David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

I am writing at the airport on the way home from Philadelphia, where I played in the Miskatonic University North America LARP organized by Chaos League in conjunction with Reverie Studio. This was a Live Action Role Play game loosely based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, which took place at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts in 1924.

This report contains SPOILERS.

Miskatonic NA is an “International Blockbuster LARP,” which means that it had a large cast (about 116 players), an immersive setting (the delightful and historic campus of Bryn Mawr University), and very substantial advance preparation by the organizers and players to deliver a fully immersive experience. Each player was preassigned a character with a detailed background and personality traits — my character sheet was nine single-spaced pages — and we were expected to arrive with appropriate costumes and props for the 1924 setting.

Up until this year, all the international blockbuster LARPs I have played in have taken place in Europe (except for Expedition Sahara which was in Tunisia). However, beginning this year the European LARP phenomenon seems to be migrating to the United States, and in many cases these LARPs are games which have originally been presented in Europe and are now being run in the US with a US partner. In this case, Miskatonic University had been run seven times in Poland by Chaos League, and they were now teaming up with Reverie Studios to run it twice in Pennsylvania. I participated in US run 2. (In 2026 I plan to play in two other LARPs that have been similarly ported from Europe to the States: Bard’s Tale and Conscience.)

Although this game was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, it wasn’t based on any specific Lovecraft story and it certainly did not include Lovecraft’s sexism or racism. Characters were all written without specifying gender or race; the players, mostly American, represented a variety of backgrounds (admittedly, mostly white) and a broad diversity of gender identities and presentations. What the game did draw from Lovecraft was themes of madness and “cosmic horror.” This was not the kind of horror LARP in which costumed NPCs jumped out from behind pillars to frighten the players — the horror was instead existential and subtle.

The game took place in the last three days of the 1923-24 academic year. Most of the characters were first-year students, with a small number of players being professors (these players were responsible for creating their own lectures and exercises, and they all did fabulously with them). A few non-players portrayed more advanced students, other faculty members, and staff. Every student had an academic course of study — my classes were in anthropology and ancient languages — and belonged to one of six “Societies” (these weren’t secret societies, more like fraternities) each of which had its own traditions, rituals, and flavor.

Life at Miskatonic was pretty much like life on any college campus. Some students were focused on their courses, others on socializing, and others on various e/x/t/r/a/t/e/r/r/e/s/t/r/i/a/l extracurricular activities. The players’ days were fairly heavily scheduled, with meals (provided by the campus food service, and quite good they were too), lectures, labs, Society events, and scheduled campus activities. But there was also a lot of free time, and students were also free to skip out on classes or other activities and/or stay out after curfew… and face the consequences of doing so. Every player made their own choices about how to spend their time, and so everyone had a different experience. No one got a lot of sleep.

Each player’s experience was very heavily influenced by their Society. A character’s Society was so central to their game that all characters’ names began with the same letter as the Society, so you could tell immediately when seeing someone’s name tag or even hearing their name which Society they belonged to… and hence a lot about their personality, priorities, and goals. My Society, the Lost Poets (whose names began with L), was focused on the arts; we spent a lot of our time talking about, making, and performing or presenting poetry, prose, theatre, painting, and drawing. The Enigma Society (E names) focused on solving puzzles, many of which were connected to the mysterious sarcophagus which had recently been discovered in the archives and was the center of the game’s overarching plot. The Mind’s Eye Society (M) was dedicated to psychology and the other sciences, while the Knife and Veil Society (K) was dedicated to the occult; they didn’t get along well at all. The remaining societies were Goliard’s Thorns (G, the goths) and Order 322 (O, the fascists), also traditional rivals. In general, students spent most of their non-class time with other members of their Society.

My character, named Lawson, was a poet. He had been born poor in Dublin, had made his way to America to seek his fortune, and had failed utterly there, winding up penniless, drunk, and sleeping on the street. He’d been a brawler and a drunkard and had hurt a lot of people, and making amends with those people was a big part of the character’s agenda for the weekend. But then one night he staggered into a cafe and berated everyone there with his lewd and insulting poetry. He’d been arrested for that, but some of those present were sufficiently impressed by his poetry and delivery that they took up a collection to bail him out… and one of them had been a publisher, who’d offered him a contract. Since then he’d become a rich and successful poet. Now, having made sufficient enemies in society that he needs to avoid the limelight for a while, he’s attending Miskatonic as an adult student, and really enjoying it. I chose to play the character with an Irish accent, and though I was a bit worried about maintaining it or getting in trouble for cultural appropriation, many people later commented that they’d been impressed by it.

When we showed up on the first day of the game our first agenda was moving into the dorms, which felt a lot like moving into the dorms in real life. We all met our fellow players — many of whom our characters had extensive backstory with but whom we were meeting in person for the first time — unpacked, and pinned our names and other ephemera to the cork boards outside our rooms. Then we all trooped down to the gorgeous Old Library for the usual half-day of workshops, in which we were introduced to the rules, metatechniques, and expectations that would keep players physically and emotionally safe, then had an opportunity to meet and coordinate with our characters’ close associates, fellow Society members, and study-group compatriots. Then we all got into costume and the LARP proper began.

