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 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 15, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about the kinds of communication within a group that can be in their own right game-changing, things that if added to a world can make for a level of coordination between characters that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Along with talking about what to watch out for, and what sort of factors it introduces, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Tactics |
Tags: communication, complications, roleplaying, tactics, World-building, writing | No 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 »
Posted by Ravyn on October 19, 2011
One of the things I pointed out in my first riff on spreading news is that there’s no guarantee that the news will arrive in precisely the same state as it left, nor even that it will arrive at all. Whether it was mean to happen or just happen, interference with news is a risk—and, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: communication, messages, news, plot, World-building | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 18, 2011
Yesterday, I talked about the movement of information across distances, and all the factors we need to take into account when dealing with them. Today, I’m going to talk about some general methods by which it does so, and how it affects the speed and consistency of the message.
The basic way, of course, is word [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: communication, messages, news, plot, World-building | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 17, 2011
A lot of us are fond of having our narratives span a wide swath of country. The main characters specifically find themselves questing their way right across the map, or just find themselves bouncing about between locations in which they could get things done; PCs find themselves running to problems, or away from them, or [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: communication, messages, news, plot, World-building | 4 Comments »