Tonight’s exercise is a bit odd. I’ve been of the opinion for a while that one of the biggest problems in writing these days is people who write things that should be creepy—or at least, that come across to me as pretty disturbing—and apparently miss how creepy they actually are. On the other hand, it’d [...]
Categories: For Writers |
Tags: character dynamics, loose threads, Wednesday Night Writing Exercise | 
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I talked earlier this week about sympathetic antagonists, and their advantages and disadvantages. I’ve seen them go a lot of different ways—success, failure, combinations of the above, all depending on what I managed to do wrong, do right, or occasionally do a little too well.
I’ve written before about my last adventure with an antagonist without [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: impractical applications, loose threads, sympathetic antagonists | No Comments »
The following is the more in-depth version of Kestrel’s bad day exercise that I threatened on Wednesday.
“Prophecy will be the death of me someday.”
Kes should have known better. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew better. It had been fine when it was just her fellows, but Mandible was still [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: bad day, impractical applications, Kestrel, loose threads, Mandible, writing exercise | 2 Comments »
This one was inspired by my old exercise on codes of conduct: I took a small sampling from my primary game. (Jalil, in particular, was requested by two different players–though I’m finding that he would have come through a lot better if I’d written this up back when he was still active as a villain [...]
Categories: For Writers |
Tags: codes of conduct, loose threads, Wednesday Night Writing Exercise | No Comments »
Earlier this week, I sang the praises of polite primary characters. While it isn’t technically a requirement in my game, they’re pretty common on both sides of the screen, to the point where I find it harder to name five characters who don’t default to generally courteous than I do to name five who do. [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: impractical applications, loose threads, polite characters | No Comments »
You’d think this fight would be energy-in.
It’s a culminator—maybe not of a full plotline, but at the very least of a good large bit of effort. It’s been giving me not only topics but even a guest post from one of my players. It’s got somewhat hazy laws of physics, and people doing absolutely brilliant [...]
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Tags: Forged in Malice, impractical applications, loose threads | No Comments »
This post is courtesy of Shinali, reporting on our current plot issue in my primary game–yes, the one with the unexpectedly snarky arc antagonist. We’re still in the midst of the fight, for reasons chronological, psychological and mechanical, and I’ll probably be discussing more of it week after next (since next week I’m going to [...]
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Tags: combat, Forged in Malice, impractical applications, loose threads | No Comments »
My group just met the enemy they’ve struggled through the Underworld oceans to destroy. She is old, she is scary, and she wields deadpan sarcasm as a secondary weapon. The players love it; I can’t figure out where it came from.
Part of it is probably my tendency to fall back on certain character types. I [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: Forged in Malice, impractical applications, loose threads | 2 Comments »
I talked earlier this week about reasons why the Big and Powerful character isn’t the one running around saving the world. This happens a lot in my game; both the setting and my own approach to things result in the world being full of the Obligatory Bigger Fish who for various reasons aren’t involved in [...]
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Tags: impractical applications, loose threads, powerful characters | No Comments »
One of the things that set me off on the topic of neglected world-building was that it might be one of the contributing factors in my interest in my primary game waning somewhat. (All right, that and the fact that we’re on a storyline designed for a player who quit before it got going; my [...]
Categories: Impractical Applications |
Tags: imbalances, impractical applications, loose threads, World-building | No Comments »