Origin Stories: The Phenomenological Relationship Between Players and Their Characters

This phenomenological study by Ryan Blackstock examines how individuals experience consciously embodying a persona through live action role-play (larp). Drawing on face-to-face interviews with twelve participants recruited from a larp club focused on the World of Darkness games, the research applies Clark Moustakas' phenomenological model to uncover the lived experience of players. The study was conducted in 2005 in the United States and addresses a gap in prior literature, which was dominated by quantitative studies measuring personality traits or the external outcomes of role-playing games rather than the internal experience of playing.

The analysis identified four experiential themes, or textures: a continuum of personalization, describing how players build and relate to their characters; a stream of embodiment, which captures the psycho-kinesthetic process of becoming a character and the difficulty of moving in and out of that state; freedom, the liberating ability to act beyond ordinary social, moral, and cultural constraints; and character as teacher, where characters serve as vehicles for social skill-building, emotional insight, and therapeutic reflection. Four universal structures of experience, spatiality, causality, relationship to self, and relationship to others, are presented as underpinnings of these themes.

The findings characterize larp as a complex activity that offers fun, social connection, personal growth, and self-exploration, while also carrying some risk when the boundaries between game and everyday life blur. Participants reported that relationships formed in-game sometimes carried over into real life, sometimes damagingly. Still, most found the activity safe and personally enhancing. The author concludes that conscious embodiment can surface aspects of identity and undeveloped potentials, positioning larp as a meaningful area for psychological and phenomenological inquiry.