61. No matter how you create your fiction, it will be wrong
“Is College of Wizardry a Harry Potter larp?”
To some, the answer is a clear yes, even though it’s not set in the HP universe. To others, it’s a clear no, and they find the question slightly insulting.
When designing a larp, there are many ways to do world building. You can create an original story world. You can do something in an existing universe. You can use a historical setting. You can do something that’s “kind of like…”. You can do variations.
I’ve done the full gamut.
I’ve spent hours discussing minor details that were important to world building. For those of us who were there, the “Where does the tea come from?” conversation will never be forgotten. I’ve carved out pretend niches in already existing worlds. College of Wizardry started out that way.
I’ve done historical larps. I’ve done historical-ish larps, which are a bit of the same, but so much easier on the stress level and cause fewer fights. I’ve done “Think Aztecs and Russians, but in a monotheistic way” cultures. And I’ve done stuff where there was more or less no story world beyond that which directly affected the participants.
One interesting thing about doing a wide variety of stuff is that there’s always someone ready to point out that you’re doing it wrong. And they’re almost always right, in some sense of the word. They’re of course also wrong.
Borrowing is wrong
When we did CoW in the Harry Potter universe there were people who called us lazy larpwrights. We were accused of doing nothing except renting a castle and slapping the HP name on it.
To others, we were heroes because we took a fictional world they knew and loved, and made it possible to engage with it in a different way. Instead of requiring the players to read through tons of world material, we could just say “Go watch this movie or read this book”.
It even freed up our resources and made it very easy to explain. “Harry Potter in a real castle.”
Of course it was also a huge sell-out and not terribly original, if one took on those glasses.
Original is wrong
“Here’s the book about Celesco” I’ve once proudly told players. It was 264 pages, and though it was a fantasy world we’d built, it had quite a dash of (what we felt was) originality. Some players loved it. To others, the demand that they had to read about *yet another* fantasy world in order to play a 3-day event… well, let’s just say it wasn’t all pretty.
And when some of us came down hard on people doing it wrong (“It’s not a baron! It’s a Waldgraf!”), not everyone found it inspiring and cool. To be honest, I learned a lot from that, though I didn’t realise it at the time.
By being original, you’re forcing your players to spend valuable time and resources on getting to know your creation. Even if it has little to do with the experience at hand. And often, it doesn’t.
A mixture is wrong
Then how about doing something that’s close enough to resemble, but is still original. “Like Star Trek, but different”. Sure, that’s doable, and I’ve been there. It solves some problems (especially legal ones), but nowhere near all.
I like Game of Thrones and loved that I got to play in a Game of Thrones larp in Italy. Would I have gone if it had had no Lannisters, no Warlocks and no Martells? Probably not. I wanted to have a GoT experience, not a GoT-like experience.
When we left the Harry Potter fiction behind at CoW, a huge number of HP fans left with it. They wanted to live in a world with dementors, Quidditch and Azkaban. Not one that was “inspired by, but still different”.
By doing a halfway measure, you get both the best of both worlds and the worst. It’s compromise land, and unless you manage to carve out something new and original, it’s a hard place to be. Especially because people don’t know what to reference, and where to go find defaults.
Historical is wrong
Don’t even get me started. Doing a historical larp is a nightmare. Trying to understand history is hard enough, and even more so when trying to portray it. Let’s not delve deeply into the amount of things that will end up being NOT historical, even if you’re trying.
Haircuts, language, hygiene, knowledge, ideals… it’s a long list, and it is not always clear who cares about which element. Some may find it deadly offensive that you’re using forks for your Three Musketeers larp. Others may rage at the fact that you’re doing gender roles wrong, while a third group will applaud you for getting them just right.
By trying to label yourself as “historical”, you’re opening yourself up to a world of pain. And if you’re on sketcy ground fact wise (“What!? I saw Titanic! I know all about 1912!”), then it can get ugly fast.
Last, but not least, by going historical, you’re severely limiting your players and your storytelling options, and you’re also putting harsh demands on them when it comes to research. I played a 1962 submarine larp with a guy who’d read up on Soviet football teams in the 1950's so he could be believable. It was cool, but very hard to keep up with!
Remakes are wrong
If someone took the story of Hamlet and retold that in a 1930's version where monarchies in Europe had never toppled, that would be cool, right? Well, I certainly thought so, when I signed up for the 2015 InsideHamlet larp, set at Kronborg Castle in Denmark.
To some, however, that larp was just a ripoff of a Swedish 2002 Hamlet larp, and it got scoffed at by a few diehards. Even though one of the key designers was the same! And others again found using the Hamlet tale as uinspired even in 2002.
It’s not easy to win.
“Inspired by” is wrong
One of the larps we run is the 1917-historical-ish Fairweather Manor, which is heavily inspired by the TV series Downton Abbey. For people interested in the larp, it’s nice that we can say “Watch an episode of Downton Abbey. If you like that, you’ll like this.”
The characters are not the same. The location is not the same. The storylines are not the same. It’s still very much the same feel, though. Which to some makes it very accessible and interesting, but to others that makes it “dirty”.
I wonder how it would if we’d made a larp set in 1917 and hadn’t mentioned anything about inspirational sources or style. Would people still naturally turn to Downton Abbey for inspiration, or would they expect a Blackadder Season 4 sort of romp? Or maybe something completely different?
I’m pretty sure it would be more chaotic and less accessible, but maybe it would be more “original”? Or is 1917 just too tainted a year?
Auteur-driven is wrong
But it doesn’t end there. It’s also a question of how the story world is approached. Some larps have strongly defined worlds, that they have put a lot of effort into, and that the participants are expected to dive into full length.
Here, the world is very much a defined space, and while the players have agency and can decide their own actions and stories, they very much cannot just make stuff up. If you’re playing Vampire the Masquerade and start talking about Clan Bodoor, that you made up, you won’t be making friends. :-)
Co-created is wrong
Giving players a large degree of freedom also causes problems. Inconsistency and varying quality is a very real challenge, when you give the participants license to go crazy and co-create. Weird, bizarre stuff will start seeping into the fiction, and it can get messy.
College of Wizardry is a larp with tons of co-creation and freedom built in, and that sometimes turns wonky and causes player-player conflict (as opposed to character-character conflict, which is great). It also makes things a bit … weird … at times.
And of course that’s wrong, since it’s illusion-breaking, lazy design and lacking artistic vision. Not to mention chaotic and crazy. ;)
It’s wrong no matter what
The core message here is pretty straightforward. No matter what kind of larp you do, someone will. say that it’s wrong. And from the right perspective, it WILL be wrong.
If we decide to do a larp based on The Little Mermaid, it’ll be a celebration of classic Danish storytelling (H.C Andersen, you know?) and will be the retelling of a local tale that is as national as it comes. She’s basically the Danish Statue of Liberty, for crying out loud!
But it’ll also be a larp that takes a Disney tale and reuses that. It’s my educated guess that more people (globally) know The Little Mermaid as a Disney tale, and not as a Danish one. Is it then pandering to the entertainment giant? Is it essentially Harry Potter/College of Wizardry all over, except with no risk of lawsuits?
I don’t know. It’s a bit of both, I guess.
Back in 1999…
In the end, I’m a bit reminded of the Skyggespil/Skyggernes Spil debacle in 1999.
We were organising a big larp, which had the title Skyggespil (Shadow play). Another Danish larp group was – it turned out – organsing a larp, which had the working title Skyggernes Spil (Play of the Shadows). One of their organisers got royally pissed off when we launched our project, since now they’d seem like they were ripping ours off. Also, she was mad that we had stolen their cool larp title.
The thing is that neither group was aware of each other until the launch of our project. We had no clue they were planning Skyggernes Spil, and they had no clue that we were doing Skyggespil. Who was ripping off who?
Nobody.
But that didn’t mean nobody got mad. ;-)
Conclusion
I’m going to continue doing all kinds of larps. Derivative. Inspired by. Historical. Ish. Original. And everything in between. This also means that I’ll still end up in discussions between people, who disagree vehemently, and who try to define what I do.
And to answer the opening question.
Is College of Wizardry a Harry Potter larp?
Not to me. But I understand that for some people it’s close enough that it’s an easy way for them to talk about it. Even if I know that it’s wrong. ;-)
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