It's hard for one experience to serve two masters - I find there's always a tension between competitive and roleplay experiences, and the best games clearly prioritise one over the other. The idea that there's something important that people are supposed to learn from an experience like this sits awkwardly with the fact that it's an undeniably niche activity - I see a lot more downside than upside in the prospect of rehashing colonialism debates with a group that's going to be inherently very unrepresentative of wider human society, to say the least.
But, yeah, I've had some really magical experiences that had nothing like this level of material support, that were just a few nerds standing in a field with a couple of props. It doesn't always hit, but the highs are high. The prospect of a multi-day event that doesn't require camping is very appealing, even at the cost of eating vegan for that time.
How close is this to just doing the thing for real? Can we entice people into old-school adventures by calling in LARPing? What could we do this with?
