How to Get Into Character More Easily

Four years ago, I unknowingly performed an experiment.

May 2013 wasn't just my first Knight Realms event--it was my first larp event period. The following month, I tried out a different larp. The difference was, here at KR I played a character so close in personality, garb, and language, that it was difficult for me to portray the character properly.

At the other larp in June, I dressed a little differently, adopted a different attitude for the character, and spoke with a southern twang. Worked like a charm.

So what are some things you can do if you're having some trouble?

The secret is wearing a "mask." The further you are from your real life self, the better, because the anonymity gives you the freedom to act more freely, similar in the way that you might put more feeling and opinion in your writing than you do in face-to-face conversations.

Garb

Consider adding a hat or other accessories. When I play Chet, I feel less like him whenever I take the hat off--or when someone else takes it and runs off. Think about headgear or possibly imbuing articles of your character's clothing with a sense of importance. That way when you're wearing it, the character thinks about why it's important to them.

Accent

Assuming you don't normally speak with an accent, think about what kind would make sense for the character you play. If you play a Londwyn, Celt, or Argenti, there are literally dozens of flavors of real-world accents that would work for that kind of character.

Personality

Give your character personality quirks or flaws, particularly ones that you don't have in your own life. How do their hobbies, fear, and general attitude around strangers differ from yours?

What are some other ways you can think of to mask your out-of-game self and differentiate your character from their player? Feel free to share your tips in a reply below!

Nalick wrote: Accent

Assuming you don't normally speak with an accent, think about what kind would make sense for the character you play. If you play a Londwyn, Celt, or Argenti, there are literally dozens of flavors of real-world accents that would work for that kind of character.

So here's my hurfy-blurfy story on accents....

When I first decided to attend Knight Realms (aka: When Liam Neary told me I was going to start playing Knight Realms), I wanted to create a character with a rich background and really immerse myself in the atmosphere because I was so impressed by all of the effort that people put into their characters and costuming. So, even though my character was Kormyrian, I decided he would have an accent. I settled on a dialect that's something between Sir Alec Guiness, Ewan McGregor's impression of Sir Alec Guinness, and Carey Elwes.

There were two main motivators behind why I went this direction. Firstly, while training myself on accent before I could drop in and out of it at-will, because I had to think more on how to pronounce my words it gave me that moment to think "what would the character say?" and as such it helped me expand more on his motivations and views.

Secondly, it helps creates atmosphere for others to feed off of. Taking the time to learn the little nuances of the accent and dialect you choose makes the character seem more real and organic. Swapping in words like 'rubbish', 'leftenant' or 'you wot?', and changing the pronunciation of words to the local dialect ('li-trillee', 'milli-tree', 'allu-min-ium' (which is the greatest British word ever created, btw)) not only draws you more into the atmosphere, but it can encourage other people to do the same. When I first got into LARPing, I really had no clue how to roleplay (quiet, all of you). When I interacted with people who put effort into their characters it made me want to be part of that immersion and step up my game.

One last benefit to using an accent, for me anyway, is it helps distinguish when I am playing my character from every generic human NPC I've ever been sent out as. I make it a point never to use his accent at all when NPCing. My biggest fear when I came into game the first time as my character after a straight year of NPCing was that people would assume I was simply playing another NPC, gank me to high holy hell, and walk away from my shattered corpse saying "When did NPCs start getting sent out with Legendaries? That was awesome!"