"What Are You Supposed to Be?” Character Design in Dagorhir
A kender knight errant giggles in the woods battle.
We often neglect character design in Dagorhir (or Belegarth, Amtgard, Darkon, and other LARP-y games where the focus is on fighting and we play one character for years on end). Rather than consciously asking “how can I convey who my character is through my physical appearance?” players often slide into wearing the same old tunics, pants, and accessories as everyone else. Much to my shame, I’ve been the fantasy character who dresses like a generi-Viking and then gets miffed when people ask “what are you supposed to be?” That changed when I took a theatre costume design class. The revelation that I could start with the ideas I wanted to convey (ie, “this character is colorful and eccentric-- how do we translate that into their clothes?”) vs individual items (”well, I already have this tunic-- I guess I’ll have to make it work for my kit, somehow”) changed how I think about character design.
Thinking about character design let me deliberately and effectively overhall my entire aesthetic. I like my kit a lot more, now, and I think more Dagorhir players would feel the same way if they front-loaded their design process.
If you’re having trouble figuring out your garb, then, consider designing your kit like you’re costuming a character for a stage or film production.
Front-Load Your Character Design
I built my “Dragonlance kender” kit piece by random piece for years, and it never added up to a cohesive whole. Every fantasy character hates hearing “what are you?” or “what are you supposed to be?”, and I used to get that a lot.
Now that I’m front-loading the design process people successfully “read” my kit a lot better. Strangers at the ren faire call me “Tasslehoff,” and new Dagorhir acquaintances burst out laughing and call “watch your pouches!” when they see me pass holding my hoopak, one of the clearest identifying “props” my character carries. Front-loading character design means thinking before you build or acquire pieces of kit, rather than trying to add items that don’t work with the “look” you’re trying to build.
Let’s think about this like we’re designing a stage production. One of the first things we should do is ask what you want to convey to the audience about the character. If this were a play, our audience would be the people putting their butts into our auditorium. Since Dag is live-action and immersive, your audience is your peers. Either way, the first time someone sees your kit, they should be able to make some inferences about you. How wealthy is this character? How much of a conformist are they? What time period or profession do you want to portray? If your design conveys nothing much (or worse, you have to break character to explain your kit or justify the absence of something that’s not there— ie,"I am an elf-- I was just cursed to lose my ears!”), then your design probably needs more thought. *
Case Study: Spud the Ranger
Dude looks like a ranger-- but WHY? HOW??
All of that is a little overwhelming, so let’s boil it down to one important question. Say an average player sees your kit for the first time. Without ever speaking to you (and, because they don’t care, without minutely examining every detail of your kit— the family crest etched onto your belt buckle is for your own satisfaction), a stranger should still be able to say, “aha, that guy is ______,” and be decently close. What do you want that blank to be? What do you need to include in your kit to make them say that?
Your "blank” could be something super obvious like “that character is a dwarf!” or “that character is an Uruk-Hai!” Successfully portrayed, not half-assed dwarves and successfully portrayed, not half-assed Uruk-Hai have really clear physical markers— they’re easy to “read,” provided you know that the beard/axe or fangs/White Hand are the identifying traits. My kender-kit falls into this category: as long as you’ve read Weiss and Hickman’s books, the topknot, hoopak, pouches, and furry vest say “kender” to you.
If your character is something that doesn’t come with easy “markers,” you might have to back off a little and go for something more general. You could pick a fantasy archetype and pick “that character is a bard,” or “that character is a raggedy peasant” or “that character is a knight,” or you could pick something even less concrete, like “that character is evil,” or “that character is more interested in having fun than conforming.” Any choice is valid-- the key is to define it to yourself and build your kit around it, rather than have your hodgepodge kit accidentally define it for you.
Let’s say we’re designing a character for Joe Newplayer. We’ll call Joe’s character Spud.
