Posts belonging to Category Concepts
Posted by Ravyn on December 22, 2011
In the comments to yesterday’s riff on why I don’t tend to start with my characters pre-heroed, UZ pointed out that there are two things that can both mean character development. It’s a topic I couldn’t resist poking a bit.
I’m going to start by assigning names to them so that we can keep the silly [...]
Categories: Character development, Characterization, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, concepts, meta, roleplaying, writing | 
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Posted by Ravyn on December 8, 2011
Our heroes of the last six years plus or minus a few cast changes, having narrowly escaped the bloodthirsty duelist they really didn’t feel like fighting, climb their way down the face and shoulder of the giant undead corpse-thing towards the elbow (through which they expect to make an entrance). As they approach the elbow, [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: context, GM tips, intimidation, monsters, roleplaying | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 17, 2011
One of the interesting things about trying to hybridize novel and graphic novel for my NaNo/the Generic Villain project has been determining what to render in words and what to render in pictures. I’d thought originally that most of my content would be writing, like on the blog; certainly, in the prologue, I ignored illustrations [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Concepts, Cross-discipline, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Generic Villain project, NaNoWriMo, Round 2, visuals, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 10, 2011
I wasn’t too successful when I attempted National Novel-Writing Month last year. I had a few ideas, but the story didn’t write; I hadn’t pushed it hard enough to get it to start writing itself the way some of my older projects had. This year, though, I didn’t have the excuses I had before. I [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: concepts, NaNoWriMo, nonsequential writing, Technique, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 7, 2011
I’ve always had a strong competitive streak: a constant drive to excel, to show the world how I measure up, particularly when I’m operating at what they consider to be a disadvantage or supposedly “can’t” do it. So something like NaNoWriMo, with its inherent scoring mechanic, is practically begging for me to turn my full [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: concepts, Generic Villain project, NaNoWriMo, Raven moments, Round 2, writing | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 20, 2011
“Art is a conversation, not a patent office.” –Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.
Sounds good: I’m ready to converse.
Take that first quote. A conversation, not a patent office. I’ve been thinking something like this for a while, though I never really managed to put it into words—perhaps it started when I started poking around webcomics and reading [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique, The Real World |
Tags: art, collaboration, conversation, Reality Hunger, roleplaying, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 19, 2011
I find Reality Hunger: A Manifesto , a book calling for “a blurring of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction”, on the new nonfiction table one Wednesday morning at the library. There are things I should probably be reading, but it takes dibs: I love this book by the time I’ve finished the first chapter. [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Writers, Reviews and technique, The Real World |
Tags: plagiarism, Reality Hunger, reviews, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 13, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about the discussion of social norms and market norms in Predictably Irrational, then expanded them to apply to the peculiar meta-dynamics of the game table. As I pointed out, you need to know what categories these norms fit into to take advantage of them, but, then, how do you utilize the norms [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Motivation, Technique, The Real World |
Tags: analysis, behavior, books, meta, Predictably Irrational, real world, roleplaying | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 12, 2011
I have to admit it: I’m addicted to books about how the mind works. I almost always learn something new (I’ve read more than half a dozen this year alone, and not a single one has failed to show me something I hadn’t seen before), they’ve got a lot of cross-discipline uses, and I’ve always [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Motivation, Player Advice, Technique, The Real World |
Tags: analysis, behavior, books, meta, Predictably Irrational, real world, roleplaying | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 25, 2011
One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of stories is that the protagonists rarely make the first move. Where there exists a conflict with a villain, the hero(es) will almost invariably leave the first move to said villains, with a few notable exceptions.
One reason for this is that in general, defense codes as closer to [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Writers, Plot |
Tags: concepts, plot, reactive heroes, writing | No Comments »