Life and Trust - A Master Class in Experience Design (Part 1)
"Life and Trust" is an immersive theater experience set in Conwell Tower, a former bank building in New York’s Financial District. The show “follows” J.G. Conwell, a powerful banker who, on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash, strikes a deal with Mephisto. This bargain sends Conwell back through key moments in his life, forcing him to confront the choices that shaped his fate. It also drags back many people impacted by those choices, which is many, since it involves both the birth of opioid industry addiction and many steps of financial and corporate greed and corruption.
The stories integrate classics such as “Faust” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray in modern immersive theater style where the audience members are free to explore six floors of the building, each designed to reflect the era’s grandeur and decadence. It also incorporates real historic figures like Emma Goldman, the influential anarchist political activist.
The story unfolds through movement, small engagements, dance, choreographed dance, silent interactions, and visually AMAZING environments rather than traditional dialogue. Along the way, participants encounter characters from different walks of life—performers, scientists, and power-hungry elites—all connected by ambition, risk, and the consequences of their decisions.
Rather than following a linear plot, attendees navigate the world at their own pace, piecing together Conwell’s story by following characters, discovering hidden rooms, or observing pivotal moments.
I could write 30 pages of what I experienced during Life and Trust and I would be just touching on the experience prior to the event starting and the opening scene of entering the space. To avoid spoilers, I am not actually going to dive into the themes and much of what I experienced, because if you have the interest and the means I am not suggesting but instead demanding for the enrichment of your own creative soul that you go to Life and Trust. I am currently booking the plans for our second visit.
Instead of focusing and failing to explain the narrative, I am going to touch on some of the smaller BRILLIANT design techniques that this experience used and what could be learned for use in LARP design.
The genius of Life and Trust begins long before you step inside Conwell Tower. Unlike their other massive hit Sleep No More, which required a full transformation of a Chelsea warehouse into the fictional McKittrick Hotel, this production takes place on Wall Street itself, in a former bank building that already carries the weight of history. The location isn’t just a backdrop—it’s an active part of the storytelling. The towering columns, the cavernous halls, and the lingering echoes of financial ambition all serve the narrative effortlessly. There’s no need to manufacture liminality; the very streets leading to the event are steeped in power, excess, and the ghosts of fortunes made and lost.
For us, the immersion began before we even arrived at the venue. We had dinner and whiskey drinks at Harry’s, a Wall Street institution known for catering to power players of both past and present. Sitting among finance professionals and old-money regulars, it already felt like stepping into the world of Life and Trust. The production didn't need to create an elaborate façade or guide the audience through a forced transition into its universe. The environment did the work naturally. By the time we crossed the threshold of Conwell Tower, we weren’t entering a theater—we were continuing a journey already in motion.
This is the difference between crafting an experience that fits seamlessly into its surroundings versus one that has to build a world from scratch. Sleep No More succeeded in its own right, but it required heavy scene-setting to make the McKittrick feel real. The moment you stepped out onto 27th Street, the illusion faltered. You weren’t in a mysterious hotel—you were in an industrial district, waiting in line. Life and Trust doesn’t have that problem. The power of its setting does half the work before the first performer even crosses your path. The weight of history, the physicality of the space, and the psychological impact of Wall Street’s towering presence make it clear: you’re already inside the story.
From the moment you step inside Life and Trust, the world closes around you, shaping the experience before you even realize it's happening. The descent down the marble staircase feels deliberate—like you’re not just walking into a theater but being pulled into something deeper, something irreversible. The twisting hallways that follow aren’t just practical transitions; they disorient, creating a sense of passage, of stepping away from the ordinary. Before you even reach the coat check, the environment is already working on you.
The corporate posters lining the hall set the stage without explanation. "Trust your soul to us." A simple phrase, yet laden with the weight of a Faustian bargain. Other taglines follow suit, their meaning just off-kilter enough to raise a subconscious sense of unease. The world of Life and Trust isn’t revealed in an instant—it creeps in, embedding itself in the details. The backdrop for photos, the polished professionalism of the signage, the quiet suggestion that something is just slightly... wrong.
By the time you reach the coat check, you're already inside the machine. The attendants, dressed in pristine 1920s fashion, greet you not as guests but as potential investors, reinforcing the illusion with a perfectly balanced mix of charm and corporate efficiency. "Is this your first time investing with Life and Trust?" It's a simple question, but it does more than engage—it tells you, in no uncertain terms, that you are a part of this world now. There's no breaking the fourth wall, no acknowledgment that this is theater. The moment you lock your phone away in a security bag, any lingering attachment to the outside world vanishes.
And then, the reveal. You ascend a grand marble staircase and step into a massive banking hall, transformed into a lavish temple of excess from the final moments before the 1929 crash. Ornate chandeliers cast warm light over the room, illuminating the brass-barred teller booths where bartenders mix modern variants of period-accurate cocktails. The seating areas, each marked with titles like "Mergers and Acquisitions" or "Accounting," play into the theme, reinforcing the world without force-feeding it. Even the newspapers scattered about name the production’s characters as members of the “Board of Trustees,” seamlessly blending exposition into the environment.
And yet, the most effective elements aren’t the overt ones. A brass mask sits on display, its unsettling presence unexplained but impossible to ignore. Before any scripted performance begins, before a single act begins, the stage has already been set. The illusion isn't waiting for you to step into it—you've been inside it even before you arrived.
Before the performance even begins, Life and Trust has already accomplished something masterful. It has primed every participant, shaped their expectations, and immersed them in a world that feels seamless. And it does this not just through set design or costuming but through something far more fundamental—location.
This experience could not exist anywhere else. The story of greed, corruption, financial ambition, and the endless chase for wealth is not just told inside Conwell Tower; it breathes through the very streets outside. Wall Street itself is an extension of the narrative, reinforcing its themes before a single actor speaks. The weight of history, the architecture, and the cultural significance of the setting all combine to make the story feel inevitable. Even before stepping inside, you are surrounded by the ghosts of real financial triumphs and disasters, by the unspoken pressure of a system built on chasing an ever-moving goalpost. Life and Trust succeeds because it embraces this, letting its environment do the work rather than fighting against it.
This is a lesson that should not be lost on LARP designers. Too often, narratives are written first, with the expectation that the environment will somehow be forced to fit. But the most powerful experiences come from the opposite approach—letting the environment inform and enhance the story. If you have a site dominated by pine forests and wooden cabins, then lean into that atmosphere. Make the trees part of the worldbuilding, let the rustic setting become a lived-in backdrop rather than something to be ignored or covered up. If your space is a single rented hall in a modern building, work that reality into the experience. Make it a gathering place, a stronghold, an artificial sanctuary within a larger world.
Not every production has the resources to fully transform a space the way Sleep No More did, crafting an entirely fictional world inside a warehouse. That kind of immersive overhaul requires enormous investment, both in labor and in materials. Life and Trust proves that sometimes, the smartest design choice is not to build something from scratch, but to recognize the power of what is already there. The best experiences don’t just tell a story—they make you feel like you’ve stepped into one. And the first step in achieving that is making sure the world around you is working with you, not against you.
The second lesson is just as crucial as the first: the experience begins well before the game does. Life and Trust doesn’t wait for a scripted moment to pull participants into its world—it ensures they are already immersed by the time the formal narrative begins. This is where LARP designers and LARP runners (two distinct roles, each with different responsibilities) need to be intentional. The game doesn’t start at “Game On.” It starts the moment participants arrive (or even earlier in virtual engagement).
Think about what your players see as they check in. What is their first impression? Are they walking into a well-crafted space that subtly reinforces the world they are about to step into, or are they greeted by a pile of black totes with yellow lids breaking the illusion before it even begins? Are they handed a clipboard and a waiver with all the ambiance of a dentist’s office, or is there something—anything—that begins to shape the world they are entering? Even something as simple as background music, a costumed greeter engaging with guests in-character, or signage designed to match the setting can go a long way in priming participants. The less work they have to do to suspend disbelief, the more readily they will step into the world you’ve built.
Life and Trust executes this principle flawlessly. By the time we officially "began," we had already been immersed in its world for hours. We had toasted whisky cocktails, relaxed in the big leather seats of the banking hall, and discussed our placement in the "Murders and Executions" department—all without direct prompts from any actor. The environment did the work. The narrative themes were reinforced in a hundred small ways before we ever stepped into the office where the narrative started and we slipped on our masks to physically moved into the scripted world. When the time came to do so, it felt natural. It wasn’t a shift; it was a continuation.
This is the goal of effective LARP design. The more effort you put into creating a world that feels real before the game starts, the easier it is for players to embrace it. Whether through physical space, atmosphere, character interaction, or environmental storytelling, the best experiences make the transition seamless. The game starts the moment your participants step onto the site—it’s just a question of whether you’ve prepared them to feel like they belong in it.
This isn’t going to be the end of our discussions regarding Life and Trust and immersive design techniques related to LARP. Life and Trust isn’t just an impressive immersive experience—it’s a blueprint for how narrative, setting, and engagement can be seamlessly interwoven to create something unforgettable. What I’ve talked about so far is just the beginning. This experience was a masterclass in world design, environmental storytelling, and psychological priming, and I intend to break down as much of it as possible to explore what worked, why it worked, and how these lessons can be applied to LARP and other immersive experiences.
In the coming posts, I’ll be diving into each of these elements in detail—how setting shapes storytelling, how pre-game immersion sets the stage before a single scripted moment occurs, how player agency and structured narrative can coexist, and the countless small but significant details that made Life and Trust feel so natural.
There will be no word count restrictions, no efforts to condense these thoughts into bite-sized takeaways. This is about dissecting techniques, examining their impact, and showing how these lessons can elevate live experiences. For now, this is where I’ll pause—but there’s much more to come.
