Posts belonging to Category Exercises
Posted by Ravyn on January 31, 2011
The comments to last week’s “Will Always Win Because” riff made me think I hadn’t really made my purpose clear enough in the original riff. So here, instead, are some examples from different games I’ve been in. Note that while the character’s foes winning is treated as because of a feature of the character and [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, flaws, roleplaying, writing | 
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Posted by Ravyn on January 28, 2011
We’ve all run into characters in our or other people’s narratives that are just stupidly hard to put a real challenge to, let alone defeat. I know I’ve often tried to design good villains, only to realize that I’m not entirely sure what exactly is going to lead to their defeat. Or someone else is [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Plot, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, flaws, roleplaying, writing | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 19, 2011
Yesterday I talked about characters’ internal narratives—the kinds of stories that they’ve internalized and often act according to. I wasn’t able to go into as much detail as I would have liked on how to find an established character’s internal narratives. I can, however, show you some of mine, and things that helped me find [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, narratives, roleplaying, stories, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 18, 2011
From time immemorial, people have told each other stories—about why the world is the way it is, about generic youths who all had one of three or four names and somehow managed to make good, about the kinds of people they’d want to be and the kinds of people they’d want to sleep with. For [...]
Categories: Character development, Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, narratives, roleplaying, stories, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 23, 2010
Yesterday, I introduced an exercise for two people based on taking information and drawing conclusions. But there’s another use for it, one that can be done with two people but works just as well with one, one that’s a little more character-driven.
It’s pretty much the same sequence of events, with one minor difference: instead of [...]
Categories: Character development, Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: Characterization, conclusions, Exercises, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 22, 2010
A good writer or GM needs to be good at getting people to draw the right conclusions. Readers who like predicting the action, or players on general principle, are served well by being able to draw them without the extra help. Heck, observation and logic are useful in the real world, particularly for identifying problems [...]
Categories: Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: conclusions, Exercises, logic, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 9, 2010
This one came about by accident. I’m not even entirely sure what started it, but it was between session, boredom was running rampant, one of my players slipped into voice and I followed, and next thing either of us knew we were watching her PC and one of my NPCs, from drastically different parts of [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, World-building |
Tags: culture exchange, debate, Exercises, roleplaying, writing | 9 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 29, 2010
This one’s an idea I’ve toyed with on several occasions—once as a sort of RP team-building exercise, once as a theoretical experiment, once because I was bored. Like most of my exercises, it helps to know the available pool of characters. Unlike them, it also helps to know the pool of players; this one isn’t [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Player Advice, The Real World, Voice and Style |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, Player Advice, roleplaying | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 25, 2010
“So this is my place….”
I’ve done a decent amount with characterization exercises, and every now and then played with worldbuilding exercises, but sometimes you don’t want to do them separately; at times like that, it’s better to get the world, whether it’s your creation or just one you want to understand better, properly interwoven with [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Exercises, roleplaying, tour, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 18, 2010
So the character’s just waking up, and is in that foggy haze between the dreaming and waking world—awake enough to be audible, asleep enough to not quite reach the point of lucidity. For her, it might be a good time to either pull the covers tighter and go back to sleep, or to get up [...]
Categories: Characterization, Dialogue, Exercises, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, dreams, roleplaying, sleeptalking, waking up, writing | 4 Comments »