Some thoughts on gaming and writing
Jun. 30th, 2004 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edgI think I've figured out the solutions to a couple of problems that I've been having.
On Gaming
º Don't play a character just because you feel like you have to. I've been having this problem recently - not only does it seem declassé to duplicate another character, but most of the people I play with have been gaming long enough, that they "know what a party needs"1, so I've been feeling shoehorned - especially when other players have had a chance to come up with complete character concepts before I even realized that I was supposed to be thinking about it.
Because of this, I often feel like I'm playing "the <whatever>" - "the fighter", "the cleric", "the human", et cetera. The problem with this is that I occasionally end up with characters I don't like, or at least character types that I hadn't intended to play. The solution is to replace "the" with "a" - "a fighter", "a cleric", "a human" - and to come up with a character that I enjoy, rather than a character Who Fits. (Of course, it's always nice to fit in with the party together. If I feel like playing an antisocial murderous psychopath, and the rest of the characters are Care Bears, I might just be playing the wrong game.) And that leads to the next point...
º Play a character, not a collection of statistics. This isn't an argument for spending your points in a way that fits your character; this is an argument for figuring out your character before you ever open the book. Yes, you might be disappointed when you find out you can't do everything you want from the get-go; that's what XP is for. But I have a feeling that it's much more fun to start with "this is the character I want to play, will the system let me do that?" than to start with "the system will let me do these cool things, so that's the kind of character I want to play". The first is more time-consuming than the second, but probably worth it.
On Writing
º Slow down. I'm always in a hurry when I write. I've managed to learn that words-per-hour is the most important thing, and so I gloss, or skim, or just leave things out, and it makes for worse writing. I need to slow down, take my time, and do it right.
º Rising action is your friend. I've tended to make chapters in long work into little self-contained short stories, and I don't think that's the way to do things. (I'm not sure what the way to do things is, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.) Each chapter should not only contribute to the plot but have its own mini-rising-action, as a microcosm of the larger action. (In fact, I almost called this point "Chaos theory in writing.") Further, it occurs to me that maybe the beginning of each chapter should be the end of the rising action of the last chapter, but I'm not sure about that.
Thoughts are welcome.
1. Quote from nobody in particular; the marks are intended to denote supposition, rather than a direct quote.
The special characters used here, if anyone's curious, are:
º - º
< - <
> - >
On Gaming
º Don't play a character just because you feel like you have to. I've been having this problem recently - not only does it seem declassé to duplicate another character, but most of the people I play with have been gaming long enough, that they "know what a party needs"1, so I've been feeling shoehorned - especially when other players have had a chance to come up with complete character concepts before I even realized that I was supposed to be thinking about it.
Because of this, I often feel like I'm playing "the <whatever>" - "the fighter", "the cleric", "the human", et cetera. The problem with this is that I occasionally end up with characters I don't like, or at least character types that I hadn't intended to play. The solution is to replace "the" with "a" - "a fighter", "a cleric", "a human" - and to come up with a character that I enjoy, rather than a character Who Fits. (Of course, it's always nice to fit in with the party together. If I feel like playing an antisocial murderous psychopath, and the rest of the characters are Care Bears, I might just be playing the wrong game.) And that leads to the next point...
º Play a character, not a collection of statistics. This isn't an argument for spending your points in a way that fits your character; this is an argument for figuring out your character before you ever open the book. Yes, you might be disappointed when you find out you can't do everything you want from the get-go; that's what XP is for. But I have a feeling that it's much more fun to start with "this is the character I want to play, will the system let me do that?" than to start with "the system will let me do these cool things, so that's the kind of character I want to play". The first is more time-consuming than the second, but probably worth it.
On Writing
º Slow down. I'm always in a hurry when I write. I've managed to learn that words-per-hour is the most important thing, and so I gloss, or skim, or just leave things out, and it makes for worse writing. I need to slow down, take my time, and do it right.
º Rising action is your friend. I've tended to make chapters in long work into little self-contained short stories, and I don't think that's the way to do things. (I'm not sure what the way to do things is, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.) Each chapter should not only contribute to the plot but have its own mini-rising-action, as a microcosm of the larger action. (In fact, I almost called this point "Chaos theory in writing.") Further, it occurs to me that maybe the beginning of each chapter should be the end of the rising action of the last chapter, but I'm not sure about that.
Thoughts are welcome.
1. Quote from nobody in particular; the marks are intended to denote supposition, rather than a direct quote.
The special characters used here, if anyone's curious, are:
º - º
< - <
> - >
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 03:37 pm (UTC)I'll grant that I often read games (especially GURPS) as a sort of shopping list: "Oooo, I could have a character who could do X!" But it's also a great deal of fun to come up with Concept X and then go see how to work it out in the rules.
On Writing:
If I slow down too much I end up writing nothing. But different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. For me the struggle is to get something out in the first place; I can always edit later. (Of course, this doesn't work with poetry, where if I don't get it right the first time I just won't. Such is.)
As for rising action... Heh. I'm still working on having some sort of actual plot at all. Perhaps once I've mastered that I'll actually deal with pacing.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 03:53 pm (UTC)Don't play a character just because you feel like you have to.
And don't let anyone try persuading you to play something you don't want. Don't be afraid to make the GM develop that nervous tic over his left eye with your concept either.
On writing:
Slow is good and so is accuracy. Use your spell checker often, don't be afraid to break out the thesaurus to find a different word and read things back to yourself.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-01 05:00 am (UTC)I agree in general, but OTOH, two of my favorite characters started out being something I "had" to play - for one, the thief became a bard because of a random background generator, and for the other, the party needed a cleric.
But I like would so totally never ever have in like a million zillion years ever come up with, you know, the Valley Girl Priestess of Happiness Joy and Rilly Rilly Good Parties otherwise. You know?
Play a character, not a collection of statistics.
Absolutely.
That's one of the strong points of AD&D, or any class-based game, I think. There's only, what? Four main classes, and five subclasses? (OK more if you count specialist wizards). And the races. You can run through those pretty fast. The first time you "re-play" the same race/class combo, there's this sort of epiphany that the characterization can make Human Fighter 1 different from Human Fighter 2.