Articles from December 2011
Posted by Ravyn on December 19, 2011
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival, on the subject of Heroes, Living and Dead, got me thinking about the term. “Hero” is a pretty subjective term, as these things go; some people consider heroism to be anything that involves improving other people’s lives, others see it as risking one’s life, there are still more whose main [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, heroes, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 18, 2011
RPG Blog Carnival this month is on the topic of Heroes, Living and Dead—and having appealed to the Management’s sense of the ironic, I’ve persuaded her to let me take the first stab at it. I talk about living heroes all the time, those little impediments, but I haven’t done quite so much about the [...]
Categories: Generic Villain |
Tags: advice for antagonists, dead heroes, Generic Villain | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 17, 2011
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been talking about antagonists with Grand Plans, how to keep these plans from seeming too dependent on creating victory conditions at the last minute, and moreso how to come up with their plans. I’d talk about my current efforts—Solace is a grandmaster of the Master Plan, even if trying [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: impractical applications, Jalil, loose threads, plans | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 15, 2011
Creepy characters are something of a hobby of mine. It started by accident; one of my early characters somehow managed to creep the socks off of her entire party, and at the time I couldn’t seem to figure out how to make her stop. So I designed a character to see if I could do [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers |
Tags: Characterization, creepy, freewriting, mood, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 14, 2011
While I talked yesterday about stringing together details and questions to come up with an antagonist’s plan on the fly, space constraints left me rather vague about what sorts of details and questions might actually qualify. Here are a few I’ve either used or seen used to pretty good effect.
This will be dramatic now, what [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Inspiration, Plot, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: antagonists, explication, foreshadowing, Inspiration, plans, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 13, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about figuring out the antagonist’s long-running overarching plan when you know the end but aren’t quite so sure about the middle. Today, I’m going to talk about it from the other direction: you’ve got the beginning, you’ve got a very vague idea what the antagonist wants (probably something vague like “Take over [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: antagonists, explication, foreshadowing, plans, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 12, 2011
Last week, I talked about situations a writer or GM trying to run an antagonist with a Plan might be trying to run that opponent from (with regards to knowledge/lack of knowledge of the plan itself). Today, I’m going to look at how to get to that plan from one of those scenarios in a [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: antagonists, explication, foreshadowing, plans, roleplaying, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 11, 2011
We all know how important intimidation value is, so it’s not surprising that we make sure our minions sound impressive from the moment they’re introduced. The trouble is, many of us really aren’t that good at it, giving them dramatic titles or noun-phrase names that instead of invoking trembling bring forth raised eyebrows, muffled snorts [...]
Categories: Generic Villain |
Tags: advice for antagonists, Generic Villain, names, titles | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 10, 2011
Earlier this week, I talked about characters getting an idea that’s technically impossible to carry off, and doing ridiculously well anyway; as promised, here’s the inspiration.
The game: My weekly Exalted game, as usual.
The group: shuttling their Friendly Neighborhood Necromancer around inside a miles-long walking corpse to find the anchors of the necromancies animating it and [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: impossible successes, impractical applications, loose threads | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 8, 2011
Our heroes of the last six years plus or minus a few cast changes, having narrowly escaped the bloodthirsty duelist they really didn’t feel like fighting, climb their way down the face and shoulder of the giant undead corpse-thing towards the elbow (through which they expect to make an entrance). As they approach the elbow, [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: context, GM tips, intimidation, monsters, roleplaying | No Comments »