Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Making the Case

In both books and roleplaying campaigns, you as either author or GM need to make the story line compelling.  You want the person to read on, your players to continue on to their goal.  But how do you do that with out feeling like your trudging along.  Here are some ideas I've found useful.

1) In both roleplaying and books, plotting out where you want to go is always a good idea.  Make your outline as elaborate as you want.  But be aware your players will take left turns now and again.  Even when writing, sometimes you change direction because of something unexpected you wrote in, so be flexible!

2) Develop the area, people and ideas you want to express.  Players like three dimensional worlds, as do readers.  Here you have to be a little careful.  Players like lots of descriptions to see if there is anything they can use or abuse.  But in this fast paced world we live in a lot of readers do not like page long descriptions, so you have to be careful on what you write.  (As a side note, most old school fantasy readers like page long descriptions and if you are pandering to them, write on!)

3)  Really think out your bad guys.  Just because they are bad doesn't mean you automatically hate them.  Maybe they are really nice guys, but just on the opposite side of the board as your players/main characters.  Unless you really want to don't use the cliche bad guy, twirling his mustache as the train comes closer, make him a dynamic person so people hate him, but perhaps understand where he is coming from.

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