Articles from July 2010
Posted by Ravyn on July 21, 2010
While many of the people I know would probably disagree rather strenuously, I think the most difficult part of any given RPG is managing the combat. But it’s interesting looking at the relative difficulty of most of the different aspects of it: what we expect, and what we actually find.
It’s pretty much a given that [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Mood, Player Advice, Scening, Technique |
Tags: combat, GM difficulty, musings, roleplaying | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on July 20, 2010
Rhetoric. It’s the purview of a speaker, a common way of showing why a leader is so popular, an excellent use of a high Performance score, a way to show off one’s own writing skills—but on the other hand, as techniques go, it’s also a bit intimidating to write, and when one is writing a [...]
Categories: Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: creation, dialogue, rhetoric, role-playing, speeches, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 19, 2010
A long time ago, I asked a question: why do we always see magic? The answer I originally worked with was that it was easier, since people are visual; I know the English language has more sight-words than sound-words or taste-words or scent-words. But sometimes, it makes sense to make someone’s arcane senses pan to [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: descriptions, displays, Magic systems, roleplaying, Thematics, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 18, 2010
Last week, I talked about things to take into account when trying to interfere with someone else’s plan. But it isn’t always to our advantage to be the fly in the ointment; sometimes, what they’re doing is almost as convenient to us as it is to them, and the best thing to do is to [...]
Categories: Generic Villain |
Tags: advice for antagonists, assisting, Generic Villain, helping, other people's plans | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 17, 2010
This week, I had an odd situation in my solo game. It’s still in the phase where it serves as a prequel of sorts to my primary game, run from the perspective of another character entirely—and yet there I was writing a scene where the two NPCs present, plot fixtures Kestrel and Kiara, had managed [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, Impractical Applications |
Tags: impractical applications, Kestrel, Kiara, Kiriko, yardstick characters | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 16, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about comfortable authority levels, the general hierarchical positions to which people tend to find themselves drawn. But they aren’t just for characters; I’ve noticed that comfortable authority levels can also have a large influence on how a person both GMs and plays.
Of yesterday’s types, leaders are the likeliest to end up GMing [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: authority, GM Advice, personality types, Player Advice, roleplaying | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 15, 2010
Like everything else, how much authority and in what form people are comfortable with varies from person to person, and from character to character. I find, though, that there are certain bands in which they lie, and knowing about these bands can make for an interesting way of further differentiating characters and figuring out where [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Characterization, Concepts, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: authority levels, Characterization, Exercises, roleplaying, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 14, 2010
Without motivation, there is no story. If there’s already a plot, it needs to be possible to get the characters motivated to do something about it. If there isn’t one already planned out, the characters need to want something enough to pull the story themselves.
When they don’t, bad things happen.
A character without motivation might follow [...]
Categories: Character autonomy, Character development, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Motivation, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, motivation, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 13, 2010
A snippet from the dream journal of my Call of Cthulhu character Morgan, not long after the Taser Tourist incident, written for the GM of that game.
It’s a restaurant. If that’s the right word. Wooden furniture, leather tankards, either it’s very period or I’m going and dreaming somewhere else entirely. The colors are warm reds [...]
Categories: stories |
Tags: dreams, Morgan, stories, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 12, 2010
While it may be technically possible in games, being able to completely quantify a character in clean, objective terms is difficult, and in a straight story, it’s next to impossible (and even if it were possible, you’d have to be careful how you did it). So for the most part, characters are often seen in [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: character perceptions, roleplaying, writing, yardstick characters | 1 Comment »