Harry Potter and the Death of Magic

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at ...>
wrote:
>
> I've already posted this to another list, but I thought it might 
> amuse here.
> 
> Last weekend (the Easter weekend) I attended a games convention - 
> Conquest - in Melbourne, Australia. This convention occurs each year 
> and is a place for people to get together playing various games - 
> most notably roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, and 
> wargames of various sorts. I've been attending this convention for 
> fourteen years now, and I've been running games there since the late 
> 1990s. For the last five conventions I have run roleplaying sessions 
> set in the Harry Potter universe. As I did this year. And I've 
> written up some notes on how things went this year, which I thought 
> might interest some people here.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> 
> Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
> Shaun Hately ...

bboyminn:

Shaun, I'm so glad you did this again. I greatly enjoyed last years
account of the Role Playing group, though I admit I am thoroughly
confused as to how it works (more on that later). This years account
is even better. I also admire all the work you put into it, I sure,
whether they know it or not, the players greatly appreciate your efforts. 

I love how you setup the story, then work in interesting plot twist
and turns. It must make it so much easier and certainly more fun for
the 'players' when you have so fully developed the world in which they
must 'play'.

I've been wondering since you made your Conquest report last year,
exactly how these Role Playing Groups work? Do the characters move
around the room like they are on a stage acting out their roles? Do
they simply stand a recite their lines like a radio play? Do they all
sit at a table and move little game pieces around? Or are they all
sitting at computers playing with their on-line Avatars? 

I assume from what you said, that you play the role of transient
characters; for example, McGonagall and Percy. From what you said last
year, you also play the role of referee or moderator, you stop or
redirect the game when it starts going astray or people try to
introduce concepts that violate the Potterverse as we know it. 

While I find the idea of RPG fascinating, and despite my boundless
ability to wildly speculate about the wizard world, and despite well
over a 1,000 pages of fan fiction written, I don't think I would be
very good at it. 

When I was in high school we used to play a party game in which we sat
in a circle and one person would start a story which invariably began
with 'One upon a time...' and rambled on from there. They would take
it to a point and stop, and the next person in the circle would have
to pick up the story from there. When they stopped, the next person
would have to pick up the story and move it forward. 

I was alway the person who moved the story into wild, perverse, and
illogical realms. Frequently jumping back to my own divergent
storyline by simply saying 'meanehile back at the....'. Unsually, at
some point, my own storyline became so divergent and perverse, that
the game either ended in total frustration or I was thrown out of it.

In any event, I really enjoyed your report of the events, and laughed
out loud several times. Always great to hear from you.

Sincerely (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), Yours without wax.

Steve/bboyminn