After action report: Miskatonic University

I honestly can’t remember why I signed up to Chaos League’s Miskatonic University. Some combination of my weakness for Polish castles, I’d heard it trailed at Knutpunkt, the character outlines appealed, and a friend I’d never met in the flesh said they were going, I think? Anyway. I did, and I’m sitting in Berlin Brandenburg putting it out of my head and down here, spoiler-free.

What did I expect?

I like structure to my larps. I can make stuff up, sure, but I like to know that there’ll be enough going on that I’ll be busy. The design bit of the website talked about four themes – campus life, investigation, relationships, and horror. Given I don’t really enjoy the “working stuff out” bit of larp – college life is a decent stand in, and not only do I know those tropes, I can play on them with others too.

In short:
Make wrong choices, follow your character and the feel of the Mythos’ tales. Winning is not an option.
Follow the game: campus life, investigation, and horror.
Follow the rhythms of the game and participate in the events that give rhythm to the day.

University guide: Game style

There was a game guide, a stack of videos and a Discord conversation that started months back.

What did I get?

Genuinely amazing production values.

Most of that ephemera is theirs. Newspapers. Letters from home. Schedules. Maps. Exercises to do in lessons.

Just amazing.

The props I can’t mention.

Marvellous, and entirely convincing.

A very few rules, a very light touch, and a trust in players I valued. Like, if you didn’t want to drink – you asked for “A white” My character drank best part of a litre of “white rum” on Friday night, and ended up making a series of ludicrously poor decisions which made the rest of the weekend fly.

(That absinthe was real, mind. Just felt right for the time and setting.)

A character, one of 100 or so pre-written, out of which you ranked 7. (I think?)

Written with real love, and real attention.

Mine was Garland. A ‘c’ grade student, appalling disciplinary record. That I could do.

The neglected sensitive who wants to learn to let go

Garland: (Possible spoilers here.)

That bit was beyond my skill, sadly. I really wanted to try and be quiet and sensitive. It lasted about a half hour into the event, then I was back to being a loud attention. Ah, well.

The Rector – a real-life professor – gave my character such a beautiful end to their arc. Garland simply wasn’t cut out for life as an academic, which mirrored my real life experience of uni. really acutely. I suspect Garland will turn out to be a thief after an ignominious departure from Miskatonic, but that’d be a nice prequel to a future trilogy of his life of crime. Something like Hudson Hawk, I hope.

“Your academic record is disappointing, and your disciplinary record embarrassing.”.

Garland’s parents, about Garland

Campus life

Miskatonic University had student societies because, well, of course. They mapped nicely onto play-styles, so it was easy to see what to avoid and use that to shortlist some characters. Loosely, there were the scientists, the puzzlers, the artists, the rebels (who doubled as vigilantes) the ones who knew about the outside world, and the ones who messed with things you shouldn’t mess with. It wasn’t like character classes, but it helped group play styles and that was really useful.

“only one play per semester.”

Gad, student, and very wise.

Investigation

Lessons were part-lecture, part-research group and hard-skilled. If you wanted to produce genuine results, you had to decipher genuine (simplified) hieroglyphs. I was glad I brought a genuine Egyptology text book. We actually used it to look up actual facts with actual plot significance. I only investigated in class – there was simply a lot to be getting on with elsewhere. and I’ve said I’m not a fan of puzzle solving in larp, so I was please to be able to stick to a rational explanation for everything – until I wasn’t. That felt very real to the Mythos. Bravo.

“If only the Book of the Dead had an index.”

Eggers, student

Horror

I probably should have spent more time on the horror elements, but I was simply having too much enjoyment in college life. The scenes where we had to experience horror were great though: staged neatly, and evocatively, and really very reminiscent of the books. There was nothing we humans could do. If saving the world is your jam, this was not the game for you.

What was interesting

At Miskatonic University you will find no fighting, no physical confrontation. These themes are far from the Cthulhu Mythos stories we want to tell. The atmosphere is based precisely on life on a ‘realistic’ campus, where students and professors are engaged in research.
So you will find no weapons, no rules of combat, or special skills

https://chaosleague.org/miskatonic-university-guide/#game

There was no mechanic for physical violence, and some characters got involved in punch-ups anyway. That would be a real hard “No” from me. I had one physical confrontation. I/Garland was strangled by someone having a moment of madness. My assailant being an actual theatrical, we’d checked in before and rehearsed. I *hope* no-one took that as an invitation to fight *without* checking in, but as there wasn’t a process described – maybe they did?

The orgas tried to give folk space to play on dark and/or sensitive subjects, and there I think they weren’t wholly successful. On a couple of occasions, I felt uncomfortable with the way some subjects were being played on. I am fairly sure that the rule we were told during a workshop – only bring up a subject like that if you are the victim – was broken a couple of times in my sight. There was also a call to withdraw from a scene – “I’m done here”. I used it once and wrongly; but someone kindly let me know and I could check in later with the person who thought I’d used it about their play specifically – which I had not. overall, I much preferred it to the Nordic use of calibration during the game. I think my favourite technique is to calibrate in off game breaks or beforehand though. I simply don’t get on with the interruptions.

The “Plot” of the larp was a single truth, which could be understood earlier or later but not – I think – affected much. No problem for me, but if you really wanted sweet, sweet agency – there were boundaries. It truly felt like a carefully designed experience produced by folk who really knows what they are doing. By which I mean, they considered what the impact of each decision would be – it was bloody clever. Given that – what they did very cleverly was give us control over, not the narrative, but our experience. There were shared times which kept us together – trivially the pulse of the university day, but more significantly shared immersive scenes which I won’t go into because spoilers.

There were a load of protagonists. I honestly can’t think of a single character I spent much time with who wouldn’t have made a perfectly decent protagonist of a novel. Maybe not a series, but a novel. The level of writing was awesome, but golly it felt crowded when absolutely everyone was a Holmes, or a Ward. For a big chunk of the larp, these protagonists were colliding off each other’s stories and it felt like A Lot. I’d have signed up to be a supporting role, if they’d been offered, I think? (Says the man who chose to play a master of a society…) Then I felt those strands resolving – mine were wrapped up beautifully and without much help from my play by some excellent co-players. As the last evening drew on, the orgas brought their narrative to a beautifully literary conclusion. Just magnificent work.

What were the best bits?

The Goliard’s Thorns

Choose this Society if you want to get into trouble, organise pranks and shenanigans, or protests.

https://chaosleague.org/miskatonic-university-guide/#goliard

Goddamn, I loved my Thorns. We pranked, we partied, we were obvious and everywhere. I ended up down quite a Wikipedia rabbit hole about them. In real history – they wrote parodies of the church liturgy that they turned into drinking songs. They wrote the Carmena Burana! I was whistling it all the time. “oh, you’re the whistling guy”, they said.

And we wrote our pranks down in a book one of us made. Such a beautiful book.

The players

of course it’s the players, it’s always the players.

“Do you mean what’s wrong with me right now, or in general?”

Kensington, student.

There were marvellous characters everywhere you looked – the positive flipside of there being so many protagonists, and I came across so much generous play. The key moment, I have to give credit to one amongst the many. There was a professor who was a disciplinarian. Every society had a banner, I’d stolen all, save one which another Thorn got. I was revealing the theft to the rest of us, one banner after another – and the Professor arrived at the door, incandescent with rage. And waited until I’d finished my reveal, before taking his turn in the spotlight and shouting us all into detention. He didn’t need to do that. He could have simply stormed in. But he gave us our moment – just glorious play. Good enemies are hard to find, and he was a gem.

Thank you so much for your amazing play. Being tasked with authority, it was very pleasurable to have such a mindful and responsive partner, with whom we could establish a lively dance of power and rebellion, which has fed the whole society and university life.Just straight and clear moves and responses, no bickering and half-toned actions. It is rare and pleasurable to enjoy painting on the same frame, give and take, despite our starting colors being so different.

Professor Petkov’s player

Dressing up

I like dressing up. I have far more dressing up clothes than normal clothes, even before I ask Mand. And 1920s gear looks great, even if you are a fat bloke. I didn’t have time t change to nightwear in game, the stripey blazer was to hot, but I felt good about how I looked.

The play

Literally. A play. Adapted by one player overnight, performed by myself and another.

A promenade performance of a Commedia de’ll Arte inspired adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” starting on the 2nd floor of the castle, and descending to the climactic scene in an actual cellar. Including personifications of chains and brick wall, a dancing carnival, a soaking wet actor and audience participation “brick by brick by brick” at the end?

It was pretty cool.

The feel

The site was amazing, the food was good, the production values were impressive, but most of all – it felt real. You weren’t running around fighting monsters; you were dealing with the monsters in your own head while the world went to hell. Admittedly, I’ve only read the King in Yellow – but it felt like being in the book. It felt like there were bad things happening you couldn’t stop, and I found that very compelling.

Essentially – they delivered what they promised, and I can’t ask for more. I’ve been burnt by a poor experience at a blockbuster larp before, and came to this one with a rucksack stuffed with props and plans. Most of them stayed in the bag all weekend.

I’d printed the script of the play “A king in yellow”, and arranged with another player to perform it. We never did, because *another* player wrote a play *during the goddamn event* and we performed that instead. Never used the flayed human face I has as a mask for that play. Never had time to dress up in y in-game nightwear – no silk pajamas, no dressing gown, no sleeping cap. Just too busy. Never actually played “Professor bingo” during class – but our buzzword bingo cards got as far as Academic Senate. That’s a win.

So thanks Chaos League – that was good.

Postscript:

…the best scene? The best scene ever – I think literally one of the best scenes I have ever heard of, and I hardly noticed it at the time? I just saw someone carrying someone in to the ball and thought “That’s a bit odd” and went about my own business?

Someone very deep in madness *killed another character and danced the last waltz with their corpse.*.

Given this was a larp about Mythos and madness – that is… Just The Best.

Post-postscript

As I said elsewhere, you demonstrated perfectly how to take a spotlight: be charismatic, interesting and loud, take space, make everyone look at you, do your thing, and then exit after 30-60 seconds.

Someone on the Internet

I’ve often said I “play to lift”, but this is the first time someone has noticed and remarked on it. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better compliment.