So after my earlier post about using ChatGPT to create an instantly playable larp, I did actually get around to trying the idea out.
This was the prompt that I used:
“Suggest a larp setting and story, for a group of four characters, to occupy about three hours of play. The themes should centre around rivalry, unfulfilled hopes, disappointment and betrayal, and the hope of something pure emerging from the suffering. The setting should be modern-day real-world. The four characters should all be of equal importance to the story, and equally able to see themselves as the protagonist — whether heroic or flawed. Suggest a series of scenes from which the larp can be structured.“
And the result came back as a larp that I’m calling Up for Debate (I hadn’t thought to ask ChatGPT to generate a title as well), and here it is on my website for you to have a look. It’s about a university debating team… no, me neither, but there you are: this is an idea that I never would have had myself.
As you can see, the prompt is quite abstract: so if you were to enter it into the chat interface, then you would get back a larp with a different theme, setting, characters, and so on.
Up for Debate is not going to set the world on fire as a larp design, but it is perfectly playable, and a group of participants who are experienced at this style of larp could probably have fun with something like this.
Since then (this was about six months ago, but I’m only just now writing it up, sorry!) Steve Hatherley has written a couple of interesting posts about tests of using ChatGPT to generate content for larps in the uk-freeform style, which is very different to the above kind of thing. Worth checking out!
