Below is a list of our currently approved panels. More are scheduled to be added in the upcoming weeks.
The exact times and locations of panels & events are listed in our registration page. REGISTER and check out our full list of events!
KEYNOTE – DREAMING REAL: How Interactive Theater Dragged Me Off the Streets and Taught Me How To Play It Grand
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
We all know how interactive theater fires our imaginations, builds lasting friendships and provides us with ours of pleasure — but it can do so much more! In this exclusive WyrdCon keynote, Jeff Gomez CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, will relate the intimate story of how LARP and RPGs altered the course of his life, inspiring him to defy an array of personal challenges and help shape a new communications technique that is transforming the entertainment industry, reshaping the way we connect with one another, and impacting global society.
Panel: Storyplay: The Influence of Popular Fiction on Role-Playing
By: Micky Neilson
Organization: Blizzard Entertainment
Description
Whether your pwning Deathwing with your level 85 gnome warlock in WoW, smacking down Beholders with your Barbarian Goliath in D&D, or leading your fellow combatants to glorious victory at a LARP, genre storytelling has most assuredly informed the way you roleplay. Storyplay will take an in-depth look at how popular fiction across today’s media continues to enrich and influence the way we play.
Panelists: Micky Neilson, James Waugh, Flint Dille
Moderator: Sean Copeland
Presentation: Igniting the Imagination of Many in a Connected World
By: Lance Weiler
Story Architect / Experience Designer
Description
Without a doubt, this is an amazing time to be a storyteller. We have moved beyond the simple democratization of storytelling and production tools. Funding, marketing and distribution solutions are commoditized, providing storytellers numerous opportunities to bring their work to an audience. And now a new phase is arriving, one that merges technology with the creative process. Storytellers will soon be able to take advantage of a world of connected objects in what has been termed the “Internet of things.” And in this environment, as always, there will be a need for good storytelling to provide a level of understanding, entertainment and social value.
Join Lance as he pulls back the curtain on how he designs and produces 21st century storyworlds and social experiences. He’ll explain how he’s working with large collaborative teams globally and methods he’s utilizing to ignite the imagination of many.
Panel: From Live to Web and Back Again: Storytelling Across Participatory Platforms
By: Lauren Scime
Organization: Witchfactory Productions
Description
How can we create richer immersive environments or “worlds” that engage fans in pervasive play that traverses virtual and live environments, allowing deeper levels of participation and shared authorship of a narrative? This is a panel discussion about transmedia storytelling in which we will address multiple ways to combine live events (such as LARPs and ARGs) with web-based social media to create truly boundless and pervasive story worlds.
Furthermore, we will challenge the limited scope of “social media.” Although this term is most often applied to online networks, semantically speaking, social media should encompass a broader range of content. Truly “social” media harnesses both live and virtual spaces to create a social narrative “world” that defies traditional boundaries.
Despite breakthroughs in cross-platform storytelling, content on the web and live action storytelling are too often separate or disjointed. However, the rapidly evolving relationship between participatory culture, web content, live action gaming and other live public events have the potential to feed from one another, creating a cohesive whole “world,” enhancing user participation and allowing fans to immerse deeper into a narrative.
Transmedia storytelling attempts to create multiple entry points for users to consume, engage, participate, and author content. In best practice, this allows the users to immerse in the story world to make it their own. Both panelists and attendees will explore the relationship between the live and the virtual, allowing for discussion around the creation of cohesive storytelling experiences that provide multiple entry points and means for participants to engage in a richer, more robust, and potentially boundless environment for interaction, while simultaneously redefining the very nature of “social media” itself.
Panelists: Nick Demartino, Esther Lim, Jay Bushman, Nina Bargiel
Moderator: Brian Seth Hurst
Panel: American LARP & Culture
By:Lizzie Stark
Description
American larp is a metaphor for American cultural values. In this panel, author Lizzie Stark unpacks that statement, looking at how American larp both reflects and is shaped by its surrounding culture. Rules-heavy boffer larps reflect the American value of equality of opportunity, and recapitulate the myth of the rags-to-riches immigrant. Likewise, the litigiousness of American culture, our corporate national culture, and our relatively new status as a nation-state shape the types of narratives we play and how we play them.
