Nov
19
All right folks, I’m here to talk to you about diversity…
Don’t leave. I can see you moving your cursor away. I’m not talking about making sure you have enough female players or Black Asian Bisexual Youths. I’m talking about making your particular RP reflect its universe a little more. Don’t think it’s a problem? Read More
May
3
We’ve had a lot of discussion here on the blog about Mary Sue and her many tentacles of slimy perfection and personality as realistic as Wayne Rooney discussing fine art over a bottle of vintage ruby port whilst listening to classical. It’s a beast we all want to avoid meeting or even worse, creating. So how do we do this?
This Roleplaying Focus is about just that with I have affectionately dubbed Mary Sue: Defeating The Beast. Read More
Aug
5
In tabletop RPGs, and computer game RPGs there’s always a risk of your character dying. Players will spend a long time building their character stats, collecting items so the danger of their character death makes them take great care in trying to stay alive.
In play-by-post games, players are in control of the story, and write as if writing interactive fiction. There’s no real risk of a character being killed, unless it’s something you want to happen yourself. Killing other player characters is against the rules (in every play-by-post game I’ve ever seen), so there’s not much chance it will happen.
Danger makes good stories. Nobody wants to read a story about a man walking to the shops to get an ice cream, but if it were a dangerous journey over rivers of hungry crocodiles, past an erupting volcano and past deadly ninja warriors, it suddenly becomes much more interesting.
So there’s a chance that your players might get complacent because they know their characters aren’t really in any danger. Like main characters in a long-running TV show, you know they’re not going to die really, because they’re essential to the show. This doesn’t stop the series writers from putting them in trouble though, and making things extra difficult for the character.
May
25
Most of us want the character that we roleplay to be badass. It’s our childhood fantasy to be the hero of the story, to be the person who helps rescue everyone else from danger, to defeat the badguys, and for everyone else to look up to. But be careful you’re not making your character too perfect, or they might turn into a Mary Sue.
I’ve been creating a Rolemaster character recently, and they have a great system that allows you to pick special abilities for your character (they call them ‘talents’), and you have a limited number of points to spend on these talents. To gain more talents you need more points, and to get these you have to choose the equal number of points worth in ‘flaws’. You can choose these talents and flaws from the book, and there’s many of each, and it’s the flaws which really inspired me.
Apr
5
When you’re creating a new character you need to think about their age. Are they young or old? There are many different ways characters will act depending on their age, so it’s crucial you get it right for your character to be realistic.
Oct
21
This article was contributed by Meg Gingie, a member of rolplaying game Reign of Blood
by Meg Gingie
While creating a character, you’re faced with several questions about it: What gender should they be? What should they look like? What should their names be? What background do they come from? Nearly all of those questions fall under what ethnicity/ies your character is/are. Going deeper into a character’s history makes it more tangible to other readers and much more interesting for them to read about and relate to.
Aug
14
Was your child a nuisance when they were little?
This article was written in Flashback week to hopefully give you some ideas of what to post about in your character’s Flashback.
Here’s some ideas:
If your character is the rough, rugged type they might have an impressive scar on their face. The scare probably comes with a story where they fought a great beast, or a bitter enemy. That’s a great story to tell.
Is your character a troublemaker? Have they always been like this? You might want to show the first time they had a run-in with the law, maybe for committing a small crime and got caught, or had a narrow escape. They could be even younger and were always getting into trouble with a teacher for shenanigans in the playground. It would be a great contrast if your character is now a calm, law-abiding citizen to show that they once had a rebellious streak and often got in trouble with the law, maybe this is what set them on the straight and narrow.
Jul
16
Even the mighty Superman has weaknesses and obstacles to overcome
In this article we’ll talk about why things shouldn’t ever be too easy for your character, and how you can do to make things more interesting by putting obstacles in their way.
So you’re playing a PBEM game and you want your character to be as believable as possible. The reason why you want this is so that other members of the game will read your posts and really feel like your character is a real person.
In reality, good things don’t happen all of the time. For total realism, sometimes bad things happen to good people. If you want to do something in real life, there will be things standing in your way. Similarly if your character wants to do something, there should be obstacles that they should overcome before they achieve their goal.
If characters on TV or films achieved what they wanted to straight away, we’d cut out the story, and that’s the interesting bit!
Apr
26
The OngoingWorlds website has now been updated so that you can add photos to your character profiles. The photos will show when you view the individual character pages, as well as on the “Characters” page for each game.
All games have been upgraded, and any new games which are created will have this functionality as standard.
To add a photo for your character, view the character’s profile, and click “Edit Character” (note: you can only edit characters that you own, or if you’re a Moderator in the game you can edit all characters in your game).
Apr
19
So you’re playing a PBEM/PBP game and you want your character to be as believable as possible. The reason why you want this is so that other members of the game will read your posts and really feel like your character is a real person. They will also respect you as a writer.
Inventing some character traits will mean people can understand your character's personality
Other writers may use your character
There will also come a time when other characters will want to write about your character, this might be when they want their character to interact with your character, or perhaps someone is writing an *Action* post which involves your character, and it’s important that they easily get to grips with your character. It’s really handy for them to be able to assume how your character will talk, and how s/he will react to certain situations (or they might leave this part up to you). But if your character (lets call him “John”) has a French accent, is a vegetarian, and is really afraid of scissors, then it’s important for other members to know about these things so that when they mention your character they don’t mention John going to the butchers on his way to the hairdressers.
