132 replies to this topic

[Thom Frankfurt]

Wouldn't a vampire's regeneration force out all the bionic/cybernetic implants?

Makes me also wonder about chick characters with breast implants becoming vampires, what would happen?

[BlackWidow]

RogueSpear, on 23 October 2012 - 06:26 PM, said:

Actually I do play a bog standard Stormtrooper. Chad Harkin, THX-16401, 48th Legion, stationed to Corellia. Been playing him two weeks now. Our party is a squad of stormtroopers, no Jedi, no bounty hunters, nothing. Just another group of squaddies. And it's great fun. The entirety of the first session was us d*cking about the barracks in our down time. That led to a bar scene, which led to a plot hook, and now we're aiding in putting down a gang. Like I said, going well so far.

Mac's not saying you don't get to be special or not part of the main story. He's just saying you don't need to be a massive powergamer and you don't need to be the guy who all the other players are forced to RP around. Let's be fair, we've all had 'that guy' who was the biggest and the best and he don't afraid of anything. So he constantly bigs that up.
And in general, unless done very well, that character (and often player) is boring to play with. Be a vampire. Be a cyborg. In the course of the RP, sure, become both if it suits. But don't start as both, with all the gear and all the guns and walk in and tell everyone what to do and constantly shove your character right to the fore of the spotlight. There's no where for your character to go from there, it's not a fun read, is essentially the point. I'm aware I'm babbling, but I'm also shattered.
I bow out for the night, reply to y'all in the morning.

Wow. You make it work. That is awesome.

[RogueSpear]

It's honestly the most fun I've had RPing in a long time. My other characters are great and I love 'em, I have a WH40k tech priest who owns a forge, a light cruiser is under his control, he wanders around in full power armour with a force field, Omnissian Power Hammer and a 20mm autocannon. He likes to build things and pretty much anything tech related. He takes satisfaction in destruction, seeking to restore mankind to it's true place amongst the stars, the dominant power in the galaxy once more. Three years of a weekly RP amasses some pretty fun stuff.
But he is pretty one dimensional. Which for a tech priest isn't really saying much, but the point remains valid. Chad has a mother, father, two brothers (One dead, one living), a little sister, a home town, a family farm (Stick with the clichés lads, just not too many), a best friend, a homebrew homeworld...And so does everyone else in the RP. All we were told we would be doing for the first session was 'Tell each other about yourselves. Where are you from?'
Which was just enough to get us going. So everyone ended up with these fully fleshed out characters. A couple of the mad SW buffs (Myself being lead amongst them) spent ages looking up stormtroopers, etc. We spent four hours just listening to each other describe our characters. We made those characters come alive.
RP is about bringing characters to life at it's most fundamental level. Yeah yeah, you're telling their story, you're telling the story (as fed to you by the GM) and making it your own (Because no GM's story has ever survived contact with their players, as is only right and proper), but you can't do that without the character. They don't need to win. They don't need to lose. They just need to be them. Those characters were alive and well in our heads before we showed up to that session. If your character is hale and healthy and full of life in your head, doesn't matter what they are. You'll get 'em where they gotta be.
Let the good times roll.

P.S. I know I said I was sleeping, but I couldn't, so I watched a Knight's Tale. WIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM!!!

Edited by RogueSpear, 23 October 2012 - 08:51 PM.

[guardian wolf]

Yeah I have to admit, this gave me a lot of pointers on how I should go about with Damarus.

[Thom Frankfurt]

Demarus? *scratches head* who?

Personally I like the squeegie characters the most.

In Rifts I always play a Coalition dude. Everything else is just________ . In D&D (or any of it's entities) I usually loose interest with the character by the time they're 6th level, with the exception of my main character that I've been playing for neigh on two decades now.

[guardian wolf]

Damarus is going to be the future son of Draco. I will be putting out a future talk only RP about it later, once I finish up with Fall from Grace.