Panel: Transmedia Storytelling 101
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
Top storytellers in the entertainment industry and academics come together to discuss the basic principles of Transmedia Storytelling and how they have begun impacting our lives. Just what is it and why is it important? As the old paradigms of entertainment media break down, how can telling narratives across platforms change the way we consume, and participate in the story worlds we love?
Panelists: Jeff Gomez, Nick Demartino, Esther Lim, Jesse Albert
Moderator:Scott Walker
Panel: LIFE IS A LARP: Live, Interactive and Real Time Transmedia
By: Philip Gable
Organization: Witchfactory Productions
Description
Imagine you are playing character in a real time game – in a story world that has been woven into the fabric of your everyday life. The unfolding stories of the NPC characters are being delivered to you in as videos, images, voice converstaions, tweets, posts, text messages, voicemails and virtually any other media you can imagine. You have the ability to interact with the story world and with other players. You can add your own content, solve scenarios, gain points or prestige and…Sound like a real life MMPOG?
Mobile game apps, touch screen tablets, Xboxes and Playstations, social media and web connected computer applications are hardly emerging technologies – but the way they can communicate, interact and deliver content in real time has the potential to be truly ground breaking. Imagine a mobile game that knows your location and can deliver images, voicemail, text messages, live radio broadcasts, video feeds and emails. It can broadcast your opinions back to other players and can act as a group communication device, keeping other players in contact with you in real time. When new content is available you are notified immediately, and have the ability to view existing content at your leisure from multiple devices. MMPOG and MMPG games have been doing this kind of thing for years, but their scope is often limited to direct connection to gaming servers. With the continuing development of cloud services, mobile technology and social media, it is time to take the massively multiplayer gaming paradigm into the real world and meld it with ARG LARP and transmedia storytelling for real time immersive gaming experiences and story worlds.
Panelists: Maria Alexander, Nina Bargiel, more TBA!
Moderator: Philip Gable
Presentation: A New World Order: The Collaboration between Technology, Storyteller and Audience
By: Brian Seth Hurst
Organization: The Opportunity Management Company
Description
While the principles of great storytelling remain constant, technology and the social power of the audience are giving rise to a new world order- a balanced collaboration in which the storyteller works in an informed partnership with technologists to create the story world in which the audience plays – and creates. As in any ecosystem there are some basic rules and each member has roles and responsibilities. The session will be an overview of the emerging creative and business landscape of “storyworlding” followed by a look at case studies of master storytellers whose real world successes are defining the future.
Panel: ARG 101: An Introduction to Alternate Reality Gaming
By: Bret Shefter
Organization: Diversion By Design
Description
Alternate Reality Games are a hot topic of conversation these days. But what exactly is an ARG, and how are they different from other sorts of live gaming? Top game designers, transmedia storytellers, and academics come together to discuss the basic principles of Alternate Reality Gaming. What is it? What is it not? And what constitutes an Alternate Reality Game and why are they an important form of participatory entertainment and culture? This panel looks at both the history of ARG’s, the methodologies used in designing them, and the aspirational drivers that make them one of the most engaging and prolific forms of live gaming today.
Panelists: Bret Shefter, and Maria Alexander
Moderator: TBA
Panel: Gaming Behaviors: What the Entertainment Industry Can Learn from LARP’s and RPG’s
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
Since the 1980s LARP’s and RPG’s have carried an unfair social stigma, and as a result, the entertainment industry has been reluctant to consider Live Action Role Playing and RPG’s as valuable channels for storytelling in large entertainment properties. This panel investigates the reasons behind this attitude, breaking down stereotypes, and looking at how LARP’s and RPG’s can add a valuable live social element to properties, leverage greater user participation, and foster a sense of ownership that drives fan loyalty. Furthermore, we will look at how we can broaden our understanding of the mechanisms and psychological drivers inherent in fanship and participation through LARP’s and RPG’s.
Panelists Jeff Gomez, Bret Shefter, Maria Alexander
Moderator: Alison Norrington
Presentation: Transforming Stories into Transmedia Experiences
By: Esther Lim
Organization: The Estuary
Description
Stories used to be a static, passive activity created for a single medium. With the emergence of new technologies and the mass use of social media, storytelling has evolved into an immersive, multi-platform experience that is dynamic, interactive and social in nature. To create a cohesive transmedia experience and storyworld community, content creators need more than just a great story and solid writing skills. New mediums require new approaches that include an interactive design strategy, community strategy and analytics. In this session, Esther Lim will discuss how to design a transmedia experience. This includes how to evaluate content for transmedia appropriateness, platform selection, and experience design considerations. She will also explore how to apply tactics from social media, community development, and social analytics to improve the transmedia experience and build sustainable storyworld communities.
Transmedia storytelling offers new ways for narratives to be created and experienced. Often this involves inviting audiences to discover and enter a story from multiple points. Without good interaction design audiences can easily get confused and lost in a multi-dimensional storyworld. So how can content creators design transmedia experiences that are easy and fun for audiences to follow? This talk explores how tools and frameworks borrowed from social media strategy, community development, and analytics can help creators understand their audiences and architect experiences that are relevant to the story and meaningful to fans..
Panel: Role Playing Our Future: How LARP’s and RPG’s can Help You Prepare for a Career in Entertainment, Advertising, Software Development and Social Media
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
Until recently, LARP’s and RPG’s, along with most forms of gaming, were considered niche hobbies at best and doorways to anti-social behaviors and taboo activities at worst. However, this is changing as academics, educators, and media producers begin to see the value of role-play and gaming as a means to convey messages and concepts, connect people, and understand social climates, patterns, and politics. This panel will clarify how the process of collaborative narrative and character building that is intrinsic to participation in LARP’s and RPG’s have a great capacity to launch us from the realms of fantasy to realize personal goals, achieve successful careers and impact the world in positive ways.
Panelists: Jeff Gomez, Jenni Powell, Aaron Vanek
Moderator: TBA
Panel: Foundations of World-Building
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
A lot goes into developing a strong story world that has the capacity to come alive in many forms across multiple media. This panel looks at the fundamental elements of World-Building methodologies. By starting with core concepts, themes and aspirational drivers, a world can be successfully extended across many media channels, while maintaining its essence and core vision. This panel offers specific techniques for how we, as storytellers, can build rich worlds that allow for expansion, development and fan participation.
Panelists: Jeff Gomez, Esther Lim, Alison Norrington
Moderator: Bernie Su
Presentation: Be Small, Think Big, Move Fast
By: Alison Norrington
Organization: StorycentralDigital
Description
Regardless of whether you’re a long-established entertainment producer or a small indie creator the value in recognizing and connecting with your audience and potential co-creators is huge. It’s often difficult, if not impossible, to highlight the ‘success’ of a transmedia property, at least in terms of more traditional ROI, as often the value lies in the frequency, quality and longevity of these story and character-centric conversations, interactions and immersive experiences.
Understanding the genre of your story world will naturally inform the behaviors of your audience/co-creators/collaborators which, in turn means that you need to define the heart-beat and message of your story at the concept phase. Multi platform storyworlds aren’t only applicable to big entertainment properties such as Star Wars and an integrated conceptual strategy can connect audiences with characters, creators with producers, and independent world builders to a wider network and demographic of audience than perhaps ever before. The devil is in the details and savvy strategising, use of social media, credible platforms and experience design both on and offline will help the story you want to tell come to life as an exciting, immersive world that is full of opportunity and potential for further growth.
Panel: NEVER SURRENDER! Role Playing as a Means to Personal and Social Advancement
By: Jeff Gomez
Organization: Starlight Runner Entertainment
Description
Scientific research has suggested that our dreams are actually our minds metaphorically role playing possible scenarios and “troubleshooting” issues in our daily lives. Taking this concept a bit further, this panel looks at Role Playing as a means to better understand ourselves and our world around us. From achieving personal goals to inciting political change, much can be understood about the fabric of human behavior and overcoming real world adversity through roleplaying in fictional worlds.
Panelists: Jeff Gomez, Lizzie Stark, Bret Shefter
Moderator: TBA
Panel: Quantum Storytelling
By: Mike Bonifer
Description
The principles of Quantum Physics and Improvisation super-collide in this program conducted by Mike Bonifer of GameChangers, LLC. Bonifer explains how narratives ‘behave different’ in networks than in linear storytelling channels, why it’s important to distinguish story making from story telling, and why this is important to you and your future economic well-being. He presents a few case studies of work GameChangers has done principles to business. And the rest of the time, we play a series of games that explore different narrative types, and the uses of improvisation in business.
Panel: Using Larp for Education
By: Aaron Vanek
Organization: Live Game Labs
Description
The art form of live action role playing has more uses than entertainment. Edu-larp is a growing field with many possibilities. This presentation will focus on edu-larp uses from around the globe, from historical simulations in a class to a high school where the entire curriculum in all subjects is based on larp.
Panel: Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities
By: Sarah Lynne Bowman
Description
Have you ever wondered why some role-playing groups seem to experience large amounts of “drama” no matter how hard the organizers and other players try to keep the game enjoyable? Have you ever dealt with a “problem player” and found yourself at a loss as to how to solve the situation? Have some of your fellow players experienced emotional devastation as the result of in-game events or out-of-game disagreements? Has your group experienced splintering, where out-of-character factions developed? Did schisms occur, causing groups of players to leave, some perhaps forming new “rival” games?
Based on two years of scholarly research and over thirty interviews — both nationally and internationally — this lecture will explain some of the major problems role-playing communities face in terms of social dynamics. I will offer suggestions for diffusing conflict pre-game, during game, and post-game. Personality traits and behaviors that disrupt player groups will be detailed, as will behaviors that help enhance communal cohesion. Player cultures from the U.S. and the Nordic countries will be contrasted. Come learn how to keep your community vibrant and healthy!
LARP 203: A journey of Live Action Rulesets
By: Ira Ham
Description
This is a discussion on over fifteen different rules interactions and concepts that have been used during his years in the Live Action community, specifically during the operation of his campaign ‘The Wyrd of Avilion’. These are not just rules that were written and tried once or twice, but an entire world that a campaign was built upon.
These rules and concepts are based on his own opinions and vision. This discussion is not intended to be a debate, but to offer his perspective on the specific ruleset that evolved over a years-long journey — how it started, how it evolved, why it evolved.
Included will be concepts that were built but never tried, overall philosophy on rules, and his latest creation — which is being developed for a future project. Access to all the documents will be made available after the discussion.
Note: This will be a more intimate and interactive presentation, and as a result will be capped at low number of people for pre-registration.
Panel: LARP 302: Long Term Design
By: Ira Ham
Description
Designing a Live Action Roleplaying Game is similar to damming a river. You can’t control exactly where the players will go, but you can ensure that along the journey there’s enough scenery to make it memorable, and enough current to continue the tale in your envisioned direction. Steering that river while weaving a story is your greatest challenge, and your greatest triumph.
In this presentation, I intend to go through my experiences as a designer in writing the plot and scripts for a long term, multi-year campaign. This will literally be the story of how the campaign known as The Wyrd of Avilion was developed, what I wanted to do, and where the game world actually went… and (in my opinion) why.
This journey will be shared in the form of all 35 scripted events explaining the evolution of the story. In this quick, condensed presentation, I will give a description of each event detailing what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, and what I would have improved if I could.
If you’ve ever been considering a long term LARP and want insight from someone who has walked the path before, this is a must-attend event. If you are looking for a discussion on how to design a LARP itself, this is not the specific focus, as only one style of LARP will be discussed.