Inventing Well Developed Characters
Develop a background story for your character. This will help bring your character to life. Define fundamentals like your age, where you’re from and where you’re going. Are you on a mission? Who are your parents? Do you have a significant other or children? If so, where are they? Are you wealthy or poor? Do you work or practice a trade? Does your character have a destiny? Establishing the basic elements of a character's backstory is incredibly important, but you can get far more detailed and specific if you’d like. The backstory can be as rich as you desire.
Define the personality traits of your character. Avoid basing your character’s personality traits on your own, which is a common pitfall. The experience is much richer if you create traits objectively. Ask yourself questions like: Is your character good, evil, or a complicated mix of both? How about aggressive or defensive? Brave? Kind? Is your character impulsive or does he or she act with common sense? Is he/she charming? Despicable? Trustworthy? Allow your character to have flaws. The game will be more interesting when your character is realistic and imperfect.
Know your character’s motives. During a game, your character will be faced with one situation after another, and each situation will require a choice. These choices dictate where the game goes. You will need to define what your character’s motives are in order to make appropriate and realistic choices. For example, imagine a character who has run away from home after being shunned by his father for being a thief. He meets a group of distinguished adventurers in a tavern and is invited to join them. He must make a decision. After being shamed by his father, the character wants to gain some prestige and respect so that he can return home one day unashamed. This is his motive. It would make sense for this character to choose to join this group of adventurers, since it could provide opportunities to gain respect and redeem himself.
Ensure that your character continually develops. As the game progresses, your character gains knowledge and experience by going through trials, defeating enemies, overcoming challenges and completing quests. These events should contribute to the development of your character in a realistic way. For example, after defeating a string of enemies, it would make sense for your character to feel more empowered, make bolder choices and take on challenges that he/she wouldn’t have tried at the beginning of the game. Think about how new knowledge, experience, and skills might influence your character’s choices moving forward.
Sharpening Your Storytelling Skills
Explore a wide range of media for inspiration. Books, short stories, movies, and television shows are all fertile ground for inspirational narratives and plot lines. Don’t limit yourself to the fantasy genre when you’re looking for inspiration – check out lots of different genres for unique ideas. If you find yourself really stuck, go online and check out some of the random plot generator websites. The plot prompts you get from these websites can range from serious to very silly, but you never know what might kick start your imagination!
Use vivid descriptions to set the place and atmosphere. For example, if you wanted to write about a character walking into a city, your description of the setting should not stop at, “Elrond walked along the path into the city.” Discuss the path – is it straight or crooked? Does the path look frequently used or is it overgrown? What part of the city is the path in? What do the city buildings look like? Is the area safe? What time of day is it? Is it raining, overcast or sunny? Your description doesn't need to answer all of these questions. Aim to include enough detail so that everyone can envision the setting clearly. If something about the setting is very unusual, spend extra time on those details. Include a backstory about how and/or why this strangeness came to be.
Base the overall narrative around a central conflict. Within your storyline there should be many smaller conflicts, snags and obstacles for the characters to navigate, but have these all relate back to the central conflict. This will make your narrative cohesive. It will also create the sense that your characters are progressing through relevant situations that will help to ultimately resolve the central conflict. Subplots are fine and expected. However, make sure there will be a way for you bring that subplot back around to the central narrative. Try to keep any irrelevant or external plot elements to a minimum.
Set up scenarios that move the plot forward. Make sure your characters encounter situations that will require action. Every encounter doesn’t need to be negative, but you do need to include plenty of obstacles that the characters must face. Set up scenarios that could go in multiple directions, allowing the players to make choices that progress the game. Some choices should be minor, but the majority of them need to be important and move the narrative forward. When you set up a situation that could go in multiple directions, be prepared with unrevealed backstory and setting for each of them.
Creating Atmosphere
Turn off the TV and minimize all other distractions. If possible, ban cell phone use completely during game play. Pulling out a mobile phone while another player is sparring with an angry wizard will destroy the atmosphere in the room pretty fast. If natural light spilling in from nearby windows is distracting and/or conveys the wrong mood, cover them with blankets. Set up the game in a room that doesn’t have a lot of other things going on. An empty attic, for example, would be an excellent place to set up.
Change the lighting in the room. Dim or turn out the lights and use candles. If you’d prefer to avoid possible fire hazards, try repositioning the room’s light sources instead. For example, you could move all the lamps into the next room and allow just a little of their light to spill into the game room. You can get even more creative by throwing patterned and/or colored scarves over the lampshades. As the plot progresses, make sure to change up the lighting to coordinate with new scenarios and settings.
Use sound to enhance the atmosphere. Music is one option, although most contemporary music would throw off the fantasy setting completely. For a no-fuss solution, stream an internet radio station that plays classical, baroque, or Celtic music. Using non-music sounds can greatly enhance a fantasy setting, as well. For example, you could play a CD that features nature or ocean sounds to intensify jungle or maritime settings and scenarios.
Rearrange room elements to strengthen the atmosphere. Put computers on the other side of the room, out of everyone’s direct line of vision. Have the game master sit in a chair that positions them above the other players. You can also use room elements to mimic setting characteristics. For example, in anticipation of a sea scenario, you could set up a fan in the corner of the room to mimic an ocean breeze.
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