Posts belonging to Category Secondary characters
Posted by Ravyn on June 20, 2013
Originally posted January 27, 2010.
One of the biggest problems people often see with secondary characters is when their creator doesn’t take much of an interest in them. I’m not saying they suddenly need to steal the story, but it helps to spend a little time in their heads, make them more than [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: Characterization, exercise, GM Advice, reprise, roleplaying, secondary characters, writing | 
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Posted by Ravyn on August 6, 2012
It’s a natural thing for a creator to worry about the secondary characters stealing too much of the spotlight. It’s happened in fiction of all stripes, particularly when the main character is left fuzzy for audience insertion purposes; it’s a common risk in RPGs, and likely to end with a bunch of very annoyed players. [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Secondary characters |
Tags: competence, roleplaying, secondary characters, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 21, 2012
One of the things I find most fascinating about having multiple rival searchers in a search plotline is the strange bedfellows it creates. If you’ve got more than three or four different parties trying to get the same thing, there are bound to be alliances, people working together—at least for now—to increase their chances. What [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: plots, roleplaying, search plotlines, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 20, 2012
It may not have been the first search plotline factor I mentioned, but the possibility of rival searchers, along with being a sure source of tension, is one of the most complicated potential elements of a search plotline. Each rival searcher only adds to the complexity.
How many are there? If you’re going for a straightforward [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Secondary characters, Technique |
Tags: plots, roleplaying, search plotlines, writing | 1 Comment »
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 | No Comments »
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 »