Posts belonging to Category Places
Posted by Ravyn on November 17, 2010
There’s a lot that goes into design of a city: things like its population, how it’s governed, where it gets its food and water, what sorts of things it imports and exports. Your audience, be they reader or gamer, might remember those, but that’s not what seems to stick in most people’s minds when they [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, Places, Technique, World-building |
Tags: distinction, landmarks, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 
5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 2, 2010
In yesterday’s post about creating magical locations based on their purpose, I mentioned the possibility of the purpose being to channel magic, and said I’d discuss it later. “The following day” counts as later, don’t you think?
Like necromancy’s slow shift from “My divinations require a corpse of some sort, preferably fresh” to “OMG FEAR MY [...]
Categories: Concepts, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Places, Scening, Symbolism, Technique, World-building |
Tags: magical locations, roleplaying, setting, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on September 1, 2010
One of the most common first approaches I see for designing a magical location is determining its purpose. Sometimes, it’s to channel magic in a certain way, but that’s less common and not necessarily likely to stand on its own—we’ll get into those later. But most of the time, even on an inherently magical building, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, World-building |
Tags: magical locations, roleplaying, setting, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on August 31, 2010
I talked yesterday about designing a magical location around the effect it was supposed to have on the audience. But it’s one thing to say “I want this effect”, and another thing entirely to get the effect in question. How do you go about it?
First, of course, is actually choosing the effect. It goes without [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Places, Scening, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: effects, magical locations, roleplaying, setting, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on August 30, 2010
What fun is a fantasy world without inherently magical locations? They make it clear which genre you’re operating in, provide a little color, and because of the ability to use elements not present in mundane locations, can often create a more intense and targeted mood than their mundane counterparts. I usually begin with a combination [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: magical locations, roleplaying, setting, World-building, writing | 6 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 2, 2010
One of the biggest difficulties with an Earth-with-modifications setting is getting across to people the time period in which the story is set, particularly as the setting gets more and more modern and the distinctions less and less obvious. A little slip, and it becomes easy for people to forget that this is supposed to [...]
Categories: Cultures, Exposition, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, History, Places, Scening, Technique, World-building |
Tags: roleplaying, setting, time, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on February 3, 2010
When you think of the phrase “fantasy setting”, what do you see?
I asked that around on Twitter and got a bunch of rather telling answers. Dragons, lots of dragons. Armor and swords, many swords. (For some reason, apparently you don’t often see halberds). Mountains, marketplaces—beards and funny hats.
Presumably, there are dwarves under a mountain somewhere, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, Places, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 19, 2009
Epic scenery tends to get a bit of a bad rap, particularly in role-playing games. Sure, they ask, it’s big and pretty and all, but are you sure you didn’t put it in just for an excuse to show off your ability to create the stuff? And most of us, being honest people at heart [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 18, 2009
Into any story, a little epic scenery seems to fall. Okay, not fall exactly. More come crashing down into view at just the right moment to make everyone use it and take the audience’s breath away. Either way, it’s pretty much a staple of stories in general and the speculative fiction genre in particular. But [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: original posts | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 22, 2009
A little over a year ago, I talked about heroes/adventurers and their day jobs; not everyone can support themselves by adventuring, and not everyone wants to. The problem with these sorts of jobs is that many people just don’t find them interesting; they might take time away from a game group, seem “too much like [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Observations from Work, Places, Scening, Technique, The Library, The Real World, World-building |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »