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| All Rights Martin Gill |
How to write an awesome character
background that refs will love
“Grythor
the Ranger was born in the remote village of Oldbridge in the northern
territories. He wandered the woods as a child, learning the secret paths of the
forests and even at times, the very tongues of the animals. He was taught the
old ways by Harborth the druid, who died leaving no other apprentices. But one
day, on the morn of his sixteenth birthday, he returned to his village to find
naught but charred ruin. His mother and father lay dead, as did all of the
villagers. Grythor’s superlative tracking skills allowed him to follow the
trail through the forests. There he found orcs, a tribe of them. For the next
five years, Grythor waged bloody war upon the Severed Hand tribe, slaying every
last one of them. Dead. Now, his revenge complete, he has become an
adventurer.”
Sound depressingly familiar?
I’ve been running LARP in one form or
another for more than 20 years now. I’ve lost count of the number of
backgrounds I’ve read which enter into excruciating detail about their characters
favorite food, the cities they visited while they were on their gap year or the
shade of autumnal gold their dead girlfriend’s hair shimmered under the light
of the setting sun.
Who cares?
OK, so maybe you do as a player, because it
adds richness to the way you portray your character, which is all good. But as
an event organizer, this often doesn’t help me. Here’s why. Far too many
character backgrounds are either way too long, masking important detail amidst
needless ephemera, or are so short as to contain almost no useful hooks an
organizer can work with. Worse still, they outline a plot hook (orcs killed my
parents…) then close all possibility of that story continuing (…and I slew
every last one of them), forcing organizers to dream up ghosts, long-lost orcs
and such to persist what was obviously a pivotal moment in your character’s development.
But the biggest crime most backgrounds commit is they tell us nothing about how
you see your ongoing story arc progressing.
They look backwards, not forwards.
So how can you change this? Well, here’s
three simple things you can do to write a background that event organizers can
have fun with, and in turn provide fun for you…
Be clear on what’s important and what isn’t. Sure, dream up tons of detail on the names of your four cousins,
their dogs and cats and what flavor cake they all like. But if it’s minor
detail, leave it out, or at least provide a summary of the critical components
to help the refs (who are reading dozens of these things). For instance, “My wife has been kidnapped,
I’m searching for her”. Additional details include, I’m Catholic, I was
educated at Oxford, I have a BA in History, I admire the poetry of Yeats, I
have a sister who lives in San Francisco who owns a book shop. All interesting
things that your refs can riff on, but not the main point, and presented in 10
pages of wordy prose, mask what’s actually important.
Be open and leave hooks. We are back to
the “…and I slew every last one of them” vibe. Invent enemies, foils, problems,
things you haven’t solved, weaknesses. What’s going to haunt you? What do you
need to resolve? “I’m a space smuggler with a broken down old ship that’s prone
to conking out, a price on my head that every bounty-hunter this side of Ord
Mantell wants to collect and a penchant for princesses.” Which leads us to…
Tell us what you want to happen to you. What’s
you character’s story? Revenge? Finding love? Hitting it big? A descent into
madness? Finding his kidnapped wife? Focusing on what you want to happen next
is a much more direct way of telling the organisers what you will enjoy at the
event, rather than forcing them to try and interpret what you want form the
detail of your background. Sometimes, your story might not fit, in which case
the organisers can be honest and let you know you might need to think of a
different approach. But you reduce the risk of coming away form an event saying
“well, my character really wanted to find his kidnaped wife, but she never
showed up” because the organisers lost that critical hook in the morass of
other information.
Think about what you want to happen to your
character, not what has happened, and remember that your event organisers
aren’t psychic. Be concise, be open, tell them what you want form the event and
sure, invent tons of detail, but leave that for your own characterization.
Your background makes your character who
she is today. It’s what you do on events that makes LARP fun. Make it easy for
organisers to give you what you want.
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| Typical crew! - all rights Martin Gill |
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