If you haven’t heard of it yet, Mythical Journey’s is a fantasy campaign larp based in Pomfret Connecticut, USA. The game has been running for 20 ish years, and the same company also runs the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. Without sounding too much like Ad copy, the game is definitely worth checking out if you’re in the New England area. As a new player I found the character creation process a little tricky. The rules are a hybrid of hit point and hit location larps, which means it’s familiar, but just tricky enough for me to make newb mistakes. Here’s what came out of some simple

Here are the boring Math bits first. If you want to know what each of these things do, or why Humans get discounts on skills, check the MJ Rulebook pdf (it’s free).
MJ Character’s current Build:

Now, on to the more interesting stuff! Here are 5 Details that make Gayland a character. The explanation of 5 Details that Make a Better Persona is worth checking out if you are new to larp. Or if you want a tool for building more compelling larp personas.

Name: Gayland Teague

While reading over the OOC region packets for MJ the Arkenstone region of Pendaan (pdf) came up as a Gaelic equivalent. My parents gave both myself and my brother Gaelic middle names. It seemed like a good opportunity. My brother hated his middle name, and it struck me that was an issue of the homophobia 80’s. Folks today don’t bat an eye at someone name Gayland… Well no more than someone with an anachronistic name say like Gertrude or something (sorry Gertrudes, popularity of the name peaked in 1890).

Hook: A 40 year old man, near the end of his life (life expectancy in the middle ages 42), retires from farming and defending his family to explore the world and learn more about it. He attempts to bring back knowledge to help protect his family from magical threats beyond their comprehension.

Back in the 90’s, when I started larping, I was playing a young character. A person with little experience in the world. Now that I’m older my characters should be as well. He has some fighting prowess, gained from defending his home, and some basic knowledge of the world, but about a great many topics he’s pretty clueless. Which is perfect for a new player.

Goal: Learn about the undead and how to protect against them. Use whatever he can find in Elydrwood to help his family and farm prosper.

After a disastrous run in with a man called “The Professor”, he’s wary of anyone claiming knowledge of the undead.

Secret: Gayland, while not dumb, is illiterate. He can read neither magic, nor normal writing.

This is not well hidden because he often pays a trusted scribe to send letters to other characters in the game. Something a bit more unusual needs to be created. This is secret by default in that illiteracy would be so common place as to not need to be mentioned.

Two Words:

Actually, I don’t know yet… I know, I know. I should be applying my own techniques. The character fleshed out well without using them, so there hasn’t been much pressure to create them. Honestly Gayland is just me… For right now, that’s fine. Over time he really should acquire a better secret and a better core. When it’s time to take up a different MJ character, then the personality will need to be a little different.

Next post will be his character history as written for the game. Then I want to mention, and show some of the environmental details begin used to make this character come alive.