Posted by Ravyn on January 11, 2012
Sometimes you have characters of few words; you know the type, the ones who will nod or shake their heads or occasionally toss out a few word insults. And then there are the ones who don’t talk. At all. No, not even then. They’re mysterious, and they’re definitely a challenge to write or play; there’s [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, roleplaying, silent characters, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on January 10, 2012
One of the things people learn when gaming with me is that I have a thing for characters in disguise. Secret identities, alter egos, pretending to be something they’re not: particularly if I’m on a slow session, there’s nothing quite like watching the peculiar dynamics of a character’s interaction with the person she’s pretending to [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers |
Tags: Characterization, disguise, personal notes, roleplaying | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 27, 2011
Originally posted on September 9, 2008. Have you ever gotten tired of a character, PC, NPC or just plain fictional, who invited himself to a pity party and never left? So have I.
No beloved peasant villages were harmed in the making of this post.
If you’ve been running games for a while, you’ve probably seen one [...]
Categories: Backstory, Character creation, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: angst, Characterization, reprise, roleplaying, techniques, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 22, 2011
In the comments to yesterday’s riff on why I don’t tend to start with my characters pre-heroed, UZ pointed out that there are two things that can both mean character development. It’s a topic I couldn’t resist poking a bit.
I’m going to start by assigning names to them so that we can keep the silly [...]
Categories: Character development, Characterization, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, concepts, meta, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 19, 2011
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival, on the subject of Heroes, Living and Dead, got me thinking about the term. “Hero” is a pretty subjective term, as these things go; some people consider heroism to be anything that involves improving other people’s lives, others see it as risking one’s life, there are still more whose main [...]
Categories: Characterization, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, heroes, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 15, 2011
Creepy characters are something of a hobby of mine. It started by accident; one of my early characters somehow managed to creep the socks off of her entire party, and at the time I couldn’t seem to figure out how to make her stop. So I designed a character to see if I could do [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers |
Tags: Characterization, creepy, freewriting, mood, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 10, 2011
One of the side effects of dealing with worlds not our own is that we’re likely to be dealing with cultures not our own as well (and if we aren’t, why in blazes not?). From a player standpoint, or from the standpoint of a writer trying to deal with a culture not her own, this [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, foreknowledge, plot, roleplaying, Things You Might Want To Know When…, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 30, 2011
One of the most important parts of creating a warrior culture is coming up with the standards to which its warriors are held. Without standards, after all, what is to set a warrior apart from a non-warrior in his culture, or a person who fights from that group of people over there? How is he [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, cultures, role-playing, warrior cultures, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 9, 2011
Sometimes, it can be hard to tell how much of a character’s personality is her and how much is her surroundings. Hopefully, a character’s personality will be independent of her role in the narrative she’s involved in, whether it’s a tabletop game or some sort of fiction. But what better way to check than to [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Plot, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, Exercises, plot, roleplaying, switching characters, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on July 12, 2011
Have you ever had someone who thinks that what you do, or that something you just did, is the most awesome thing ever, even if it’s only for a day (or, heck, a moment) or two? The times I have, I’ve found the admiration to be one of the most gratifying emotions I’ve ever been [...]
Categories: Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: admiration, Characterization, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »