I’ve been back in England for the week, this time primarily for Strange LRP¹ — more on that in a bit — but given I was going to be here for the week I thought it might be nice to do some tourism, especially given my last three weeks of indolence. So I booked some trains up to York and back to Cambridge, and have been tromping through a variety of “must see” locations.

It’s been fun, if maybe more exhausting than I anticipated. I’d slow down, but there’s so much left to see and experience. So I’ll grab what time I can here and there, snooze on the train or spend a long day in bed at the B&B, and just keep moving.

A key reason for the itinerary I’ve chosen are a couple of the “stately homes” of England: Chatsworth House and Castle Howard. Both were built ages ago — Chatsworth in the 1500s and Howard in the 1700s — and are generally the sort of thing you’d expect from people who were both ridiculously wealthy and deeply insecure about their status. They’re overstuffed with ancient statuary and art and they’re always situated in the middle of ornate landscaped gardens.² Of course, the age of the English country house is over, since they’re just far too expensive to maintain. Most were demolished; many of the ones that survived have been opened to the public, either as hotels or wedding venues or just tourist spots.

Castle Howard is better known, simply because it was used as the estate in Brideshead Revisited.³ And boy, does it look the part. It’s probably the most impressive architecture I’ve seen in a private residence.⁴ And it probably gives the best idea of what life would have been like in the 19^th century for the people living in these houses, what with the follies⁵ and the boat house and the ornamental garden. I really, really wanted to throw on a pair of plus fours and a sweater vest and roll up on the running board of a Silver Ghost.

But of the two, I really liked Chatsworth much more. It’s older than Howard, being first built in the Tudor period, but it feels more modern. They sponsor yearly exhibitions on various themes — this year was “The Dog” — and bring in contemporary works of art to complement the collection of the Cavendish family. So you’ll have rooms featuring art by Jeff Koons and Lucian Freud alongside the expected Gainsboroughs and Constables.

It’s hipper, in other words. It’s an eclectic mix of old artifacts and current works,⁶ and that goes a long way towards making the house feel vital. Castle Howard was interesting. Chatsworth House was actually pleasant, almost comfortable. I’m glad I saw both, but only I want to go back to Chatsworth.

I also managed to get a little time in a trio of English cities: Sheffield, York, and Cambridge. Sheffield I didn’t get to see much of, since I arrived fairly late and used the Saturday to go visit Chatsworth.⁷ I had more time in the other two places.

York was really great, and I’m very glad I got to spend three days there. It’s got a scenic Old Town, all around the staggeringly large York Minster. It’s the sort of cathedral that you could honestly take a couple hours to explore; I didn’t, having arrived late and never having made it back on subsequent days, but I was just in time to attend an Evensong service which was both moving and beautiful. The rest of the Old Town was exactly the sort of place you want to wander around if you’re feeling a bit out of it and want to find a quirky pub or comfortable inn for a drink and a bite. There’s a lot more I wanted to see — I didn’t spend any time in the local museums or touring the walls or anything — but as always it’s yet another reason to come back.

Cambridge was kind of the opposite. Despite only spending about 24 hours there I really feel like I saw most of it. I had a self-guided walking tour sending me and a friend in and around a number of the colleges, crossing the Cam a number of times⁸ and seeing the highlights: both of Christopher Wren’s chapels and his library with the Shakespeare First Folio, The Eagle pub with its RAF graffiti and Watson and Crick hagiography, King’s College Chapel, the Chronophage. I was only in graduate school for an eyeblink, but it was nice to be transported back, if only for a long morning’s walk.

After all that, though, it was time for Strange LRP. This was a short⁹ larp set in the world of Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell. It was run in Treowen,¹⁰ so involved a fairly long drive from the east side of England to get to, as well as a fairly long drive back to Heathrow afterwards.

It’s part of an ongoing campaign — this was the third installment — and so it had the usual bumps of being someone who hadn’t played either of the previous games. The big advantage it has in this, of course, is that it’s built off of the Susanna Clarke book. The basic gist is “Pride and Prejudice and Wizards”¹¹ and so if you were prepared to rock up in Regency garb and mutter darkly about the Fae you’d have the basics in place.

I often have problems making connections and getting involved in games where there aren’t organizer-written characters, but it wasn’t so bad this time. I was talking with a friend after the game, and they suggested it might be due to the slow influx of more Nordic-larp influenced players, who broadly speaking tend to have a more collaborative mindset. They tend to naturally look for ways to share plot and get other players involved. That’s not unknown in most larp cultures, but it seems to be an approach more common in Scandinavia, and it’s great to see.

