Umbral Echoes Blog

This is a quote that I find myself constantly looking up, so I’m basically just putting it on my blog so I’ll be able to find it more easily in the future.

The Difference Between DnD and Exalted:
From “spatulalad,” on RPG.net:

D&D: “Okay, you enter the tavern and head to the bar. As you’re sipping some ale, you overhear some rough looking half-orcs talking dirty to the daughter of the guy in charge of the caravan you’re guarding. What do you do?”

Exalted: “Okay, you enter the city and kill off the current ruler and set yourselves up as the overlords. As you’re setting up court, your Night Caste reads the lips of a messenger a mile away and figures out that one of the Dragon-Blooded viziers is plotting with a demon lord of the Second Circle to eat the souls of the first born children of all people in your city and then use the ritual’s power to make a ten story First Age warmachine that shoots laserbeams from its eyes. Also, there are ninjas. What do you do?”

Last time, I outlined a few ways that I’ve seen people go about creating characters. So this time, I’ll go over how I do it.

Sadly (or perhaps it’s a good thing), there’s no one formula I use. Sometimes I will think, “Wow, that’s a neat power/ability! I think I’ll design a character around that.”  Sometimes I’ll be intrigued by a character in a movie or book, see a synergy in them with another character from some different series (or half-formed concept already lurking in my brain), and combine the two (or more) into something new.  Sometimes I hear a particularly awesome song and it just gives me a concept.  That last was how I made my character Sammael; here’s the song (not sure if this will work in Facebook, so if not, the file is here):

[display_podcast]

The child-like-yet-creepy tune gave me the image of a kid in a cathedral with dead bodies all around him.  I let the scene play out in my head, and created a character from the result.  What caused the scene?  What happened before?  What would it do to a child, and what would they end up like after?  Just a small jump from one step to the next, and by the time it’s done, you have a character.

But more often than not, inspiration strikes randomly. I’m not sure what path those neural impulses take, but one minute I’ll be all, “Mmmm, steak,” and the next it’s, “Wouldn’t it be neat if there were a modern-day cop who worshiped Aztec gods and made human sacrifices out of really evil people that got let go due to legal loopholes?”

So if I had to nail down a formula, here would be the steps (though sometimes the order shifts drastically):

1. Figure out the character concept — the core of who the character is, what they do, and why.  This part is actually pretty easy for me.
2. Flesh out the personality.  Give the character some quirks.  If the character concept follows a stereotype, find some ways to break the mold.
3. Write a background story.  This part is also pretty easy, but requires a bit more discipline.
4. Fill out the character sheet.  Also easy, once the above are complete.
5. Come up with a name for the character.  Hardest part, almost without fail.

I’ve found that once I’ve done 1-3, the character sheet comes almost without thought.  By that point, I know the character.  I know what they’re good at, what they like, what they would have practiced and studied.  So filling out the skills, powers, and the rest of the character sheet is easy.

Step 5, ironically, probably takes me longer than any of the other steps.  I don’t like just giving a character any name; I like to give them a name that “feels” right for them, that evokes the right emotions, and that often takes a while.

Overall, I find that I enjoy characters as much as playing them, on average.  Sometimes I have more fun making the character than playing it, or vice-versa, but in the end it’s about even.  If there’s one thing I like about being the storyteller/gamemaster/what-have-you, it’s that I get to create and play a bunch of different characters.

First off, let me say that I’ve only been in one Google Wave gaming session so far, and have seen a few other sessions.  So I haven’t done very in-depth or broad testing of this stuff.  Also, Google Wave itself is evolving — it’s still in beta, so I’m not going to talk about bugs, or technical issues that I’m sure will be hammered out.

My friend and former coworker Justin Achilli is running a 3.5 D&D game via Google Wave, as an experiment in its viability for online roleplay.  He’s shared his own thoughts, and I’d like to share a few of mine from a player’s perspective.

So, from my perspective, so far I’m getting exactly what I expected.   It’s somewhat of a mix of playing via live chat (of which I have several years experience on White Wolf’s now-defunct moderated chats) and play-by-post, with most of the advantages and disadvantages therein.   I’ll list some below, and again, I’m going to refrain from putting any disadvantages down that I expect to be addressed (e.g. it’s still fairly slow and has the occasional glitch).

Advantages (compared to tabletop)

• It’s easier to schedule.  No transit time to/from; just log in and bam, you’re in game.
• When a player misses a session, the playback feature makes it easy for them to get caught up.
• It’s possible to narrate aspects of your character’s actions in more stylish detail.
• It’s easier to have secret side-conversations where necessary (no passing of notes or leaning over and whispering).
• There’s a complete record of each session, which game masters or payers can look back on (or search) if they’ve forgotten something.
• It’s possible for several people to type simultaneously without the “talking over one another” effect you get in real life.
• It allows you to multitask without being distracting to others.

Disadvantages

• Hell of a lot slower-going than tabletop for character interaction.
• Even slower than that for combat — and the more crunchy the combat, the slower it is.
• More impersonal.
• Can’t use things like mood music/lighting to set the mood (though it would be easy to use a third-party app to stream a playlist).

Overall I prefer tabletop, but I do like online mediums (including Wave) as an option if tabletop isn’t.   I think Wave offers some advantages over both chat-based and PbM/PbP play as well — it’s the best of both worlds when talking about those two options.  I also think Wave is better for more story-centric games/systems than crunchy games, but I’m sure that there will be a number of plugins (or “robots” as Wave calls them) for that sort of thing.  There are already some robots for things like dice rolling, maps, and other such things.  I’m excited to see what can and will be done.