Into the Witcher School: An X-Teamer's Life Inside Live-Action Role-Play

Three days in a Polish castle. A halberd in hand. Hundreds of players in period costume pressing toward the front lines to the sound of drums. For Bartosz Król, that's not fantasy — it's a weekend well spent.

Król, an X-Teamer, has spent years as a regular participant in live-action role-playing events across Poland and beyond — from sprawling Warhammer battle LARPs with more than 700 participants to Great Gatsby-inspired fantasy LARPs set in 1920 with secret spies, dark rituals and superpowers woven through the plots. The scale and setting change, but the appeal is constant: the moment you step into character, the story stops being scripted.

In this story, Król breaks down what live-action role-play actually is, why The Witcher School stands out among the events he has attended and what it takes — in costume, in combat and in character — to make an immersive LARP work.

What Live-Action Role-Play Actually Is

LARP — Live Action Role Play — is a form of role-playing game where participants physically portray their characters in a fictional setting, improvising speech and movement in ways that resemble improvisational theatre. Events last anywhere from several hours to a couple of days. Most require players to dress as characters from an appropriate setting; fantasy is the most common, but historical, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi and modern variants all exist.

For Król, the draw has never been the setting itself — it's what happens inside it. "To me, LARPs have always been a chance to experience an adventure like a character from a movie or a book," he says. "Most of the games are designed to tell some sort of a story — your character is given a set of goals, relations and possible story arcs. But here's the thing — it's not scripted, so from the moment you start playing, you never know what happens."

That unpredictability is the whole point. Epic duels, romances, feasts, songs and dances are all on the table — none of them guaranteed, none of them planned. "I'm always fascinated what kind of stories will emerge," he says. "It's basically like you are transported to a different world for a couple of days."

The Witcher School — and the Prince Who Failed

Of all the events Król has attended, The Witcher School occupies a special place. It is one of the most prominent and detailed blockbuster LARPs in Poland. Participants from around the world travel to a Polish castle to train as a Witcher — one of the monster slayers from the Witcher universe — spending three days learning real skills including archery, fencing and smithing, participating in monster hunts and inhabiting a story set before the events of the Witcher books and games.

The event runs with hundreds of players and around two dozen supporting non-playable characters — NPCs — over three days. Król attended not as a regular player but as an NPC, helping the organizers run the game.

His character was Prince Jost: the king's nephew, a member of the Blue Stripes unit and an official envoy dispatched to negotiate a treaty with the Witcher School. "It was a fascinating story, full of twists and turns," he says. The mission, as it happened, did not go according to plan. The Witchers proved too proud to bend their knees to the King of Temeria. The game ended with Król's character tearing up the treaty and swearing the king's revenge.

Playing as an NPC shifted his experience considerably. Where a player drives their own storyline, an NPC's plots are largely assigned by the organizers — the role is closer to supporting actor than protagonist. "Many of my plots were assigned by the game organizers and I was tasked to entertain the players," he explains. It was a different kind of challenge, but a compelling one.

Soldiers, Thieves and Vampire Hunters

The Witcher School is the most detailed event Król has attended, but it is far from the only one that left a mark. His catalog of LARP characters spans genres and centuries.

BattleQuest is the biggest Polish LARP by headcount — over 700 participants — staged in a Warhammer setting where war and its surrounding politics are the primary focus. Not every participant has to fight; a neutral city trying to survive and profit from the conflict provided plenty of non-combat roles. Król went in as Kurt, a simple Empire soldier. "Equipped with my trusty halberd I went there mainly to experience soldiers life… and the game delivered," he says. "I was standing in the front lines fighting with Norsemen hordes, shouting orders with my fellow men, marching to the sound of the drums and trying to survive in the difficult time of war."

New Age: Tomorrow Never Dies transported him somewhere else entirely — fantasy 1920, loosely inspired by The Great Gatsby, in which all attendees were invited to the Great Gatsberg Breakfast to discuss culture and politics. Król played a famous illusionist and notorious robber. The game folded in secret spies, dark rituals and superpowers alongside its Gatsby-era pastiche. "The most important part was that it made me feel like I'm part of a movie," he says. Photos from that event are still archived on Facebook.

Beyond those two, there were others: Mir, a Game of Thrones-inspired LARP in an old Polish castle built around a turbulent wedding between two feuding families; Fantazjada, a historical drama set in a medieval city where he played a thief building a criminal organization; and Shadows of Poland, a vampire hunter tracking ancient monsters through a Polish city at night. Each one, Król says, gave him stories worth telling long after the costume came off.

Costumes, Combat and the Art of Making It Real

Behind every immersive LARP is a significant amount of preparation — and Król is candid about where his skills are strongest. He does not make his own costumes. He buys them from LARP shops and specialized crafters, a market large enough to stock everything from weapons and armor to fake blood, orc masks and latex prostheses.

But buying a costume is only part of the process. The conceptual work — deciding what kind of character to play and what they would realistically wear — takes its own kind of time. "I first start with concept arts," he says. "I spend a couple of hours looking for inspiration on the internet. And once this inspiration is found, then I have to make them real. Many costumes from games or movies are not particularly practical, so it requires some time to make them work in real life." Sourcing materials, finding the right details, fitting it all together: "It takes a long time, but the effect is really worth it."

On the battlefield, the experience is closer to what you might expect than you'd think. Latex weapons mean the hits do not hurt, but the emotions inside a LARP battle are genuine. "It's chaotic, there is a lot of shouting, but teamwork, equipment and morale are much more important than fencing skills," he says. "It's extremely fun — you really feel like you are part of the actual battle."

In Poland, the dominant convention is WYSIWYG — what you see is what you got — meaning mechanics are minimal and the weight falls on physical performance and roleplay commitment. At BattleQuest, three hits and you are out; protective equipment can factor in if the player judges it realistic. A hit that would not plausibly be survived means going down — "preferably with a lot of screaming" — and retreating to the back lines. Being knocked out of a battle is not the end of your character, though. At BattleQuest, players are wounded rather than killed, and the field medics waiting in their tent with fake blood and theatrical operations have their own moment to perform.

For Król, that combination — the preparation, the character, the chaos of battle and the stories that emerge from none of it being scripted — is what keeps drawing him back. There is always, as X-Team's Season 3 theme had it, another LARP.

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