How to Host a Pervasive Game Supporting Face-to-Face Interactions in Live-Action Roleplaying

Abstract

Introduction "You are invited to the Bauer mansion for dinner and to help solve a murder." Invitations like this one have been sent out by the millions, inviting friends and family to a multiplayer murder mystery party, often from the best-selling "How to Host a Murder" series of games. At these parties the players gather at a friend's house for dinner imagining it to be a mansion in the 1930's. The party goers often dress up and interact as characters and spend an enjoyable evening together solving a murder mystery. Multi-player games such as these are based on social interactions as the key feature contributing to the players' enjoyment. Although the earliest documented live-action variants of board games date back to 735AD, when games of chess were played with real people, they remained rare until recently. In the last two decades live versions of roleplaying games such as Hasbro's Dungeons and Dragons and White Wolf's Vampire, the Masquerade have become extremely popular,