Posts belonging to Category Dialogue
Posted by Ravyn on January 4, 2011
Brickwall, in response to yesterday’s post on deception, mentioned that one shouldn’t start a deception around other people who know the truth, because they will inevitably get in the way. I agree that other people who know the truth are dangerous, but in my experience, there are ways of ensuring that they’re more help than [...]
Categories: Dialogue, For Roleplayers, Player Advice, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: deception, game groups, roleplaying, tactics | 
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Posted by Ravyn on January 3, 2011
One thing I’ve noticed about both games and stories is that every social monster needs at some point to learn how to deceive, whether this actually involves lying or not. After all, the social monster’s job is to get the people to the conclusion that she and/or her companions want them to reach, and that’s [...]
Categories: Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: deception, dialogue, roleplaying, tactics, writing | 7 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 1, 2010
I’ve talked a lot about dialogue before; it’s at least as useful as appearance for differentiating characters. And while accents, verbal tics, catch phrases and levels of vocabulary are all very well, there’s one way to take a look at a character’s mind that just requires interaction with people of different stations. How much store [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, dialogue, rank, roleplaying, writing | No 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 »
Posted by Ravyn on August 13, 2010
Yesterday, I talked about how a GM or a writer can keep from misplacing characters in a character-dense scene. But while it’s harder for someone who controls multiple characters to keep perfect track of all of them, it’s still possible for even a PC to be misplaced in a scene. Everyone’s talking too fast, it’s [...]
Categories: Dialogue, For Roleplayers, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: group scenes, keeping track of characters, player tips, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 12, 2010
One of the biggest problems with having four or five people operating in the same scene, regardless of its type, is the risk that the better-imaged ones will take over and the less-definite ones will get lost in the shuffle. A couple days ago, UZ asked how to avoid that without creating a completely patterned [...]
Categories: Concepts, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique |
Tags: combat, conversations, group scenes, keeping track of characters, roleplaying, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 9, 2010
Often, a writer can get away with establishing a character slowly, over time. In this scene, emphasizing this quality. In another scene, another one. A slow, gradual process. A GM with a long-term enough plan, or a player who wants to dole out the information bit by bit, might be able to do the same.
But [...]
Categories: Character development, Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Description, Dialogue, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, one scene, roleplaying, show don't tell, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 20, 2010
Rhetoric. It’s the purview of a speaker, a common way of showing why a leader is so popular, an excellent use of a high Performance score, a way to show off one’s own writing skills—but on the other hand, as techniques go, it’s also a bit intimidating to write, and when one is writing a [...]
Categories: Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: creation, dialogue, rhetoric, role-playing, speeches, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 5, 2010
In-jokes. The secret language of people who’ve known each other or been part of the same subset of a subculture for a while, they serve a writer or roleplayer as a way of illustrating a strong shared history between one or more characters. But for people going a little more meta, they’re also an excellent [...]
Categories: Characterization, Cultures, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Language and Linguistics, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: in-jokes, Language and Linguistics, processes, roleplaying, slang, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on July 1, 2010
So I’m sitting and talking with one of my former players, and he asks me a question: why can’t these characters let their emotional shields down when the whole group’s around, since they seem to do just fine in sidechat? That gets me wondering. After all, the inner lives of the characters are my favorite [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Characterization, Characters in the world, Dialogue, Exposition, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Technique |
Tags: exposition, information, questions, roleplaying | 1 Comment »