#spacelarpcafe — Public Fediverse posts

Oh God, it's been 9 years since I started writing about the #spacelarpcafe

I personally would prefer a space larp (or even a #spacelarpcafe), where we do an away mission out here in the local woods.

but I'd settle for a high fantasy thing too.

I decided a 7 or 8 years ago that I wanted to be able to do all of the kinds of production that the walt disney company does, and that I wanted to be able to do those things without becoming a monster.

As of right now, about the only thing we don't do (other than being a monster) is theme park attractions.

(Give me another two years and we'll get #SpaceLARPCafe kicked back off.)

There's no reason for it to specifically be cryptid themed. @bstacey suggested dinosaurs, which would work very well.

I also love the idea of a world where a bunch of little steampunk-y robots are just out there, and your goal is to spot them all. I've been thinking about that idea since I stumbled on this kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1537376953/wrylon-robotical-field-guides/description a decade ago.

It could be a scavenger hunt. It could be in the #SpaceLARPCafe universe.

There should be enough to do to keep the locals engaged, but it should be friendly enough that it's fun to just play for the weekend, if you're just in town for the weekend.

#SpaceLARPCafe

This isn't something I'm actively working on, so much as it is something that I'm convinced I will do at some point, and that I have a bunch of pieces for folded in to other things.

I won't rehash the whole thing. Find the original post from 2017 if you're interested.

I'm looking back in to it today because I'm looking for things that I can use as visual inspiration as we build out v1 of the #SpaceLARPCafe

Stylistically there's a lot going on here, but practically it is pretty vapid.

I think we're going to run #spacelarpcafe as a weekend installation for Community Day at the makerspace in the spring.

I have ten million things to do before then, and some of them are building a Spaceship.

@kat @ifixcoinops @BillySmith if you dig through the #spaceLARPCafe tag, I'm sure you'll see me talking about converting a school bus or a pullbehind trailer.

I even found a 1950s carnival spaceship trailer that I drooled over for a few weeks before my wife talked me out of it. (It would have needed 10k or more in work and parts.)

I ... do have a spaceship room already. I could just use that.

Basically, I see it like this:

- You have a ship. Your ship has a record. That record is your ship's local copy of the "wiki". The wiki is the state of the universe as far as your ship is aware, and it *can be, but does not have to be* federated.

- Your ship is only online when your ship is online. The world changes without your ship, and your ship will not necessarily know about it unless it is associated with a dock. The dock will backfill data to your ship.

- Your ship can associate itself with a dock. The dock is kind of like a relay. It serves as a hub connecting lots of ships, and probably also federating with other docks. (This is the #SpaceLARPCafe but can also be wholly virtual.) It also becomes the server for the game world your ships connect to.

- The actual bridge simulation bits are built from structured data and text from the "wiki", and the results of various excursions get bundled back up and sent back to the wiki (which does not promise consistency, but will follow a trust model of some sort that I can invision, but don't want to take the time to explain.)

- The only multiplayer aspects come from the other members of your bridge crew and from the other ships connected to your dock. (eventually, maybe, if there's enough interest, dock to dock interaction might approach something closer to real time, but at some point this shit gets complicated and potentially expensive so I'm trying to short circuit as much of that as possible)

- Outside of the bridge simulator bits, everything is done through menus and text at the base layer. We might put a fancy skin on eventually, but under the hood it's all structured text. (The whole game world, in fact, and nearly every interaction within it, should be able to be modeled as flavor text + structured data. This is because all the data discovered about the game world is presented in a wiki! Players are invited to contribute to the wiki (video, audio, and text)

- There's not one massive, persistent game world. There are a bunch of small ones. There's not even one consensus view of reality, there are a bunch of fragmented ones. This might be a problem for a different style of game, but it adds some DIY hacker aesthetic to this one.

Doing it this way lets me bolt on to an existing game engine with some relatively light scripting, and to pass data in and out of the game engine in a way that makes it all feel like One Thing instead of a collection of a bunch of different things.

It means that we can have some basic proc-gen for "you've entered an unexplored region of space and when you get there you find X, Y, and Z" and then store that data for future explorers, while also logging the first people to visit the region, etc. etc. etc.

I have more thoughts here, but it's dinner time

Everyone is flying busted ass homemade ships, relying on a public wiki to know which worlds are safe. The whole universe is basically uncharted.

That gives us a *lot* of room to hang a story off of.

The #SpaceLARPCafe can be "renting" ships to visitors and serving as a "dock" for members.

Visitors can pick from a pre-supplied list of fly by planets and basically just do a training mission and a simple excursion.

Members can chart uncharted systems or do supply runs to charted systems or do rescue missions or salvage missions for other ships.

That gives us room to tell lots of different kinds of stories, but also to have a good reason for many of the stories to remain disconnected or not to build on one another (while also leaving *plenty* of room for us to have ongoing stories that do build on one another.

The original premise for #SpaceLARPCafe put it, more or less, in the Jupiter's Ghost universe (#jg #JupitersGhost).

That is to say THE DISTANT FUTURE. A world inhabited by lots of aliens, with various factions vying for control on the edges of a crumbling intergalactic utopia.

That could be a lot of fun. I think there are a lot of stories to tell in a universe like that!

But it also means slotting this thing in to the periphery of a fairly established universe, which is very different from our own. That takes a lot of work to pull off visually. It would require super complicated sets for the physical elements of things, but it also requires pretty elaborate storytelling and onboarding for new players, and it makes the *game* part harder too.

It didn't really occur to me until yesterday that I already had another option.

For those who are new to these topics, #SpaceLARPCafe is an idea I had a long time ago to bolt a starship bridge simulator like Space Nerds in Space or Empty Epsilon on to the basic idea of an escape room or a haunted house, and then to stick all of that in the back room of a cafe, complete with flight simulators.

It's an interactive, multiplayer space exploration game + a real world space to tie the game world together + star tours.

I've written about the idea a lot, but the post you want if you're encountering it for the first time starts here:
https://retro.social/@ajroach42/99141421780857515

The Space Explorer's Field Guide (wiki) is a TV show we're slowly working on for New Ellijay Television #NETV and probably my favorite of the several series we have in various stages of production and preproduction. The basic premise goes:

The year is 2030. 5 years ago, someone uploaded plans for a DIY interstellar engine to hacker news, and ... It worked. It could be assembled for peanuts.

The american empire has collapsed. The world is in chaos. Interstellar flight is possible, easy, cheap, not remotely safe.

It's a vast, nearly infinite cosmos. All of it is basically uncharted.

A weird combination of hardcore nerds and long haul hikers are out there documenting it and contributing back to the wiki.

Imagine every weird little instance of the fediverse as a guild of space explorers and you'll be most of the way to what I'm envisioning here.

I'm thinking more and more about #SpaceLARPCafe within the context of the universe of the Space Explorer's Field Guide (wiki) ( #sefgw ) and how those two ideas could co-exist.

I went to a very well designed and thoughtfully curated private museum today and it has my mind all aflutter with possibilities.

Interactive storytelling and emmersive theater ( and, yes, #spaceLARPCafe, even) are only a shade removed from the best museum exhibits.

It has been brought to my attention that I haven't talked about Jupiter's Ghost recently enough for even people who know me well to know what the hell I am talking about so

It's time to talk about my pet project.

Not #newellijaytelevision

Not #expeditionsasquatch

Not the #zinestation or the #zinestation486

and not the #spacelarpcafe (although very nearly the space larp cafe)

Today, right now, and for the foreseeable future, I'm talking about #jupitersghost or #jg, what it is, what I want it to be, and how you can get involved.

Every once in a while my brain decides that it's time to think about the #SpaceLARPCafe again.

Today is that time.

We're looking at a commercial building up the road from the coffee shop.

It needs a lot of work.

But it would make an excellent home for the makerspace's retail endeavors, with plenty of room left over for a Museum or a #spacelarpcafe

This was such a big deal to me as a kid. Everything about the Star Tours ride captivated my imagination in a Big way.

It's the only ride I ever enjoyed standing in line for, too.

I was sad when they rebuilt it, and I'll probably never ride the new one.

I don't know that I'd ever build something so elaborate for Star Tours either, unless it was at the request of someone else, but I will totally do something like this with OC on the way to the #spacelarpcafe

So this is where I am at the moment re: #spacelarpcafe

I need to design a uniform and produce it.

I need to design some gear (side arms, communicators, etc) and make them.

I need to make fancy scifi housing for some of the laptops I have sitting around, and figure out if I'm going to run Space Nerds in Space or Empty Epsilon.

Then it's:
- Design and print quickstart guides for the various stations for new recruits
- Build some spaceship props/sets
- invite my friends to alpha

You know what I just remembered?

#spacelarpcafe

Now that's all I'll think about today.

It's #Sunday! I'm listening to #Jazz, drinking #coffee and trying to buy a #coffeeshop

(And fighting everything in me not to turn it in to a #spacelarpcafe)

Thinking about #SpaceLARPCafe again today as I plan a #SNIS party for some friends.

We're renting a room, I'm covering everything in silver foil and passing out (nerf) side arms and uniforms.

I imagine it's going to be a lot of fun.

Order of Operations:

- Sasquatch (In progress)
- Intergalactic Computers (coming fall 2019)
- Jupiter's Ghost community site (coming winter 2019)
- Yesterday, Tomorrow (coming spring 2020)
- Jupiter's Ghost podcast (coming whenever it's ready and no later)
- #SpaceLARPCafe (coming whenever I don't have to work for someone else anymore.)

(and, like, yeah it'd be way easier to tell a convincing story about people aboard a spaceship if I had a physical cabin for the to board, and if that cabin was apparently fully functional, but I've already established that that part can be done for $5k DIY with arduinos and hydraulics, and I need a compelling story first anyway.

Build the universe. Make it interactive on it's own. Bolt the flight sim on later, if at all.

It's a #SpaceLARPCafe, not a Spaceship Simulator Building.

And, obviously, the coolest application of motion simulators and animatronics is the original Star Tours.

The first time I rode that ride I was obsessed with it. I've been talking about it endlessly for the last week. I've gone off about the #SpaceLARPCafe several times, but that's just an extension of my desire to combine physical special effects with story telling and play in a way that makes something unique.

It's born straight out of my Imagineering childhood.

There's a building for rent on the square of the town where my home is (which is far away from the town where I live.)

It's RIGHT on the main drag in the little tourist area of town, and I so much wish that I could turn it in to a #SPACELARPCAFE

Two years ago, on another social site, I said:" Okay, but seriously: Take the idea of a haunted house, replace all the horror elements with sci-fi/space stuff.

Add basic plot, and some interactive elements.

Result = best day ever."

Clearly the #SpaceLARPCafe idea has been kicking around in my head for a while.

Remember #spaceLARPCafe?

That's my dumb idea of a LARP coffee shop where you can crew spaceships and interact with folks.

It came up today in conversation about hovercraft.

And then I found Space Nerds in Space (#SNIS #SpaceNerdsInSpace) https://smcameron.github.io/space-nerds-in-space/

This is a bridge simulation game. FLOSS. Written in C, with scriptable missions written in LUA, and support for multiple ships in one universe.

... I don't know what to do with this information, but I'm glad to have it.

I got bit by an idea today

I'm frustrated about this.

This idea crops up about once every 18 months, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it because it's impossible to implement under the current capitalist system.

I'm going to call this idea #spaceLARPCafe and describe it in detail.

Hopefully I remember to actually unlist the rest of these.