dr-archeville:

Role-playing games can take many shapes and forms beyond the dice-rolling of Dungeons and Dragons. 
One game designer wrote a live-action role-playing game meant to be
played specifically at the chain restaurant Olive Garden, and it’s
strangely heartfelt.

Jeff Stormer, a podcaster and game designer living in Philadelphia, told Kotaku over Twitter DMs that his idea for an Olive Garden live action role-playing game started out as a joke.

“A
podcaster friend of mine, James Malloy, was messing with another
podcasting friend of ours, Meghan Dornbrock, about an Olive Garden gift
card he spotted in a photo she took, and he @’d me on Discord asking if
I’d write an Olive Garden LARP,” he said.  Stormer says he is not one to
refuse a joke request, so he finished most of it in the span of an hour,
then circled back to complete the rest a few weeks later.  “Then, months
later, I was out drinking with my wife, and realized I’d never tweeted
it to the official Olive Garden Twitter, and, for some reason, felt they
needed to see my masterpiece,” he said.

The game is simple.  Titled after the restaurant’s tagline, “When You’re Here, You’re Family,”
the game asks  the members of your party to form a new society as a
community.  The adventurers order Olive Garden’s classic deal — unlimited
soup, salad and breadsticks.  As each round of food gets delivered, the
characters become a new “family” and, therefore, a new generation of
their community.  They reflect on how things have changed, for better or
for worse, thereby building out the mythology of the generations of
“family” they have created.  Once several generations have eaten their
fill, the players can order a coffee, at which point their characters
become a new group of pilgrims discussing why they’ve decided to leave
their previous community and embark on a new life.  Stormer ends the LARP
with a reminder to tip your waiter “extremely well.”

“My
favorite moments in the LARP are probably right in the beginning and
right at the end — when the players/’Community’ decides where they’re
headed and why they have to leave, and then when the cycle repeats
itself in the end,” Stormer said.  “That, or the way the game subverts
the idea of ‘family’ by making every generation kind of embarrassed and
frustrated with the generation before.  That feels very honest to the
conversations I’ve had with people about family histories.”

Stormer
said that he hasn’t done the LARP yet, though some of his friends have
reached out to him to tell him about Olive Gardens nearby, so it’s a
possibility.  He is very serious about becoming an Olive
Garden-sanctioned LARP designer, though.  “I don’t expect that title to
come with benefits or pay or anything — just the bragging rights is
enough,” he said.  “Now, do I expect to actually GET that title?  Probably
not.  But it’s important to have to dreams.  ”If Olive Garden isn’t
impressed, Stormer said he’s got some killer ideas for Red Lobster.

“…
the way the game subverts the idea of ‘family’ by making every
generation kind of embarrassed and frustrated with the generation before.” – ‘Subverts’?  Sounds more like ‘represents’.

Fan-Made Olive Garden LARP Has Unlimited Breadsticks And Heart