Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/27/evermore-a-larp-themepark-el.html
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Why does it have to be in Utah?
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Yeah, I was reading, wondering where it is. I saw “Utah” and thought, “Well, I guess I’m never going there.”
The weird thing is this is the second time I’ve read about some elaborate, specialized adventure park that’s in Utah - the other being a VR place where they build sets you’re physically interacting with while you only see what’s displayed in a portable VR headset, a custom game. In both cases, my first response is that they’re not going to get a sufficiently large audience to support the endeavor in Utah…
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Although this is in the Salt Lake City region. Which is a fairly cosmopolitan area by Utah standards and actually went blue in 2016 while pretty much the rest of the state went red. So it may not be the Utah you are thinking of.
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Did anyone else read “Dream Park” by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes? “Evermore” sounds like a rough draft for that location…
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An appropriate ratio of people of color to most medieval fantasy settings? /s but not /s
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That’s kind of like “damning with faint praise” - SLC has a couple hundred thousand people? The whole urban area has, what, just a bit over a million people? That’s not a lot of people, really. If they had a lot of tourists coming through, that would be one thing, but…
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Hey Utah has got all sorts of cool tourist attractions; like the Joe Hill Shooting Gallery and the Mountain Meadows Adventure Park (fun for all the family).
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an angry hag was seated at the end of a long table, lost in her thoughts
I just wondered how anyone knew the hag was angry if she was just sitting there lost in her thoughts.
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They might make a go of it. SLC is a large-ish city with a lot of Mormon visitors and a lot of people passing through on the way to ski or hike or bike in the mountains or to attend Sundance. The tickets are inexpensive compared to Disney or Universal ($29 for adults, $16 for age 6-12) so it’s an affordable day out for a middle-class family.
I might give it a shot if I’m in the area. Walking into a Thomas Kinkade painting isn’t my thing, but I like the Celtic Lore adventure aspect and love the energy and enthusiasm the craftspeople have put into the experience.
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Elaborate RenFaire. If I was a community actor in Utah, this would be the place.
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One word, bro: Eyebrows.
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Plus you might meet some LARPer hottie in a tight get-up.
Tiger growl.
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… wait. I’m a nerd 
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Joe. Hill. Shooting. Gallery.
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The management behind the park has tried to make it as accessible as possible to the general public who may not even care about role-play.
I wonder how the commodification of an experience like LARPing will change it. When you’re just a bunch of nerds sitting around a table, or fooling around in the woods, there’s a sense that the shared fantasy - i.e. the fun - is really only a result of everyone involved really investing their imagination and creativity in it. Without that, it falls apart and isn’t fun. So people who aren’t playing along or are playing counter to the goals of the group don’t last long.
But when the world itself is provided as a commercial service, and exists for anyone willing to pay the fee, regardless of whether they’re invested in it, you get…Disneyland. Just a colorful backdrop for people to be their boring and in some cases unpleasant selves, and consume the entertainment around them provided by entertainment professionals. We hate those people in role playing, but if they’re paying your themepark bills it’s hard to turn them away…
And as market incentives encourage you to make the experience more and more accessible, it seems like the whole thing could get mundane fast. Unless of course there’s enough LARPer weirdos to actually sustain something like this independently. Who knows? It’ll be cool if there are.
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SLC is an airport hub within a 2 hr flight of almost every major US city west of or in the Rockies. Just over 2 hours from Vancouver, BC. I’d go there.
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