What do we need to make our world come alive?
What does it take to make us sing?

Sister of Mercy, Vision Thing

So there’s possibly a few disciplines going on in the starcruiser experience and I don’t just mean, live theater and tech.

The actor’s are trained to seek out people who want to play but need a jumping-off point or an invitation. They also know to leave people alone who want to be left alone. I am assured this is covered in Gary Izzo’s The Art of Play.

Some actors can focus very small, I’ve seen Raithe, Rey and a Saja all get very up close and personal with adults and children, sometimes touch them on the arm or shoulder, look them in the eye and the whole world is just those one or two people. Another passenger described part of it as unflinching eye contact, and that all the actors had it.

A variation brought up to me by a fellow passenger is a character who says they’ll meet up with you somewhere in a few minutes, or just walks up and absconds with you for a personal interaction. Obviously, people have to be comfortable with this, the reward for playing along initially is getting to play more.

A lot of the characters lead 30+ person experiences, or move through a crowd of 100+ people keeping all eyes on them, so they’re going very big.

The actors are really good about getting your character’s name and remembering it when you meet them again later. I can’t remember people’s real names, so I really want to know how they got so good at this one.

Sometimes they’d ask you what your favorite thing was or what did you learn today, probing questions to make you think more about the experience. Some folks would say their favorite thing was lightsaber training, after the day two Engineering Room VIP tour, I said I learned that the Halcyon’s original engineers must have had eight very long arms. Is this a cruise ship thing?

On day one, at dinner, we received a piece of a secret message, a dinner theater thing to get the guests talking and further the story. Over the course of the stay, we received three letters under our door from the cruise line on official-looking stationery that reflected current events and kept up the immersion, but I wonder if they were also supposed to keep us appraised in case anyone in the cabin missed a plot point.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books, please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com