While at Anime St. Louis and Show Me Con last weekend, I saw a production by the theatre/LARP troup “The Dragons Keep.” From their website:

“TDK is a unique role-playing game and improv show that mixes improvisational theatre with a Dungeons & Dragons style LARP (Live Action Role Playing). Think Saturday Night Live meets Lord of the Rings with Audience Participation. The cast play all of the NPC’s (Non-Player Characters, like monsters) and a few selected members of the audience are called up on stage to be the PC’s (Player Characters). Only audience members that fill out a character card prior to the beginning of the show will be eligible to be called up on stage. These audience “party members” are given a quest. To assist them with this quest they are given a spell orb (with seven spell charges), weapons and armor. With the aid of a guide (one of our cast members), the party is lead through a somewhat perilous adventure that tests their wits, strength, and overall moral worth. Some party members successfully make it through the entire adventure, and others.well, let’s just say they aren’t as lucky. Every show is a chapter in our ongoing, two-year story arc, so every show is unique. “

See more photos and read my impressions of the show after the jump.

While normally they use an on-going story arc, for the purposes of the convention the troupe chose a stand alone lighter story line so that people new to the experience could better appreciate it. The story they chose was based upon the premise that a new mega-dungeon named “SlayMart” had moved into town and was running all the smaller dungeons out of business. The heroes then had to travel into the SlayMart and attempt to shut it down for good. Overall the production was interesting if a bit clumsy, and the story was pretty funny. If they are performing at any future cons I attend, I will definiitely be in the audience.

Singing pirates:

Slow motion battle sequence:

Talking with the president of “SlayMart”:

An enchanted door:

Dueling the Rock Elemental at air guitar:

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 3:53 pm and is filed under science fiction, conventions, anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.