Would I watch Dream Park-style professional LARPing?

I… OK, yes, I would.  But here’s the thing, and Penny Arcade is kind of alluding to it, here: what you’d get is Dream Park*-style professional LARPing.  That means athletes who can also act.  Even the people doing magical character classes would have to be in shape.  Which means that they’re all going to be fairly young, too.  Or else really in shape.

So I guess I’m saying that I’m not anticipating this to be a retirement career in my golden years.  Even if they set up a league tomorrow.  Which they are not; Hasbro was mostly thinking of Magic: The Gathering anyway.

Moe Lane

*Wait, they wrote another book in the series?  Why the hell wasn’t I notified of this?

6 thoughts on “Would I watch Dream Park-style professional LARPing?”

  1. There, to judge by the scroll at the bottom of the amazon page, at least 2 more beyond that: The Barsoom Project and The dream Collective.

      1. No, Moon Maze is book #4. Yes, I was surprised when I noticed 5 years after it came out as well. (And frankly, something about the book just felt, well, off.)

  2. Mr. Lane… I would suggest you play to your strengths. If they are going to be doing pro LARPing, they are going to need scenarios, magic items, maguffins, and magic weapons. Seems to me they’ll need people who can provide these things.

    You know, guys with decades of experience at running RPGs.

  3. It might happen sooner than you think. Critical Role gets about 10-15k viewers each week on Twitch. A couple of other shows get in the thousands when they stream and right now at 1 AM Eastern, there are close to 7k people on Twitch watching the “D&D” category. It’s growing, even if I’m rather alarmed at some of the shows’ behind the scene processes. (Some of the shows have a very strong “on the rails” feel to them. And when I see “writers” credited on a show, I get suspicious.)
    .
    It may not end up as Dream Park. But I suspect that something along the lines of the Star Trek series detailed in Nick Coles’ “Ctrl-Alt-Revolt” might not be far off.

  4. Honestly, I think we’re close to this already. Power Rangers:Hyperforce is already this except Tabletop, and a ton of Aquisitions, Inc. stuff before it fell into the same heading.

    I think the possibility of improv theater fusing with competitive sports makes this potentially workable for at least twitch stream level stuff, even lacking holography or expensive set design.

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