Harry Potter Fandom - Roleplaying Games

Roleplaying Games

Roleplaying is a central feature of the Harry Potter fandom. There are two primary forms: internet-based roleplay and live-action roleplay, or LARP.

LARPing often involves re-enacting or creating an original Quidditch team. Match rules and style of play vary among fandom events, but they are generally kept as close as possible to the sport envisioned by Rowling. The 2006 Lumos symposium included a Quidditch tournament played in water. More common are ground-based games such as the handball style developed by USA Team Handball and featured at the MuggleNet-sponsored Spellbound event, as well as the Muggle Quidditch style played intramurally at Millikin University (at left). This version of quidditch has grown past intramural play, is far from LARPing, and has an international governing body, the IQA.

Internet-based roleplay tries to simulate the Hogwarts experience. Most sites are forum-based, such as Vault 713, emphasizing taking classes taught by staff members in order for the players to earn points for their respective houses. Some internet-based roleplay sites go more in depth into canon and storylines, and do not specifically rely on posting as the only method for gaining house points while others have expanded to include activities such as Quidditch, dueling, and board-wide plots. Examples would be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one of the longest running forum-based HP RPGs, which has been online since 2000, and Enchanted Hogwarts, which has been online since 2001.

2007 saw the launch of World of Hogwarts, a completely free MMORPG Harry Potter roleplaying game in Second Life, set ten years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Here, roleplayers can create an avatar and interact with other students, attend lessons organized by other roleplayers, play Quidditch, sit for their exams, earn and lose points for their house, visit Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the Forbidden Forest, get a job at the Ministry of Magic, explore several secret passages within the castle, and even immerse themselves into intricate and well-composed storyline plots that have, through time, grown into the canon rules of the game.

One of the main role-playing sites is Enchanted Hogwarts. EH focuses on inviting one into the world of Hogwarts. Everyone must register so that they may be sorted into an appropriate house. Interaction has always been a key emphasis of the site, but it is primarily focussed on the development of the writing and analytical skills of its members and is set in a unique Alternate Universe, which means that members are able to play as canon characters who have died in canon, and are able to alter them a little as long as their new actions remain in-character.

Another Role-playing site is a branch of MuggleNet, Mugglenet Interactive. On this site there are many forums for taking classes that earn you Galleons, Sickles and Knuts, and discussion boards about the books, among other things. The role playing on this site allows you to create a character which you can make storylines for and interact with other members. There are several landscapes on this site, including Diagon Alley, St. Mungo's Hospital, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, and other wizarding places. A main forum board is that of the Gryffindor Common Room, where many players go to meet other characters and become involved in the daily drama that occurs there.

A website created by ISO Interactive, called the Chamber of Chat is a free online interactive virtual world under a MMO format. Although not a full MMORPG format, Chamber of Chat is set up with 3D virtual chatrooms and avatars where fans can socially interact with each other in Pictionary and Harry Potter Trivial games or participate in discussion groups about Harry Potter or Film media or perform plays as a theater group to other fans as audience. They hold special community event such as Harry Potters Birthday or Halloween and have seasonal house competitions. Fans are able to create their own avatars, collect or be rewarded coins to purchase furniture items for their own "clubhouse". However, the website emphasizes more social interaction between fans' avatars to stimulate the Hogwarts student experience. "Chamber of Chat is a graphical Social Virtual World with a few Facebook plug-ins. The Harry Potter Virtual World is designed for fans. This give users the feeling that they are interacting in the actual 3D world. You can hang out with other students, relax in the common room, mingle at the pub, play games like Pictionary and even download cool looking wallpapers." On 19 April 2007, Chamber of Chat was awarded Adobe Site of the day. Chamber of chat has also been awarded a place among the SmartFoxServer Showcase. "Chamber of Chat is an MMO community inspired to the magic worlds of the Harry Potter saga. The application is a great example of integration between Director/Shockwave (client) and SmartFoxServer PRO.". Chamber of Chat has been a long time associated branch of The Leaky network and although as part of the network with The Leaky Cauldron, Pottercast and "Ask Peeves" search engine, it was ranked number two behind Indiana Jones's TheRaider.Net out of 25 essential fansites of "The Best of the Web" by Entertainment Weekly in December 2007.

Numerous sites have cropped up that are set in the Harry Potter world, but not at Hogwarts, giving the opportunity for more creativity as authors roleplay at schools outside of those mentioned in the books. While these schools follow canon, the extent to which they do so varies from school to school. Examples include Durmstrang Institute, Hogwarts New Zealand, and Rocky Mountain International School for Magical Enlightenment. Wizarding colleges have also sprung up on the internet as well. The first example, unlike its counterparts, provides an interactive game along side the role-playing environment where students can buy and sell wizard items, and make potions.

Other sites use modified versions of phpBB that allow for a certain level of interactive roleplaying and are what is commonly referred to as "forum-based roleplaying". Interactive gaming can include player versus player features, a form of currency for making purchases in stores, and non-player characters such as monsters that must be fought to gain levels and experience points. However, these features are more prevalent in games that are not forum-based. Advancement in such games is usually dependent on live chat, multiplayer cooperation, and fighting as opposed to taking classes or simply posting to earn points for one's "house"; like at Hogwarts, players in forum-based games are sometimes sorted into a different group distinguishing different values within a person.