This is a review and thoughts of the fifth run of the “Conscience” LARP organised by NotOnlyLARP that occurred from March 1st to 3rd 2024 at the Fort Bravo Film Studios, Almeria, Spain. Please be advised that there are light spoilers of the LARP in this post. All photographs are by the author unless otherwise specified.
“These violent delights have violent ends”*.
* Friar Lawrence talking to Romeo in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”, act 2, scene 6. And not Dolores Abernathy of Sweetwater…
“Once Upon a Time in the West”
Long time readers who read my retrospective on Mission Together may remember me mentioning that I’d just missed out on a spot on a Westworld LARP called “Conscience” in late 2019. When two new runs of the LARP were announced for Spring 2024 I jumped at the chance. I had been a fan of the Westworld film before the TV series and the LARP is at Fort Bravo, a studio that Sergio Leone built for his westerns. This was ticking more than a couple of boxes for me amid what was looking like a very crowded arena for LARPs in 2024. It would seem people were making up for the time lost over Covid.
This would be my third LARP with NotOnlyLarp (NoL) after Mission Together and Zero (in 2022 and 2023 respectively) and my fourth International LARP overall. Registration was relatively simple and straight forward and most aspects of the LARP were handled by the LARPmanager website which (once you get used to its quirks) seemed to work relatively well as the registration/questionnaire process progressed at different stages. From paying for your ticket to add-ons (like Mugs, T-Shirts) and measurements if you needed to hire your costume for the role you were casted as.
“Pale Rider”
Ahead of filling out the casting form I did debate what kind of character I wanted to play. Switching between someone like the character of Peter Martin from the film (a guest at the park) and Lee Sizemore from the TV series (an employee of the park). In the end I went the Lee Sizemore path and I got a character who would in the plot department of the Aleph Corporation (the in-game version of Delos).
After the casting process was finished I found out that I would be playing “Ballard”, the gamification expert of the park. The closest comparison character to the TV series would be the acerbic plot writer (and aforementioned), Lee Sizemore (as played by Simon Quarterman in the show). I was very happy with this casting as he was one of my favourite characters from that show.
Looking back now as I type this, had I been playing it safe? Had I forgotten the advice given to me back during “Odysseus” all those years ago? Had I forgotten to “embrace the chaos?” Potentially, but I’ll talk more about that later.
“3:10 to Yuma”
As with other similar games there were buses laid on from two seperate locations (the airport and central Malaga) that would take you on the roughly 3 hour drive to Fort Bravo.
Sleeping accommodations were either in dorms or you could upgrade to cabins if you wished. We were advised pre-game that we were in the middle of the desert and that it could get quite cold at night, so I brought my heavy duty sleeping bag and all my cold weather gear but it rarely got cold enough inside to warrant it (at least to my sensitivities) and, with the help of two fan heaters, it was relatively warm inside throughout the event. The catering was also very good to the extent that although I’ve got in the habit of bringing a selection of protein bars and other snacks to LARPs like this but I took them all back with me. After getting there, first order of the day was grabbing your rental kit (I think most people had at least one item), finding a bed to chuck your stuff onto and then lunch before the workshops started.
Fort Bravo has been used as a filming location for many varied westerns, I think the most recent thing that was filmed there was an episode of Doctor Who (A Town Called Mercy) that I would watch post the LARP and look to recognise the places I’d just been to.
The workshops were more important this time round because of some of the adult themes that were being explored in this LARP and went into detail about how players (as guests and Aleph Employees) could interact with Players playing Hosts (the eponymous robots of Westworld). These would vary with explaining safety techniques, how to role-play being violent, playing sex scenes and other items of a similar adult nature. These workshops would be coupled with a tour of the location (telling us what buildings were in-game, which would be Red Zones when the sun went down) before we would split up into our profession groups and we would go through how to “play” the LARP. The last item on the day before the start was a “Speed LARP”, where you go to a series of predetermined points and have chance to calibrate with a series of contacts.
