Raitwin Brunnwacht is a fictional LARP-character I created and have been playing for more than 10 years. He is a wizard specialised in divination and astrology.He is also a member of the Societas Hesindiarum Intelligentiae and, therefore, a white (or good) wizard in the classical sense. I am regularly attending the LARPing-convention EPIC EMPIRES in Der Kesselgasse.

Why do I add this to my research webpage?
In a podcast about the role play setting DSA there was a problem stated, which is related to my research interests. To understand one must know, that there is a trend in LARPing (and roleplaying in general) away from white to black magic. The main reason for this is the fascination players have for demons and the undead. White wizards however ignore (or even ban) dealing with such creatures. Sometimes non-playable white wizards also justify their ignorance with an affiliation to a religion, which makes them unattractive to modern players. But there are also other reasons why white wizards vanish from LARPing-conventions.

One must understand that there is an immanent necessity for a clear demarcation from other character-concepts, when playing a concept of a fictional character, due to dramaturgical reasons. Many players struggle with demarcating a white wizard from a black wizard by other means than religion. But a demarcation by religion confuses a white wizard with a cleric, i.e. a priestish mage that uses holy magic.

The podcast identified this struggle correctly as a lack of understanding what the arcane sciences are in a fantasy setting. Because, since white wizards are defined negatively as opposed to certain magicial practices, that are performed by black wizards, and opposed to unscientific magic like holy magic, there is a pressure on white wizards to come up with their individual positive accounts which fit into the space between these two well-known concepts. Since in DSA there is also a group of grey wizards present, the demarcation is even harder to make. That this overburdens wizard players is shown by the extensive amount of taxonomies of demons in in-game fantasy literature, i.e. an arcane tome is 90% of the time a list of demons. 

I was very unhappy with the misrepresentation of white wizards as religious fanatics by other players and their general vanishing from LARPing-conventions. Hence, I tried to develop an arcane science that gives player an idea for playing a white wizard convincingly. Of course, this is where renaissance magic comes in. My basic idea was the following. I took:

Then I formulated an arcane science in a spirit matching the DSA setting. An outline of this arcane science was published as an e-book by Ulisses Spiele and is available for free. I also produced three books on white magic for the purpose of LARPing (30 pages each) and I pro-actively argued as Raitwin Brunnwacht in in-game newspapers that there is a coherent body of teachings about white magic:

Since the trend to black wizards causes the view, that all wizards are evil and should be burned at the stake, playing a white wizard becomes virtually impossible. I argued against these tendencies here:

If someone is interested in what I have produced, then just send me an e-mail. But the in-game literature is in German and my dyslexia affected the texts.