Posts belonging to Category Thematics
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 | 
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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 July 13, 2011
One of my players recently asked me how I did nonvisual magic in my games. I covered the topic before, about a year ago, but since then I’ve had time to refine my technique a bit and think about the process, rather than just the descriptors, of my effect/sense descriptions.
I start with the outline, well [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Technique, Thematics, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: description, magic, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on May 16, 2011
I’ve noticed that in many of the books I read, magic is rather similar to physics, in that it works the same way no matter where you are and where you came from. Sure, you might get cases where it seems to work differently due to other factors, rather like the way gravity differs between [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Magic systems, roleplaying, variance, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 4, 2011
In response to my riff yesterday on discovering a character through one of her interests, UZ pointed out that there was a certain universal symbolism about tea.
“A villain who drinks tea is a civilized villain. A murderer who drinks tea is an urbane murderer. There is no such thing as a tea drinking contest. In [...]
Categories: Concepts, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Language and Linguistics, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: roleplaying, symbolism, World-building, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 26, 2011
Over the last couple of days I’ve dipped into mythology a bit, with a crew of anthropomorphized Deaths and a new legendary look at quicksilver. Now I’m going to look back and see where they came from—who’s up for a little myth dissection?
I find the best thing to do when toying with mythology is to [...]
Categories: Cultures, Death, Undeath and the Afterlife, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Thematics, World-building, stories |
Tags: death, five reapers, meta, myth design, thought exercise, world flavor | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on January 25, 2011
They say, in the land with the five reapers, that quicksilver is the symbol of death.
It is liquid, and one cannot escape a liquid. What would stop a rolling stone, it simply flows around; what the air would not have the weight to move, it overwhelms. Quicksilver is captivating. Like water, it beads up, it [...]
Categories: Death, Undeath and the Afterlife, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Thematics, World-building, stories |
Tags: death, five reapers, thought exercise, world flavor | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 26, 2010
A while back, I wrote about getting to understand the kernels of one’s characters by casting them into character roles from an existing story. That’s a fun way to find the parts of the characters that define them, but it’s not always easy; as often as not, most stories aren’t going to get you anywhere [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Kernels, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, kernels, roleplaying, themes, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on September 16, 2010
The world isn’t what you expected it to be. Things, generally supernatural, are pretending to be completely normal and hiding everywhere from the sewers to your neighbor’s preschool. And you’ve just figured this out and are trying to figure out how to make sense of it. Grasping at straws in the process is a perfectly [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Magic systems, Player Advice, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, fairy tales, roleplaying, setting knowledge, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
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 »