There are various ways to create a World. In most novels, the world is narrow, detailed like a corridor through which the storyline paths. And yet, many of us have read Tolkien, or Brust, or scores of other authors who persist with the same world. We as forum roleplayers seek to create worlds post-by-post, thread-by-thread. We gather several friends, toss together enough information to have a setting, drop a character each into the fray, create a bit of history, and starting moving forwards and outwards.

Let me first caution you, from my own experience: stick to a single time period, and only move forward. I have partaken in a world so fluidly created that we moved back and forth through history (at the same time) days, months, decades, centuries, millenia. We created three concurrent planes of existance, at least four ranks of beings, and five times as many characters as we had players. Had we need one person, this would have prospered and grown. Unfortunately, there were too many nuances to keep track of in space and in time. At some point, any world will become too thick for many players to keep it free of contradictions.

Let us say that you seek to create a world, and start with a continent, a town, a day, and some characters. You are a group of perhaps ten avid writers, all looking to participate, all with equal pull as to which direction thir world moves in. One way to go about it is to write, each creating lore, writing quests, beasts, enemies, events, and more of the like. STOP. Do not do this. You are not the lone writer, the Tolkein who has free reign of his domain. Passive Writing, where your work is simply added to that of your fellows, is a killer of worlds. Your work does not engage your fellows, nor are they necessitated to read it, given that they too are people, with lives, with limited time, and are currently busy with their own Passive Writing. In analogy, if all of you start bricking out a building from different places with no rules as to how your bricks should be stacked, your building will either have many holes, several clashes between builders, or no structural integrity if you all manage to still come together.

I prescribe Active Roleplaying.

We are all used to in-character topics where we all throw together our PCs and write NPCs in as we need them. This is, of course, Active Roleplaying, as it requires your fellow players to take heed of your character’s actions, and of any world-fleshing information you include among those actions. But how many times can you ‘Kill the Were Bear’ or ‘Save the Princess’ or ‘Recover the Golden Goblet’ before you and your fellows are bored and want to move on to another world, or maybe their girlfriends? Active Roleplaying doesn’t always have to be quests, and most importantly doesn’t always have to involve PCs.

One mode of Active Roleplaying that involves only NPCs is what I call Conversation Topics. There is little description (of the scenery, at least) and there is almost no action (apart from “stood” or “sat”). If your world was Rome, there could be a Conversation Topic at the Forum or at the Senate. If you were following Aladdin in Agrabah, a good place for a Conversation Topic might be the local bazaar. In Alexandria, the Lighthouse Library would serve well. In the small town of Sleepy Grove a perfect Conversation Topic would be the Town Hall Meeting. In a college setting, an engaging discussion class would work. Given a corporation, a meeting of the Board of Directors. At a high school, the PTA meeting. In a Fraternity, a Regional or National Conference. Etc. For any setting except for the travels of a quest, there is likely some location where several NPCs are likely to meet.

Use them. Rather than starting off with the “Slay the Dragon” quest, take to the town hall, where all sorts of mundane and otherwise matters are likely to be discussed. One man will whine about someone’s urine on his white fence. Another will comment about how ugly that white fence is anyway. If nothing else, it is a place to create a one-time or even recurring character with a personality that you want to test out. It also sets the mood to have Gerta, mother of three, bust through the doors yelling and screaming about bandits who kidnapped her son and demand the town’s harvest for his safe return, where failure to comply will involve taking the grain by force anyway. Now you have a quest to work with, with a proper setup. Your fellows were playing equally useless townsmen until this quest came about, but now all know about it. When they go to the new topic you’ve created for the quest they wont be surprised: they will be ready, eager, and thinking of what their NPC will say when the heroes come back.

NPC Conversation topics can be revisited over and over again, or can be abandoned with no loss and no harm done. They give players a chance to stay active in the world between quests, while at the same time serving as spawning point for quests. As the world grows, they become perfect starting points for players new to the world. Most importantly, they give all of the players a chance to practice roleplaying with little consequence - a rowdy townsman can always be bounced out of the meeting, while a boring senator can always just stop talking. And if the annoying teacher gets hit by a car, well, not only was that a good solution to a failed experiment, but it also spawned a murder mystery that a bunch of dumb kids are likely to investigate.

NPC Conversation topics aren’t purly theoretical - I have tried them, and in my limited experience they have worked wonders. If you have a world to try them out, please do, and give me your insights and your suceess (or otherwise) stories. Good luck, and happy world building!

In its most basic form, roleplaying is just that: playing a role other than yourself. The most prevalent and well known form of this would be acting, where someone becomes a character either for the stage or screen. They study the character, his/her personality, accent, thoughts and then throughout the film/play, the actor essentially ‘is’ that character. Another place we can see roleplaying, and perhaps in its most ‘innocent’ form, is in childsplay - a perfect example would be when kids play ‘house.’

However, what is more pertinent to this site is Play-By-Post Online Roleplaying. This is generally played on forums, and takes upon itself a role similar to acting, in that you are taking the role of a character (or several) and throughout the roleplay you essentially become that character. The major difference, of course, is that online roleplaying is performed through writing, rather than playing the actions yourself.

Writing the varying aspects of your character with other players who also are writing their character, you work together to create a story. Each character’s actions and individual histories come together and through each post your story develops. It also is the job of each player to not only write their character, but also the environment in which the characters are in. In this sense, then, online roleplaying could very well be more aptly defined as ‘collaborative creative writing.’

You are working in collaboration with other writers to write creatively - each person taking the point of view of one character in your story. That is what Play-By-Post Online Roleplaying truly is.

This month’s words are: fire and sea

I find the majority of writers dichotomized into two groups, neither of which produces ideal works, in my subjective opinion. I generally class myself to the second group, but am aiming for the idyllic middle ground. The first group are the minimalists: not only do they not avoid adverbs but they also cut adjectives, simplify actions, reduce nouns, and produce very skeletal projects. The finished works are functional, yes, but very dry. An entire book in this style is horribly boring to read through, and roleplay posts, while shorter, are often too short, lacking, and interesting. To escape this minimalism, many other writers go too far, and fall into the second group: fluffers. Nouns are padded with strings of adjectives, adjectives and verbs are modified by adverbs, active sentences are cushioned by passive ones, and the result is so fat that is has lost all semblance to a dog and looks more like the inside of a pillow. The second group also over-extends metaphors ;]

One problem with finding the middle ground is determining what is “bad” from the second group. The minimalists pretty much set the lower bound, but how fluffy is too fluffy? A generally accepted rule, according to such books as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is functionality. Every action, every adjective, every description, all need to either serve some purpose now, or in the case of roleplaying need to be usable for some purpose later. Of course, noticing that there are mountains behind the lake might have little significance to your character in a roleplay, but another player might make use of them and direct the action right up their slopes. However, taking the time to describe the particular colors of the rising peaks, the contours of the snow coverage, or even the random orientation of caves is a step into the fluff: the other players who plan to make use of those elements can just as easily describe them on their time. In solo works, if those details aren’t on the agenda, don’t toss them in. Another good rule for minimizing local fluff is to reduce the quantity of “ly” adverbs within any piece. any “ly” adverb modified verb can be replaced by a more applicable and descriptive verb. “Gently touching” can be replaced with “caressing”, “lightly laughing” can be replaced with “giggling”, “jumping forcefully” is easily swapped out for “leaping” or even “lunging”, depending on direction.

I have found that the best way to convey information while giving a good image of the scene is by writing out the mood associated with the actions, while allowing for each reader to see the scene with their own details. Any details left out will be filled in by the readers’ imaginations, each one differently, based on their general preconceptions of the detail at hand and the scene surrounding that detail. This allows for the reader to do much of the work describing static elements, giving the author the freedom to describe only the necessary and relevant dynamic ones.

Over the course of some of my attempts at teaching the arts of roleplaying I’ve developed a bare-bones process to take bare-bones actions and get them to a healthier “fleshed out” middle ground. I’ve since modified the process, but it is important to realize that I am working from the bottom up (rather than cutting from the top down). This can be applied to any piece of creative writing, but I will be describing it for a single roleplaying post. Most pieces of writing can be broken up into scenes or even parts of scenes.

1. Set a goal. Some writers write first, and their goal comes to them, while others brainstorm to get to the goal. The brainstormers will have an easy task: simply come up with the end result for this particular snippet of writing. Stream of consciousness writers, at least those who decide to make use of this process, might need to write a draft (which will then be tossed out, unfortunately), and will use that draft to develop their goal.
2. Take several steps from start to finish. The previous post or the previous scene set the starting point for this scene, and you have just determined a goal, which is the end to this post or scene. Now write out several actions, in the “bare-bones” manner, which will bring the situation from the starting state to the ending state. Play around with the actions, develop and order, determine the actors (your played character, any non-played characters, or even the environment).
3. Get some context to smooth those actions out. Your actions are steps, but writing should flow. So, those actions need to get modified and where appropriate, those jumps need to become lunges. To do this, imagine the scene (Durr, right? Bear with me.). Imagine what is happening, and imagine it first from the point of view of the omniscient author. You know all, you see all, you know what is playing out and how. Now imagine it from the point of view of the actors: what do they see and how do they feel about the actions, and how do their perspectives differ from yours? Now imagine yourself an audience member, watching the action unfold. You don’t yet know the goal, so how is the action making you feel at each checkpoint? Imagine yourself another player’s character, seeing it all happen. Most likely, that is who you are writing for.
4. Smooth and refine the surface. The imagination exercise gave you more than just one perspective on your own scene, and it is up to you to determine whose perspective you adapt it to. If the scene is meant to change the mind of another player’s character, include those details which might, based on that character’s personality, influence him or her. If the scene is meant to instill awe or inspiration, or to simply give some background on your character, describe from the point of view of an audience member (or omniscient author), focusing on those facets that you want associated with your character’s personality.

Example: The dragon rose above the water-line and hovered on an aerial within arrow-shot or the pirate ship, bearing her upon its back. Her wet skin glistened in the sunlight as she knocked an arrow. When the pirates did the same, she could not help but tense up. Still, she furrowed her brow and warned them. “You will lose much more than your cargo if you let your arrows fly our way!”

The goal here is to have an image in your mind: most often a beautiful, bright colored, well defined image. However, every reader’s imagination is different, so it is important to closely define only the most important features. These are the actions and their descriptions, more so than the nouns. You can tell from my example that the character is confident but realistic (and aware of her mortality) as she furrowed her brow but tensed anyway, respectively. The day is sunny due to the glistening of her skin, and the pirates are not standing idly, waiting for her to finish her actions or monologue. However, this scene lacks many fluffy details which every person can come up with themselves. While I envisioned the character as a blond with straight hair, someone else might envision her as a curly redhead: either way she is toned enough to wield a bow. The pirates have a ship, and while I imagined a single mast boat and the pirates in some generic tri-cornered hats, the important point is that they are on an open deck and also have bows. If you imagined The Black Pearl and its crew carrying bows, the important elements of the scene are unchanged.

I attempted to convey many particular elements without writing them out directly and without over-describing them. Say you want to describe a bright and sunny day, because those are great for heroics, but you don’t want to say “bright and sunny day”, because that is telling. Instead, you want to give an image of something that is often associated with a bright and sunny day, like droplets of the babbling brook shimmering under the sun. It is a happy image, set most likely in a forest, and anyone who knows what a babbling brook might be will try and imagine it, applying that setting to whatever else you write immediately afterward. This is showing: you are showing somewhat what a sunny day feels like, and they are imagining the rest of the sunny day. What your character looks like is up to you, but that she has knocked an arrow makes the reader think she is lithe. Replacing “furrowed her brow” with “pursed her lips” might her a more appealing and feminine image, intrinsically conveying a possible ponytail and an I-take-no-attitude expression in her eyes (without saying either of those!). Of course, the particular details someone imagines will be different, but even if her hair isn’t in a ponytail, the expression on her face and the perception of her personality are likely to be the same among most readers.

You want to do this for every scene. Swimming through the water, rising out of the waves, confronting the ship, avoiding the arrows, breaking the mast, etc. However, for repeated actions, like gliding beneath the water, the particular elements of the mood need only be described once: simply mentioning a repeat of the situation will bring the same image back into the readers’ minds.

Returning to the topic of bare bones vs. fluff: just as there are adverbs that produce excess fluff, there are dull nouns and verbs and adjectives which produce no mental image whatsoever, or the wrong mental image. In dialogue, “she said” and “she announced” and “she prepared” are very dull verbs (although, “saying” and “announcing” carry very different tones).

Things like “circular room” or “in the castle” or “examining each man” are very dull adjectives/nouns/verbs. Yes, they convey an action, a location, and they do so adequately. However, they have no color or mood and thus produce no (or the wrong) mental images. Adding something like “Her voice had been sultry, almost arousing, but now they could hear the poison behind it” would most certainly illustrate a Queens change in tone while doling out the “but should you fail me, your death will be slow and painful” portion of her speech. This sets the mood, makes the reader feel like one of the persons being addressed, and gives insight to the Queen’s character and agenda. So even if she speaks with very regal structure and vocabulary, adding color to her tones will make her speech more enticing to read. I know I didn’t give you much on that example, but try to imagine that scene anyway. How much could you fill in? (Let me know if it worked!)

