Participant Characters

With the exception of the three set characters, the community of Skylark Island consists of characters created by participants. Some can be NPCs, others can be played by text online, or in person at our LARP events.

The community

Every other character on Skylark Island can be imagined by participants:

• alone, musing on who might live there, or who you would be if you lived there as someone else
• with others, creating community hub characters like an innkeeper, or imagining community groups who live there, like the knitting circle or the shepherds

Creating characters

You are invited to craft a character from the island, or anywhere else in the world. You're welcome to make more than one character. If you have an idea for two characters who interact, whether because of a personal or work relationship, consider inviting another participant to create and play the second for more enlivening interactivity.
If you want to be yourself, but living on the island, you're also welcome to do that. When we get to our in-person gatherings, you might find that your plan was just to watch, but then you want to comment or get involved in the action. That's fine, you can always speak up:

• as a participant, making observations about what's going on in the story, or
• as yourself, but you are resident on the island and speaking from that point of view

... and you can switch between the two. In other words, if you start out referring to the community as 'they' but move into saying 'we' at some point, everyone will get it.

Character pages

There are pages for participants' characters on this website: let us know if you would like yours to be included here. How much you share about them is entirely up to you.

Non-Played Characters (NPCs)

Some characters might only exist in someone's imagination. They might be described to others, perhaps written up in prose, talked about, but never played by anyone. We might know about them but only refer to them, never meet them. (We call these NPCs or Non-Played Characters.) These characters can be described in great detail, or we might only know one little thing about them.

Played characters

Text-based play online

On our digital platform, characters can be played by the person who created them, in the form of text-based roleplay.
This is a bit like co-writing an ongoing novel in which you only write your own character/s' dialogue and the prose around them, and others do the same with their character/s. You tell the story together, and it's very responsive because you can never be entirely sure what the other characters will do.
No writing experience is required to play this way, and the pace can be varied for those who prefer a certain speed. There is plenty of support within the process itself, for getting involved in this way. We accompany each other.
Characters played this way can also be performed live, by the person who created them or, where possible, by a professional performer who is guided (or not) by that person.

Performed live

Characters can be performed live. This might happen during an online video gathering, or in the room at a live event. Some participants might play their own character/s. They might volunteer to play one of the three core characters, or a character created by another participant, or a character we feel will add something to the experience that is missing. Participants do not need performing experience to perform.
Any character that has been played online or described, but is not performed live, can still be referred to. Some reason can always be found as to why they're not present where expected.
Click here for a character creation guide
Click here for information about how we roleplay
Click here for information about copyright: ours and yours

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Character Creation Links

Participant Characters
Character Creation Guide
How We Roleplay
Copyright - ours and yours