I’m also noticing a difference between larps which have an overarching plot and those composed of a lot of little decisions. You can design a game where everything’s building towards something, whether that’s a grand denouement or a definitive conclusion or a crucial decision. Or you can ignore that, instead focus on individual plots, try and make smaller but more meaningful payoffs for player decisions.¹² Strange LRP, despite a number of global crises demanding attention¹³ was clearly focused on the latter.

If there’s a flaw in this kind of design, it’s that it lays a lot in the hands of the players to create something meaningful for them. Even worse, your arc depends entirely on what you find in the game and have negotiated with the other characters.¹⁴ The larp ended with a big meeting where the various Societies debated what to do, and ultimately an armistice was struck between the North of England and the Source of England, with the invading force of the Pale Queen agreeing to postpone the invasion for a year. Largely the status quo, in other words.

And honestly, that fits the setting pretty well. It’s a game where a convocation of magicians might endlessly debate over minor technical points while a few interested parties, disgusted by the endless debates, act independently to solve the problem; where your beloved dies and returns as a revenant having lost their soul to the fae, and it’s up to you to fix it.

So there was no effort to really tie everything in a bow for the next year’s game.¹⁵ And that’s a weakness, to be fair. Even on the level of a bunch of individual plots, some were much more successful that others. But even so, I’m looking forward to the next one, whenever that is. I understand the game a lot better than I did before playing. I think there’s still space to explore in the world. And maybe it’s blind optimism, but I think the next one could be something really great.

Next: Tel Aviv (TLV) to İstanbul (IST)
Prev: Kyiv (KBP) to London (LHR)

Footnotes

¹ The idiosyncratic formulation for larp in the UK is “LRP” which I dislike on a number of levels, mostly because if you’re trying to convince people your niche hobby has broad appeal I don’t think you do it by putting it in all capitals and removing the vowels.

² The gardens are in many ways the most ridiculous part of the whole thing, since barring a few formal ornamental gardens the style has mostly been intricately planned and engineered landscapes that are cunningly designed to look like you just happened to stumble across them while traipsing across the countryside. To the extent of knocking down whole villages that happened to get in the way of your desired unspoiled vista.

³ Also Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties which I don’t recall being mentioned in the promotional material for the castle.

⁴ Note “impressive” is not the same as “best.” I’ve been to Fallingwater, which is pretty great.

⁵ There’s a “Temple of the Four Winds” still standing. Sadly the “Temple of Venus” was knocked down due to safety concerns, by the somewhat comical expedient of felling a large tree into it.

⁶ The most recent being a permanent installation commissioned by the Duke and Duchess of their family portrait by the artist Jacob van der Beugel. It consists of 659 ceramic panels with abstract patterns on them, encoding the DNA of them and their children. It went up in the last 5 years.

⁷ I did manage to locate a vegan fried chicken restaurant and inadvertently glut myself — I was uncertain of the portion sizes when I ordered delivery — so that’s yet another thing to check off the bucket list, so to speak.

⁸ Didn’t manage to go punting (one of the shortcomings of visiting in October is dodgy weather), but I think I’ll survive the disappointment.

⁹ Started late Friday, ended mid-Sunday

¹⁰ Where I had formerly played All For One

¹¹ Although, honestly, that’s not the best gloss on Clarke’s book. Jane Austin was interested in the inner lives of all her characters. Clarke’s really only interested in the inner lives of her leads; the rest is reserved for the details of the world she’s creating. And it is a marvelously detailed world. Just in a different way than Austin’s.

¹² I suppose the third option is benign neglect, where the organizers (like the God of the Deists) wind everything up and then let the participants manage on their own. But I’m not sure I’ve seen many of those kinds of larps; in most cases the organizers are fiddling with the plot or setting up NPCs to push particular people’s buttons.

¹³ A fairy army marching on London under the auspice of the Pale Queen, Another Fae realm lead by a Raven Queen claiming dominion over the north of England, a plague of Yellow Fever consuming much of Europe. To the designer’s credit, these all felt pretty in line with the source material.

¹⁴ You can, of course, propose scenes with the GMs. But it’s all player-driven.

¹⁵ Or, rather, the year-after-next’s game. The organizers are burned out, and need a break.