“Dances with Wolves”
The background to the LARP was that the Aleph corporation (in-game equivalent of Westworlds “Delos Corporation”) was having a normal day at their western themed theme park. Among the guests that day were a number of VIPs and potential investors as the park had been losing money for some time ever since a guest was accidentally injured by a Host. And thus the game began…
I think it’s important to note that this LARP is effectively three LARP’s in one with the following groups having their own plot: –
- Aleph Employees
- Hosts
- Guests
The LARP would revolve around the various points where these three groups interacted. Even in the Aleph Employees group there were another four groups with their own plot lines: –
- Plot
- Behaviour
- Security
- Maintenance
My character, Ballard, was second-in-command of the Plot Team. My job was to make sure the plot team did theirs which included keeping current plotlines up to date, tweak them where necessary, to ensure guest satisfaction and possibly come up with new ones. Whilst also looking for ways to ascend to the top job…. Once we had some changes we would then recall the necessary Hosts, update their storylines and, if necessary, rehearse with them to make sure the new storyline worked.
The first phase of the LARP started well enough with the whole plot team together and discussing some of the ramifications of the work we were doing. We were soon dismissed and free to enter the Park (one of the staff perks) but it was dark and I only had one contact amongst the guests that I couldn’t find, I would then proceed to hurt my knee after stepping down off a step awkwardly and retired to bed early with a couple of paracetamol. If you read my post about Mission Together then you may remember how I didn’t have a great game and didn’t go to the GMs or the safety team, that was on me that time.
Thankfully, this time I never felt the need.
As a senior member of the Plot Team (and the gamification expert) my job was to review current plot lines and work with the team on new ones whilst also trying to keep up with VIP requests. At the same time, my character had one eye on the future and was trying to ease out Robert Leone (the current head of plot) by undermining his plot lines as being “old and boring” whilst also ingratiating myself to Sheridan (the head of park operations). This also involved sucking up to important investors like Oscar Graves (as the park was in need of new funding) and being able to tailor experiences to their wishes.
My other plotlines nearly exclusively revolved around Aleph and mostly within the Plot department. My one point of contact outside of this and actually in the park was an ex-girlfriend I was going to try and hit on again (Ballard really was a slime ball!)
One secret I did have was that I knew one of the members of the team was secretly a host, this was all part of an experiment to see if we could automate parts of the park with technology we already had. One of my tasks was to monitor and interact with them never betraying their true nature.
The day would proceed between rewriting plot lines, updating Hosts, diving into the park to try and catch how plotlines would work (and hammer a few more nails into Leone’s professional career!). This may seem like not much happening but I haven’t even touched on the other issues in the plot team, the upcoming host fight (think robotic fight club) or one of the other problems confronting Aleph. Ballard’s game was firmly grounded in corporate intrigue and trying to climb his way to the top and this was certainly how my game progressed.
The next day started with some concerning rumours that the Hosts were remembering their pasts (they were blanked each day to prevent this kind of thing). We were asked to stop changing plots whilst Behaviour tried to figure out what was going on. It was during this phase that I got the nod that I would soon be the head of plot as Leone was leaving, with the official reason being to “spend more time with his family”. At this point Ballard was on top of the world and was even trying to lure his ex with the promise of a job in a new park that Sheridan had secured funding for.
The system failures would continue but Ballard was a little oblivious to this having achieved his goal and started to milk it for all it was worth. However, it soon became apparent that the Hosts were going to come for all of us and come they did. When the end came it was swift and brutal, Ballard would try to run only to be cornered and die on his knees, screaming for his life whilst his head was crushed by the hands of a host.
The Robot revolution had begun.
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”
This was a great LARP with a lot of moving parts and I do have some observations to make.
Big shoutout to the crew and GMs, I’m fairly sure each Aleph team had their own GM and that mean’t we were rarely waiting for a GM call when we were trying out new and different things (of course there was the time a proposed plotline would have broken the LARP..). The location was also so amazing and absolutely helped reinforce the immersion.
It won’t come as any shock or surprise that we knew the robot revolution was coming. We’d been told during the initial briefing that there would be a signal late in the game, we weren’t told what the signal would be but it was fairly obvious (from an out of character perspective) what it would indicate. The issue became that in the run up towards it, it felt like everyone was waiting for it which led to a lull (certainly among some members of the Aleph employees). It felt like everyone was on pause waiting for it. When it came, it was swift and brutal as it should have been but I would have tried to come up with a different way to signal the beginning of the apocalypse to try and make it more of a surprise which I think would have had more impact but I get the need to make sure every Host-Player knew when the time was to rise up.
There was an extensive Aleph website that the Plot (and other Aleph personnel) team we were able to browse and refer to, all of the plots were listed but it might have been nice to have had the plot author as another column in the list (just to make the player lives easier) as we could then have referred to our own plot lines and others without having to click through all of them. Also, I’d have liked to have seen a time table of plot events as we were often asked which plots were currently active and there was no real way for us to know. There were set events (the bank and the wedding are two that come immediately to mind) but everything else could just kind of happen. I’d have tried to put in more of a structure around this as it would have helped the plot team in their engagements with other members of Aleph, I think more structure in this area of the LARP would have been a real help.
Virtually all of Ballard’s contacts/plot were centred around his role in the plot team but I would have liked a couple of more to drag him out of the office and into the park (apart from the one he did have). I also think the majority of Ballard’s plots as written felt more like additional background for the character. The old adage of “background is not plot” felt like a recurrent theme whilst I would read and reread the background in the run up to the LARP, realistically I got more plot engagement with my contacts (who were all uniformly excellent).
“Open Range”
If LARPs had ratings then this one would be an 18. One thing I referred to above were the areas designated as “Red Zones”. These were the aforementioned “violent” scenes could be played out and there was a good chunk of the workshop time given over to them for this reason. From reading Ballard’s background he did not come over as someone who would abuse hosts, he might treat them badly, or refer to them negatively (which happened throughout the game) but he only saw them as tools to realise his vision for the park. This led to several great scenes in plot between Ballard and Reed who would argue this point to some degree (and towards the end of the LARP, newly promoted Ballard would fire Reed for what he perceived as gross misconduct (and some serious hypocrisy!)). I never went to one of the Red Zones as I don’t think Ballard would have and ultimately it’s down to my interpretation of the character from the notes as written.
Back on Odysseus in 2019, I’d gone with a friend and he approached me out of character (OOC) on the first night of that game and asked how it was going (that was my first international LARP), I explained I was in decision paralysis due to some of the events that had happened and he responded with “embrace the chaos”, which I would then do and have a truly fantastic LARP. Had I forgotten that advice? Maybe I’m holding onto OOC values too tightly without fully embracing the character, and it’s the fear I’m going to inadvertently ruin someone else’s game. Like “Cougar” in the first Top Gun movie, maybe I’m “holding on too tight” without fully embracing the game and/or character, maybe it’s old LARP baggage weighing me down.
I’d written the above whilst my feelings were still fresh, it would be a couple of weeks later that an article would be published on Nordic LARP that resonated with me and my feelings about this game, you can find that here. This article (titled “Playing Boldly”) resonated with me on a number of levels and I wonder if I would have done things differently if I’d read this in the runup to this game. It’s certainly something I will take on board as I move towards future events.
“The Magnificent Seven”
As I wrote earlier, there’s an awful lot to like on this LARP, thats not to say I don’t have some issues with some of the elements but I think the core gameplay/mechanics/flow work well and I came off this LARP satisifed that I’d had a good game. The concept of replaying a LARP still feels a bit alien to me (despite the fact I am replaying Odysseus in a few months (at time of writing)) but I would play this one again. I’m not sure what role I would take but I would like to revisit Mayfield at least one more time.
My sincere thanks to all my fellow players, the crew and especially the GMs for making this world come so alive.
So thanks for reading, if indeed, you still are.
Critical Path 