Posts belonging to Category World-building
Posted by Ravyn on January 16, 2012
This one’s back to writing for RPG Blog Carnival. I love the way it makes me think about aspects of the theme I wouldn’t have looked into.
One of the things that a lot of people forget about making locations, fantastic or otherwise, is that the locations themselves are in a constant state of flux. The [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Places, Scening, Technique, World-building |
Tags: locations, mood, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, scening, the perfect version, World-building, writing | 
5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 9, 2012
Sometimes, we find ourselves needing a new course of events. It might be for a counterfactual exercise, a chance to use new people in a pre-existing world (or to replay the same world with the same people but different characters), a way of answering somebody’s what-if, an alternate universe the characters have figured out how [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, History, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: alternate timelines, meta, plot, roleplaying, Technique, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 5, 2012
More for RPG Blog Carnival, or at least inspired by it. This is my brain on poetic when mixing having just finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms with knowing location design is on the topic list in the very near future.
The root of a world is “What if”.
No, wait, that’s not quite right. The root of [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, Places, World-building |
Tags: freewriting, locations, my brain on poetic, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, World-building, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 4, 2012
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is on fantastic locations. When I first saw the topic, before I read the post, I’d been kind of worried that it would be about the found only in fantasies sort of fantastic, rather than the awesome and memorable kind—and there are a lot fewer things that can be said [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, World-building |
Tags: fantastic locations, roleplaying, scening, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 29, 2011
I originally wrote this for an early RPG Blog Carnival on the subject of gods and religion. It all came down to one question: were the two necessarily mutually dependent?
I’ve always been partial to chicken-and-egg questions, particularly within the context of invented worlds. And I always come back to this one: Do gods [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Gods, Religion, World-building |
Tags: gods, religion, reprise, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on November 28, 2011
Two sides, both alike in… something, anyway… is an automatic recipe for drama: just ask Shakespeare! Between the inconveniences they cause and the general waste of life and potential they represent, blood feuds are a prime “problem” in a setting for protagonists to find themselves fixing. But there’s a lot to take into account when [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, History, Player Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: conflicts, feuds, foreknowledge, mediation, plot, roleplaying, Things You Might Want To Know When..., writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 22, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about the importance of getting places to resonate with the people in a world and thus through them with the audience, even before anyone actually sets foot there, and talked about what sorts of factors might give the places that resonance. The next step, then, is to figure out what sorts of [...]
Categories: Description, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, History, Places, Scening, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Places, resonance, roleplaying, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 21, 2011
One of the things I’ve always loved about a good world-building is a sense of place: the idea that after a little while, hearing a place name alone will bring in all the echoes of what the place actually means to the characters. It’s important, particularly in a narrative that bounces about between cities and [...]
Categories: Description, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, History, Places, Scening, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Places, resonance, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 14, 2011
“The major conceptual difference between medieval/historical games and modern/future games is not the weaponry. It’s the ability to split up and still stay in communication.” —Darths and Droids, 13 November 2011
That commentary got me thinking about the kinds of communication that can serve as a game-changer, both in game groups and in works of [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, World-building |
Tags: communication, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 20, 2011
All this week, I’ve talked about ways that news might spread in a fictional setting. I’m sure it’s interesting theoretical detail, but there’s one question the posts haven’t yet answered: what can it actually do for a story or game?
Let’s fix that, shall we?
The obvious use of understanding how news travels is knowing—and more importantly [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: communication, messages, news, plot, World-building | No Comments »