And Errol Ellumier is also does some puzzle designs for that as well. So the design teams are relatively small.
When we start doing workshops with actors, then often actors will add a lot of like ideas and content and things like that. So there is almost invariably with a show like this, there's a workshopping process where things are gonna get changed around.
So like the game matrix itself will shift a little bit because people will also notice things that don't make sense. Actors will be like, what's my motivation here? Like, why am I doing this? You know? And then you're gonna sort of rewrite things and then find ways for things to shift in.
Sam: Yeah.
Caro: But you'd be surprised, like I design pieces like this on my own completely and do all the logistics for it.
So once you've got the skillset, I think it's something that is pretty achievable on your own.
Sam: Yeah. Cool. so like, club Drizly Meyer is like a whole club also. Right? So did you say how many like actors, performers are kind of involved?
Caro: there's a a cast of I wanna say like a dozen or so people in the cast. And then there are like acts like dance acts and other performers that come in as well. And those dance acts, there's probably another like 20 or so people who are dancers who perform different routines, but they usually don't have a lot of knowledge of the game matrix. Or what's going on.
And then there are a bunch of people who are sort of in waiter costumes and there there's like, one or two of them are sort of like the GMs and know everything that's going on and can do a lot of puzzle hinting. They're all trained in the puzzle hinting kind of aspects of it.
So they're, they're there to facilitate and make sure that people don't get totally stuck and frustrated.
Sam: Yeah. And from having researched it a little bit, it seems like club Drussel Meyers been like going for a while.
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: how often does it change? Did you kind of do that initial workshopping and then it got locked in and it's still the same thing? Does it get revised?
Caro: So it runs on a four year cycle. So it's like 1939 through 1941, and then, no, 1942 and then it resets. So the designs change every single time. And the initial conception of the show was that based on what the audience did last year, that that was going to impact the way things happened for the following year which is so fun and so cool.
Sam: Yeah, that's, that's wild. So you're like intentionally trying to appeal to essentially like campaign players, right? To like come back and like experience the next one also?
Caro: Yeah, and, people who love escape rooms, love club Joss Meyer, 'cause it's very, very scratches the puzzley itch while having all these like, awesome interactive characters as well.
Sam: yeah. And do, do the audience members like take on a character or If I'm showing up on my, like basically myself.
Caro: they're immediately cast in the role of people going to a club in 1941. You know, so who, some of them will adopt that a persona and like immediately sort of like go into role play mode. And some people are. like, oh okay, cool. Um, Great. And like, you know, they're themselves kind of thing.
So in immersive theater we have sort of a way of thinking about this in terms of like the level of immersion and how deep into the play that people are gonna get. And we call people sun, bathers, waiters, swimmers, and divers.
So you have some people who are like those divers. They're like, they're in, they're a character. They immediately build relationships. They like network and do all kinds of stuff, right? They're really in it. And then you have like different levels of that and like up to your sun bathers who are like, I have a cocktail. I'm here. Don't talk to me. Yeah,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. That's, that's my partner.
Caro: yeah.
Sam: yeah. But, but somewhere along the way you're, you're sort of maybe going up to a bartender to be like, so how's the war? Like, sort of like tipping, dipping your toe in, right?
Caro: And our bartenders are, are role players as well. So it's like everybody involved is a role player and a LARPer of some stripes. or an actor who's been trained in this, these types of things. So everyone's fully on board with the play, pretend.
Sam: Yeah. So thinking about Clo Russel Meyer or Star Cruiser or whatever, like, I'm curious, I'm sure it, it depends on the experience, right? But like, what are you prioritizing? Like, are you prioritizing artistic expression? Like can you, is there like a theme or like, you know, a thematic argument or idea that Club Drussel Meyer is like trying to convey? Or is it more just about entertainment or just that feeling of like being in another time and place or just profit?
Like what are the the various things that you think about as a, an artist here
Caro: I think it so depends.
Like I'm, I'm working on a immersive theater piece right now that is like a huge immersive theater piece that's going to be on stages in London, and the goals of that piece are wildly artistic. Like we're like, we're gonna have people go in and see something they can't unsee and they'll be changed forever for the better. And like, we'll solve all the humanity's problems with this space. You know, like,
so it ranges from these super high concept, very, very like cerebral, intellectual sort of thing to the very campy and kitschy. Like, I'm here to do something goofy and interact with like a Muppet. Like that's.
So I like, for me, it really depends on like. What in particular, I'm trying to say with the artistic work, right. So I like to layer in little things, even in pieces that are campy and kitchy. I like to often address a topic or layer in a topic that's something that has a little bit more meaning, something for people to attach to a little more. But that's just my artistic preference.
Sam: Yeah. In like a more freeform LRP design I mean, I, this is, this could just be me talking to myself about tabletop games, but I'm gonna ask you anyway like, games are such an interesting medium where like I, I'm also a screenwriter, right? And like I know when I'm trying to be an artist and convey my artistic thing in the screenwriting, I know how to do it. And then like, it's like me monologuing to an audience right through the medium of movies.
But when I'm being a game designer, I can't do that in the same way because there's this, it feels like there's a, a layer between me and that. Like the
Caro: Yeah, ask, don't tell, right? Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: like, it, it's supposed to be a more open-ended experience,
Caro: Right.
Sam: trying to convey meaning in it. And I'm curious. It's for, to hear you talk about like, especially in these like bigger, larger scale projects. How are you thinking about that? Like how are you, what
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: conveying meaning
Caro: So part of it is that you have to train all of your actors to be good GMs. So like you need to train people the difference between monologuing at them and asking them questions that lead them gently down the road towards where you want to go, right? So some of this is, is very teachable technique, right?
Like, people, like I said, we people long for connection. Like what we really want outta these experiences is connection. And so there are going to be no lack of people or opportunities for that connection to happen, and it's really about how do you respond in that moment, like how do you make sure that you are truly present and engaged and not just waiting for your turn to talk.
Sam: Hmm mm-hmm. Yeah. How are you thinking about it in terms of the environment itself? do you think of the environment itself, like as a tool that you can build in to do that kind of work?
Caro: Absolutely. But it depends on the environment. So like some of the, my proudest environmental design work has been for LARP mods, right? Where. we're putting people into a laboratory and they have to explore it and figure out like what the scientists did here and what went wrong and all this other stuff, right?
So, part of that is like just I, it's really like level design skill and environmental storytelling skill. So.
Sam: yeah. Totally.
Caro: And I think that like tabletop and designing for tabletop can be extraordinarily helpful for like actually doing this same skillset and translating it into a physical reality. Because the first thing I do is I actually draw like a layout of the room that I'm in and I physically block out where I want my characters to be, where I want my, my different things to be.
I want to make sure that I have a plan so that when people go into the room, I'm going to know what their sight lines are. I know I'm gonna know what they're looking at, I'm gonna know where their attention is drawn. So it's that same thing that you do as a gm when you verbally tell people like, oh, you, you made a a great perception check. Here's what you notice, except you're doing that with lighting and sound and like, just making sure that those things are gonna come to the forefront in a way that's more physicalized.
Sam: That's so interesting. Yeah, going back to being a filmmaker, I'm thinking about being a director and how much the job of being a director is just like trying to point, like trying to make the audience look at the right place,
Caro: Yeah,
Sam: of where the audience is looking and directing their attention.
Caro: totally.
Sam: and like my partner's a theater director too, and it does feel a lot like in that medium you're directing attention to the right place. And yeah, that, I love that comparison to a perception check that you're, whether it's verbally or with lighting or sound or color or whatever, it's about directing attention.
Caro: Exactly, exactly. Like I said, I think there's a lot they, these mediums translate really, really quite fluidly. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. is there something that I haven't asked you about yet that you feel like is a, a particularly like transferable skill here?
Caro: Yeah. Okay. So the, I think this is something that people underestimate in their tabletop games, that they don't think about their lighting and sound design. And holy sh you can really, really make things much more epic and much more immersive with just a little bit of sound design. And it's some, a little bit of lighting changes, right?
Just like changing the lighting and then having a little control over your lighting so that you can like change everything to a red light at the like optimal moment. Like, oh, players will go nuts. Like the, it's so much fun. And these are easy ways to do these things too, that are fairly cheap. Like it's not expensive to get a color changing light bulb, in this day and age, that connects to your phone app or whatever, you know?
Sam: You can buy 'em at ikea.
Caro: Exactly. Exactly.
Sam: yeah. Yeah. that's really interesting. I think about how. How big the oohs and ahs are at the d and d table. Whenever the DM puts down a map, like
Caro: Yeah,
Sam: little object that exists in the real world and in the fiction, and isn't that neat?
Caro: I'm a huge fan of minis. I also like to like, prepare meals for my players that are like on theme in the world, you know, like, yeah. And a lot of my players will come to like, sort of like semi cosplaying as their characters, right? Like they'll have little, little elements of their characters that they like to wear to get into it, and I think that's so awesome and so fun.
I love to encourage it.
Sam: my friend um, showed up to Big Bad Con this past year with just a little backpack full of like hats and scarves for people.
Caro: Amazing.
Sam: that he played, it was just like this hat seems like it'd be good for you. And like, it didn't matter if it was a LARP or a tabletop thing that out came the hats, you
Caro: That's awesome. That's awesome. That's so cute.
Sam: Yeah.
Caro: That's really cute.
Sam: Yeah. And I think, I think there's a way to take it like a little step further to, because we were talking about Conveying mood through like one extra sense in a way,
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: Like whether that's it's a cool map instead of a sketch, or whether that's we're gonna control the lighting to match the thing, or I'm gonna pull out pocket bard and like set the score or whatever.
Caro: Or I'm gonna use real coins like as currency. We're gonna track our currency 'cause we're gonna have real coins that you have to like hold and hold in a little pouch.
Sam: once your bag is full, you can't carry any more out of the
Caro: you're encumbered, you know? Sorry.
Sam: Yeah, but I, God, that's the best encumbrance mechanic I've ever heard of. Um, But that actually is like pushing towards the thing I was gonna say next, which is one of the most memorable d and d sessions I've ever played was when we showed up at a town and there was a traveling theater there and the DM handed out play scripts and was
Caro: Yes. Of.
Sam: And suddenly like, we had a real script to do the thing and it became, mean, like I, I did a, a whole long episode about maps and the Fall of Magic map in particular is so good at sort of getting people and like the beauty there of, I said this already, but an object that exists in reality and in the fictional fantasy
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: when that object is then like used in the story, it like really brings you in to the moment.
Caro: Absolutely. And the beauty of it is that if you have this physical object, then all of these stories and all of these memories are tied to this object and you can keep it and put it on your little shelf and like always have that. to remind you. And I think that's so beautiful. 'cause our art forms are ephemeral, so very often they're just not really captured.
So being able to have like a little token that you can bring with you is really special.
Sam: yeah. That keepsake game term
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: from Shing.
Caro: Yeah,
I think that like it's, easy to underestimate the power of like physicalizing things. It's easy to forget that we have five senses and that we can use all of them in our gaming experiences. so anytime that I'm seeing somebody like bring those things into it in a new way, it's really, really cool.
Like I've also seen just people play with physical space in ways that are like just unique and surprising, right? Like.
Sam: Hmm
Caro: The incorporation of like water, like everyone's got a cup of water and you have to pour these things in order to solve a puzzle. Like, ooh, wow, fun. You know, like that's exciting.
Or you have like liquids that are color changing when you mix assets and bases together. Like, you know, we haven't done that since we were kids in chemistry classes. And like, it's just so delightful to like bring it back and like remind people of those things. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. something I'm, I'm sort of reflecting on as you're talking about this is how much the kind of thing that we were talking about feels like it is designing. like one specific moment,
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: those play scripts that I mentioned, or the water puzzle that you're talking about here is like, yes, something awesome that you can do at like your home d and d group today.
And also can you make a whole game out of like, you, I guess you can make a whole game out of those kinds of things,
Caro: Totally.
Sam: feels like you get a lot of mileage out of the way those play scripts were written, like for me
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: like I, yeah. And that tailoring of experience to your audience feels really powerful.
Caro: Absolutely. I think that like the, because it is sort of really showing someone that you've thought about them conscientiously and that you really care about their experience. Like they feel that connection from you, you know? And that's really, really cool.
And I think that even in games that are like repeatable things that, where it's not necessarily designed or tailor made for you. There's still like the other players around the table and they're still your GM who are like you know, putting this on for you. So it's always gonna be a unique experience. It's always gonna be in the moment.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm curious to just hear you like, can, do you have like a favorite larp story that you can tell me?
Caro: oh my God. Uh, I Think that my favorite LRP story is probably my first LRP story, and it's because of this was the experience that like, set me on this path because it was so cool.
So I was 18. The first time I heard about LARPing, I did not know it existed. I grew up in a very small town in Connecticut. And me and my friends a whole bunch of other nerdy stuff, but LARPing was not something that was known to us. So some friends went away, they learned about LARPing at a Boy Scout retreat. They came back and we all decided to go to this LRP together.
So we all made our costumes, we made our weapons, we made everything ourselves like with, you know, duct tape and pipe foam. We show up at this lrp and we had been like really talking a big game 'cause we were 18,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Caro: so we're like, we're coming in and we're like the coolest guys who ever lived. And so the GMs were like let's fuck with these kids. This is gonna be fun in a, in a fun way. Not in like a. Like a mean way.
So they had set up this plot line where there was like a necromancer who was going to be like harassing a town and he was gonna like pull our group in and menace and just like menace everybody in. I'd run a, a terrifying scene and like kill them all and like turn them into undead.
So I had been having such a good time at this larp, I was meeting all these new people and like having all these fun new experiences. Everything. I was playing this like. Really like sexy Elvin Ranger who was like dressed very sexily because I was like, wow, why not? And so I missed this mod entirely. I had no idea that it had taken place. My friends were just gone and I was like, where'd they go?
Anyway they came back to the tavern and then they were like, Hey, we have to tell you something really important. They took me out into the woods and killed me and turned me into one of these unde as well. So this, there were no rules for how necromancy works. So what they told me was what the GMs told them, which is that anyone that you kill, you can turn into undead. Like you can just tell them that they're undead now too, and like that's how that's gonna work.
And I was like, so did you just make me a necromancer? Do I have this power now? Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So the GMs had no idea that I had been turned into a necromancer. So game goes on. Everything. My friends all have ah, mod that's run for them, where they get turned back and they're no longer undead.
And like that little thing ties up neatly, but I. I had a plan. So I realized that there is a very op game system where a a thief could waylay somebody and if they waylay you, you are just knocked out. There's no recourse for that. And once you're knocked out, anyone can slit your throat. You're like, you're just dead.
So I was like, I can definitely take out at least one thief by myself.
Sam: Yeah.
Caro: So I did this. So I tricked one of the thief players into coming into a remote place in the woods with me, attacked him, killed him, turned him into an undead. And I was like, here's the deal, we're gonna take over the town. And he was like, great.
So we went around and my plan was to use my, 18-year-old feminine wiles to get all the fighters in the town to be distracted while he would sneak up behind them, waylay them, and then we would murder them. And this worked so well.
Sam: Yeah, I bet. Yeah.
Caro: And so by the time that the game staff realized what was going on, we had killed more than half of the town. And like they, everybody was an undead servant. And so rather than punishing us and being like, what the fuck were you kids doing? They were like, this is awesome. This is so cool. So they turned all the NPCs into townspeople to fight us, and then they like, you know, took back over.
But then they had the necromancer was like really impressed with my work. And then that started like this whole plot line of this like necromancer seduction plot thing. It was so, so fun. And yeah,
Sam: It sounds like there's a, great lesson in there about saying yes.
Caro: Totally, a hundred percent. And like not punishing for not totally understanding a rule or, and, and like looking for the joy in like, what these players are doing isn't harming anyone. They're creating like a playful space for everybody, so there's no point in punishing them. So let's like invite them in a little more.
And I think that's such a really good lesson for like people to take.
Sam: that's, that's such like the fun of emergent play to be, right. It's to
Caro: Yeah,
Sam: fuck weird thing that no one could have predicted
Caro: exactly. Exactly.
Sam: I also see interesting in there about communication in LRP, especially over like a, a large group that's just like something you don't have to think about when your table
Caro: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: But how, I mean, I know the term fog of
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: to this
how do you manage fog of
Caro: I,
Sam: communication in
Caro: combat this with a three-pronged information system at all times. So there's going to be three different sources of telling you the same thing, so that players believe it. Because the first NPC, they're gonna be like, we don't trust them. The second NPC, they're gonna be like, we don't trust them. The third NP is gonna be like, well the three people are telling us the same thing now, it's probably true.