One of the descriptors for this article is the word “functional”, and I should return to it. Every descriptive element should serve some purpose: the sultry almost arousing voice that carried poisonous tones does well to describe the queen’s personality. However, taking a paragraph to describe the Queens bosom and buttock along with her facial expressions along the same lines of sultry and arousing but somehow dangerous would be fluff, because the task at hand had already been accomplished, and more concisely to boot. So, with every detail, ask yourself if the detail accomplishes something new, or can be replaced with something both more condensed and more telling.

Problems stemming from inflexibility:

• Overwhelming Content - when the prerequisite to becoming involved is reading a large quantity of material, that can form a barrier to players who would otherwise participate.
• Obstructing Contributions - holding an iron fist around what is occurring in the story, and maintaining a regimental environment, obstructs opportunities for others to contribute. 
• Poor Integration - a closed or tedious environment can make it awkward for those who are trying to involve themselves in the story.

To provide an example of the above items, imagine a story involving a group of friends playing a criminal, a victim, and a police officer. The setting is the criminal’s cellar, where he tortures his victim until the police officer comes and arrests him, rescuing the victim. This restricts the ways a fourth party could become involved, making for an example of poor integration. The basement environment is not conducive to people just wandering on in and participating. As an outsider, I would feel as though there was nothing to contribute without railroading the story.

Tools for developing flexibility:

• Open Writing - write in such a way that it is easy for people to respond to you, such as posing a question to nobody in particular or walking up to a vendor in a market square and inquiring of the local news.
• Length and Style - keep your posts of relatively average length, so others don’t spend an excessive amount of time reading them. By the same token, don’t make them too short, otherwise you won’t be able to keep their interest. Also write in a style that is familiar, and not overly obtuse. A narrative, third-person style seems to be the most typical.
• Acknowledging Others - when another person posts, do what you can to acknowledge what they’ve written; for example, noticing they’ve entered the area or responding to something they’ve said.
• Maintaining a Summary - just a short list of what has happened thus far, so people can quickly know what is happening or, if they have a poor memory, can recall it with relative easy.
• Foreshadowing - provide all the involved parties a sense of direction, so when they sit down to write they have focus. This can be done either by foreshadowing in the actual writing or by less discrete methods such as providing a summary of objectives, both short and long term, that is readily available for everyone to read.
• Autonomy - don’t let your character become trapped in a situation where you’re utterly reliant on other players if you wish to move forward.

Metagaming is the act of over-reaching the bounds of the character. Past the introduction, given that a player controls only their own character, any changes to environment or plot occur as perceptions of that character. Metagaming, then, is overstepping a character’s perceptions and tapping into the knowledge and power of the player (who knows more and can do more). This can either be used correctly, or incorrectly, with an incredibly fine line between the extremes.

Incorrect (read: wholly unacceptable) uses of metagaming are generally deemed Godmoding. Here the player assumes a level of control far above and beyond what the other players have agreed to use. Examples of godmoding include, but are not limited to, speaking/acting for others’ characters, directly describing the damage (physical or emotional) caused to others’ characters, giving one’s own character godlike/super powers without due explanation, acting (inexplicably) off of others’ characters’ thoughts, matching a character’s strengths to others’ characters’ weaknesses, etc. I am trying to cast metagaming in a neutral light, and am associating the things we generally hate about it with Godmoding instead. So, bear with me.

Proper (read: socially acceptable) metagaming requires a very tight hold on what not to do. For example, it is possible to act on another character’s thoughts, but to do so without godmoding. By giving due explanation of one’s own character’s perception of another character’s personality and body language in a situation, the metagamer’s character can discern the basic gist of the thoughts, if they are easily deducible. In this way, the player, who knows the other character’s thoughts, hones their character’s perception in the right direction, so that their character also gains that information. This is usually done to move along plot, but should not used to gain an unfair advantage in a confrontational situation without proper explanation. This is a very common and often overlooked form of metagaming, used to streamline a roleplay. The fact that this is often overlooked (as in, critically) should show that this really is an acceptable form of metagaming.

Now onto some techniques that employ/are-classed-as metagaming (but don’t ruin the game if used with care).

“Leading” is the process of moving the action of a scenario forward by some short interval without explicitly acting out all portions of the scene. It is called “leading” precisely because the “leader” makes some logical leap forward, thus prompting all other players to make the same leap to arrive at the new point in time. Leading is used to skip over elements like necessary but known dialogue, occurrences which are inexplicable now but can be explained later, etc. It is necessary that all skipped events be mentioned by the leader, and be easy for others to understand how the missed events could have happened. Leading hinges on cooperation from other players to accept the leap forward so as to avoid contradicting the leader.

If the player leading requires that others’ character perform in some way that is precedented and natural to their personality, then the leader may imply that those characters did indeed perform in just that, or a similar manner. Note that the leader may only imply that the events were accomplished, not how (in terms of specific dialogue and actions) the other characters accomplished them. The other players would then pick up on the missed events, and fill their own portions in to match the leader’s plot. Leading should only be used in the case that an RP is dying off, or moving in some nonsensical direction. Any use of leading should first be discussed with other players, and then be well thought out, as it is irreversible!

“Pushing” is akin to leaving breadcrumbs for other players to pick up. While leading is reliant on active metagaming, pushing makes use of passive metagaming. Often times the action of the roleplay might stagnate, or take a turn towards the degenerate. Times like those, but also when a player just wants to develop their character, or introduce the next “act” of the plot, pushing is a non-invasive control technique.

The actual work done to “push” something is akin to “hooking“: the player pushing writes a series of details that at the present moment are unused. It is different from hooking in that hooks are open ended details, added to give players a starting point. The details left as a result of pushing are quite the opposite: they are all tied together by a common goal or consequence, whichever goal or consequence the “pusher” intends.

The technique of pushing has some merits and pros over other control techniques. For one, it is non-invasive, meaning that it does not require any direct control of other characters. As well, it leaves the actual work up to other players, while giving them the illusion that they came up with the goal or consequence that results. This garners interests, and makes an RP longer lived.

Passive metagaming may come into play if the pusher describes a new element as “within reach” or “easily observable” by some specific character, prompting them to act on the element. This is passive because the other players do not have to respond. Contrarily, active metagaming, like that used in leading, requires that other players respond with complementary action to fill in the time skip.

Of course, pushing is difficult to pull off correctly. Since the trail of breadcrumb details is only clear in your mind, players might misinterpret the desired consequence, and go off in another direction altogether. Players might also not use all breadcrumb details present. The trail left might be too loose, and thus hard to follow, or it might be too tight and obvious, and consequently boring. However, aside from the last variant, all of the possible outcomes of pushing involve very dynamic play, making pushing worthwhile to try out!

The moral behind metagaming is to find a comfortable median. Active metagaming is more invasive, but more direct, thus more likely to accomplish what you might see necessary. Passive metagaming is not invasive, but is very indirect, so while other players will not be unhappy, the metagaming is less likely to accomplish the intended task. The level of appropriate metagaming should always be decided by any group of roleplayers collaborating on a roleplay, so that players who wish to make use of advanced control techniques know where their limits lie.

Having read this guide, you might wonder why “leading” is active, while “pushing” is passive, and why the terminologies aren’t switched around. This is due in part to the origination of the concepts (separately), and the terminology was applied to them without due consideration. However, another argument is that when given a push, players have a choice on whether to move or resist, while when being led, the choices are to follow or to hold a mutiny (mutinies are rather difficult in the sense of a roleplay). Regardless of terminology, the lessons lie in active and passive metagaming, so take that away with you if you take nothing else.

So try your hand (with others’ permission) at socially acceptable metagaming, and let me know how you fair via comments or emails!

This month’s words are: smoke and sky

Whether you create or you participate in an RP, there may be certain facts, concepts, plot points, etc, all of which you know and plan to employ, but no one else knows. These things known only to you I will describe as the Private Sector. On the other hand are details which are shared with the other players, whether through the OOC, IC dialogue or thought, or IC description, and are thus part of the Public Sector.

But the big question is, for each particular detail, Where should it go? Should it stay hidden for now (until it becomes necessary), and thus be private, or should it be divulged and thus made public? There is no overarching answer, as each detail is different, each RP is different, and every group of roleplayers is different. This discussion will focus on a process that can be helpful in deciding what to do with a particular detail. Or rather, what the act of revealing that detail will accomplish.

