Design Diary Episode 1 - "New Worlds to Conquer"

I’m going to keep a diary about the development process for B-Movie. In it I will be talking about some of the design questions we are trying to answer, and giving updates on the project as it goes along. It would be irresponsible to suggest we’re planning to play this any time soon; there are no specific dates in mind beyond post-pandemic, but we hope that you’ll come along on this design journey with us. There are risks that come with talking about a larp design in public while it is happening. First that it turns into a “design by committee” where the decisions are debated on facebook. The upside of this is a sense of community engagement and even ownership of the project, the downside is that more time is spent explaining or justifying decisions than actually making them. With that in mind I make no promises about how often we’ll be able to directly engage with your thoughts and comments.

So far Avalon larp studio has had one brainstorm about this project, and a collective (online) viewing of the 1994 Tim Burton biopic of Ed Wood. Beyond that, so far the team has watched over one hundred B-Movies produced between 1936 and 1985. Research is important, and whilst that might include binge-watching Netflix’ Hollywood it also includes reading up on the socio-political history of 1950s Hollywood. This generates a lot of ideas, a lot of questions, and a lot of possible stories that could be told in this world. This is how I like to start, generating ideas and mining possibilities and then we’ll decide what direction to take the design. This generates two questions:

“What are the themes of this larp?” and “What will players be doing with their bodies during this larp?”

You will have to wait to find out more about the answers to both of these questions. Like a Saturday morning serial movie, tune in next week to find out what happens next, in the epic adventures of . . . B-Movie!