My character, somewhat against my expectations, was more involved with his actual classes than with the mystery around the sarcophagus or intracollegiate shenanigans. The players who portrayed the professors were amazingly good at their jobs, providing fascinating and engaging lectures and exercises. Professor Petkov — one of the main “villains” of the piece, being a hardass and a sadist — was actually the most engaging teacher (and a fantastic player) and my character wound up respecting her intellect enormously. It didn’t hurt that she had a habit of breaking up the class into competing teams for group projects and my character’s (okay, my) group projects tended to win the competitions.

Outside of class my character engaged strongly with the Lost Poets, and these hours were among the most enjoyable and heartwarming of the game for me. We bonded fast and deeply, and had many late-night discussions on the meaning and purpose of art. The Lost Poets may not have investigated sarcophagus-related puzzles like the Enigma Society or conducted seances and exorcisms like Knife and Veil, but we were a real fount of gossip and our gala exposition (talent show) on Saturday night was a highlight of the game for many, not just in our Society. I really felt like I had met my found family in the Poets and I can’t imagine myself having been happy in any other Society. (I might possibly have said the same if I’d wound up an Enigma or Knife and Veil character, both of which I’d considered, but I would have had a completely different game.)

One of the key moments of the game for each player was their turn to read from the Forbidden Texts — a powerful mini-game within the game — after which, having been exposed to forbidden knowledge, our characters would begin to Descend Into Madness. For my own Descent, my character sheet told me that I would write a poem full of horrific imagery in which I imagined violently slaughtering my closest friends. But as I had spent much of the game making amends with people to whom I had done physical violence, and in each case I had expressed true remorse and a promise that I wasn’t really like that and would never do such a thing again, I felt that a poem involving physical violence would be too much of a blow to those recently-repaired relationships. Perhaps, in the spirit of “drive your character like a stolen car,” I should have gone ahead and done that. But I didn’t, and instead I chose to attack them psychologically instead. Since in this game everyone’s character sheets were open for all to read, I could look into my friends’ souls and find out exactly what I could say that would hurt them the most. I would write a cruel, insulting poem in which I plunged my knife deeply into my closest friends’ most tender and secret vulnerabilities.

My initial intention had been to just gather a few people together to read this poem, but with the upcoming exposition I realized that it would have more impact if I delivered it there. So I whipped out the poem in the hour between dinner and the exposition, then sat nervously waiting for my turn to come up. As I waited I realized that I couldn’t just step calmly to the podium and deliver this horrific screed, so I began to stare and tremble and mutter in my seat. Several people, concerned, came over and asked if I was doing okay, but all I replied was “black… black… everything is black” and “the show must go on, the show must go on.” When my turn came I charged onto the stage and delivered the poem with great vigor, gusto, and anger, and when I came to the last lines — in which, of course, I was cruelest to myself — I collapsed in tears on the floor. Many people came and helped me up, and I expressed surprise at finding myself on stage. The last thing I remembered was being in the audience. Had I fallen asleep and missed my cue? But no, they told me what I’d done and showed me the poem I’d delivered — written in my own notebook in my own hand. I read it and was utterly appalled, and ran around apologizing profusely to everyone I’d insulted. Fortunately they all forgave me, though for some it took a while. And, in a weird parallel to the cafe incident from my backstory, many many people came up to me and said that my poem and delivery had been exceptional and superb.

The other most memorable scene for me took place the following evening, before the climactic Gala that would conclude the game. Because by this point in the game everyone had been exposed to the Forbidden Texts, madness was endemic, and having already gone through my Descent and come out the other side I found myself, rather against my expectations and intentions, being one of the few trying to keep the Society on track to play our part in the Gala. One of the Society’s three Masters announced he was getting on a train to Carcosa (a location from the forbidden text The King In Yellow) and had to be gently restrained. But, hilariously, the character’s player was indeed getting on a train that evening, as he had to leave the game early, and so the character escaped. Another Master seemed to be doing all right until I noticed that she was scribbling maniacally in her notebook, and so I tried to talk her back to herself.

And then one of my best friends, a playwright named Little, returned from wherever he’d been hiding after nearly killing three people in a performance-art-piece-turned-chemistry-experiment… an amazing scene to which I’d been fortunate to witness the conclusion. He was still quite mad, with blood on his face (“don’t worry, it’s not mine”), but I took him aside, grabbed his shoulders, and told him that he was a playwright, not a chemist or a war criminal, and if that he’d just listen with his heart he could return to being his own true self. It was a long and impassioned speech — the scene, which involved just the two of us, ran to perhaps twenty minutes — and at the end of it he coughed up whatever foul spirit had been clogging his lungs and began to act somewhat more normal. But as we walked off to the Gala behind our Society banner I continued to be worried that he might relapse, that the Master who was still scribbling in her notebook might wander off, or that another friend — who was raving about some scheme to prevent the return of the evil elder gods which I judged had no chance of success but was also unlikely to make things worse — might do something desperate.

At this point half the students were mad, multiple schemes to save or destroy the world were proceeding, and I was convinced that whatever had been released from the sarcophagus would surely end us all — Miskatonic University at least, perhaps the Eastern Seaboard, perhaps the world — but, in the end, we all wound up dancing the evening away and only a few people died. The true cosmic horror would not be released until later, when an expedition from Miskatonic found the lost city of Zerzura in the Sahara Desert.

I believe that Sahara Expedition was written first and Miskatonic University later, as a prequel. I can recommend both games and I think they can be played in either order. Miskatonic University wasn’t as intense as Sahara Expedition but it was nonetheless immersive, emotionally engaging, and beautifully run and had a fantastic setting with many subtle but effective props and special effects. I can wholeheartedly recommend it and any other productions from Chaos League.

When I was a kid, there was an ad that ran in virtually every comic book for a “Polaris Nuclear Sub” that was “Big Enough for 2 Kids” and “Sturdily constructed of 200 ib. test fibreboard.” Of course I begged my parents to buy it for me, but my dad pointed out that “fibreboard” was just cardboard and we had plenty of that. So together we built a submarine our of cardboard boxes, and it was better than anything we could have mail-ordered for $6.98 plus 75¢ for shipping and handling.

Fast-forward to 2024, when I learned of the existence of a Live Action Role Playing event called Feindfahrt (), an anti-war LARP held in the submarine set originally built for Das Boot (1981), which also happens to be one of my favorite films ever. Of course I had to sign up for it, and as I write this I’m on a plane home from Munich where I just finished playing it.

Massive SPOILERS for the game follow. Proceed at your own risk.

The fictional premise of Feindfahrt is that after the capture of the German submarine U-505 (this really happened, and the sub is currently on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago), the Allies decided to staff the captured sub with a mix of US and UK sailors and send it deep into enemy territory on a secret mission. The intent of the game was to give players a sense of how oppressive and cruel the life of submariners during WWII was, with a good dose of interpersonal drama as well. It wasn’t intended to be a realistic submarine simulation or a strategic military game, but a game of communication and psychology in a tense and claustrophobic setting. There were 35 players of all genders (playing characters of all genders, in one of several departures from historical accuracy) drawn from countries including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the UK. I was the only person who came all the way from the USA for the game, though several other players were Americans who lived in Europe.

The Das Boot set is a life-sized recreation of the full interior of a Type VII-C German U-boat, 60 meters long and about 6 meters wide. During filming the set was mounted on a hydraulic platform that could tilt through 45 degrees in 5 seconds in both the pitch (fore-and-aft) and roll (side-to-side) dimensions to create dramatic scenes of diving, rolling in high seas, and being shaken by depth charges. Today the set sits on solid ground under a tent at the Bavaria Filmstadt studio. Which, given that the high temperatures in Munich this week were 39-45 degrees Fahrenheit, meant that it was as cold as the North Atlantic in there. However, we were forewarned about this, so I packed two sets of long undies, lots of wool socks, and a heavy sweater and I was reasonably comfortable the whole time.

As you can see from the above diagram, the boat was equipped with a Heckin’ Torpedo Room, an E-Machine, and a Bug Room. (Not really.) From left to right they were Aft Torpedo Room; Electric Engine Room; Diesel Engine Room; Galley; Non-Commissioned Officers’ Quarters; Control Room and Conning Tower; Officers’ Quarters, Radio Room, and Sonar/Hydrophone Room, Head, and Forward Torpedo Room. When I say “quarters” I mean “tightly packed bunks with a narrow passageway in between;” the enlisted men slept in shifts in hammocks slung between the torpedoes. Note the size of the little red person at the forward end of the top diagram; we’re talking cramped here.

We spent 12-13 hours per day in the sub, but we didn’t sleep there. The set did not actually have enough bunks to sleep 35 players even in shifts, and also it was terribly cold and the head wasn’t functional. So we all had to find our own accommodations in a nearby(ish) hotel (I chose the Bio-Hotel Alter Wirt, https://www.alterwirt.de, five stars would stay again) and commute to the submarine each day. We could easily leave the set whenever we wanted to, for bathroom breaks or just to decompress, and took our meals in a heated building nearby. I personally never felt particularly claustrophobic.

The set was not and had never been a real submarine. For one thing, the interior walls were painted black to create a claustrophobic feeling, whereas in a real sub they are painted in light colors for exactly the opposite effect. The controls and indicators were almost all nonfunctional and in many cases not technically accurate. Many parts that would have been metal in a real sub were made of wood or drywall, and were also over 40 years old, so we were repeatedly reminded to be careful not to break the sub. Despite these limitations the whole thing was incredibly detailed and immersive and I would definitely describe it as the Biggest, Best Toy EVAR. Also, the LARP organizers had repaired the diesel engine prop so that it moved realistically (after being broken for 18 years) and added some functional instruments such as depth gauges, battery meter, and speedometer; Arduino-powered interactive hydrophone and sonar; telephones for communication between the bridge, engine room, and torpedo room; and video screens so that people in other parts of the boat could see what was on the periscope. And there were speakers throughout to provide realistic sound effects such as rushing water, the hull creaking under strain, and depth charges exploding nearby.

In most European LARPs I’ve played there are a few non-player characters (NPCs) mixed in with the players to provide advice, guidance, and emotional support and keep the game from going off the rails. In this case, given the small cast of 35 players and confined play space, we had just one NPC, the Chief Engineer. But the organizers also did have cameras throughout the sub and were listening in on all phone conversations. This meant that sometimes we had to do things such as, for example, calling the bridge from the engine room to report that the speedometer was showing zero when the engines were running all ahead full, after which the speedometer would quickly correct itself. There was also a “red phone” (actually black) which we could use to contact the organizers directly. The organizers, in turn, could communicate to us in the form of radio transmissions from HQ, at least when we were surfaced.

Our characters were pre-written and assigned to us based on a fairly brief questionnaire about our preferences. The character descriptions were well-written and quite detailed, giving a full rundown of the character’s background, personality, motivations, and relationships with other characters. I played CPO Robert Johnson, the Chief of the engine room, a highly experienced and trustworthy engineer who was generally on good terms with everyone — though he could be stubborn and persnickety on technical matters. The one person on the boat he didn’t like was the Executive Officer, under whom Johnson had previously served on the submarine Seahorse. The Seahorse had sailed into a minefield in a storm, killing most of the crew, and Johnson blamed her captain (now U-505’s XO) for the disaster. However, other player characters who had also been there considered him a hero for saving anyone at all. Johnson also disliked the boat itself, as his father had been the engineer on a civilian ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat early in the war, but saw it as his duty to keep this cold-blooded German war machine running smoothly for the sake of the mission and the crew.

Creative costuming is a big part of many LARPs, but in this case we were all in uniform, so all we had to provide was dark pants, dark waterproof shoes, and whatever long undies we wanted. US Navy sailors were issued khaki shirts, cardigans of various colors, and white sailor caps; Royal Navy sailors got dark blue cardigans and hats with ribbons; and officers got pea coats and big fancy officer hats. (Amusingly, I was Royal Navy, the only non-American in my watch; my watch mates were all American, but all played by non-Americans.) We also got embroidered name tags and drinking cups with our character names on them. I was rather alarmed that my name tag was bloodstained, and I was informed that my character in the previous run had lost an arm!

Having been handed our characters and issued our orders by headquarters, everything else in the game was improvised. It was up to each player to decide what to do and say minute by minute, and we each reacted to developing situations and other characters’ actions according to our characters. But we were given some guidance to keep the game moving and fun: to choose drama and action over passivity and inaction, and to treat each other as experts in our fields and accept any improvised technobabble as gospel. Thus, if a player said that the frammistat needed to be reflanged, then by God that frammistat did need reflanging. This created a potential problem when I wanted to send a junior ensign on a wild goose chase: I had to make sure that the other members of the crew, most of whom did not have English as a first language, understood that a request for a “left-handed monkey wrench” or “sixty feet of waterline” was NOT to be treated as gospel but as a nonexistent item, a deliberate prank.

The first half-day of the game was spent in orientation and workshops, as is typical for European LARPs. We spent time in groups getting to know the other members of our duty station (bridge, engine room, or radio/torpedo room), our watch (we were divided into two watches), our navy (US or UK; there was some tension between the two), and in some cases sailors we’d served with previously on the Seahorse or other vessels. We then got a tour of the set and some instruction in “how to U-boat.” In the afternoon we got into costume and into character for a shakedown cruise near Bermuda (where the sub had been taken after being captured). We took the sub and crew through their paces and uncovered some issues, notably in communication. (Bridge: “Engine room, take her down to 15 meters.” Engine room: “Not our department, you’ve got the controls for the ballast tanks and dive planes right there. We make ship go fast and slow, you make ship go up and down.”)

My Engine Room crew’s jobs were to run the diesel and electric engines as commanded; use the rudder control wheel to direct the sub’s heading, again as commanded; keep all mechanical systems running smoothly; and fix anything that went wrong. Given that most of the controls on the sub were nonfunctional props, this involved a lot of “stare meaningfully at a gauge while tweaking a knob” and “pretend something broke and pretend to fix it.” As the game went on, though, there was less making-up of problems and more problems appearing from sources external to our team, which made for more satisfying play. And everything is more fun when you work with other people, so I made sure to send people out to fix things in pairs.

We really did start to work together as a team and I felt a great camaraderie with my people. One superstition we decided on as a team was that it was bad luck to point at anyone or anything with one finger — you should instead use two or more fingers, a thumb, or your whole hand. (This is, apparently, a real superstition in the Swedish Navy). If you violated this rule you had to knock three times on the overhead to regain your luck. Like saying “Macbeth” in a theatre, this was our superstition but anyone around us could get dinged for running afoul of it.

Then we skipped forward in time a few months for a scene set at a drunken party in a Scottish coastal town right before launch. But the party was interrupted by an air raid siren, and we all staggered out into the street heading for the nearest shelter… and then the bombs started falling, with real explosions and fire all around. It was a spectacular and dramatic opening to the game! Once we arrived at the bomb shelter we flashed back three days to a meeting with an Admiral in which we were all requested to write a letter to our next of kin, to be delivered in case we did not come back. On that sobering note the first day of play ended.

Before the second day of play began we were offered a chance to “calibrate” with other players about what we might want from them or offer to them. I said my character sheet indicated I was not bearing up well under the strain, and that I intended to have some kind of break late in day 2 or early in day 3, though I couldn’t say when or what kind of break it would be.

The second day of the game opened with us already out at sea, where we received our orders: join a German U-boat wolf pack and accompany them back to their base, where we would use our torpedoes to destroy an important fuel depot which was protected from aerial attack. To many of us this seemed like a likely suicide mission, and my pointed questions about how exactly we were going to get away from the exploding sub pen were waved off.

We successfully located the wolf pack and made contact with them using stolen German codes, but then the pack moved to attack a civilan convoy. After one of the German subs torpedoed an Allied ship, we fired a second torpedo into it to demonstrate our bona fides. This was, for many of us, a morally indefensible choice. The captain pointed out that the ship was already sinking when we torpedoed it, but others protested that we’d almost certainly killed people who might otherwise have made it to lifeboats. As we submerged and ran from the scene, I collapsed in tears, saying “I feel like I just killed my own father!” As my crew helped me move through the bridge to my bunk one of the bridge officers asked if I was okay. “I’m a fucking war criminal!” I replied. Eventually, with the help of my crewmates, I calmed myself down, but I wasn’t the only one who had severe qualms about our actions.

As we made our way through the minefield surrounding the base I was called to the bridge to offer my technical expertise on getting the sub out of the harbor after launching our torpedoes. With the help of my second in command, my best friend on the boat, I advised that we would need at least two sub lengths ahead of us, or one length behind us, clear of any obstacles in order to reverse course. I was ordered to work with the sonar operator to make that decision — as soon as the fuel depot blew he would send out a ping and I would have five seconds to choose a course for our escape based on what came back. The ping showed clear both fore and aft, so I recommended a forward path as the quicker of the two options. That got us out of the immediate vicinity, but as we were beginning to run away another sub fired a torpedo at us. Thinking quickly, the XO — the man I believed had killed the Seahorse — ordered us to fire one of our own torpedoes at it, with the fuse set to just five seconds. The two torpedoes detonated right in front of us, damaging our bow but allowing us to slip away in the chaos. Thinking us destroyed, the Germans did not pursue and we made it through the minefield and into the open ocean without further incident. Thus ended the second day.

Calibrating at the beginning of day 3 I said that I’d been happy to be the supportive officer, directing my crew and doing my best to make sure everyone got as much game play as they desired, but I would like to do more fixing of problems as an individual contributor. (Cue ominous foreshadowy music.)

The third day’s play opened with us steaming away from our successful raid on the fuel depot, when we were ordered to pick up a “high value target” off the coast of The Netherlands. On the way there we had a strange noise on the hydrophone which my second-in-command speculated might be something caught in our propellors. I suggested reversing the engines briefly to clear the possible problem, and damn if it didn’t work! Later on there was a distressing hiss coming from something on the bridge; I tracked it to an air leak and patched it with period-appropriate chewing gum.

Evading both German and British ships as we approached the German-occupied Netherlands, we rendezvoused with a German speedboat, which handed us a defecting German scientist who specialized in the behavior of gases under pressure. But as we headed back out to sea the speedboat was intercepted and sunk by a British destroyer. The destroyer then pursued us, pounding us with depth charges. (I don’t think there was ever an in-game reason given why we didn’t just surface and surrender.) We took heavy damage and began to sink uncontrollably. Water shot from the walls (thankfully it was warm water) and I and the other engineers worked feverishly to patch the leaks. Once we got that problem solved the air compressor, which was needed to start the engine as well as to blow the ballast tanks, began to hiss and spew high-pressure air and we had to fix that. But though we stopped the air leak, the compressor itself was shot. Eventually we settled on the bottom, well below our maximum rated depth, with the hull creaking alarmingly and batteries and air running out fast.

With no air compressor to blow the ballast tanks or start the engines, and no forward motion to make use of the dive planes, we were well and truly stuck on the bottom. I had the idea of attempting to start the diesel engines (usually a Very Bad Idea while submerged) in hopes of pushing compressed air from the engine to the ballast tanks, but that didn’t work. I tried asking the German scientist who specialized in pressurized gases, but she didn’t have any ideas we hadn’t already tried. We did have hand bilge pumps but pumping them with all our might didn’t help. Finally the NPC Chief Engineer presented an unexpected solution involving sending volunteers diving into the pitch-black bilge (actually they went outside the sub, with hats pulled down over their eyes, and could only work as long as they could hold their breath) to find some strangely-shaped knobs, fit them to the corresponding attachments, and thus open the necessary valves to permit the bilge pumps to pump water out of the ballast tanks. This felt to me like an arbitrary escape-room-ish puzzle, and it left most of the players just shivering in the dark with nothing to do but hope it would work, but we did manage to find all the necessary valves before running out of volunteers and it did indeed work, allowing us to pull ourselves off the bottom and limp to the surface.

So we cheated death… barely. But as we were triumphantly steaming home we received a third assignment: to torpedo a ship carrying a German super-weapon. Upon receiving this order I lost my temper and repeatedly insisted that the sub was too badly damaged to survive anything resembling combat. This turned into a heated exchange with the Chief Engineer. He and I stood practically nose-to-nose, me with my arms crossed on my chest, saying with cold fury “In my professional opinion, SIR, any attempt to engage the enemy will inevitably result in the loss of this vessel and all hands, SIR.” He ordered me to conduct a full inspection and repair all problems found. “I can tell you without doing an inspection that this vessel is beyond our capabilities to repair, SIR. We need to return to port and careen her, SIR.” He repeated that this was an order. “Then I am insubordinate, SIR.”

He relieved me of command and had me hauled to the brig. But we didn’t have a brig, so he said to put me in the head. But there was only one head and we couldn’t afford to be without it. Another officer, more sympathetic to me, offered to take me off my superior’s hands, and he was happy to be rid of me. By this point I realized that my choices had been reduced to: die handcuffed to my bunk, or do what I could to save my crewmates (and most likely die trying). I chose option 2. I told my new commanding officer that I’d do what I could, but it would take as long as it took and I would be honest in my assessment of the situation. He set me to work beginning with the forward torpedo tubes, which had been damaged by our own torpedo as we escaped from the fuel depot the previous day.

We broke for dinner at that point, and several players inquired anxiously as to whether I was okay. “My blood is fizzing,” I said, “but I’m having a blast.” In the LARP community we call this “type 2 fun,” meaning that “my character is miserable but I’m enjoying myself.”