First, when revealing a detail, there must be a reason and thus something to be gained. Rather than just “going for it”, take a step back. What can be gained from revealing this little bit of information? It might be a bit of secret biography about your character, or a plot point you have in mind that you haven’t gotten to yet. By letting this bit be known, what benefits can you or your RP profit from? Will this detail guide fellow roleplayers in the direction you intend? Will the new revelation give players a burst of interest and get the RP back on its feet? There are many pointed questions; many well defined benefits for any particular detail which might cement your decision.

But, where something is gained, something else is lost. Every time you fill a hole with a detail, you prevent someone else from doing it. A roleplay is a joint story being told, and everyone wants to tell it. If you reveal this detail prematurely, you add constraints. Will players become frustrated? Will this detail counter any development they might have been trying to foster? Knowing what you lose is just as important as what you gain.

Most importantly, you must consider the risks of either revealing something or keeping it hidden. If you reveal the necessary details one by one, and not all together, than there is always the chance that someone else will contradict the next private detail of yours in line, with some detail of their own. Would you be able to work around it? Would it completely ruin your privately-defined character, or destroy your planned plot? If yes, would you be able to bounce back? How flexible are your ideas? If they are rigid and linear, then revealing the private sector is a security measure. Everyone knows what will happen, and they have to play out how happens. Or if your ideas are vague or so far removed that they would work in almost any situation, revealing them now might remove the excitement they incite later. Maybe saving that kind of details until the right moment will be your key to an amazing collaboration. Always guess at how much your ideas can suffer from the actions of someone else, and always judge your decision to divulge them on your own ability to adapt to changes.

Keep the idea of the public-and-private sectors in mind as you roleplay, and comment here (or email me) with insights you develop as a result!

Where this gets useful is that when you have a few of these things, you can start sticking them together like some sort of crazy tinkertoy. Now, the obvious way to do this is simple substitution. If Bob likes golf and Dave likes golf, you now have a connection between Bob and Dave. Easy peasy. The weakness of this approach is that there are only so many times I can pull on that particular thread before it becomes predictable - ‘let me guess, we’re golfing again!’. while it absolutely benefits from simplicity, it lacks nuance.

Less obviously, but perhaps more potently is when you establish connections between the outliers. Let’s say for example that Bob still likes golf, but Dave has a different connection: let’s say he’s married to Paula. If I connect Paula to golf (say, she owns the local country club) then I have just made Paula more interesting, and I’ve just made the path from Bob to Dave clear, but a little more nuanced, and practically speaking, easier for me to bring into play. How do I mean? Ok, instead of only having one thread to pull on to get Bob & Dave together, I can pull on either one of their strings and more organically pull in the other. Paula’s havign money problem and the club might be sold. The club is hosting an event and Paula’s running it. A new pro has opened up, and Bob wants his help - if only he had the ear of the club owner!

So, that’s all straightforward enough, but where this ties back into the current line of thinking is with NPCs. While PCs tend to have very organic starbursts, NPCs need to be a little bit simpler, if only for bookkeeping, so I use a simple template when I set one up - a starburst with 4 connections, one to a PC, and the other three to stuff. The link to the PC is usually the most straightforward to account for.

The other three will generally be a thing or an NPC - it doesn’t matter a lot what they are, but what’s important is what their roles are.
he first is something that puts him on the same page with at least one of the same PCs. He values something that the PC values, he’s got a positive connection with one of NPCs connected to a PC, whatever.

The second is a connection that creates tension between the NPC and a player. This doesn’t need to be such a profound difference that it would make them enemies. In fact, antipathy so strong as to make the NPC an enemy should be rare - it is far more useful to have a point of honest, civilized disagreement than a reason to go immediately to the knives.

The third is the one that I’m making sure to add after my recent consideration - something tangential to the PC’s interest, something that explicitly does not tie back into anything else - something that is that NPCs own interest. Practically speaking, this is the thing that the NPC is doing when no-one is watching, and the players may never get full visibility into this.

Now, obviously a more important NPC might have more nodes, while a less important one might have only one or two, but 4 nodes is a good place to start.

Anyway, it’s a simple trick, and one that is probably very familiar to folks who do a lot of relationship mapping, but I find it useful when I need to step back and look at a game and figure out where things happen, and where things need to happen.

Footnote: This is a republished article by Robert Donoghue, printed with his permission from his original post, Building NPCs.

This month’s words are: door and key