Joe Newplayer knows that it is gauche to corner his fellow players and tell them, in the third person, that Spud is a ranger who has some werewolf traits and has lived by hunting ever since he was exiled from his hometown, so Spud is going to try to convey this, instead, through costume (and later, through in-character roleplay). Good egg, Joe!
The very least Joe wants our audience to be able to say, of Spud, probably, is “aha, this dude spends a lot of time in the woods.” Going for “this dude is a hunter with a dark past” or “this dude has some weird canine traits” is a little harder, so that could be something to build up to (or, again, express through in-character roleplay).
What would help convey “dude who spends a lot of time in the woods”? Joe, having considered this a bit, might be tempted to start listing individual clothing items he wants to buy-- cloak! Hood! Some dope-ass boots!-- but I would encourage him to hold back. Rather than listing individual clothing items, start with some elements of design, like line, mass, color, texture and movement. Start by thinking about your design as a whole, not by over-focusing on individual pieces, and your costume will be more coherent, unique, and effective.
The Elements of Design
Do we want Spud to appear bulky or slender? A confident character might take up a lot of space, while one who hopes to fade into the background might be drawn more tightly in. Should Spud’s silhouette be shaggy, many-corner’d, or streamlined? What sort of textures are right for a dude who spends a lot of time in the woods? What sorts of colors? Should the materials Spud wears be light and floaty, heavy and stiff, or something in-between? WHY?
Hold off on the internal character reasons for any of the “whys” (ie, “I have this cloak because my mother made it, and she died, so I wear it to remember her”) and keep your focus tight to the audience. Joe might choose a silhouette that’s top-heavy with fur or leather shoulder armor and tapers down to through the lower legs, which very quietly suggests the lean lone wolf. Joe might chose muted, natural colors (which might say that the character wants to fade into the woods), or weirdly clashing or worn-out ones, which might say (though this is getting rather too subtle, but that’s his choice) that he doesn’t care about clothes or society’s expectations (or perhaps that he’s colorblind— canine attributes! ;) ) Joe might distress his fabrics suggest a character who’s down on his luck, or add lots of layers to imply that he carries everything he owns on his back because he doesn’t have a fixed address.
Remember that each choice you make will inform the physical experience of wearing the costume, too. A costume that the actor can’t move in is bad design! What does this character need to do in their clothes, and how do the elements of design you established above intersect with that? Do they need to physically carry all their worldly goods? Will they sleep or fight in this outfit? Will they need help donning their fancy clothes? No matter how independent and stand-offish your traveling female thief is, she’ll probably need help lacing up a back-fastening corset, so ponder the physical realities of the garments you might include, and ask if they fit with your big picture.
If this is overwhelming, pick one adjective and build your design around that, instead. Do you want people to see your character as, primarily, tough? Independent? Scatterbrained? Confident? Timid? Otherworldly? Brainstorm how your adjective could bleed out onto their clothing— not just by giving them individual props (this character is tough because he wears lots of knives!), but by thinking in terms, again, of audience impression (this character is tough because he wears hard textures and has no extra frills!). Grab a print-out croquis (try here) and do some drawings, like you’re making paper dolls. (It’s okay if they’re shitty. Mine are hilariously bad.) How can you make a character look confident, tough, timid, or otherworldly using shapes, colors, and textures, rather than building up from individual items?
For more insight on how to do this, consider reading more about costume design for film and stage. This is a good, quick crash-course in how to start thinking about character design. Give it a shot!
In Conclusion
Start from the ground up and ask what you want to convey to your “audience”— ie, your fellow fighters. The result will be more coherent than if you build stuff up, piece by piece.
Next time, I put my own neck on the chopping block as we look at how I built up my Ilsa character using some of these elements of design. ‘til then, tell me what YOU do to design your character! :)
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*There’s an argument in favor of subtlety— you probably don’t want to look like a cookie-cutter ranger— but the failure state of “subtle” often “incoherent” or “muddled.” Pick your poison. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