Posts belonging to Category The Library
Posted by Ravyn on September 18, 2012
Yesterday, I talked about how almost everyone will look at a character’s job and decide that it’s easier than it actually is, including the character doing the job. Today, I’m going to talk about why that should matter to us, particularly to those of us who write rather than tabletopping.
The first, of course, is characterization—figuring [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Observations from Work, Plot, Technique, The Library, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, Observations from Work, perceptions of jobs, plot, World-building | 
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Posted by Ravyn on September 17, 2012
Not too long ago, I had what felt like the same conversation twice in a span of about twenty-four hours. One day, on my commute home, I found myself talking to a fellow trolley rider who knew what my occupation was, didn’t quite get why I “needed to go to school for that”…. and then, [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Observations from Work, The Library |
Tags: Characterization, Observations from Work, perceptions of jobs, World-building | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on November 16, 2011
There was a conversation I once had with one of my regular patrons, a civvie who worked the electronics store, whose daughter was one of our regulars. I’d run into him at the trolley station, on the way to one of my Sunday shifts, and he asked me what I was reading. “Clausewitz’s On War,” [...]
Categories: For Writers, Observations from Work, The Library, The Real World |
Tags: exceptionalism, rants, real world, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 24, 2011
Thursday morning at the office I’ve been assigned to until my library reopens. It’s still early, nobody looking for SAC or the Relief Society or even the Education Office, so I’m trawling through Reality Hunger looking for quotes to engage in one-sided conversation with. One of my new officemates, reading the previous day’s paper as [...]
Categories: Observations from Work, The Library, The Real World |
Tags: CDC Zombies, Observations from Work, real world, teaching | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 24, 2011
A bit over a year ago, I mentioned military reading lists as a source of inspiration. The Marines’ version of the military reading list (known as the Commandant’s Reading List, though I’ve never been entirely sure how much control the Commandant actually has over it) is one of those staples of working at a Marine [...]
Categories: Observations from Work, Reading Through the Ranks, The Library |
Tags: book reviews, Commandant's Reading List, library | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on November 10, 2010
More than a year ago, I talked a bit about in-groups and out-groups, and the role of PCs between those groups. In-groups make for excellent distinctions between sets of characters, but there’s one other thing they can do in both stories and games to further involve the audience in the story. See, the thing about [...]
Categories: Concepts, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Observations from Work, Technique, The Library, World-building |
Tags: connecting with the audience, identifiers, in-groups, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on June 17, 2010
RPG Blog Carnival June 2010, hosted at Campaign Mastery, is on inspiration. So I’m going to look at some of the things that inspire me. I’ve already talked about nonfiction books as an inspiration source, but I’m going to narrow my focus even further: books from military reading lists.
Yes, members of the American military (at [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Inspiration, Observations from Work, The Library |
Tags: original posts | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 27, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about the uses of a weekly routine in grounding a story or its characters in their world. The advantage, of course, is that it creates a set of predictable yet limiting events, gives people a feel for what the patterns are like. But there’s one other trick that can be done, once [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Observations from Work, Technique, The Library, World-building |
Tags: background, disruption, roleplaying, routines, weekly schedules, World-building, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 26, 2010
Routines are a natural human behavior, whether the people engaging in them choose to admit it or not. And one of the most common routines in this day and age is the weekly schedule: the things that happen on this day, or these days, week in and week out. It’s not just an interesting observation, [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Observations from Work, Technique, The Library, World-building |
Tags: background, roleplaying, routines, weekly schedules, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 2, 2010
After yesterday’s riff about minimum skills, I figured I’d better give a nice thorough example. And where better to demonstrate a range of minimum skills than to look at what’s expected of the friendly neighborhood Marine library technician?
Needless to say, there are the standard requirements, the kinds of things you’d expect from a library employee [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Observations from Work, The Library, The Real World, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »