Posts belonging to Category Character dynamics
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 »
Posted by Ravyn on December 29, 2010
One of the most difficult elements of group dynamics is looking at the connections between characters and other characters’ relationships. After all, it’s not connecting to a tangible thing like another character, it’s doesn’t have the same consistency on the other side of the link as tracking a character’s relationship with the idea of the [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: characters and relationships, connections, group dynamics, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 28, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about group dynamics, and how they’re based around several types of connection within a group of characters. Today, I’m going to look more closely on the first and simplest kind of connection, the one that directly connects two characters.
So what sorts of things might connect two characters, either before or after they [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: connections between characters, group dynamics, groups, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 27, 2010
We often find ourselves creating groups of people who are together for some reason or purpose. Protagonists, antagonists, neutral characters, potential allies, combinations of the above: these groups are all over the place. In order to make them interesting, we can’t just look at them as groups moving in lockstep, nor as sets of individuals [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: character connections, group dynamics, groups, roleplaying, secondary characters, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 1, 2010
A long time ago, I wrote about minimum acceptable skills or knowledge, the kinds of things that people need to be able to know or do in order to be accepted into an organization, be respected in a society, or otherwise show themselves as being worthy of a position or title. But today I found [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Organizations, Player Advice, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, first impressions, roleplaying, skills, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on October 12, 2010
“…tell me, do you think you might ever have met this person?”
In a game where character connections are important and the cast could fill a few pages of a phone book, it can be really difficult for a new character on entry. “Who do you know? How do you know them?” “How should I know?” [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, GM Advice |
Tags: character connections, integrating new players, roleplaying | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 4, 2010
So there you are, working on one of your scenarios, one that’s currently either in-progress on your writing or something your game group got halfway through before session had to come to an end. One group of characters is doing something that you know for a fact was orchestrated by another character, but they’re exceedingly [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Tactics, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: awesome, Characterization, characters with plans, plot, roleplaying, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 26, 2010
There’s a lot to be said about the peculiar dance between two enemies: a blend of mutual hatred, a peculiar sort of chemistry, and who knows what in the middle. It makes conflicts interesting—but like a good romance, it requires that the two enemies be, in their own way, a good match.
And you can learn [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: characterization exercise, enemies, relationships, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »