Building a Character

There are so many different options for creating a character for BathLARP that it can sometimes seem overwhelming. This guide will take you through the basics of what you need to know to build a character within our game world’s mechanics. If you ever want to discuss ideas or ask questions, feel free to talk to other members of the club.

To officially create your character, go to My Information → My Characters and use the New character link in the bottom right corner. You will receive an email when the character has been approved and you can sign them up to games.

Coming up with backstory, personality and kit is all up to you. Everyone has their own preferences for how they do it or which bits they like to do first, but if you’d like some extra ideas or guidance, try checking out guides people have written or use the cultures, religions and places shared by other players in the Game World and Setting section (with their permission).

• General Information
  • Inspiration and Ideas
  • Skills and Stats
  • Backstory and Kit
• Races
• Classes
• Guilds
• Miracles
• Magic

Inspiration and Ideas

Everyone enjoys larp for different reasons, so it’s up to you if you want to come up with your stats, personality or story first. Your character is yours and completely under your control. However, for newbies, we have a few recommendations to make sure you have a good first experience:

• Some races, classes and guilds work well together and others don’t. Playing a combination that doesn’t mix well can be a lot of fun, but it can also be really frustrating as your character may not advance as quickly as others.

• Nasty, unpleasant or even evil characters are possible, but there are in-game consequences. We suggest saving the darker characters until you have more experience and know just what you can get away with in the game world.

• Some of the guilds are more difficult to play and have fun with. The guild intros will tell you if that is the case.

If you play your first character and find that you really don’t like them, it’s possible to restat them, or ‘recycle’ them and use any Character Points they earned on your new character. Talk to your Campaign GMs or the Character Ref Team for more help.

Skills and Stats

Each character can do different things. Characters use Character Points (CP). to buy skills and abilities. Each new character starts at Rank 2, with 20 CP. You earn additional CP with every game you play. You can also spend Monster Points to boost your characters.

How much a skill costs to buy will depend on your race, class and guild. Some skills can only be bought by characters who belong to certain guilds or meet certain criteria.

Mages must also choose magical schools which affect what spells they can cast. Priests must choose a miraculous Path which affects what miracles they can cast and how they must behave.

Backstory and Kit

Characters don’t just exist as a set of stats – who they are and how they react to things is often shaped by their life before they started patrolling. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and for a first character we suggest keeping them as simple as possible – there are notes on the Guild pages to give some ideas for backgrounds.

Some important notes:

• If you want to play someone that belongs to a player-created people, guild or existing family, talk to the existing player first about what you want to do. It may be that your idea doesn’t quite fit so needs to be tweaked, or even redone from scratch, and it’s rude to just show up as so-and-so’s long lost sibling without the player knowing first.

• You can base characters off existing ones in popular culture, but you will need to adjust them to fit the setting – and if they’re too close to the original, be prepared for an amount of friendly teasing.

• If you’re creating a character for a campaign, talk to the campaign GMs about it – they will generally have guidance notes on what is and isn’t viable, and what information they need to know.

You can find out more from Our LARP System → Extra Help.

As a club we’re generally pretty good about lending basic kit (especially leather armour and weapons) so you don’t need to worry about expensive buys from day 1. You will want good, solid footwear with good grip – walking trainers or boots or army boots – and layers to keep you warm and dry in bad weather.

You can find out more about what to include in your kit and where to buy kit from (or even make it) from Our LARP System → Extra Help.