And, you know diaspora A is only gonna hear it from one person, diaspora B. So again, you know, so you need to like, hedge your bets and try to give them the information three different ways.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Three clue rule out
Caro: Mm-hmm.
Sam: mystery design.
Caro: Exactly.
Sam: people three clues for every step of the
Caro: Rule of three for everything, man. Yeah.
Sam: But yeah, I mean, how do you, how do you think about on the one hand, I'm like, okay, if you're the GM in that story you just told, how do you think about like managing who knows what and what's going on and responding? And on the other hand, it feels like the answer to that question is just like that rules and that's your job. You just like figure it out.
Caro: Yeah.
Sam: I, I don't know. I'm curious to hear you talk about what it's like to be in that position, if you can imagine that or if you've been in that
Caro: So it's helpful to have somebody who is essentially your story producer, whether that's like the head GM or whatever it is, but somebody who's gonna like do a continuity check and be like,
Sam: Sure.
Caro: is bananas. And no.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caro: you know, somebody needs to say no. Like, because otherwise you're gonna end up with like, really different lore depending on the writers and like what's going on. So making sure that you have somebody who is gonna sort of like lore check and make sure that that is gonna work, I think is important.
And then I think the rest of it is like really trusting your team, trusting your writers, like you know, knowing and believing that they are gonna have like really cool ideas. And that if you're the head gm, then your job is really to support your team and like make them shine and put them in positions to succeed is the best thing you can do.
So like, work with people you trust, work with people whose story ideas you admire and.
Sam: Yeah.
Caro: And keep those relationships strong 'cause they're fundamental to your game being successful.
Sam: Yeah. Okay. I, I need to start wrapping up here. But also I, I don't, I, I feel like that this is frankly why I like to have a very specific topic to, to cover because I feel like
Caro: because it's like, we could talk about this for 30 hours and never get to the bottom of it.
Sam: Well, and, and like I would need to go do like six years of, weekly lrp PAG in order to like ask you some of the questions that I wanna be able to ask you about. Right.
But I do wanna be able to like, sign off here with do you have any final things that I haven't asked you about that you wanna make sure to mention or anything else that you want to be able to say about. design and the design of like, larger form experiences at large.
Caro: I think that w where we're sort of struggling as a community right now is figuring out how do we scale but sort of keep our integrity as storytellers.
Sam: Sure.
Caro: And that's a really, really hard problem. But I do think that this is a problem that has solutions. Like so an idea I wanna put forward is like tabletop is a perfect model for this, right? Where if you look at tabletop groups, you generally have like a one to five ratio of sort of GMs to players. And I think that this is true in a lot of story trailing formats and larp being no exception here. So I think that if we can figure out ways to sort of like activate those GM type players and allow them to exist within the world, but also like be creating their own story worlds, I think that we're heading in the right direction then.
So if our job is to create immersive worlds and then empower people to tell stories within them, that's how I think we can start to solve some of these scalability issues.
Sam: Yeah. When you're talking about scalability, are you talking about like sustainability, like up to a thousand people? Like what, when you say scalability, what do you
Caro: I'm talking like theme park throughput, like
Sam: Sure.
Caro: level of like people participating in A LRP or you know, going to a, a role playing theme park, which I think is in the future.
Sam: Oh,
Caro: I know right.
Sam: amazing. Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna enlist me for my free labor GM ing for all my friends when I come to the, the theme park. But,
Caro: Yep. It's one of those, what's you, if you're a storytelling type, you can't turn it off like you're gonna, you know.
Sam: I mean, that's what I'm, that's the fun part for me.
Caro: Exactly.
Sam: Cool. Well Caro, thank you so much for coming on.
Caro: My pleasure. It was so, such a delight to talk with you, Sam.
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: Thanks again to Caro for being here. You can find more of them on their website, car murphy.com, or at various links in the show notes. Thanks to everyone who support Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Exploder, or on the dice Exploder Discord, and my games are@sonal.itch.io.
Our logo was designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray, and our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy. Travis Tesser and thanks to you for listening. I will see you next time.