Posts belonging to Category Backstory
Posted by Ravyn on May 29, 2009
After all of yesterday’s reasons why parents and adults with distance are often portrayed as rivals, you’d expect them to be like oil and water, right? But it doesn’t have to be that way; in fact, there are plenty of ways in which the parent and the adult with distance [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: original posts | 
No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 28, 2009
Yesterday, I introduced the adult with distance, a character who often mirrors and complements the parent’s role in a character’s relationships. But the world’s more complex than just connections to a specific character, so I’m going to look at a different issue; how the parent and the adult with [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Character development, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 27, 2009
Yesterday, I started talking about parents and their potential impacts on characters and their development. Today I’m going to stay in that vein but take a slightly different tone, as I move on to the next step outward in a developmental relationship: the adult with distance.
At heart, the adult with [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Character development, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on May 26, 2009
Yesterday, I started riffing on the importance of knowing how characters were shaped through their interactions with other people. Today I’m going to start with the obvious movers and shapers: the parents.
Now, before I get into the details, a point of definition: for the purpose of this article, I am [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Character development, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 25, 2009
Way back in February, I ranted against characters who have no roots to speak of: the ones who didn’t seem in any way to have been shaped by other people. I’d originally been going to start on this series then, but I got a little distracted explaining why characters with [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Character development, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on March 10, 2009
This one comes from a discussion I had with my coworkers this evening, in which we finalized the history of an important place in one of our campaign paths.
One of the biggest problems with this, as we soon found out, is that we already had material written for one adventure that might conflict with, or [...]
Categories: Backstory, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 25, 2009
Yesterday, I expressed objections to an idea: that the tabula rasa character, the one without preexisting social connections, is likelier to form relationships in a story or game than someone that already has a few such connections. Yesterday’s post was directly responding to the comment that set it off, detailing my disagreement with the comments [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character archetypes, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 24, 2009
Yesterday, I remarked on the lack of connections many characters, both in fiction and in games, seemed to have within their worlds. One response in particular caught my eye: Brickwall, presenting the tabula rasa, or blank slate, character as one of the reasons why people wouldn’t start with pre-existing relationships. As he puts it, “Who [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 23, 2009
There’s something that’s always confused me about a lot of fantasy characters, and even more of the RPG characters I’ve run into. See, I’ve learned from personal experience that very few people actually like operating completely alone, and most would choose not to.
Image courtesy of DAVIDKNOX on stock.xchng
So why are there so many lone wolves [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 29, 2008
So you’re either the GM or a player, and you want to have a secret. Secrets are tough things to work with; fun, but very prone to backfiring. Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself.
Why does it need to be a secret? Some situations are epically suited for it: if you’re secretly [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Player Advice |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »