All About (Not) Designing a Character

mostlylarp:

I always admire people that are able to create deep, intricate character backgrounds and conjure up fictional personalities before taking themselves into a LARP.

I also admire people who make even a half-attempt at doing so, or care enough to put in any effort at all.

I am totally not one of those people. The usual helpful guides to making up character histories and personalities fall completely flat for me:

"What does your character want in life? What motivates them? What is repellant or upsetting to them?"

How the heck should I know? I don’t know what their life was like, I haven’t been there yet!

I think I have this difficulty because I do not see characters as discrete entities, with traits and qualities that are wholly contained within them and which exist regardless of the setting they find themselves in. For me, a character’s actual life-shaping experiences and memories mostly do not begin until I start playing them. I can’t decide what a character’s personality will be like until I understand the forces that shaped them into that person, and I can’t know that until I’ve got a grasp of the setting of the LARP.

Creating the character of Vladimir, the person I PC as in Madrigal, has been a four-year process that continues to evolve. Madrigal is an interesting case because, by design, it reveals very little information about the setting in the rulebook. Since I rely on knowledge of the setting to define a character, I had very little to go on when creating Vladimir. At the time, I didn’t even know for sure that I was going to continue LARPing. I pretty much knew three things when coming into Madrigal as Vladimir:

1. Vladimir was a Ghul, a race of cursed humans who are weak in the daylight and undergo a horrible transformation into a stronger Undead form every night. This happens because of time spent (usually unwillingly) in the cursed land of Onhur.
2. Vladimir was a Warlock, an arcane spellcaster who channels spells through a bladed weapon and fights in melee combat. I made this choice for the very in-game reason that I have crappy aim and can’t throw a packet to save my life.
3. Vladimir was a new member of House Beacon, a company of ridiculous but highly effective mercenaries.

Now, that’s much better than nothing to go on when making up a character, but as far as personality goes Vladimir was basically just me, my real-life personality, plus those three details.

In the future, if I play another LARP that has more setting details for me to work with, I might be able to come up with something more concrete before I start playing. But I can say with confidence that jumping into a LARP and letting your experiences shape your character as you live their life is a very entertaining and rewarding experience.