You don’t have to be an experienced roleplayer or even know what larp is to have a great time at Wizard School Camp! Tina Degenhart, a player in the very first New World Magischola, gives some awesome advice for those who may be a little nervous about roleplaying or trying out wizard school.

Here are some reasons why YOU can do wizard school without any experience roleplaying at all:

Balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar

  • Everyone has been to school. Everyone has some knowledge of how to be a student, and of the kinds of scenarios that can happen in a school environment. Players can fall back on their memories and prior knowledge as they role-play. 
  • But not this kind of school. While familiar events such as professors playing favorites, gossip, ostracization and bullying, test anxiety can occur, you’ve never been to a school where magical creatures can appear to aid or attack, or where you have the ability to conjure imagination into reality. Stepping outside of reality fosters creativity and agency. 
  • Everyone has some knowledge of how to be a wizard. Whether you’re the biggest Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Dresden Files fan, or a player of World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons, or a fan of Disney or Marvel movies and fairy tales, most people have come across wizards, sorcerers, mages, witches, or other magic users and wielders of arcane power. These shared experiences create a base for players to roleplay as they draw on these stories and create their own.

About Maury Brown

After working as a marketing and communications executive for a Fortune 500 company, Maury Brown moved to the education sector, where she has more than 15 years experience designing curriculum, delivering and assessing instruction, and conducting research on engagement and learning with students in elementary school through graduate school. A diverse writer of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction with degrees in literature and creative writing from the University of Virginia, she is finishing her PhD in Rhetoric & Cultural Studies, researching larps as participatory design and interactive storytelling. She has been involved in role-playing games since the early 1990s.