Tag: roleplaying techniques

December 14, 2009

Playing a Cleric: Prayers

I have a tendency to play PCs with religious backgrounds. Playing “the cleric” is a challenge, you are playing against expectations. Other players may expect you to be a healing machine. Your GM may impose expectations from a church – or even a god. If you want to develop a multidimensional character with its own identity, you need to develop...

May 14, 2009

Its Just A Game, Part II: Emotional Insulation and Player Characters

This is something of a follow-up to my last post. There have been times, in the past, when I’ve become too emotionally wound up with a character I’ve been playing. This happened more often when I was involved in LARPing where the immediacy and direct correlation between a player and PC was particularly strong. My playing style involves a degree...

January 15, 2009

Some thoughts on moral perception and nonhuman races

Human moral psychology is weird. In a game, most of us don’t think twice about killing enemies in the moment. It doesn’t really matter what that moment is, as long as it includes some danger (not necessarily to your PC) and/or urgency. On the other hand, if things are calmer (say, the enemies are captives, being reasonable and talkative, or...

January 5, 2009

Making Magic Mysterious

I finally began reading the Black Company novels recently. I’m still early in them, so – while I’ll say that I’m enjoying them so far – this isn’t a review. One minor thing I noticed is that the wizards of middling power who are part of the Black Company often use magic to produce horrors. These might be swarms of...

November 4, 2008

Fallout 3 – intro and character generation

As I mentioned yesterday, I just picked up Fallout 3. I haven’t had much time to play, but i like what I’ve seen so far. Good games often give me ideas about how to improve other games, so I may be commenting here from time to time on possible applications to tabletop RPGs. This wouldn’t be too weird. The SPECIAL...

September 8, 2008

Romantic entanglements

On Saturday, we played our temporally-displaced Exalted game. It was a good session in which I got to explore my character a bit more than usual. One thing that I sometimes have trouble with is figuring out how characters feel about things. Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes, though, people have unpredictable desires… and PCs should be no exception. So, yeah....

August 5, 2008

Stunt Modes

I like the stunting mechanic in Exalted. The way the rules are written, almost every action that a PC takes that is described by that PC’s player in terms other than game mechanics is a stunt. Most people don’t play the game this way, but let’s ignore that fact for a moment. I’ll get back to it. So, yeah. Saying,...

November 28, 2007

Confession Time

I’m not a real roleplayer. I know people who, while playing in an RPG, will take on a role so thoroughly that their thoughts become, largely, those of their PC. In a LARP, they might sit in the corner giggling madly the entire game. In a tabletop game, only a fraction of their roleplaying occurs at the table. Much of...