Articles from February 2009
Posted by Ravyn on February 18, 2009
The second style of manipulator I mentioned in Monday’s riff was the manipulator of organizations. This one is relatively easy to understand, but hard to characterize in detail, as many people have trouble figuring out how this sort of manipulation works.
Interestingly enough, there are as many ways to manipulate an organization as there are to [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 
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Posted by Ravyn on February 17, 2009
Yesterday, I discussed the concept of manipulation styles: different ways in which characters can attempt to get others to do what they want. Today, I’m going to go into a little more detail.
The individual-based or personal manipulation style is the one many people think of when they imagine a manipulator. Most tricksters in folktales are [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 16, 2009
Sometimes, people just don’t understand what it is they should be doing, or saying—or maybe even thinking. Something needs to get done, and there they are, focused on something else entirely, and they can’t just be told what needs to happen. So what’s a character to do? Manipulate them, of course. This is a particularly [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 15, 2009
If you’re like most ex-protagonist recruits, you’ve come from either a heroic ensemble or a long-standing rivalry. This means that your former teammates, or that idiot you’ve been trying to surpass, will come and try to get you back. In your inevitable confrontation, you will have several advantages. One: Unless you have done something to [...]
Categories: Generic Villain |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 14, 2009
Looking back on this week, I realize there’s not much I can do to tie the week’s posts into tonight’s session. And I could do something themed for Valentine’s/Singles’ Awareness Day, but honestly, I did that yesterday and the last couple weeks, and I’ve never been fond of the holiday anyway. But that’s all right. [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 13, 2009
One sign of a living world is that its features have visible changes, particularly over time. Not everything stays as it began, after all.
Holidays may seem constant to us, but they do a lot of changing over time: sometimes with help, sometimes without. Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite examples.
While it has never been [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Religion, World-building |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 12, 2009
“What is a role-playing game?” they ask tentatively. And I feel the need to preface the answer with a story.
Though I didn’t get into role-playing games fully until after the turn of the century, my gamer stepbrother had introduced me to the concept with war games in my parents’ garage a good decade and change [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, RPGs for the Uninitiated |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 11, 2009
This topic’s a bit of a stretch from my usual. It’s a question of human nature and society, more than anything else—but what else is a writer, if not one who looks at human nature or society? And I’m never one to skip a chance to look at something that could provide interesting characterization on [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, World-building |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 10, 2009
The love story is a timeless classic, one that has been passed down through the ages and even has a genre to itself. We get that. While that does give it a great deal of appeal, it also means that many of the people looking at such have seen it all before. How do we [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
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Posted by Ravyn on February 9, 2009
Romance is practically a fact about human nature, and quite possibly one of the most popular plot elements the writing world has ever seen. It is also one of the hardest to do well, and one of the likeliest to annoy people in the process. In a game, some of the likeliest people to be [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »