Posts belonging to Category Character dynamics
Posted by Ravyn on July 27, 2011
I talked yesterday about hidden benefits of convention-going—the ways that watching the other people there, or even looking introspectively at your own reactions to whatever goes on, can help you learn a lot that can be slipped into characterization, world-building, or player motivation later. But what good is all that without some solid examples?
The first [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Motivation, Technique |
Tags: admiration, groupie moments, motivation, roleplaying, writing | 
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Posted by Ravyn on April 6, 2011
In Monday’s post, I talked about the idea of a small group of characters so closely associated that they might as well be a single character. So how does a small group as a character work?
Before we can discuss why they work that way, we need to understand what kind of group can serve as [...]
Categories: Character creation, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: roleplaying, small groups, unit, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on April 5, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about some of the elements for creating groups of characters that could also function as one somewhat complicated character role-wise. One of the points I touched on was the idea of each character’s role in the group, and how these roles can be used to ensure that the characters aren’t misplaced (unless [...]
Categories: Character creation, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: role, roleplaying, small groups, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on April 4, 2011
Sometimes you’re going to have a group of characters that are so associated that they might as well serve as one single character; you hardly ever see them apart from each other, and it’s usually either plot-related or a fact about feasibility when you do. Presenting these sorts of groups onstage is a challenge, particularly [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: role, roleplaying, small groups, unit, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 9, 2011
This was inspired by (and, in fact, supposed to be a comment to, before it turned post-length on me) the recent Hathor Legacy article “Pride and Possession”. In it, Gena responds to seeing a debate on whether or not Mother Gothel might not have been so bad after all (I’ll admit, this concept rather scares [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Motivation, Reviews and technique, Secondary characters, Symbolism, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: antagonists, Beauty and the Beast, Characterization, redeemable, responses, roleplaying, Tangled, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 28, 2011
You sometimes see characters who despite not actually being present are moving the story at least as much as anyone who’s actually there. Sometimes they’re dead, other times it’s just a case of physical (or metaphysical) distance; they might be emulated, perpetually preempted whether they actually have an effect on the current storyline or not, [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: absence, Characterization, presence, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 4, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about figuring out a superior-subordinate dynamic from the subordinate’s point of view. Let’s reverse it now, and look at things that might affect the superior’s view of the subordinate.
How did the subordinate get into the position in the first place? Was this, as with most modern jobs, by coming and looking for [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: character dynamics, relationships, roleplaying, superior-subordinate, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 3, 2011
It goes without saying that not all characters are created equal—and certainly not hierarchically. Where you have organizations, you will have the people in charge and the people they are in charge of, and the people those people are in charge of, and so on and so forth until you run out of ladder rungs [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: character dynamics, relationships, roleplaying, superior-subordinate, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on February 1, 2011
One of the things I find most fascinating about disguise is that it’s not limited to just coming up with a new look and a slightly different backstory.
On the one hand, there’s disguising identity, and we all know how that works. Choose a new name, change your costume, apply makeup or magic or holograms, invent [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Tactics |
Tags: Characterization, deception, disguise, disguising social dynamics, roleplaying, tactics, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 30, 2010
In Monday’s riff on the three types of character connections that go into group dynamics, the third connection I mentioned was the character-group connection: how the character views the group around her, both conceptually and as a collection of people. Unlike the others, this one is almost as much about the character’s identity as about [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice |
Tags: character-group connections, group dynamics, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »