Strandfall

Right now, our About page has this explanation for what Strandfall is:

Strandfall is a highly physical outdoor larp (live action role playing game) that uses custom spatial computers. Players are survivors of a global disaster that has unleashed mysterious, deadly storms. For three hours, they investigate the origin of the storms and make fateful decisions about their future as individuals and as a community. 

Strandfall is in conversation with works like Threads, Battlestar Galactica, Station Eleven, Eclipse, and Death Stranding. Inspired by Nordic larp, we aim to collapse the distinction between the screen-based and physical worlds by introducing physical traversal and social dynamics.

This is both true but also an incomplete description of what Experimental Social Scene (a new collective consisting of me – Adrian Hon – and Alex Macmillan) is making. Quite how Strandfall will be realised in our public playthrough this autumn in Edinburgh will depend on our design explorations over the next six months.

We’re able to take this time and to be so open with the process because we’ve been our work is supported by TK funding. All TK projects must incorporate some element of technology, and here’s Strandfall’s:

Our “storm sensors” are novel spatial computers designed for outdoor usage over long distances. They will house ePaper displays, LoRa (long range) radios, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS chips in a 3D-printed enclosure to provide a low-tech way to augment the reality of the park. These computers will be cheaper, more rugged, longer-lived, and more capable than smartphones, deployable to locations with zero cellular service and no battery charging options.

The sensors will be mounted on top of camera tripods for deployment. Runners will carry them through the park, then position and aim them in the correct direction, as co-ordinated by “operators” using walkie talkies. This will let players feel like they are really setting up important equipment, scanning historical sites for clues (like surveyors), and establishing laser communication links. Lacking colourful touchscreens, the sensors will be less distracting for runners, helping them focus on their surroundings. Essentially, they are a highly tactile and deeply realistic way of immersing players in a post-apocalyptic setting, since such devices – not smartphones – are the most likely to be used.

(from our original 2025 grant application)

Due to the long lead times of custom hardware production, we know Strandfall will have these “storm sensors”. Precisely what role they will play is another question entirely. Alex is making them to be highly flexible, hence their internal name of “MFDs”, or multi- functional devices. This means there’s an awful lot they could do, and that’s what we are spending a lot of time thinking about.

So rather than telling you exactly what Strandfall is – or will be – I’m going to share some of the questions going through my head right now:

• What are the risks and rewards of gamifying a larp?
• How much technology should we use beyond storm sensors?
• Are we putting too many ideas into this?
• How deep and automated should our simulation be?
• What are our influences?
• How do we think about indexicality?
• How do we responsibly run a larp like this in a public park?
• How can we make a highly physical larp accessible to people with very different levels of mobility?
• What makes this different from a normal location-based/pervasive game?
• Are we making relational art (and isn’t that bad now)?
• How does Strandfall fit into traditions and practices of environmental/interactive/immersive theatre, larp, and Happenings?
• What internal tools are we using?

What I can tell you right now is the reason why we’re making Strandfall. I spent the last twenty years making games that blur the boundaries between the real and digital worlds, from alternate reality games like Perplex City to smartphone games like Zombies, Run!

Now I want to make games – or should I say art? – that makes room for people to be brave with one another in person.

However you feel about the loneliness epidemic (PDF), most agree we need to spend more time together, in person, with friends and strangers. Many thinkers suggest we accomplish that by returning to the rituals and traditions of old: churchgoing, village fetes, and so on. I doubt this will work. Instead, we need to make new collective experiences that are exciting and enchanting enough to pull people away from their screens at home, while also being thoughtful and meaningful.

Based on my time at the Immersion larp festival and the spectacular sci-fi larp Eclipse, the tradition of Nordic larp has come the closest to delivering this promise in a way that feels sustainable and welcoming to all. That’s why we’ll be learning from Nordic larp’s many books and conferences and talks, and working with veteran larp and TTRPG designer Juhana Pettersson.

Alex and I like to joke that Strandfall is the world’s first strand-type larp, but it’d more accurate to say, simply, that it’ll be first larp we’ve made. Maybe it’s predictable that we would load it with technology, but in our defence, I think technology has a special role to play in creating provocative immersive art.

We’ll see!