LARPing For Fun & Profit

[jburneko]

Hello All,

I'm putting this in actual play because to some extent it's about someone else's actual play.  But it might belong in either Theory or even Publishing.  Please move accordingly.

I can't believe I've never mentioned this before.  But with all this talk about "mainstream" and the "social context" of roleplaying, this just suddenly leaped to mind.  

Here, in Santa Monica, there is a small theater called, "Magicopolis" which hosts magic shows.  Every Saturday night they have an indefinitely running show called The Dungeon Master.  After reading about it, what leapt to mind is, "Oh my god, this guy's figured out how to make money off his LARP!"  Here's how it works:

If I remember correctly, it costs $15 to get in and the theater is sold up to its normal capacity.  Each show is a completely different adventure, so people have incentive to come every week.  Then, six members of the audience are chosen to actually play the game while the rest of the audience gets to cheer and boo as they see fit.

Personally, I've never gotten around to actually going, so I can't offer much more information than the ad copy.  However, I can tell you that's been popular enough to run for over a year, the time I've known about it, and just the other night I was walking by right around show time and there were quite a large number of people waiting in line dressed in costumes.

For more information go here:
http://www.the-dungeonmaster.com/

I'm pretty much just offering this up for information.  I thought it might spark some interesting questions and feedback concerning the productivity and profitablity of roleplaying.

Jesse

[xiombarg]

It sounds very interesting -- but I'd like to hear how well it works in practice, and what it's really like, especially for the audience as opposed to the adventuring group. Unfortunately, I don't live in Santa Monica...