So if you wanted to go to the Whomping Willow, you have to defeat these challenges: As high school students living in a dangerous time, we were forbidden from leaving Hogwarts. Which, I dunno, I thought was pretty funny.Ī shadowrun is a challenge you beat to get into a location that’s otherwise guarded, covered in wards, locked, or inaccessible. But that moment, Charlie outed himself as a Death Eater to me, and Michael was a witness. The flee spell made me run until I reached another building or floor, so I kept running. I offered to split the loot between the three of us, you know, being all polite even if I wanted all of it. Because they’re MacGuffins, they didn’t do anything on their own, and were mostly useless unless you knew what MacGuffins were and were also looking for them. ’26), were breaking into the office of Professor Flitwick (Jesse A. Plus, the Death Eaters are Considered Evil, so they were keeping a low profile.Īnyway, one night, I, Michael Corner (Alex B. And like many Guild games, there’s some secrecy in hiding which groups you’re a part of. Another group was trying to get the MacGuffins, the Death Eaters. Let’s call these MacGuffins, for lack of a better name. You throw these spell packets and yell what effect they produce when they hit, like “flee”, “cower”, “crucio”, or “death”.Īs Neville, I was part of a group called Dumbledore’s Army, and one of our goals was collecting some items.

A spell packet is this cloth sphere, maybe five centimeter diameter, filled with bird seed, held with a rubber band. Nerf guns for generic spells that did 1 HP each, maybe 2 HP if you had an ability that did extra damage. Like many Guild games, HP7 has combat mechanics. It’s mildly warm, so I’ve worn it outside when it isn’t too cold, when I don’t feel like putting on a jacket. Wearing the robes while square dancing was great, because it does the spinny thing when I rotate my body, and it looks so cool. The best thing about the robes is that I’ve kept them after game end. But it felt so cool to do the hand movements when casting spells, and it was a nice thing to fidget with while walking down hallways at 2 AM. It didn’t have a mechanical effect in the game if I wanted to shoot people I’d use a Nerf gun, not point my wand at them. I loved holding my wand while walking around the halls. You can also see me holding a wand in this picture, which was made by Ariel S. I played as Neville Longbottom, so I have these gorgeous red-trimmed robes, that fly around when I walk quickly. I was reluctant to get robes at first, but some generous donations from alums allowed us to all get robes for free. A ten-day game in IAP sounds like a lot, but I enjoyed every hour of it, and I wish I’d gotten a chance to do this earlier.Ĭostuming and props are fun. I’d guess that I was also on the upper end in terms of time spent playing.Ĭramming a one-night in the middle of a semester can be hard, sometimes, due to scheduling and school. To be clear, I spent this much time on game because I was having fun! I spent time outside of game looking forward to coming back and doing things. On weekdays I usually entered game at around 7 or 8 PM and stayed until 1 or 2 AM, and on weekends I entered at around 3 or 4 PM and stayed until 2 or 3 AM. Ten-days are a commitment, but it’s not like you’re in-game 24/7.

It was the highlight of my IAP this year, a spot of joy in an otherwise dark winter.Īs much as I want to, I don’t have the time or energy to write a huge post about this, but here’s some scattered thoughts.Īlmost all Guild games during the semester are one-nights, which take around four hours. But the game still ran, and it was amazing. The pandemic’s been rough for the Guild, so there were less players than I hoped. So I was so hyped that a ten-day ran this year, and got as many of my friends to sign up as I could. And it’s the first ten-day I joined: in 2020 no one ran one, and in 20 no ten-days ran due to the pandemic. This is a rerun of HP7 the last time it ran was in 2011. This year’s ten-day game was Harry Potter Year 7: Hogwarts Under Siege, co-written by Andrew M. ’11, one of the co-authors of Athens, another game that ran that IAP.

Such ten-days have been written about in the blogs before, like in 2008 and in 2009. These happen in IAP, the glorious time of year when classes aren’t as big of a deal for most people. Over my time in the Guild, I’ve roleplayed as a ghost who didn’t know he was a ghost, an undercover robot working for space police, and a Wookiee stuck in a tavern in the middle of a desert storm.Īnd one of the Guild’s oldest traditions is the ten-day game, which is exactly what it sounds: a ten-day long larp. One of MIT’s oldest student groups is the Assassins Guild.

The most dangerous game exposition