Articles from June 2010
Posted by Ravyn on June 30, 2010
Maybe it’s that epic scene you just don’t want to finalize. Or there have been far too many distractions lately, and not enough motivation. The story will begin when the world’s ready—but what does ready mean? Inspiration, whatever that is, is refusing to come. What does all of this mean? There’s something you want to [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Motivation, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: creation, motivation, real world, role-playing, writing | 
3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 29, 2010
When something doesn’t work out the way we’d hoped it would, or even the way it worked before that didn’t seem to be too bad, there’s one question we immediately ask ourselves: “What am I doing wrong?” It’s pretty much human nature, after all: we remember the bad things and try to fix them.
There are [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: criticism, improvement, roleplaying, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 28, 2010
We’ve all had one of those games that isn’t quite what it used to be and wanted to do something about it. I know many people think that in situations like that, the best thing to do is just to scrap the game and start a new one, and it might be true, but let’s [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Motivation, Technique |
Tags: motivation, roleplaying, Switch | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on June 27, 2010
One reality we all have to get used to is the importance of respect in this business. And no, I don’t just mean the respect of your minions, though not having that is usually a one-way ticket to perpetual failure. And I don’t mean the respect of random people on the street, though it does [...]
Categories: Generic Villain |
Tags: advice for antagonists, earning victories, Generic Villain, respect | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 26, 2010
I talked this week about the challenges of working with a character unaware of aspects of her setting’s metaphysics that are player common knowledge. As I implied in that article, I’ve been practicing lately. The character? The lone PC in a solo Call of Cthulhu game, who goes by Morgan.
As my characters go, Morgan is [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: conclusions, impractical applications, Morgan, ooc setting knowledge | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on June 25, 2010
A standard story is a long-term situation that has a tendency to further complicate itself, and complicate itself, and complicate itself some more, until it runs out of new complications and gets resolved. I can deal with that. But what starts getting to me is those stories where instead of the overall plot being one [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique |
Tags: complications, plot, role-playing, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 24, 2010
It’s easy to deal with a character who has to not-know something that you know when the character isn’t all that clever; there’s a lot more leeway to get away with dubious logic, missing obvious clues and other typical means of keeping the character from reaching the conclusion before the plot says so. On the [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, conclusions, IC/OOC, intelligence, role-playing, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 23, 2010
I’ve always been the kind of player whose greatest weapon is her and her character’s setting knowledge. No fewer than three languages if I can help it, maxed informational skills if at all possible—in short, trying to ensure that anything I know, the character knows too. But then I ran into an interesting sort of [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Player Advice, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: denial, IC/OOC, roleplaying, setting knowledge, weirdness filter | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 22, 2010
Getting a bit more in the spirit of RPG Blog Carnival rather than just the letter, here are a few artists and pieces that have given me that little burst of inspiration.
Matti Paalanen’s work, particularly the Celestial Aeon Project. I forget who it was who first introduced me to these, but a couple listens and [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Inspiration, Technique |
Tags: examples, Inspiration, music, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 21, 2010
Still more for RPG Blog Carnival. What can I say? I’m inspired.
When the blog was still young, I wrote about using music to create soundtracks for an RPG campaign. It’s a popular technique, one that people ask or talk about a lot, but it’s not the only thing a GM can do with a computer [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique |
Tags: Inspiration, music, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival | No Comments »