Create a Character
The story of Wizarding in the Wild West is a rich tapestry of varied and colorful creatures. As a participant, you get to decide what kind of character you want to be and get to dress up as. We encourage each participant to design a character, create a costume that matches the personality and character, and then come and join one of our events!
One of the great benefits of immersive play is the ability to make decisions that might allow you to learn without real life consequences. Or by injecting your own personal qualities into the character, you might learn to see the beauty in yourself that you otherwise might overlook. We find that reality is usually the best source of creative inspiration.
You might have the ability to independently create your character, and have no need for the help of our coaching. This outline is simply a way to help those seeking assistance in order to more quickly determine the type of character they might want to create.
We hope you will consider and imbue the best, most familiar and meaningful qualities into your characters in order to learn and enjoy this experience. We encourage thoughtful reflection, and once you decide, work on a costume, and then work to fulfill that role when you come play with us, whether at the marketplace, event, quest, or campaign.
Learn about the Larger Story
This website is full of useful and relevant information regarding the different peoples, cultures, stories, events, and characters currently a part of the world the exists in Wizarding in the Wild West. We suggest you read as much as you can in order to familiarize yourself with the quirky, unusual, original, inspired, and inspiring world we have created. As you do so, you may get ideas and inspiration on which to go off of. We encourage you to record it or write it down, and to build off of what you imagine. Once you have an idea of where to begin, then continue to consider the suggestions listed below.
Many of the stories have their original inspiration stemming from previously existing stories. Becoming familiar with those stories is also a valuable way of seeding your own imagination.
Know the Genres Represented
While witchcraft and wizardry in a backdrop of the Wild West is the dominant magical culture represented in our story, we have elements of almost every fantastical genre represented in one corner of our story or another. Our stories take place in both the real world, as well as those of fiction. We weave in known fantasy, as well as places and history that has yet to be known in popular imagination.
When crafting your character, you can draw from whatever place that suits you, but especially if you can draw from the sources or those like them listed below.
The worlds and magic we incorporate into our stories include but are not limited to those of the American Wild West, the witches and wizards of JK Rowling, the wizards and peoples of TH White's The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, general icons of Halloween including zombies, witches, mummies, mad scientists, vampires, gothic widows, and werewolves, iconic Christmas including Santa and his elves, Krampus from the Christmas of Germany, New Orleans gothic, including voodoo and vampires, wider American myth including the folk magic inspired by indigenous peoples, Paul Bunyan, Bigfoot, and Appalachian stories including the Devil and Daniel Webster, Steampunk, Diesel Punk, all elements of James Barrie's Peter Pan, including the winged sprites or faeries of Victorian England, Germanic myth, Celtic myth, viking myth, Grecian myth, Pagan myth, American Indian myth, Aztec myth, the Fountain of Youth, Egyptian myth, the City of Atlantis, the City of Enoch, Alice in Wonderland, WWII Americana, Jules Verne's 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea, iconic Shakespearean medieval magic, PL Travers' Mary Poppins, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Indiana Jones, unicorns, centaurs, HP Lovecraft's Cthulu, CS Lewis' Narnia series, Middle Eastern myth including Aladdin, Alchemy, and the djinn, Hebrew myth including the Testament of King Solomon, Mary Norton's Bedknob and Broomstick, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, Roald Dahl's the BFG, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, and George's Marvelous Medicine, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, the fairy stories of the Grimm Brothers including the Pied Piper and Cinderella, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen including the Little Mermaid, stories from Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book including Beauty and the Beast, myth of South Pacific Islanders, Frank Baum's the Wizard of Oz, Wicked, the Count of Monte Cristo, the macabre works of Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Who, Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, Chris Van Allsburg's Jumanji and the Polar Express, Audrey Wood's Heckety Peg, Claire Huchet Bishop's The Five Chinese Brothers, Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, and all other sources and inspirations of western and related fantasy.
Determine your Preferred Genres
In the world of Wizarding in the Wild West, there are many intersecting genres. While your character will likely interact with many elements, it is recommended that you choose one or two dominant influences for your character.
Determine your Sex
In the world of Wizarding in the Wild West, there are important themes with roots in Alchemy. It is important that each character identify the biological sex of their character in order to engage fully in the story as it has been written.
Determine your Race
There are many races represented in the world of Wizarding in the Wild West. They include but are not limited to witches and wizards, selkies, banshees, halflings, Tuatha De Danaan, or the "Good People" of Ireland, winged sprites or faeries, dwarves, centaurs, mermaids, dragons of all types, chupacabras, zombies, vampires, mad scientists, werewolves, mummies, mad hatters, and victorian inventors.
Determine your Place of Origin
Each of the genres represented in the world of Wizarding in the Wild West at one time or another have cities and places indicative of that genre. Your character might be from an location fictional or true. Your origins need not be from a correlated place build with that specific genre in mind. You are free to determine exactly whatever parameters that might surround your character; doing so will make your story all the more rich.
Determine your Residence
There are many places, both fiction and real where your character might live. The stories of the Blackburn Brothers covers a wide array of places where your character might live. However, you may invent a completely unrelated place where you character could live; there is no need to stick to the established canon of Wizarding in the Wild West.
Determine your Occupation
You can come up with your own occupation, depending on your place of residence, your skills, your motivation and your race. You could be a wand waving adventurer, a cardigan wearing college professor, a crooked government employee, a hippogriff ranch hand, a zeppelin ship's captain, a flying broom sales person, or an apothecary entrepreneur. You could be a gemstone miner, a wardrobe salesman, or a forgetful wandering or lost prince.
The more you learn of the stories and places spoken of in the stories of the Blackburn Brothers, the easier it will be to determine what your character's occupation is.
Determine your Preferred
Means of Travel
Your preferred means of travel will most likely be a reflection of the genre(s) your character is a part of. Witches and wizards tend to travel by floo powder, broom, apparition, or portkeys. Steampunk characters might travel by means of steam technology. Mermaids swim. Dragons walk or fly. But the most common form of travel in Wizarding in the Wild West across the board is by steam engine.
Determine your Motivation
Each character will have unique incentives and desires. Most are assumed to gravitate to either a good, bad, or grey moral center.
Determine any pivotal
personal Background
You'll want to consider anything important in the history of your character that would impact the decisions and choices made or influenced in their story. Trauma the character has experienced is one major consideration for ideas that might influence who your character is and what makes them what they are and how they act.
For ideas, you may look to your favorite stories, or even to experiences in your own past that make you what you are; sometimes we get the best inspiration for the things we know and are familiar with.
Determine your Connection
to the Blackburn Bros.
The Blackburn brothers are very well traveled. They meet all sorts of peoples and creatures in the most far flung or remote places of the world. Due to their professional involvement, they of necessity frequent many different cities and towns of a variety of magical creatures and genres. They also come across strange and wonderful individual beings that are alone or lost. Many people and creatures maintain their connection to the Blackburns through the stores and market place where representatives of most of the magical world assembles on a regular basis. The Blackburn Manor is the most frequented location and event where peoples and creatures would meet and interact with the Blackburns.