Post by Morreion on Oct 26, 2011 17:11:31 GMT -5
Storyboard: Get them in a tree, throw rocks at them (Massively)
You want to lose. You want to have awful things happen to your character, and if at all possible, you want them to be awful things that could almost be prevented for added tragic consequence. In short, to really make your roleplaying the best it can be, you want to subvert absolutely everything that games have taught you to do, including the game that you're playing.
Storyboard: Making it worse (Massively)
Just remember -- for everything that goes wrong for your character, you have to make sure that there's something to spur him or her forward. Otherwise, you're just being sadistic for no reason.
Storyboard: Balancing the failing act (Massively)
You want your characters to suffer repeated setbacks, yeah. You might even want to make, say, a character who wants to be rich be perpetually poor instead. But you can milk that failure for a lot more if she starts out saving a lot of money, then has to spend it on something more important (say, another character). Then she builds up again and starts trying to invest, only to have that fall out from underneath her. She starts a business that fails. She marries a millionaire who goes broke. You get the idea. Why are people still amused with Wile E. Coyote and his perpetual inability to catch a single bird? Because he never goes about it quite the same way twice. He screws up each time, but he's always getting back up and trying something else. If you want your character to be perpetually unable to achieve something, don't keep it a one-note lamentation. Let her try and fail, try something else and fail, and so forth. Keep it moving -- I'd say that depending on playtime, two weeks to a month is the longest you want to linger on one note. That's enough time to rise, fall, and get back up without feeling rushed. But as it turns out, you might not actually fall again after all.
You want to lose. You want to have awful things happen to your character, and if at all possible, you want them to be awful things that could almost be prevented for added tragic consequence. In short, to really make your roleplaying the best it can be, you want to subvert absolutely everything that games have taught you to do, including the game that you're playing.
Storyboard: Making it worse (Massively)
Just remember -- for everything that goes wrong for your character, you have to make sure that there's something to spur him or her forward. Otherwise, you're just being sadistic for no reason.
Storyboard: Balancing the failing act (Massively)
You want your characters to suffer repeated setbacks, yeah. You might even want to make, say, a character who wants to be rich be perpetually poor instead. But you can milk that failure for a lot more if she starts out saving a lot of money, then has to spend it on something more important (say, another character). Then she builds up again and starts trying to invest, only to have that fall out from underneath her. She starts a business that fails. She marries a millionaire who goes broke. You get the idea. Why are people still amused with Wile E. Coyote and his perpetual inability to catch a single bird? Because he never goes about it quite the same way twice. He screws up each time, but he's always getting back up and trying something else. If you want your character to be perpetually unable to achieve something, don't keep it a one-note lamentation. Let her try and fail, try something else and fail, and so forth. Keep it moving -- I'd say that depending on playtime, two weeks to a month is the longest you want to linger on one note. That's enough time to rise, fall, and get back up without feeling rushed. But as it turns out, you might not actually fall again after all.
