Contributor: JJ
Submission/Title: Character Design/Development
I like hearing about the processes through which other people come up with their characters. Not stats, so much, as the concept for the character itself, mostly because I've seen a great number of different ways that people approach character building, and I'm hoping a few other people might be willing to share how they do it. I'll stick with PC characters, because the process of creating NPCs is an entirely different beast.
For me, I find that I tend to pick a couple of base concepts that I need/want to start with for OOG reasons, and build from that, coming up for IG reasons why the OOG things I want to happen have happened, and how my character got to where she is now, and that aside from 'I will be a healer' 'I want to hit things', tend to leave statting for the end of the process.
Omi, a human healer, was the first character I'd come up with for any game whatsoever. I didn't really know how to do this larp thing; I was familiar with roleplaying, but only playing characters that had been given to me, I had pretty mediocre costuming (and was terrified at the idea of trying to paint anything on my face), and I certainly didn't know anything about the game world. The OOG concept for her was pretty much "I'm not sure I understand this, so I'm not even going to try to pretend that I do". So she became an ignorant farmgirl who'd been dragged into adventuring by a combination of coincidence and bad/good luck, with no sense of fashion and a fair amount of curiosity about nearly everything. I ended up filling in some minor details (like, oh, what country she was from) years later, but by then, she was pretty well established, personality-wise.
Fathom was my first attempt at making a character that was part of an established group. OOG concept was pretty much 'try new things'. I'd been larping for a while at that point, and wanted to do a bunch of things I'd seen from the plot side but never gotten to do myself. I'd never been part of an established team before (my first team that Omi was part of literally met each other on the road a few days before we hit game); I really wanted to play someone who got to fight with a weapon; I wanted to try playing a non-human and I got excited to explore religion in the game, since the first game I played doesn't do religion. So I ended up with an Adelith (water-aligned race) priest of the god of the oceans who ran around with a mercenary company hitting things with a polearm. Working all of that into one character history was a bit challenging, but fun, and I did have fun with all the new stuff.
Submission/Title: Character Design/Development
I like hearing about the processes through which other people come up with their characters. Not stats, so much, as the concept for the character itself, mostly because I've seen a great number of different ways that people approach character building, and I'm hoping a few other people might be willing to share how they do it. I'll stick with PC characters, because the process of creating NPCs is an entirely different beast.
For me, I find that I tend to pick a couple of base concepts that I need/want to start with for OOG reasons, and build from that, coming up for IG reasons why the OOG things I want to happen have happened, and how my character got to where she is now, and that aside from 'I will be a healer' 'I want to hit things', tend to leave statting for the end of the process.
Omi, a human healer, was the first character I'd come up with for any game whatsoever. I didn't really know how to do this larp thing; I was familiar with roleplaying, but only playing characters that had been given to me, I had pretty mediocre costuming (and was terrified at the idea of trying to paint anything on my face), and I certainly didn't know anything about the game world. The OOG concept for her was pretty much "I'm not sure I understand this, so I'm not even going to try to pretend that I do". So she became an ignorant farmgirl who'd been dragged into adventuring by a combination of coincidence and bad/good luck, with no sense of fashion and a fair amount of curiosity about nearly everything. I ended up filling in some minor details (like, oh, what country she was from) years later, but by then, she was pretty well established, personality-wise.
Fathom was my first attempt at making a character that was part of an established group. OOG concept was pretty much 'try new things'. I'd been larping for a while at that point, and wanted to do a bunch of things I'd seen from the plot side but never gotten to do myself. I'd never been part of an established team before (my first team that Omi was part of literally met each other on the road a few days before we hit game); I really wanted to play someone who got to fight with a weapon; I wanted to try playing a non-human and I got excited to explore religion in the game, since the first game I played doesn't do religion. So I ended up with an Adelith (water-aligned race) priest of the god of the oceans who ran around with a mercenary company hitting things with a polearm. Working all of that into one character history was a bit challenging, but fun, and I did have fun with all the new stuff.
Mary, a human doctor/pirate, was created entirely in response to a request from some friends that I come play a healer for their pirate crew, because there were too many of them and only one healer, and because they were having a ton of fun with the game. Somewhat amusingly, the OOG concept for her was 'Not Omi!'. I was worried that me playing an OSG ('one sword guy') healer would end up with me automatically reprising Omi, so a lot of Mary was designed to guide me away from accidentally acting like Omi. Omi was pretty goodly, Mary ended up a half-step away from sociopath. Omi had a good childhood and a big family, Mary was an orphan with a traumatic past, and a chip the size of a ship on her shoulder. Omi nearly always used her sword for defense only, Mary ran around the battlefield (somewhat stupidly) chasing things with her sword. It was fun, but definitely a challenge. One other thing that I think probably strongly influenced the design of that character was the knowledge that it was a short-term game, so I was free to try some things that I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull off/enjoy (like giving her a damaged voice that I continually had to remind myself of), because I knew I wouldn't have to keep it up very long.
How about other people?
Simple to follow, and honest. Please leave comments below.
This is perfect, and I appreciate your input. There are other LARP people, who know who they are, I'd love to see contribute to this. They are busy. I understand.
ReplyDeleteI'll get things rolling with Esme and Tev. Esme was a classic amateur LARPer experience. To date... her character history is almost completely wrong. It has not been re-attempted since day one. (Maybe kinda for CP.) It is all lies. She has developed into an equally melodramatic character, but there are big sensical differences that fit her into the LARP world much better.
Esme started with my now-husband and now-best friend trying to make me a character. I was trying to graduate from Bowdoin, and didn't really care. They tried. They really did. I did not, though I DID write a character history. In which I did everything wrong. Including IG taboos. (And I whined. I really did.) I went to game. I didn't want to be withdrawn and elegant. I wanted to be loud and fun and witty. I wanted to adopt an obnoxious accent. I wanted to fight and run around. I *did* want to sing. So the awesome plot OK'd my best friend's rapid rewrite of Esme, and now she's the gushy, nosy, bleeding heart with no fear of spiders that you all love-to-hate. She's a mess. She wears weird combinations of what I wear in real life. Relative to other people, she has more CP than I care to admit. She may perm, and I will be devastated. Whatever. I enjoy her, and I really enjoy being a spider-woman. Don't dunk me in the white spring.
Now Tev. Oh Tev. Tev is my favorite. She is near and dear to my heart. She was well thought-out in a crazy kind of way. We started with an aesthetic we wanted. We used the not-so-complicated Mirror, Mirror system. We were flexible, creative, and cooperated as a trio. Tev, Mushir, and Balti came together, more or less, in a well-reasoned villain narrative.
Tev wears almost exactly what I wear with silly make-up. Her weapons and stuff are getting cooler. I buy her gaudy jewelry. I draw her. My husband tries to make me talk in her voice.
She is indulgent, apathetic, and pissy-all-the-time. I have a great time. I love her character build.(I got rid of unleashed two hours into the LARP. Sorry everyone.) She is mostly fluff, but not really. She is everything I want a fae to be. She is not sexy; she is gross and weird. She makes people uncomfortable. She doesn't care. Neither do I.
Is Tev deep? No. But she's fun. She's me. She has a rich character history, a good build, and a lot of potential for depth. I'm not good a roleplaying deep stuff. You've suffered it. I've suffered it. I can write you drama, but I'm not great at it. But, I do like to think. I will use art, clothing, and my knowledge of historical periods to flesh out a character.
I tend to start with a concept and then add in the details saving the stats for last.
ReplyDelete1) My first character, Jericho, way back in 1989, was just an attempt to join the rest of my D&D group in bringing our characters from the tabletop to this brand new thing called NERO. I made him as close to my tabletop character as I could get.
Realistically, there wasn't a lot of roleplay needed for Jericho. He was really just a super-goodly version of me, but at the time of creation I really had no idea how this whole LARP thing worked.
2) After Jericho permed 16 years later :-( I wanted to stay with my team but not be seen as a repurposed Jericho. I did *NOT* want anyone to see me and think of my previous character. I also wanted to explore something totally different, a social experiment if you will and thus Kumir was born.
Almost every game has the plot where a slaver comes in with a slave or slaves and the PCs make it their mission to screw that slaver and free the slave(s). When the plot is over everybody is happy. Except, what happens to a poor slave with no skills, no decision making abilities, no way to support themselves, turned loose in a society that doesn't want them to be what they are? Ever wonder that?
I did, so I decided Kumir would be one of those and I'd stick the PCs with their very own ex-slave to live with the consequences. I had a concept. I wrote a history (which from my days on plot I was able to tie into stuff two other PCs had worked on) that accounted for forty+ years of slavery with layers for the other PCs to uncover IG and made him a Scavenger so he would be totally different looking from Jericho.
Characteristically, Kumir is humble and subservient in both manner and posture.
Finally, I made him a straight healer with no add-ons just to see what it was like because Jericho had been such a diverse character I wanted to see how a streamlined one played out.
3) Zephyr - Well, you've seen the whole history now, but how did I come up with it? I was moving from Madrigal staff to Madrigal PC and again I didn't want people thinking of my Madrigal character when they saw me, so again I picked a makeup heavy race.
I read through the race packages and found one that fit the bill and interested me. I made sure my character would have a reason for a heavy musical background because all of my characters are musical in some way. I love the Troubadour package.
I decided I was going to make the character completely geared toward one particular thing, in this case air/wind and thus added in Stormdancer. I pictured him as somewhat light and airy in how he comes across to people, maybe even flighty on first meeting.
Many, many thoughts, but I'll try to be concise and stick to a few.
ReplyDeleteZoe: you're not the first and you won't be the last to throw taboos in your character history. I don't think it's necessarily all that explicitly obvious that certain details are just Not Okay in the Accelerant system. If you ever hear the phrase "tickled on the altar of Sereness," well, that's shorthand for a very smart player having Gone There on day one and having been told "no, nonono, 'fraid that did not happen," for example.
I tend to build (player) characters similarly to JJ. I do have a "flavor" first (angsty? mischievous? etc), then I sort of get the basic concept for the character and stats / race / culture that attract me at the same time. Concept is far more important to me than actual stats, mind you, but there is a process where preferences on either concept or stats will sort of feed each other -- after having considered whether I'll be going for or against type (foofy Trechelians are more likely to be highborn than beastmasters at Madrigal, for ex).
In some ways I'm not sure the process for creating NPCs isn't even easier, in that it can be more like crafting a puzzle piece to fit into the story. This is the story. This is the feel that I want. Here are a couple of details that might be unexpected. Bam! Done.
Of course, on the NPC side, there's even more consideration of what might be needed in a role than there is on the PC side (and I recommend not erring too much on the side of what's "needed" as a player character, since you may be apt to have A LOT less fun).
Trying to work ahead of time to craft both a team identity AND a bunch of PC identities that might mesh well is, I think, the greatest challenge -- not least cos honestly, YOU JUST NEVER KNOW how everything's going to work out once it hits the field in ANY case. You can have ideas, you can even have good guesses; you will never truly know until it's all in motion, and that's even before any character development on anyone's part even begins!
Okay, NOT so concise, but there it is. ;)
(oh why must you give me hell, OpenID?? I wonder who I'll end up posting as!)
I love how logical some people can be with character creation. For me, it's a perfect storm of events that has to come together to make a character. If friends wanted me to PC with them at a LARP, they needed to tell me well in advance while some of them could slap something awesome together after an hour of reading the new rules. Myself--and maybe it's the right-brained artist coming out--I have to wait for the character concept to "come to me". And like JJ, it's always the concept first, and I let someone who has a head for rules help me sort out stats much later.
ReplyDeleteSure, I read up on the game, its history, etc. A few things will stick out as interesting to try, then lodge themselves in the back of my mind. Sometime later, I might see a character on TV or in a book that goes along with the same idea or might be completely different and spark my interest in another direction. I'll chat with my friends, who have had their ideas sorted out already, and see if there's a player class that's missing, like the healer or the front-liner. Sometimes that influences my final decision, but not always. I'll bounce ideas that have been marinating off my creative husband, everything from vague concepts to specific backstory points and quirks without committing to anything. Through all the spaghetti throwing, eventually something sticks that I really, really like. And kapoof! A character. This process can take anywhere from a few days to a couple months, depending what my deadlines are.
When I first started roleplaying, I liked to play things that I thought were "exotic". Not super dark and tortured past exotic or special snowflake exotic, but characters very different from real life and from each other. These days I like to explore "real" people--with quirks and personalities born out of their history--who end up in the weird situations that can only happen in a game world.
I try really hard to get into the game world-- let's be honest, it's not well-published. This is a problem, and it really involves a lot of hard work on the part of everybody. That's why I do this.
ReplyDeleteMaking five characters is unnecessary.
Making three is fine. Dreamy, purple, stupid do-whatever you want to do drama fiend? Get it out of your system. Go play Mirror, Mirror. Drive Rob, Mickey, and crew nuts.
Realistic, slightly boring, and slightly complicated character that adheres to the system? Yes. Read a folk story-- get inspired. Watch a movie. Listen to a song. (Dude, don't be sexist or racist which is my soap-box kettle of fish.) Plot people will make it work. Friends will make it work. Go witch-fox-gob it up.
Have a back-up "if I perm which I won't character." This one plays with system mechanics. This one uses things you have. This one doesn't necessarily have a background that is interesting, but really plays into the dynamics of the system. (This is Tev. This is not Esme.) Knowing the rules is fun, and does not have to be obsessive.
Chris is good at this, and has a mystic worked out well. He is also really good at building characters for fun. Please ask him for help.
And someone awesome has told tales of the Sereness tickle. Plot is good and great and understanding.
ReplyDeleteZeddy: "Have a back-up "if I perm which I won't character""
ReplyDeleteI recommend this if you at all suspect you might. I had a very strong feeling that I was going to perm a character at a specific event 9 months before that event. I started a new character (Kumir) and had him in reserve. Lo and behold, I permed the character at that event, as predicted.
If I hadn't already invested myself in the new character, I'm not sure I'd have continued playing. Some people say it's no big deal. That was not my experience at all and developing a new character in that frame of mind would not have happened.
This is a fun topic for any RP based activity - even my D&D folks have a ton of fun explaining their "way" that characters come into their heads, and it's so awesome to read them!
ReplyDeleteIt always follows the same path for me:
1. Plan around the game hosts/players
2. Think of one "50,000 foot view" definition of the character to stay inside
3. Only pick abilities that support #1 and #2 for flavor and not necessarily functionality. (statting is always last)
4. A name that specifically supports the end result
So being new and wanting to know more about everything, I wanted a character that had an excuse to go out of their way and talk to people. BUT, also needed a way to always be "doing" something. That way if I found no one for my character to "hang out with" per say, I'd still have a way to keep myself entertained.
Last but not least, I needed a story excuse for why the character knew next to nothing about the game world. That way if I mis-spoke, or didn't react properly to some element of the world, it would be easy for other players/NPCs to write off as "because she didn't know better" in character and not just out of game.
Stats are the last thing done usually. The most important aspect of a given stat is how well it supports the persona. In any game, it is completely common for me to pick an ability just for the flavor and not because it is actually functional. However, Mira is the first time I ever made a character that proved completely unplayable for me and had to be restatted after first game.
Nothing against the original header, but I realized quickly that the "role" of that header wasn't for me. A complete "re roll" was available, but nothing about her story would be damaged by changing headers. It was important to me that she retain what she'd learned first gather, retained the relationships she'd made, and the whole "scribe" thing was working out well.
Honestly that she was a scribe was only secondary, but has grown to be a huge part of the character. It started after the first night. Everything was so cool that I couldn't sleep and had to jot down what I'd seen to remember it later, complete with sketches and everything. That journal was *supposed* to only be a prop, and storing the writing quills in the brim of my hat turned out to be quite functional. So much for "decorative only" hehehe.
Most popular post. JJ is great. You guys are wordy and awesome.
ReplyDeleteWhat do I think? I want fake polar bear pants, matching jacket, so Tev can have a great time at MM's winter LARP.
New info from Mickey. They're talking winter LARP. They're talking new LARPcast. They're talking Invictus, and I'm glad.
I shall keep my eye out -(what an interesting expression)- for fake polar bear pants. After that, the matching jacket should be easy. Actually - Chris can make this stuff no problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm late to the party by like 5 months, but whatever.
ReplyDeleteVladimir is the result of being convinced to try out this crazy hobby at a drunken New Year's party. I've always been more game-oriented than RP-oriented, so the main part of creating Vladimir was basically a matter of skimming the rulebook for what I thought would be fun to play (no small feat when you've never seen the gameplay up close).
I settled on the half-undead Ghul for my race, because I'd recently done a (very effective) Joker costume for Halloween and wanted to use up the makeup I had.
I chose a melee spellcasting class (which is a Warlock in Madrigal) because I knew already that my aim is crap and I didn't want to make packets, but I love magic in fantasy games too much to be a straight-up warrior.
And for personality... well, Vladimir was and mostly continues to be "Jake, But With Superpowers and a Nighttime Skin Condition." The game he was created for is deceptively stingy with published information about the setting (by design), which means it felt like more challenge than it was worth to try and create a deep and fleshed-out character backstory for a hobby I didn't even know I liked yet.