What Is The Magic Circle?

This is the place I natter about larp theory.

I expect to post intermittently here, when I have things to say, and not when I don't.
(I'm spelling it 'larp' because not capitalizing it saves me the trouble of holding the shift key, which saves my wrists, which lets me write more.  I use larp to mean all larp, even North American boffer larp, not just Nordic larp.  I don't use it out of any particular agreement with the other principles of the Nordic larp community, although I don't necessarily disagree with them either.)

I trust that you know what larp is. Otherwise Lizzie Stark's What Is Larp? is a good primer.
I've played some larps and written some larps and run some larps and talked a lot about larps, and I have Opinions, Dammit.  That's all that qualifies me to write this. I come out of the MIT Assassins' Guild, and that's greatly influenced how I think about larp, although I've primarily written games for Intercon.

The magic circle in larp is literally the space within which the game takes place, but it refers to a conceptual as well as a physical space.  Inside the magic circle, a plastic toy gun is a Beretta 9mm, a sorcerer can throw a fireball from her bare hands, and your college roommate really is dying of cancer.  Inside the magic circle, the rules of reality as we commonly know them are suspended in favor of the rules of the game's reality.

The Magic Circle is a blog about how we create that space; how we construct meaning inside that space, outside that space, and on the interface; and what motivates us to do so.

Come, step into the circle.