07/07/01: Room Review: Magic and Muggles!
by Sass

I decided to begin my monthly Reviews of IMC with a newer room. It recently came to my attention that there is a room that has come into full blossom in a short amount of time. This room is Magic and Muggles.

When I first read the announcement in the forum about the room opening up, I thought to myself ‘A room based on a children’s book, this will NEVER fly!’ I could not have been more wrong.

A friend of mine pointed out that the books were good, and since my son was reading them I might wish to find out what it was that held his interest. Well, guilt generally works with mothers, so of course I did. From the first book I was hooked! I realized how badly I wanted to play in the room. In a matter of a couple days I went from ‘this thing will never fly’ to ‘where can I apply!’

The world of Harry Potter contains wizards, witches, dragons, as well as other mystical creatures and people that you find in games such as D&D, but NOT in the D&D format! What makes the room different from other fantasy role playing rooms is the modern day setting in England. The location is a school for wizards and witches. If you have never read the books, the home page has good information on nearly everything you need to know. Reading the books is recommended if you want to have the full role playing experience.

The room itself has a staff who are very pleasant to work with. They are friendly, helpful and always willing to make the newcomer feel right at home and get them to join in. Perhaps this is one reason the room is doing so well? You can tell they are dedicated just by checking out their home page. The amount of time and effort put into making a page so nicely laid out shows the commitment of it’s staff. There is a vast amount of information on the page that helps enhance the role playing experience in the room.

I believe there are other things that contribute to the popularity of the room as well.
 
1) The majority of chatters in the room are all very knowledgeable on the books and helpful to the new comer who might not know much about the setting or the books.

2) The rooms rules, other than the basic IMC standards, are very basic and easy to follow. There is no role playing game system to follow, which makes it easier to role play for those who can not afford books nor have time to memorize a complicated systems.

3) It uses a different way to role play MAGIC! *grins* There are no books of spells to remember, no rolling system for dice, and yet it has a fairly firm base that is less haphazard than free style can be sometimes.

4) The main characters that are played here are CHILDREN! More mature chatters will find roleplaying a child an interesting experience. While there are adult characters played here, the children rule the room, character wise that is.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with one of the rooms hosts in order to find out a few things about the room such as who came up with the concept, why they thought it was a good idea, how they decided what the rules for such a room should be, etc. Check out my interview with the hosts in this month's zine!
 

Good review, but I still think my Colonel Sherman Potter PR is better. "Horsefeathers, Klinger!"