Ahhhh LARP, my hobby and a major part of my life. Recently I’ve been trying to think of the characters that I have created, and what parts of them are truly parts of me, and what are fiction.
First off there was a variety of different characters I have flitted through, none of them truly deep however they were necessary for me to understand how to create and theme a realistic personality.
Now after a while I created one called Slaine MacTrew, my first character that I believe was fully developed. I could go on at great length with tales and history however it is more the character idea that interested me. You see Slaine was a stoic fighter, bodyguard and son. He was devoted to protecting his mother, which I hope is a trait that I possess, the ability to protect those I care for. However Slaine was not to live forever, he was struck down by his own overconfidence in his abilities, for although his charge was safe, he didn’t watch out for himself. This unfortunately is something I am also prone too.
Christopher Cartwright was in a very similar line of work to Slaine, however his motives and character were very different. A truly violent sociopathic criminal, loyal to the brothel mistress he worked for, the man was a tower of strength. Now the mindset he followed was a rather difficult one to get into however once it was in place it was easy to intimidate other people, something I found scarily too easy.
Finally we have the current character, Bloodthunk. Now Bloodthunk was in part created by many other people before I got to play him. He is a totally zealous religious nutjob, I mean like the Taliban combined with mid-western America. He has many traits that I really don’t possess to my knowledge, for example his total lack of compassion, I mean he has none, zero, zip. Also he has a faith that I can just not match, a zeal that borders on the psychotic.
The real question is where have these characters come from? Where do we all find these roles we play?
