Posts belonging to Category Character image
Posted by Ravyn on August 9, 2010
Often, a writer can get away with establishing a character slowly, over time. In this scene, emphasizing this quality. In another scene, another one. A slow, gradual process. A GM with a long-term enough plan, or a player who wants to dole out the information bit by bit, might be able to do the same.
But [...]
Categories: Character development, Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Description, Dialogue, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, one scene, roleplaying, show don't tell, 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 »
Posted by Ravyn on June 10, 2010
Most people don’t pay that much attention to clothing with their characters (unless they’re paying too much, which is a problem in its own right), but often it’s assumed that they’re wearing approximately the same flavor of things day in and day out (if not, as some comic characters demonstrate, the same outfit ad infinitum). [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Technique |
Tags: costume changes, costumes, emphasis, mood, roleplaying, writing | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 31, 2010
Books and RPGs are, as a class, not the world’s most visual of mediums. Yeah, you’ve got cover art (not that it necessarily gets it right, as a number of people could attest); yeah, there’s the whole battlemap thing, particularly when dealing with variations on D&D, but on the whole it’s as likely as not [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: pictures, roleplaying, visual media, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 21, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about visual cues—simple parts of a character’s physical appearance that hint at her job, skills, background or other salient details. Most of us have a mess of visual cues trained into us, but when we’re creating worlds, what’s the fun in only using the kinds of cues we’re trained to see? Why [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, roleplaying, visual cues, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on May 20, 2010
The robe and wizard hat. Guns and black leather. White labcoats and peculiar equipment. Breeches, a nice jacket and a riding crop. A military uniform and a wide-brimmed hat with a chinstrap. A bag of dice and a backpack that makes one’s back hurt just looking at it. What do all of these have in [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character image, Characterization, Cliche, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, description, role-playing, visual cues, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on April 30, 2010
Most people who create characters know what it’s like trying to get the character down for the first time, especially when it’s one of their earlier projects. There’s that bit where just about everything seems like it should be chosen carefully so as to make sense later, making the choices themselves a bit of a [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, difficulty, trivial details | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on March 26, 2010
Yesterday’s article talked about ways that different versions of the same sort of interaction could mark a character as leaning farther towards Awesome or Better Than You. But it’s not just interaction, it’s also action; what sorts of actions, either behavior or plot-event, tilt a character in a different direction?
An Awesome character tries. This doesn’t [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 25, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about a character continuum between Awesome and Better Than You characters, and its uses in helping guide the target audience’s response to any given character. One thing I find really interesting about the continuum is that it’s a razor’s edge; there are many behaviors that characters across the continuum might use, and [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: original posts | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on March 24, 2010
I find there’s a continuum over which powerful characters (either compared to the PCs in a game, or compared to the world in which they’re in) tend to fall. On one end, you have the characters who are truly Awesome; one can envy them, but they’re much easier to respect than to hate. On the [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: original posts | 3 Comments »