Alliance LARP is first and foremost a role-playing game that focuses on characters, storylines, and complex plots.  As a player, you become your character for the course of the event, which is often an entire weekend from Friday night through Sunday morning.  Everything you say and do is in-character.  For this reason, you should design a character that is fun to play for such a long period of time.

In Alliance, your “role” in the world can be almost anything you want to be, from frontline fighter willing to defend the town at the slightest hint of danger to an inquisitive scholar seeking to explore the magical world or even a simple bard spending your time entertaining others in the tavern.  Over time, you could climb the ranks of nobility, eventually becoming a squire, knight, or even a baron.  The game world is set-up for you to explore, develop, and expand.

Unlike most fantasy games, “classes” such as fighter or rogue are completely out-of-game.  All in-game skills are available for any character, except with certain racial restrictions.  The class system is only used out-of-game as a means to efficiently group similar in-game skills. Choice of class will affect the cost of purchasing skills as it will be more expensive for a Scholar to learn to use a Polearm than for a Fighter. The class system is fluid however. If you find that your character who once valued books and knowledge now has the lust for battle and a blood debt to pay you can begin to purchase fighting skills and eventually when the point system works out in your favor, you will may chose to switch out of game to the fighter class. The Alliance Rulebook describes skill system in great detail.

The only requirement for your character is that it must be one of the Alliance fantasy races and follow all of the racial requirements or guidelines for that race.  This includes proper physical representation of the race through things like makeup and prothetic ears as well as racial restrictions on in-game skills.  To balance those requirements and restrictions, there are also racial skills available to members of any specific race.  For example, High Ogres have the racial skill to resist necromantic effects and Dwarves have a racial advantage for blacksmithing.

Characters also have free choice to react or not react to any given situation, but every action can have consequences.  So while it may be fun to play an evil necromancer who wants to raise the dead for a personal army, understand that most other characters would probably fight against that goal if they ever found out, which would probably include trying to kill your character.

Player versus player conflict is allowed, but keep in mind that everyone is here to have fun.  Intentionally starting fights with others for no reason is against the rules.  Player versus player conflict for legitimate character or plot reasons should be kept entirely in-game.  Out-of-game, players often “check-in” with the other, letting them know it’s entirely in-game.

Please refer to the Alliance Rulebook for more information about character creation, especially the section “A Guide to Role-Playing.”