One idea I’d been playing with for my world, probably not plot-relevant but definitely interesting in its own right, came up back when my main culture was still primary influence unspecified but very, very scholastic. It’s always seemed unfair to me, picking on scholars’ ideas when they just didn’t have the resources available to be [...]
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There’s a lot going on in my game. If you’re prone to understatement. We’ve got the group looking for a spy, and drafting in a friend of theirs to help the God of Prophecy see something that said god itself cannot look into without help. We’ve got threatening graffiti on one NPC’s walls, and another [...]
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Welcome to the new home of the Exchange of Realities.
I’d been considering this move for a while; those of you who followed things other than my blog probably know why. My old site was nice, particularly in the beginning when community was still the priority of most of the major Names on that network, and [...]
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I spread my wings, and this was where I landed. This site is still under construction; come back soon!
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One of the biggest things I’ve found that destroys twists is someone seeing it coming. For many people, the answer to this is to try to avoid foreshadowing if at all possible (cheating!), or keep any foreshadowing so subtle that the only way to find it is after the fact. But in most of the [...]
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Usually, when I’m riffing about what I’ve learned, I talk about my game. But it’s really hard to show leadership through an NPC when you’re running for a bunch of high-powered mavericks, and besides, I have a much better example at hand. See, this is more art imitating life; most of what I’ve learned about [...]
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Up until now, I’d never really understood the need of webcomic artists to celebrate their hundredth strip. It’s what, a little over three months? Only significance is that it’s a three-digit number. Now, half a year, that’s impressive.
And then I actually started blogging, and I began to understand it a bit better. Keeping to a [...]
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Just about everybody knows at least some of the major varieties of playstyle. You’ve got rules-heavy vs. rules-light, deep roleplaying vs. beer and pretzels, gritty vs. over the top, balance between combat and intellectual puzzles and social situations, and types of metagame enjoyment. (If you haven’t read this last one, you should; it’s awesome.) But [...]
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World-building may well be the most overwhelming part of writing a fantasy story or prepping for a game. It’s certainly one of the most overwhelming. Between the magic system and the cultures, the maps, the climate zones, the legends, the level to which the legends are accurate, the cultural repercussions of the legends, the class [...]
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I come today with one of the most flexible tools a writer could have.
It isn’t exactly uncommon for people to tell writers that they should try playing in tabletop role-playing games. After all, it’s a chance at characterization, a way to work on descriptions a bit, and a chance to see what sorts of interactions [...]
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