After dinner I kept trying to fix what I could in the time remaining, but I was really pessimistic. Basically, as I’d thought, the ship was absolutely beat to shit. “If we fire even one torpedo,” I said, “I estimate the chance of it getting stuck in the tube and detonating right there is over 25%. And I don’t recommend taking the boat below 50 meters.” The XO gave a big angry speech about how our duty was to the Navy and to Britain, that we were to follow orders, that this was not a democracy, but that we would do as we were told, without question, in order to save democracy from the fascist threat. But I realized that my loyalty was, and always had been, not to the Navy or to Britain but to my fellow crew members, and that saving their lives was more important to me than duty or honor. I had sacrificed my reputation, my position, and finally my career in attempt to save them, and spending all those chips hadn’t worked. But I had one chip left — I could work as an individual to try to fix the ship — and so I resolved to spend that one as best I could.

I was continuing to try to fix the spavined engine when we intercepted the target and, somewhat to my surprise, did manage to successfully fire a torpedo and sink it. But the target vessel was not alone — the area was swarming with German destroyers — and in fairly short order they began depth-charging the hell out of us. Explosions pounded our ears, I flung myself around the engine room like a member of the Star Trek bridge crew, the depth gauge fell and fell, and the lights went out. Then we heard the music indicating the end of play. Game over, man.

We all silently filed out of the sub and walked back to the air raid shelter, where we saw the same Admiral we’d seen before instructing a lieutenant to send the usual condolences to the families of those lost on the Allied ship we’d helped to sink, and also those lost on the U-505. Then we heard a voice reading a letter. It was, I soon realized, one of the letters we’d written to our next of kin in that same room at the beginning of the game. More and more voices joined in then, all the letters overlapping in a Greek chorus of farewell. I certainly recognized my own words in there, and I imagine most everyone else did as well. And then the game was over. Roll credits.

There was an afterparty, but between jet lag and emotional exhaustion I faded out after less than an hour. As I walked past the sub on my way back to my hotel, I noticed that the sound system had not been turned off and there were still gurgling noises coming from the tent. Bubbles coming up from the bottom, I guess.

That ending felt so right and seemed so inevitable that I figured it had been on rails, but afterwards we learned that runs 1 and 2 of the game (we were run 4) had made it home alive, so our fate really was open, at least to some extent. I can’t point to any specific decision that sealed our doom or could have saved us, but I think that out-of-game timing was a big part of it. We succeeded in our first two missions quite quickly so there wound up being time for a third at the end, which is the one that killed us. If we had finished our second mission closer to the end of the day Saturday, the game might have ended there with us still afloat or even home safe.

The pivotal moment of the game for me was when my character stood up on his hind legs and defied authority, even though it didn’t change the outcome (or perhaps made it worse, as he might have succeeded in repairing the ship if he hadn’t wasted time in rebellion — though I strongly doubt it). It reminds me of my favorite scene in the Westworld game, where I resigned from my job and threw in my lot with the robots — though in that case I did manage to save some lives, including my own. Perhaps I’m just a rebel at heart? But I can tell you that, unlike my breakdown on the previous day or my Westworld resignation, I did not plan that scene, or even anticipate that it would happen. It just emerged naturally from my character in the moment, especially from his experiences on the Seahorse (it said in my character sheet “He has sworn never to blindly trust an officer again when it comes to life and death”).

I don’t regret my actions, and indeed my conscience is at peace knowing that I did everything I could to save my crewmates. But in retrospect I’ve come to the conclusion that my character was actually in the wrong. In the end we achieved our goal — we achieved a major strategic victory — albeit at the cost of our lives and the ship, which is most likely the outcome the Admiralty expected when they gave the order. My attempt to disobey orders salved my conscience in the moment but in the larger context of the war was counterproductive and morally wrong.

On the other hand, if you take a bigger step backwards, was the war itself morally justified? But better people than I have been arguing this point for centuries, so I know I’m not going to be able to answer it. But considering these questions from the perspective of a realistic, immersive experience is, I think, the main point of this LARP.

Feindfahrt cost me a lot more than $6.98 plus 75¢ for shipping and handling. But in the end, the fun you make yourself is always the best.

I recently returned from Tunisia, where I played in the Sahara Expedition LARP organized by Chaos League. This was a Live Action Role Play game loosely based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, in which we were seeking the (fictional) lost city of Zerzura in the (actual) Sahara Desert. It was one of the most intense LARPs I’ve ever played.

This report contains SPOILERS.

LARP is a big tent, incorporating many types of game, and Sahara Expedition was of the species “International Blockbuster LARP,” which means that it had a large cast (about 80 players) drawn from all over Europe and the USA, a realistic setting (a hotel and two campsites in the Sahara Desert), and very substantial advance preparation by the organizers and players to deliver a fully immersive experience. Each player was preassigned a character with a detailed background and personality traits — my character sheet was about twelve single-spaced pages — and we were expected to arrive with appropriate costumes and equipment for the 1934 setting. In addition, many period-appropriate props and set pieces were provided by the organizers, along with tents, mattresses, and three delicious meals each day (I was extremely impressed by the food, especially given that it was being prepared from scratch by a small crew in the middle of the desert).

Although this game was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, it wasn’t based on any specific Lovecraft story and it certainly did not include Lovecraft’s sexism or racism. Characters were all written without specifying gender or race and we were free to play our character as any gender we chose. Most of the players were white — I believe there were two people of color and one Asian — but where tensions existed between the European player characters and the local people they took place mostly offstage and were based on differing priorities rather than any sense of superiority or inferiority. What the game did draw from Lovecraft was a sense of “cosmic horror” in which we were forced to confront situations and phenomena far beyond mortal ken and face vastnesses of space, time, and power which strained the human mind even to contemplate. This was not the kind of horror LARP in which costumed NPCs jumped out from behind dunes to frighten the players — the horror was instead existential and subtle. But, as we were warned at the beginning, it wouldn’t end well for any of us.

The expedition was a joint venture of four institutions: the Royal Geographic Society handled cartography, documentation, and logistics; Miskatonic University handled archaeology, art history, and linguistics; the W. Isynwill Foundation handled clairvoyance and spiritism; and the Legion handled security and medicine. Each player was associated with one of the institutions, and the first letter of our character names and a specific color of scarf or clothing made it immediately obvious which institution a character belonged to. (Having every member of the Royal Society’s name begin with R was simultaneously very helpful and extremely confusing, because it could be difficult to keep over twenty R-names straight.) In general the relationships between the groups were cordial and cooperative, as we all worked together to solve the many mysteries and obstacles the expedition encountered in the desert. Most of the conflict in the game was interpersonal or with the inimical desert and cosmic forces.

Each of us had a specific job to do. I was part of the Royal Geographic Society’s Documentation Department, tasked with recording the expedition’s discoveries and producing a documentary film of the expedition. I myself was the scriptwriter (typecast much?) and I worked with the director, assistant director, cinematographer, still photographer, and actor. (Yes, just one actor. He was very good.) My partner Amy, diving into the deep end on her first LARP, was the still photographer. The Documentation department didn’t have any specific responsibilities regarding digging up artifacts in the desert, decoding ancient tablets, mapping routes, or conducting seances with the spirits of long-dead pharaohs, but we did get to be present for all of those. As with the Documentation departments in which I’ve worked in tech, we had a top-down overview of the whole project rather than being siloed into just one specialty, and that was pretty cool.

On the first day of the game we awoke in a four-star hotel on the edge of the desert, where we had a full day of out-of-character workshops to acquaint us with the other members of our institution and department, the equipment and responsibilities of our individual jobs, and the various techniques and metatechniques that would keep the players physically and psychologically safe in the game (including safewords and techniques to escalate or de-escalate inter-character conflict). Then after dinner, we put on our costumes for an in-character gala to celebrate the beginning of the expedition. This was, for many of us, the first time our characters were meeting each other before setting off for the desert, and given that we would be working closely together and many of us had previous relationships with other characters it was a bit of a scrum, with everyone trying to make contact with all their work and social relations at once.

Those previous relationships were an extremely important part of the game. It was a bit like Lost, in that the number of people who had extremely significant backstory with other characters — many of whom had not seen each other for years or decades until happening to find each other on the same expedition — was far beyond what chance alone could explain. As players we knew that this was to create drama, but as characters we suspected that there were dark and mysterious forces at play. “The veil is thin here,” we frequently told each other. So between reconnecting with long-lost loves or enemies, doing our jobs, and trying to find the clues and unravel the mysteries to make our way to the lost city of Zerzura, we did not lack for things to do each day.

On the morning of the second day we checked out of the hotel (leaving behind all inessential baggage to be picked up after the game) and piled into a caravan of 4×4 vehicles, driven by professionals, which took us across the trackless desert to our campsite. “Bouncing across the Sahara Desert in a 4×4 had not been on my bucket list,” I said as we powered up one side of a dune and slid down the other, “but now I’m adding it so I can cross it off.” The campsite itself consisted of one large tent for meals and group gatherings, just big enough for the 80 of us; several medium-sized tents for headquarters, cooking, and medical (one for in-character medical and another with real doctors); and about 14 traditional Berber tents with six mattresses each for sleeping. These were open on one side and were held up with unfinished sticks, but were quite sturdy and perfectly adequate for the conditions. (It was in the 70s-80s F during the day and 50s-60s at night.) We divided ourselves up among the tents by institution and, where feasible, by department.

We really were deep in the Sahara Desert — an hour’s drive from the nearest town, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but sand and the very occasional bush. We were sufficiently equipped with food and drinking water, but there were no showers, no sinks, and for toilet facilities we had “the world’s largest litterbox.” (We were instructed to bury our waste, including toilet paper, but to pack out any wipes or other trash.) The term “taking a dune” quickly took over from “going to the bathroom.” And it was sometimes a bit of a challenge to walk far enough from camp for a bit of privacy without either getting lost (especially at night) or running into someone else on a similar errand.

Each day we had a schedule of meals, morning and afternoon work sessions, and meetings with our departments. It was kind of a workplace LARP, and in addition to doing our jobs we also had to file reports with our superiors (and they with theirs) and coordinate with other departments. The archaeology and art history departments, coordinating with cartography, went off into the desert on “sub-expeditions” to dig up new sites whose locations had been determined by examination of cuneiform tablets, decorated vases, and notes from the previous, lost, expedition, and the Documentation team tagged along to record the excavation. Each sub-expedition unearthed new artifacts and information, which when examined and decoded led to additional new sites and new insights into previously unearthed artifacts. Occasionally photographs would come back from the lab showing people and markings that hadn’t been visible when the photo was taken. The spiritualists and astral travelers of the Isynwill Foundation performed seances and rituals on the artifacts as well, which revealed more clues. (In-game we were expected to take the insights of the spiritualists as seriously as those of the archaeologists and linguists.) Each new clue led us closer to the lost city of Zerzura.

But there were also forces trying to stop us from reaching our destination. We found evidence of recent rituals in the desert, with protective amulets and messages of warning, indicating that the local people were opposed to our mission. Our supply caravan vanished, leaving only a skeleton gnawed clean by beetles and a letter demanding that we turn back. Ancient documents, when translated, warned of a nameless evil that should not be disturbed. The spirit of the great pharaoh also warned us not to open the gate. But did we listen? Heck no! Every warning made us still more determined to overcome all obstacles and achieve our goal. “To Zerzura!” was our toast and our watchword.

Each of us was provided with a diary in which to record our progress, but we were instructed not to turn each page before it was time, because the diary also included pre-written entries that told us how to behave as we drew closer and closer to our goal… and descended into madness. We knew from the beginning that we would all go mad, but each of us had our own path and our own timeline. My own madness took the form of the increasingly insistent voice of my dead college girlfriend — a woman with whom I and one of the other characters had both been in love back then — calling me a coward for having abandoned her and demanding that I apologize. So I repeatedly dropped to my knees in the sand and apologized tearfully to someone who wasn’t there.

Late in the first day in the desert we received a packet of letters and newspapers from home, which of course had significant news for just about everyone. In my case it was a news article indicating that the parents of my dead girlfriend, acting on new information, had exhumed her body and discovered that she had not died of a fever but of poison! I sought out the other character who had known her back then to deliver the news, which led to an extremely fraught and accusatory conversation in which many old wounds were reopened… and then suddenly her demeanor changed, and I realized I was talking not to my colleague but to our departed lover, who was speaking from Beyond through my colleague’s mouth. (My colleague was from the Isynwill Foundation and for her to be taken over by a spirit was not entirely unexpected.) She repeated her accusations of my cowardice and betrayal; tearfully I insisted that I had loved her and would do anything to make up for the harm I had done. “Avenge me!” she said. “How? When?” “When it is time, you will know.” Then she went calm and said “It has been so long since I have had a body,” then reached out and touched my cheek. “I recognize that touch,” I said, and collapsed in a flood of real tears. The scene — entirely improvised by both of us — had played out with such reality and intensity that I was completely overcome.

When I recovered myself I discovered that my colleague had passed out and now lay completely insensate on the sand. Others came by, attracted by the noise we’d made, and attempted to revive her, to no avail. Eventually members of the Legion physically carried her to the medical tent, where she was attended by both Legion doctors and Isynwill psychics. “How long was she under the spirit’s control?” I was asked. “It felt like 20-30 minutes.” “What? Ten minutes is the limit! She could die! What were you doing, running a seance without support!” “It wasn’t supposed to be a seance! I had no idea this would happen!” Eventually they told me to go to the mess tent and get something to eat while they continued to tend to my colleague. Half an hour later she showed up at the mess tent, demanding to know what had happened. She remembered none of it.

After my head had cleared I considered what I’d learned, using both in-game and out-of-game information. If I were to avenge her during the game, that implied that the murderer was someone who was present in the Sahara… and my colleague and I were the only characters who shared that bit of backstory. So, I concluded, it must have been my colleague who had poisoned our mutual girlfriend, jealous that she had loved me more than her, and “when it was time” she would, I guessed, confess the act and I would be called upon to avenge her. But could I really take a living person’s life on the say-so of a ghost? I met with my colleague’s player out-of-character and discussed the mechanics of a choking scenario. (There are stage combat techniques to create an impressive choke without risk of harm to anyone.) We were both familiar with these techniques and discussed time, place, and boundaries. And then I asked “So… did you kill her?” “What?” she replied, completely blindsided.

It turned out that the whole “avenge me” thing had been something the other player had improvised, not something from her diary or character sheet! So I reconfigured our confrontation, instead simply meeting her in-character to tearfully discuss our mutual lost love and discuss the fact that sometimes “vengeful spirits” were not actually who they claimed to be. We had a very sweet reconciliation on a dune and stared off into the sunset side by side.

Meanwhile, we drew ever closer to Zerzura. On the second day in the desert we set off across the dunes, a two-hour walk standing in for a fourteen-day trek, following clues found in a newly discovered diary from the previous, lost expedition. Our baggage followed, on a caravan of actual camels. And then we arrived at the previous expedition’s camp, which stood empty and untouched. There we found additional documents revealing the previous expedition’s fate and outlining the final rituals to open the gate to Zerzura! All we had to do was wait for the stars to align.

By this point I, both in-character and out, had what I’d describe as “senioritis,” which is to say that I was no longer paying a lot of attention to my job or interpersonal relationships but was prepared to see out whatever came next. We’d come this far, and turning back was not really an option. My partner and fellow player Amy mused out-of-character that we might possibly be in an actual cult, and at that point I couldn’t say for sure that wasn’t the case.

The sun went down and the stars came out, a vast and spectacular desert sky including the Milky Way and numerous shooting stars. We gathered in a circle and began chanting words in a long-dead language. And then…

Okay, I did say at the top of this report that there would be spoilers. I even wrote up a description of the finale. But I feel that, out of respect to the organizers, I should keep that information to myself. If you really need to know what happened, send me a private message or email. Suffice it to say that it was spectacular and a quite satisfactory ending to an amazing LARP.

And no one lived happily ever after.