[RogueSpear]

Yeah, I don't think I'll ever lose interest in Tod. I mean, I justified, in character, attempting to build a Super Star Destroyer (Essentially), so who couldn't love that?
I don't think I'd like to jump into an RP on the forums with him as he is now though, which is a shame. He just seems ridiculous and over the top when I fully line out what he can do...So like all PnP RP characters after they've been running for a while. Still, when he started, he was rescued from robot worshipping hereteks after being tortured for information for weeks, and was missing an arm. He's come a long way...

[Thom Frankfurt]

*Mumbles incoheriently about there should be a 'K' in there somewhere.*

Oh yeah and I like how you have a bio forum just for your character. I was thinking about doing the same for Thom and DeMarkus. I'm just too lazy to.

[guardian wolf]

Well the next talk only one will be when I finally bring out Damarus as a character so as to see what most of your character's reactions are.

[Thom Frankfurt]

RogueSpear, on 24 October 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

Yeah, I don't think I'll ever lose interest in Tod. I mean, I justified, in character, attempting to build a Super Star Destroyer (Essentially), so who couldn't love that?
I don't think I'd like to jump into an RP on the forums with him as he is now though, which is a shame. He just seems ridiculous and over the top when I fully line out what he can do...So like all PnP RP characters after they've been running for a while. Still, when he started, he was rescued from robot worshipping hereteks after being tortured for information for weeks, and was missing an arm. He's come a long way...

Totally. My uber D&D character, Stans is just wrong. My longtime GM lives only like 15 minutes from me, (when the freeways aren't packed full of m0r0ns anyways) and he was talking about starting up a TT game with me and some of the people he's going to college with. I'm all for it, but I'm thinking "He's gonna have Stans babysit a bunch of LL (low levelers) who's characters are going to/should die in the most unpleasant way possible when he finally decides to throw a challenging monster at us.

[RogueSpear]

Feel your pain. Tod is currently acting as quest giver and heavy reinforcements for a low level party I'm running over skype - my crew from Ireland but now I'm in Scotland.
They're so incompetent the boss from the tutorial level that our old GM did for us killed three of the characters.
Needless to say the next campaign, written by me, which included Iron Men, Power Armour, Ashen Tear Assassins, prepared positions and mortars was a lot of fun to run for them.

Update: Corporal Chad Harkin died 8 days ago, crushed beneath the treads of a rebel tank.
I'd make it truly exciting and awesome, but he literally tripped sprinting across a road and...yeah. Squish.

Edited by RogueSpear, 24 November 2012 - 08:15 AM.

[guardian wolf]

Bump for good measure

[Vodkavaiator]

Why is this thread no longer stickied?

It's a great way for people to get an idea of what they should be doing when creating an RP character...

Sure I can keep bumping this to the top, but the point was that originally it was the first thing people saw jumping into this

Edited by Vodkavaiator, 21 February 2013 - 05:58 AM.

[dal10]

metro's answer was that the devs unstickied a lot of stuff for some reason. we could try messaging garth (since he originally stickied this thread) and see if it can be restickied.

[guardian wolf]

Once again bump for good measure

[cmopatrick]

i ought to add a bump and save you lads the trouble...

[dal10]

if we get enough people from this section to sign a petition we probably could get this restickied.

[Sparks Murphey]

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling. Some great stuff here to keep in mind as you write.

• You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
  
• You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
  
• Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
  
• Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
  
• Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
  
• What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
  
• Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
  
• Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
  
• When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
  
• Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
  
• Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
  
• Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
  
• Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
  
• Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
  
• If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
  
• What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
  
• No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
  
• You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
  
• Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
  
• Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
  
• You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
  
• What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

(Originally found here: http://aerogrammestu...f-storytelling/)

[Thom Frankfurt]

It's always nice to come on here and be inspired by Mac's, Spear's, and now Sparky's words of wisdom.

Edit: Added Mr. Spear.

Edited by Thom Frankfurt, 08 March 2013 - 07:24 PM.

[RogueSpear]

Hey some of mine are in there too
The Pixar rules are interesting though, I'm gonna need to have a think about them...