I acquired Juhanna Pettersson’s Engines of Desire: Larp as the art of experience via a kickstarter, and I’m gradually working my way through it. Most of the book is reprints from old Knudebooks, and may already have been discussed here (under the “academic” tag) if they were interesting. But there’s some new stuff in it too, which I’ll go through in this thread.
Basics of character design
- From the 2019 Knudebook Larp Design, which I still haven’t been able to get my hands on, so its new to me.
- Lots of sensible, basic advice on “how to write a character”. Experienced larpwriters will know a lot of this already, but its useful to have it all written down in one place like this.
- Key idea: “The character is the main interface between the player and the larp… the character situates the player in the larp’s social landscape… provides motivation and reasons for action [and] questions and dilemmas that enrich internal play”. (Many kiwi larps would also include some mechanical interface, like moves / abilities / powers, but these are just a different kind of play-enabling lever. Or should be).
- what you need (in terms of length and detail) obviously depends on the specific larp.
- basic rules: short is better than long. Stick to a small number of key details as the players won’t remember them.
- players will change the character, deliberately (by emphasizing some aspects, or by plot triage) or inadvertently (by forgetting or misremembering things). Characters need to be designed with this in mind, ideally able to be played in different ways without breaking the larp.
- Characters fundamentally need to enable players to access the themes of the larp. If your larp is about class conflict (a bad example for NZ), every character needs to have a class position. If its about a family full of dirty secrets, then everyone needs to be on the family tree and have something to hide.
- a good rule when assessing character concepts is to ask whether a character can “do their thing” in the larp? If not, they may be better as an NPC or backstory element rather than a PC.
- the usual warning against bad-arse loners, using Strider from LOTR as an example.
- be careful about characters who remove or prevent play for others (example of anti-revolutionaries in a larp about starting revolution, or good apples in a dirty family who are solely there to provide contrast).
- enabling vs disabling character personality traits: a character being shy or cowardly discourages interaction (bad-arse loner is another example of this). Disabling traits should be balanced with enabling ones.
- Archetypes (e.g. the noble knight) are easy for players to grasp; internally contradictory characters (e.g. a cowardly hero) are good for introspective larps.
- character motivations should all point to action within the larp. “make the characters want to do the things they need to do for the larp to work”.
- groups can provide characters with easy social relations. Three Affiliations model from 1942 (which used work, friends, and family) is a good guide. Each of the group types should perform a very different social function to enable different sorts of play.
- prewritten character relationships should be meaningful and create action. Note that these create fragility (e.g. when someone can’t make it), so suggests workshopping within groups as a possibility. Have at least 3 relationships per character to compensate for the usual high failure rate.
- backgrounds are there to help the player understand the character and access the larp. They’re not a story, though it can be, if that serves that fundamental goal.
- key background elements: essential events for the character’s identity and personality (e.g. if they’re a soldier, tell them about the war), and directly relevant details that are important or might come up during the larp (e.g. of a former servant invited to a party at the house they used to work at; in NZ we’d also add pre-seeded plot and secrets, stuff done with other characters etc).
- Character information should be functional and limited to the essentials. Extraneous information is a distraction which undermines the larp. When writing, focus on utility and efficiency of communication rather than style.
- pay attention to the expectations of your playerbase about character length and style.
- There is a final note that There is More Than One Way To Do It.