Articles from April 2009
Posted by Ravyn on April 30, 2009
Wrapping your head around a large number of different kinds of people is generally difficult. There’s always a mindset you don’t understand, a kind of person you’ve never met before, or a set of traits that logically seem to go together. As a result, a lot of people find [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: original posts | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on April 29, 2009
For many people, pre-existing settings are the way to go, gaming or writing. They save a lot of the work of world creation, freeing up the adapter to focus on plot or to create little details that would take too long to work out otherwise; they give the audience a [...]
Categories: Character development, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice |
Tags: original posts | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on April 28, 2009
More for RPG Blog Carnival.
Some comic relief characters spring up to fight back from the grim darkness of the grim dark world where everything is so grim and dark that readers and gamers alike would flee if there weren’t some sort of humor to keep them stable. Others are [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Character development, Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Player Advice, Secondary characters, Technique |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 27, 2009
Census listers. My game group. I found myself comparing them a lot, particularly on days when I was looking forward to session at the end of the day. It was partly a fact about cohesion, and partly a fact about proactivity; my listing crew beats my game group [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Observations from Work, The Census, The Real World |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on April 26, 2009
We’re still on Aywren’s question about staying antagonistic; a long one, yes, but vital to the cause. Without antagonism, we aren’t Hands of Darkness, now, are we?
As I pointed out last week, a good villain needs to have a self-justification that can stand up to long-term contact with people. [...]
Categories: Ask GV, Generic Villain |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 25, 2009
Earlier this week, I talked about player absences. Timing was perfect, as my game’s about to deal with one: one of my players is going on foreign exchange, and even for a play-by-IM like my game, the resulting time differences are near-impossible to work around. What else could I [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 24, 2009
Last week, I talked about how to develop a character through her clothing. But it isn’t just characters who can benefit from these sorts of techniques. Instead, you can try to characterize an entire culture through what it wears; not only does this allow you to hint at the [...]
Categories: Characterization, Cultures, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique, World-building |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 23, 2009
Usually, I talk about topics that can fit both role-playing and writing. Today’s a bit different, though; I’m going to talk about a topic that fits both role-playing and real life, and that’s the importance of the ability to effect change.
I’ve written about this before, in mentioning the importance [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, GM Advice, The Real World |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 22, 2009
RPG Blog Carnival is on humor this month. It’s a large and varied subject, and has many uses—not only do people often try to display it within their narratives, but individual or cultural senses of humor can make variation between people and cultures seem more realistic and set them [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
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Posted by Ravyn on April 21, 2009
One of the hazards of roleplaying as a group activity springs from the fact that it requires a group, and requiring a group means requiring people’s schedules to line up. Needless to say, this doesn’t always work. People get dragged away for family events, overwhelmed by school or work, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, GM Advice, The Real World |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »