How do you replay a larp? I’m thinking about this because I’ve spent the last three days at College of Wizardry 19, where I’ve been teaching alchemy¹ to a bunch of witches and wizards. I previously played the second run of the game, so it’s been fascinating to see the differences.

I had a crackerjack idea for a professor,² and got accepted. I put in a ton of work testing the process and figuring out how to run a class around it, got a costume together and then ended up with a lot of stress around the whole thing³ and decided to dial back everything on the game except the teaching.

So these few days have been strictly me running classes, and watching the game run around me. I’ve been playing comic relief, with a ridiculously bad French accent⁴ and an “I’m only here for the semester” laissez-faire attitude. And so I’m sharing my usual post-larp regrets⁵ with the somewhat bittersweet recognition that I planned this this way, and it worked out the way I planned it, and that’s probably all for the best, all things considered.

I had, at one time, a “no replaying larps” rule, forged from the recognition that there were a number of interesting larps, and in a world with limited time and money it was just prudent to invest in a diversity of experiences. That rule has been blown apart by present circumstance — since I’m now effectively that much closer to the games, the cost of attending has dropped significantly. And if you have a good idea for a professor of wizardry, there’s really not a lot of places to try it out.⁶

But College of Wizardry is a rare beast in the sorts of games I like to play, in that it’s easily been the breakout star of the field.⁷ And there are a lot of repeat players. That’s caused a number of things to happen.

First, the organizing team knows how to run the game. Things run on a military schedule. There’s very little that can faze the crew, because at some point they already dealt with it. The food’s been upgraded and tweaked for Western European tastes, there’s alternative scheduling if the weather’s too bad to run scenes outdoors, they’ve got the scenography of all the previous runs to draw upon and can pull together things on short notice that are shockingly good. Very few larps reach this level of testing. It’s amazing.

Second, the players know how to play to game. There are well-worn plots you can take part in, and while every run might have different focuses⁸ it’s pretty easy to find a character who fits a particular arc and know what kind of game you’re going to have. You have the “something hinky is going on in the forest” plots and the “students messing with really powerful magic” plots and the “a curse is slowly destroying my mind/spirit/body/family/friend” plots.

This, I’m a lot more ambivalent about. For one thing, it can be difficult for new players to find a way into the game. At the afterparty, I talked with an experienced larper who had just played their first game of College of Wizardry, and they said it wasn’t at all clear at the start of the game where the seams were — it took two days of game before they finally picked up enough to be able to navigate the game. New games, that haven’t had time to settle into grooves, can feel freer.

But more philosophically, you can’t replay the first time you play a game, in the same way you can’t rewatch a movie for the first time, or have a first taste of ice cream again. Sure, there are other experiences locked within a game — playing a student is very different than playing a professor — but for the most part, the feel and themes and situations built into the game are going to assert themselves, against your attempts to find something new in the experience.

To be sure, there are advantages to repeating a game. It can fill in missing pieces from previous runs, or give you a chance to revisit a character with unfinished business. It can be a low-stress source of comfort, and a way of connecting with friends. A lot of times, that’s all you want.

But there was a moment at the start of the game where the headmaster first strolled up to the balcony to being announcements, and as a teacher I looked down at the gathered students as they gazed up. I remember that moment from the first time I played, that sense of wonder and potential, the overwhelming effect of the Great Hall and the school banners and assembled teachers looking down sternly at the student body. You only get that once. I want to find that again.

Next: Berlin (TXL) to London (LGW)
Prev: Berlin to Leśna

Footnotes

¹ Well, strictly speaking, I’ve been playing Florian De Clercq, restauranter, chocolatier, and visiting Professor of Alchemy. I’ve actually been teaching how to make chocolate candies, which turns out to be completely possible in a room tricked out to look like an 18^th century lab, provided that lab has open flames.

² “Hey, what if wizards, instead of making potions, made chocolates?”

³ Partly the responsibility of teaching classes, partly signing up for another larp two weeks later, partly planning a quick tour between the games with a friend, partly the whole leaving-the-United-States deal.

⁴ Et eez orrible, n’est pas?

⁵ You always wish you had done more.

⁶ Although, let’s be honest, “students at a magical college” is really close to being played out in larp circles at this point. I mean, “students at a superhero college” qualified as a fresh, new idea, which should tell you exactly how far along we are with this stuff.

⁷ You can argue what that field is, of course. But for a certain style of larp and a certain price point, College of Wizardry achieved a level of media attention and has achieved a number of runs that is really enviable. It was the first of these kinds of games I ever played, which introduced me to the hobby and went a long way, in a twisty kind of path, to leading me to my current situation.

⁸ This run, for example, there was a lot of play focused on discrimination against werewolves.