I was a Child of the House

As I am writing this[1], I just got done doing my first big larp. By which I mean the first that lasted longer than a few hours, the first one I've travelled for, the first that I have slept during. As I understand is normal after this, I am buzzing with it, absolutely at risk of boring the hell out of people about it. So let's talk a little about it.

First up, the details. The larp was called Children of the House, it was made by Poltergeist Larp - the larp runners were Lotta, Sandy & Lucky, and it was hosted in Pałac Lubinicko in Poland, which is a few hours from Berlin. Tickets were €350, which covered their costs but not their labour - this covered the larp, accommodation and food, but not travel. It was a larp in "the Nordic style" - which means it's more on the artsy experimental side.

The larp was an adaptation of the book Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. It's a beautiful book about a man who lives within an endless house – giant halls filled with statues. There are clouds on the upper floors, and oceans in the drowned halls below. The man is filled with a great sense of peace and benevolence, and he has lost all memory of a life outside of it.

This being a larp, the primary change is that it is not a story of a single man, but instead the story of a community. We live together within the Embrace, which name refers both to our community and to the room in which we live. We each have names that denote our function within the community - I was Mender, who attempts to prevent imbalance within the Children. I related these imbalances to the operation of the House - defects of the body related to the oceans, defects of the mind related to the statues, and defects of the spirit related to the clouds. There were also Children who fetched things, who led our rituals, who made decisions, who explored farther halls, who interpreted signs in the clouds or listened to the statues, who recorded our histories, who predicted the tides. And Children newly arrived in our community, who we were in the process of finding roles for.

The larp had a three act structure – wait, before I go into that I should sketch out the experience as a whole. Ahead of the larp there was homework - a costume to prep, a player guide to read, and a character sheet to internalise. On Thursday I woke up in Berlin, got breakfast at the hostel, and got a train to the airport (it ran late). I there met with fellow players who were giving me a lift to the venue, a mansion in Poland a few hours drive away. We arrived and unloaded, and I sat a little awkwardly waiting for the larp to start. I didn't know any of the other players, or the organisers (except one player who I had talked to a little at AMAZE earlier in the year). The afternoon was then taken up by workshops - structured exercises to prepare us to play - and then we entered into the House that evening. This was the start of Act 1, which was meant to be low conflict - setting a baseline of harmony among the Children, and letting us settle into our characters. We slept within the game, had breakfast within the game, and then had our first break - an hour to reset and do calibration (jargon for discussing how our characters will relate to each other, and what kinds of play we might give each other). Then back into the game for Act 2 - for this, the larp runners told us we were aiming to add a little more tension, but not to get as far as open conflict. We played within Act 2 for most of the day, and then there was a final calibration break - a longer one this time - in the evening, and then we were in Act 3, where we were told the intensity could reach new heights ("but you should still stay together as a community, and don't die"). We played through the evening, slept, and then played through to the climax of the larp the next evening. There was a couple of hours of practical info and workshops to decompress, and then there was a party - alcohol, a disco, lots of very hyper chatting, some people hooked up. And then we woke early in the morning, helped the organisers pack up and reset the venue, and then I got a lift back to Berlin and arrived exhausted at my friend's apartment, where I am writing this (the next day). That's four days in total, with a solid 48 hours within the fiction of the House itself.

I struggled with my fatigue a fair amount during the larp - especially during Act 2, I could feel the brainfog and my instinctive reaction was to go entirely into rest mode. But I also knew that I needed to keep making connections to other characters to have some setup to play off later.

My character, Mender, was focused on the other Children rather than the House itself - which meant I didn't have particularly organic reasons to explore, do blackbox scenes, etc. (Blackbox scenes are where you go into a separate space to play out a pre-prepared scenario - something where the organisers help you set up something more intense, rather than something that has come up naturally). Instead a lot of my play ended up being what I referred to as "toxic therapy" - coming to a character, asking how they were, and attempting to sooth their worries and doubts about the House. My line was: the House protects us, the House will provide, the important thing is the warmth of the Embrace. I felt like a theologian - studiously collecting evidence and then finding a way to turn all of it towards the conclusion that everything is as it should be. It was nice to have a reason to always pay attention to new discoveries, to be open to them - but always to push back against doubts and worries (which was the natural arc of the game, I think - to start from acceptance and rebel against that). In the calibration break before Act 3, I went for a little walk by myself and gave myself the goal to keep arguing for the House, and eventually lose that argument honestly - but I failed in that quest, and instead found that I kept the faith, even to the end. The House is good, it is good for us to lose our memories, the warmth of the Embrace and the sublime peace of the House are what matters above all other things. I think I even went far enough with this that I convinced my off-game self of the rightness of my position [2].

Let me give you a peak moment for me, along with the context needed to understand it.

Meals were provided to us "by the House" - we would find them by a statue in the main halls. We would assemble and gather them, slowly walking down in a procession. There would be much singing - "it fills us, it feeds us, the House does provide". Beautiful improvised singing, some humming and some harmonies layered under and over. The food would be carried to the table within the Embrace, we would line up with plates and serve ourselves. The food for all the meals was tortillas with olives, dates, hummus, seeds, often other bits alongside. I was warned that it might not seem like enough - but I found it was plenty, after a meal or two I adapted fine. We would sit down to eat in silence - most of this ritual I've described was created by the players together, but the idea of silence during eating was the one bit that the designers asked us to abide by specifically. That was such a delicate bit of design. Voice, who was played by a player with a lovely Scottish accent, would lead us in these rituals - collecting the food, handing out plates and flatbread and collecting many of the plates, and then at the end offering thanks for the food that we had received. I grew to love these meals - the silence made the space feel reverential, the arguing (of course, it's a larp) ceased and we could feel togetherness. The repetition of the ritual, but obviously with variations, singing together... and of course, it helped that my character was a true believer in the togetherness of our community.

So that's the context. By the third act, players were rebelling in whatever direction they could - they wondered if the food was making them forget, they wondered if breaking the rituals could effect change in the community, they distrusted the Ancestors (NPCs who visited us, who we initially held in high regard). So, in that final lunchtime meal, several of them chose to break the silence. I gathered my food from the high table and I came back - I was going to sit by Voice, and then she asked me "would you like to sit with us?" in a mild and welcoming voice. %%%not clear speaking is the problem%% The sacrilege! And from the person who led us through these rituals, whose very purpose was to do so! I said (said!) "no, I would not" and walked away to sit elsewhere. I ate my food with alarm as other Children within the room talked. They did not do so loudly - they quietly talked about the savour of the food, they offered bits of flatbread to each other. They transgressed in the mildest possible way. After I had eaten, I saw that Voice had left the room - she was eating in the vestibule just outside the Embrace, by the statue of the Satyr. And then I thought about how she would not say those closing words, ending the meal - and I broke down sobbing.

What glorious play! Real tears, a real sense of loss - the community I loved so much had turned against each other, the things I treasured most were discarded. And it was only getting worse.

I put my plate away in an upset, stormed out, confronted Voice (a quiet and bitter "has this helped?"), and in this was caused an argument to start which broke the silence even more comprehensively. I had no heart for arguing, I was only for grief. I took myself to the upper floor to sit by the statue of Beekeeper and admire her silence and grace until I was filled again by the tranquillity of the House.

I'm not sure I have more organised things to say about the larp. The rest of this post will be scattered thoughts:

It was strange waking up in character. I was quiet, and my dreams were those of myself, not my character. It took me a few minutes to start interacting as Mender, often after going off-game to brush teeth etc first. In the car on the way back, a fellow player said they had a dream in character, and I was jealous of that.

But on the other hand, it has been 4 or 5 days since I left, and I still sometimes think of the voice or faces of my fellow players.

During the afterparty, someone came up to the off-game lounge where I was sitting. Come down! The song after next is going to be the pornipolka! Come dance it! It's a big tradition!

So I did, and found to my surprise that this larp tradition stretching back to the 90s is in fact a tradition that I was already familiar with. I knew it as Orcadian Strip The Willow, a ceilidh dance that was always the second last song at ceilidhs when I was at university in Edinburgh. You spin your partner with one arm, and then spin all the people on one side of the room with the other, moving down the room as you go. Unfortunately they skipped the bit where you spin real fast with your partner at the start – booo!

The night before joining the larp I slept in a hostel with 3 other people. During the larp, I slept on a mattress on the floor with 20 others. I slept much better during the larp.

I was warned to expect physical discomfort, but I didn't experience this (except for stupidly not getting into my sleeping bag the first night and waking up a little cold -- but that's my own fault).

The food, too, I was warned about. But actually I found I adapted just fine to it. Some figs and a handful of raisins for an energy boost at the end, a little bit of calibration for what was enough to be full, and how much I could take without causing anyone else to miss out of something.

I miss being in a community in this way - I have been talking about it with friends as being like in a cult. That sense of togetherness, singing together, eating together, knowing that there is usually someone in the room you can go sit with and have a quiet talk with. I don't have this level of physical touch within my life out of game. I do have friends, an active life filled with people. And I find I am even hungrier for it now.

I guess one reason that I feel this especially is because my character always believed in the benevolence of the House. I didn't have any fear or doubt about whether it was right to be in the House or not, whether losing our memories was something to fear or not.

In the briefing after the larp had ended, one of the few questions that were asked was "where can we go if we want to have sex during the afterparty?". The answer was: this isn't a larp with a sex room, and we don't want to create one now, but please find somewhere quiet and where you're not going to be exposing yourself to other people, you're creative. Also we have condoms and the morning after pill in the player supplies[4], help yourself.

And indeed multiple people did hook up at the party (though, just for clarity, I didn't). I have a bunch of thoughts about the relationship between in-character and off-game attraction and relationships, and indeed about neurodivergent styles of hitting on people and how they relate to larp. But I am not going to write them here.

I should also say that apparently the run before us was much more inclined to in-game cuddle puddles, and in character romance & poly groupings. I wasn't aware of many (if any) in-game relationships in our run[3]. Me and two others calibrated for a polycule in game but it never properly came into being - it was defined around our shared opposition to the forces of change, but it turned out we had enough internal disagreements that that dynamic was never quite realised. Or maybe we were too hesitant about initiating that kind of scene. Or the story just moved on...

Sometimes when I was tired I would slip out of character and I would make somewhat sarky jokes. I kind of missed being cheeky, it wasn't really within my character, but the characters who did seemed to have a lot of fun. One particularly memorable bit where all the naughty kids got together and had a fake meeting where they did satirical bits, pretending to be the more pompous members of the community. Which is a pretty impressive bit of roleplaying, really - playing a character who is also playing a character.

As Mender, I was the closest thing to a doctor we had. Which came into play more deeply when the person playing Fetcher decided to break her leg and arm with a day to go of the larp. We hadn't interacted much - her role was to fetch water from the upper floors. But suddenly I was the default caretaker - setting the break, binding it up, helping her settle and caretaking - and also talking about how her identity was threatened by no longer being able to do her job.

I also cared for a few other people - which largely consisted, in roleplay terms, of draping a scarf over them to prevent them from getting cold. Which did at some points mean I was scrambling back and forth to find my previous scarf so I could myself stay warm, after having given away a different one.

Oh right, also giving it to Fetcher to bite on when I set the break, definitely a bit where I was mentally going "well, if you're up for putting it in your mouth then I don't mind..."

Another big element were the journals. Scribe was the Child who wrote journals, to record events that have happened to our community. They were writing in the latest one, and they had a few that they had written in the year or two before the larp started. And then, over the course of the larp, we found many more. The revelations within these obviously caused us to question some truths we believed about the world and our place in them. There were also some photos and notes we found as well. This was a great way to regulate the progress of the plot, without being didactic about what response we should have these revelations. And, too, these journals were often found when Children went exploring, or had dramatic blackbox scenes. So they were a nice way to reward that kind of play with something that would add to the drama for the whole community.

And then, later on, we found the journal that related Scribe losing the memory of who they used to be, and becoming Scribe, trapped and accepting of their place in the House. Most of the journals they would read out loud to the rest of the Children, but this one was too much for them to bear, and they had to ask someone else to read it.

(also, wow, they must have been a lot of work to write!)

This section is about the ending, so skip it if you think you might play this. Not that there are currently plans to run it again, but...

Anyway, it was very good & effective. A flood long foretold was suddenly upon us. I realised what was happening, and ran from it. And then, up the stairs, realised that while everyone was streaming after - what about Fletcher? She couldn't move without help.

We huddled upstairs, waiting for it to pass. Our familiar halls were deep underwater, we could see the blue light from the top of the stairs. Fear, loss & disruption, but a sense that we were all in this together. Cold, everyone wet and no way to get dry. We can hear the pounding of the waves below.

And then they subsided, and an unfamilar noise came to us. A sound of... breaking? Mechanical, maybe?

And then suddenly, our tribe was visited by police officers. Not that we had any concept of police officers. They were people we'd never seen before, something that was not within the memory of any of us there. Barking official commands, wanting to know how many of us there were, un-used to our language and ways. Hustled us downstairs, sat us down, fed us cold chips and ketchup, handed us dossiers with our histories and told us we had 5 minutes to decide whether to forever leave our home, the only place we had any memory of.

And actually let me talk about the chips. They were cold, as I said. And with ketchup. And it was such a delight to eat chips from within the perspective of a character who had no memory of them. To dip my fingers in the ketchup and taste it with curiosity. It took me a while to try out dipping the chips directly. So strange, this food! And talking while we ate, but the whole thing felt so unfamiliar, it didn't feel like a violation.

And a dossier with lots of writing, some clarifying the role of the Ancestors and what had happened to them. And some telling me about a person who was supposed to be me (I can't, now, remember the name I was supposed to have). Phrases I didn't understand: "payment in arrears", "mortgage foreclosure", "job interview". I didn't know what this was about, and I didn't want to know.

A choice: to stay or to go. 2 minutes to decide, no big discussion. I knew I was staying. I knew many people I loved would be leaving. I sought them out to say goodbye. Deep farewells. A gift given to me. Most people left. I stood with Poet to watch them go. After a while, we were pulled back to the few that remained, huddling on the floor. We clung onto each other, weeping. A close community of 35, now reduced to 6. How would we survive? The loss of all our friends.

The players leaving told me later that it was very affecting to see us sprawled like that. Almost like we were a Renaissance painting, limbs, faces visible, extremes of emotion but also very still.

And then... the end. Shake it off. Change your clothes, try to step out of your characters. Some rituals to help re-enter this world, decompress from the fiction. And a party.

Okay, that's your lot. I have more I could write - stories from the larp and reflections on how larp works as a larger practice. But in the interests of getting this posted, this will do for now.

Oh wait - there is one more thing I haven't said. Which is a deep deep thank you to the larp-runners, the crew, and to everyone I played with.

[1: but not when I'm posting it, this took a long time to get finished. I did the larp at the end of August]

[2: Since writing this, I have listened to the audiobook, after not having read the book for a few years. and the feeling I get is that Susanna Clarke would also be tempted by this. On the other hand, I think my conviction has wavered with time away. there's probably a moral necessity to not turn away from knowledge? But on the other hand, the two things that really kept me to the House were sublime beauty and the warmth of community... which are hard to argue with. ]

[3: But apparently more of this happened than I was aware of - which makes sense, really]

[4: I find this comment symbolic of the degree of care and forethought that the runners had for the players]