I’m going to Wizard College in June.

Many of us grew up with the Harry Potter books, wishing for a Hogwarts Letter. Or we read the Wizard of Earthsea books. Maybe we read The Magicians and wished we too could take one of those exams.

Now I get to run away to Wizard College, and for 3 days, I’ll be a student again.

I had a chance to interview Maury Brown, one half of the Learn Larp company which is producing New World Magischola, a 4 day LARP at the University of Richmond this June and July which took Kickstarter by storm.  It made 300,00 dollars.

Learn Larp is a company built by Maury Brown and Ben Morrow, and they both have strong backgrounds in education, LARP, role-playing games,  literature, and a certain amount of business acumen.  Having met them, they also have a sharp understanding of what needs to happen to make this game successful for as many players as possible. Their approach to New World Magischola isn’t just unique in that they are making it a massive sandbox for players to jump into, but they’re making it inclusive & accessible for players with little LARP experience, to players with disabilities, to players with nonstandard gender identities, to LGBTQIA players, players of color.

As a disabled gamer I couldn’t be more excited if I tried. See, Maury shared with me a document about the queer feminist design principles which they used to create the game. From the use of a gender-neutral term for magic users (Wizard) to diverse identities both within the fictional universe and the game itself, and the playable characters having been written so that they can be played as any gender the player chooses. This means the game doesn’t police gender binaries!

One of the first questions I asked Maury was about the inclusion of disabled and transgender characters. Both of these groups get the same question: Can you be “fixed” with magic? And the answer in both cases is no. “There are ways that magic can enhance or be used to help {characters with disabilities} but the idea that a non-disabled body or a non-cisgendered body is the standard is problematic.”

This thread  of inclusion is thorough and allows for a wide variety of characters, experiences, and cultures. It can be seen in the materials that they have already put out on the website. New World Magischola is a North American world built on North American history, lore and issues. Unlike many imagined magical societies, this one is built directly on top of the issues facing the geographical land it lives in, meaning that players must grapple with the difficult histories of the mundane world and how it interacts with magic. An example of this can be found in the Baja Province materials, in which Santa Maria (The current leader of the Flower Mountain Escuela) began healing AIDS patients in the mundane world despite the laws and social norms the Magimundi enforces to keep out of Mundane issues.

Brown tells me that some people have dropped their pledges, or expressed concern that this game is not “for” them because of the feminist principles which have been laid out here. The fact of the matter is, this game is for everyone who wants to play it – and more importantly, everyone can find themselves in this world no matter who they are. (and before you ask, yes, there are some tickets available!)

As an historian by training, I praised Brown for their layering of issues in the history of the United States with the imagined history of Wizards in our country. She laughed and told me “Sometimes we wish we hadn’t done that” because of course, once you include the complications of the real world “There is so much more to take into consideration!” Certainly, it’s easier to just ignore everything that happens in the real world, but as I noted to her during the interview, it creates a more intense and rich world for the players.

Within the Facebook groups that have popped up since the Kickstarter started, I have been observing the effect of a bunch of people who love the imagined worlds of our teen years and even childhoods getting to throw themselves into a sandbox. The game is built so that we can all have a say in the world that we live in for the three days that we’re in character, with limits of course. As Maury said “Choices that participants make create the story, and what they say and do matters. There’s an important level of agency that we give players, and we build a framework for them to play within and an environment where they feel safe enough to take risks and see where the story goes.”

As I wrapped up my interview with Maury, I asked her about my plans to incorporate my actual disability into the world of the game, and whether or not I could have a service wyvern. For a minute, we negotiated how it would work, deciding that young wyverns are small enough that they could be trained for service, but that they would retire when they get too big.

Mine will be named Theodosia. And now I have to build her. I can’t wait to keep up with the world that Maury and Ben are building for us, an imagined playground where for a few days at least, we’re going to be in the world we always dreamed of. We’re wizards!