July 18, 2026
Touch grass, not your phone
I'm Making Strandfall, a Solarpunk Orienteering Larp
Tech fans are obsessed with this anti-phone outdoor roleplay experiment
TLDR: Strandfall is a new live-action outdoor game that swaps smartphones for custom gadgets so players have to work together in the real world. The comments fixated on one spicy idea — that phones kill the magic — and people were equal parts amused, impressed, and ready to sign up.
A new outdoor roleplay game in Edinburgh should have been the main event, but the comments absolutely ran away with the plot. Strandfall is a three-hour live action adventure where 30 players will roam a real park, hunt the truth behind world-ending storms, and use custom-built gadgets instead of phones. The creators want players talking, arguing, navigating with paper maps, and making big group decisions in person, not staring at glowing screens. And that one line — “Smartphones are anti-enchantment devices” — hit the community like a lightning bolt.
That phrase became the instant fan favorite, with multiple commenters basically declaring it the quote of the day. One person admitted, hilariously, that they were reading it on a smartphone right now, which is the kind of self-own the internet lives for. Others were all in on the vibe, calling the anti-phone paragraph “gold” and cheering the idea of a game that feels more magical because it refuses to act like an app. The project creator even popped into the thread to say, yes, this is my weird little masterpiece, which gave the whole discussion a fun backstage feel.
And then came the gadget thirst. Commenters were weirdly enchanted by the wonderfully sci-fi-sounding “McNair-Feldman Device,” with one person basically saying the name alone made them want in. Another got distracted by a tiny printer in the article and demanded answers. In other words: the game sounds cool, but the real drama is that the community seems ready to dump their phones and join the solarpunk wilderness cult immediately.
Key Points
- •Strandfall is a new outdoor solarpunk larp co-created by Adrian Hon and Alex Macmillan through Experimental Social Scene with support from Immersive Arts funding.
- •The game is planned for September in a park in Edinburgh, where 30 players will take part in a three-hour expedition centered on investigating mysterious storms.
- •Players will use custom-built McNair-Feldman Devices to forecast storms, build a radio network, locate missing scientists, and explore the play area.
- •The devices include long-range radio for mesh networking, GPS, accelerometer, compass, ePaper display, and a custom 3D-printed enclosure.
- •The article says smartphones were rejected because of both hardware limitations and the expectation that players would use them for instant navigation and messaging rather than immersive, coordinated play.