http://exchangeofrealities.today.com Where gaming and writing mingle Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:00:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Well, that didn't go as expected.   The plan was simple. Party's going after a guy who pretty much controls the world in which they're dreaming. Split the party, mess with the party's heads, everyone wins (...eventually, for some value or another of win, whether IC or OOC), and I ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/07/impractical-applications-week-73-side-splitting/ I spent the last couple of days talking about differentiating between characters' reactions to other characters, both in making different people's reactions to the same character different and in finding ways for one character to react differently to different people. But most of those assume that you're ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/06/see-any-reaction/ Yesterday, I started talking about non-uniform reactions, or differentiating between different characters' attitudes to the same person. But that doesn't take into account internal variation—who says that one person's going to have the same reaction to a whole bunch of different characters? Not I, not by a long ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/05/non-uniform-reactions-from-the-one-to-the-many/ This is another of those topics that branches from the idea that no two people are the same. Yes, this should be obvious, but it often gets lost in the rush when people are trying to juggle large casts of characters, and what results is oversimplified reactions. Perhaps ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/04/non-uniform-reactions-faces-in-the-crowd/ It gets people killed in horror movies, has led to more misunderstandings (or cases of people knowing things they probably shouldn't have) than almost any other plot device, often results in the person with the right skill being in the wrong place when needed, and can slow a ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/03/eight-reasons-to-split-the-party/ Many games and stories feature characters who can turn just about any physical object into a weapon, regardless of any of the many sources of impracticality it demonstrates. And many people realize that this is Awesome and attempt to emulate it, resulting in someone who can explain how ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/02/useful-mindsets-everything-is-a-weapon/ Normally the management and I don't get too involved in each other's work, but here we have a perfectly good riff on dreams, and nothing about how we deal with them. See, the dream is an excellent way to mess with a protagonist's head. What better way of ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/11/01/the-generic-villain-speaks-in-dreams/ Dreamscapes. Such lovely things, when you want to try something new. This week, I got to apply them to my own game.   It had been coming for a while, after all. The group's old worst enemy had cropped up in the head of a friend of theirs, something a ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/10/31/impractical-applications-week-72-dreaming/ Some plot twists just can't get themselves taken seriously; just mentioning that a story ends in one is enough to make a hefty portion of its audience look for something else. “All a dream” is one such, and quite possibly one of the most reviled of the offenders. ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/10/30/all-a-dream-when-is-it-safe-to-use/ In yesterday's post, I mentioned that everyone has the potential to use dreams as exposition or foreshadowing. Unfortunately, not everyone does it well. There are a number of pitfalls that come from leaning on dreams to serve vital roles in a story.   The biggest mistake, of course, is ... http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2009/10/29/dangerous-dreams/