Posts belonging to Category Secondary characters
Posted by Ravyn on January 31, 2012
Yesterday, I wrote about the game shepherd NPC. What got me thinking about that character type (or at least, what got me thinking this time) was that one feature that all of the 3D Zelda titles share—their local equivalent of the game shepherd, someone to look over Link’s shoulder and tell him about things that [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Reviews and technique, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: game shepherd NPCs, GM Advice, Reviews and technique, roleplaying, Zelda | 
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Posted by Ravyn on January 30, 2012
One of the things we’ve learned pretty quickly about introducing a player or group to a world they’ve never played in before is that they might not really know what the place is like. Not everyone reads the setting info cover to cover, after all. This is usually where we bring in the Game Shepherd [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: game shepherd NPCs, GM Advice, roleplaying | 7 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 28, 2011
Originally posted on October 8, 2008, because worlds that obviously revolve around their protagonists are dead boring.
The secondary character exists when you’re not looking at her.
That should be pretty self-explanatory, but it’s easy for people to forget that. In stories, you have characters that for some reason are always there, always available, always [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: roleplaying, side character autonomy, techniques, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 21, 2011
Every now and then, you just need a character(s) from a certain group. Such and such a cult. Such and such a location. Such and such an army. The personalities don’t matter as much, just as long as the characters have the appropriate background and will deal with the group in a certain way. Sure, [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters, Tactics |
Tags: quick character use, roleplaying, secondary characters, semi-generic characters, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 12, 2011
One of the interesting things I found about my game was if in doubt, I could generally stall for a game by introducing a cute thing. Small and fluffy, childlike, prone to noises that could’ve been speech if it’d had the intelligence to support it—it really didn’t matter. It’s a recognized pattern, I think—or at [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: cute things, elements, roleplaying, tone, 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 30, 2011
One of the things I found myself thinking, when writing about corruption among bureaucrats, is that in many stories and games bureaucrats, desk jockeys and others who live by papers and numbers get the short end of the stick.
We’ve all seen the types. You get the corrupt ones—oh, so many corrupt ones—who are behind everything [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: bureaucrats, Characterization, narrative roles, roleplaying, writing | No 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 11, 2011
We know all characters need to be differentiated one way or another, but it’s particularly important for antagonists. After all, even in standard fiction, villains drive the story enough that it takes a really spectacular main character to make up for a bad one, and—well, since the protagonist in a game’s been outsourced to the [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character creation, Character development, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: antagonists, Characterization, differentiation, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »