Restoring One's Muse (By Inviting Her Hot, Pixellated Friends)

Blogging's a funny thing. Sometimes you can't sleep because you have too many ideas running through your mind. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you can't think of one damned thing to write about, and you wind up not being able to sleep because your writer's block is driving you crazy.

Problems, and Massively-Multiplayer Solutions

Here at Stupid Ranger, we've always had a much easier time writing about D&D when we're playing frequently. It's a kind of feast-or-famine thing -- and right now, it's famine. During certain times of year, it's difficult to get everyone together to play. On top of that, Dante and SR are moving far, far away for a couple years to a place called Colorado (or, as I like to refer to it, "Thunder Bluff"). We've been considering several options as to how to both A. keep in touch and B. keep playing D&D together.

I was talking to the lovely Efreak about this situation, and she suggested that perhaps we play World of Warcraft together. Now, you have to understand -- I have long been a person who swore that they would never touch an MMO as long as they lived because I was afraid that it would suck up my whole life, and now here is my wife suggesting that I install the beast on my PC. However, she also assured me that my life would be forfeit the moment that getting epic PvP raid gear became more important than my son, and so I decided to bring it up to the rest of the crew. To make a long story short, I now have a level 21 Shaman and I'm very disappointed that Ghost Wolf form makes you neither invisible nor intangible. My cohorts also have characters on the same server, and we like killing things together.

Broadening Our Horizons

All of us here at Stupid Ranger are very broad-spectrum geeks, and D&D is not our only form of fun. Recently, I've had the urge to write, but it's rarely been about D&D (as you can see by my prolific posting here as of late). What I have had the urge to write about for some time now, is videogames and movies and other general geekery. As it turned out, my compatriots have been having similar urges.

Thusly, we are considering broadening the scope of what we do here at Stupid Ranger. Please do not panic if you see a post about how amazing and frustrating Mega Man 9 is, a scathing review of "The Happening", or epic tales about being a complete newb in WoW. You may also expect to see the same good stuff you usually see here, and we will (of course) tag everything in a way that we can still be RPGBloggers.com compatible (and so those of you who don't care what my thoughts on Rock Band 2 are can continue reading RPG-related stuff only).

And yes, I absolutely realize the end result is that we're trying to be Critical Hits. (I mean, who wouldn't?)

Have Wacom, Will Travel?

In addition, I have been itching to tell more of the Evensbrook story. I have also come to the conclusion that I really don't have time in my life right now to draw the comic as it was (at least with my sanity intact). Therefore, I am going to ask the Internets for help. If you are an artist, or know of one who would be willing to do this, I am looking for someone to draw the Evensbrook strip. My ideal plan is to have a Penny Arcade kind of setup, where I write stories and funny stuff, and the artist draws the pictures and makes everything look wonderful. Me Tycho, you Gabe. And the position would pay exactly as much as I get paid for this! (And I wouldn't even make you chip in a few bucks a month on the web hosting, like I do!)

I realize the chances of this actually taking place are slim to none, but on the off chance somebody is interested it might be a lot of fun. A far more likely outcome is that I start simply telling the story as an episodic novel here on the site. Stupid Ranger has several ideas that she wants to start writing about in much the same vein. In any case, we're going to be firing up the Writers' Turbines here shortly, so please take your seats and don your protective helmets.

Thoughts?

Admittedly, it does feel a little weird broadening our scope since we have traditionally been a pretty narrow-focused site -- but we're doing this for fun, and this will be fun (hopefully for everybody). We'd love to hear your thoughts on the direction we're thinking of taking.

I'm giving away the big secret!! (Steal this idea.)

During a recent discussion with my lovely co-host Vanir, we got on the topic of the exceeding amount of "regular life as relating to roleplaying" posts that we've done over our time in our tiny little corner of the Internets.

I find the process of relating roleplaying to other areas of life a pretty natural fit. In fact, if you sit back and think about it pretty much all roleplaying decomposes into social interaction and imagination... two cornerstones of most of our lives. I think that in part this realization gave rise to the Great Roleplaying Blogger Boom of 2007, bringing you such greats as Critical Hits, Musings of a Chatty DM, DungeonMastering and others, but it also provides you a very useful all-purpose tool for improving your pencil and paper roleplaying experience.

Step One: Think about the social or creative dynamics of your life.
Step Two: Think of an aspect of your roleplaying game (could be anything, really).
Step Three: See how #1 and #2 interact with one another.

This will lead you to some interesting notions about how to make better characters and build better (or more believable) roleplaying settings, and might even inspire you to take up the digital pen and write your own thoughts.

Good thoughts, like good tape, stick together and if you are so compelled to share your insights with others you might quickly find yourself interacting with our very own blogging community and sharing your own perspectives!

So there you have it. This is a fair measure of my creative process that I use to write my posts every other day, the big secret is out.

Allow me to pose and then answer a few questions:

Q. Does that mean I'm going to change my process?
A. Maybe, but probably not for awhile.

Q. Does this mean that I will cease writing posts using this formula?
A. Heck no, it seems to do pretty well for us so far!

Q. Will you link me if I do steal your idea and start my own blog?
A. Probably, if your stuff is any good (and linking us back too would be nice).

I seriously enjoy considering roleplaying games and how they can impact and be impacted by the way we live our lives. I am historically bad at starting trends like this, but it would be kind've neat if any of my inspired blogging cohorts give this process a try and link back to your resulting post (preferably in the comments for easy tracking).

I'd be interested to see how others interpret roleplaying as life!

Visiting the Archives: Proper Villainy, pt.1 -- Evil 101

One of the great series to grace the halls of this hallowed blog is Vanir's "Proper Villainy" series.  Vanir does a great job of dissecting villainy into little bits of evil, beginning with this first part, which originally appeared here September 2, 2007.  Enjoy it again!

Proper Villainy, pt. 1 -- Evil 101

As recently discussed on dungeonmastering.com, villains add a great element to a campaign: an opposing force that the players can invest themselves in fighting against.

But what makes a really good villain? Let's start with some basic concepts:

• What The Hell is "Evil", Anyway?
  
  I've never been real crazy about declaring alignment for characters. If you have a Lawful Good character and he's homeless and penniless and he steals some bread to survive, does that make him not Lawful Good anymore? What about a man who kills someone in a jealous rage but is otherwise good? Is he now "evil" or is he still a good guy who made a horrible mistake?
  
  People are more complicated than that. "Evil" people are still people -- it's just that the way they view the world is a bit more twisted than most everybody else.


• Nobody Is Born Evil
  
  Bad guys act the way they do because they're EVIL, right? Well, sometimes. In a cartoon or a crappy movie, yeah. The bad guys are just bad and that's the way it is. But a good villain probably didn't start that way. Very few individuals would kill an entire litter of puppies and then go, "Man, that was great -- I sure do love being evil!". They had to start somewhere. And there's a lot of ways to get evil, including:
  
  
  
  • Temptation
    
    It's said that every man has his price. Somebody found this character's price. They might have been offered money, or power, or anything -- but whatever it was, the character wants it enough that he'll do morally questionable things to get it.
    
  
  
  • Fear and Anger
    
    You get enough fear and anger together, and you don't know what the hell you're doing anymore. And in your head, committing horrible acts upon whatever you're afraid of/angry with seems perfectly justified!
  
  
  • Sense of Duty
    
    This one may contain elements of the previous two. A character works for someone who asks him to do something reprehensible. He knows damn good and well it's not right. So he's "just following orders". Not to say that a mistake flips the switch and makes a character evil all of a sudden, but if this character continues to do this sort of thing and starts thinking of this as "normal" behavior.... who's to say?
  
  
  
  Note that in all three cases, the common theme of a desire and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to get it exists. It's in the continued willingness to do evil that lies the heart of a true villain.

Next time, I'll show you why it's easier than you might think for a villain to do bad things. Until next time......

Also appearing in the Proper Villainy series:

• Proper Villainy pt. 2: Time To Kill The Donuts
  
• Proper Villainy, pt. 3 -- Fear and Loathing in Lothlorien
  
• Proper Villainy pt. 4: Learn from the Master
  
• Proper Villainy, pt. 5 -- Let The PC's Win. (Wait, What?!!?)
  
• Proper Villainy Profiles: Beowulf
  
• Proper Villainy Profiles: The Joker
  

Roleplaying with Rock Stars

Dante & I had the great privilege to go to a Death Cab for Cutie concert Sunday night.  And the part of my brain that loves music was suddenly merged with the part of my brain that loves roleplaying, and I had a musically inspired roleplaying epiphany.

In all roleplaying ventures, there are three readily-identifiable personality types: the Star, the Second and the Stage-Hand.

The Star

The Star is the lead, the spotlight character, the one who leads nearly every encounter with little effort.  The Star loves the attention, the grandiose plans and high adventure.  The Star can ascend from any class; since this is mostly personality driven, there is very little dependence on class.  However, the Star may take a step back if it becomes necessary for another character to take the lead, but such role reversal will not last long.

The Second

Like your back-up singer, the Second is the character that helps bring it all together.  The Second doesn't usually like to draw all the attention and enjoys being in the background, helping the plot move along and keeping the Star from Certain Death.  Of course, a Second may occasionally step up to the mic and lead a Star-quality solo performance but will usually revert to the Second role very quickly.

The Stage-Hand

The NPCs in your adventure are Stage-Hands who perform those little behind-the-scenes tasks that need to happen in order for the adventure to progress.  Whether it's testing the mics or detailing the prophecy that will lead to fame and glory, the Stage-Hand makes sure things run smoothly.

Life in the Band

A good performance requires all three roles to be filled.  Without everyone involved, the set will generally fall apart or, at the very least, will not be very entertaining.  Not every player is suited to every role, just as not every character is suited to every role.  I personally prefer to be a Second, but I enjoy taking the Star role every once in awhile; however, I have played the occasional character who was better suited as a Star than a Second.  Be aware of how your band is composed, treat each other with kindness and respect for your roles, and enjoy the beautiful roleplaying music.

Meeting a new cast of characters...

This week was my first week at my new job in Colorado, however we are not entirely moved out there yet. Most of this week was steeped in the pleasantries of meeting new teammates, managers, and hangers-on and it offered me a unique opportunity to reflect on how these interactions play out both in real life and in roleplaying.

First impressions matter.

The words you choose to introduce characters to one another can really influence the dynamic of their first interaction. If a given character selected slightly more threatening words or a passive tone of aggression, they might be welcomed differently than they would if the person was overtly friendly.

I found that in my (boring ol') Real Life, the experience I have in roleplaying really helps me identify when my impressions are getting colored by the words people choose and the tone that they take with me. This doesn't prevent me from making my first impression, it just helps to give a little additional perspective.

You can't underestimate that 'click'.

As I began interacting with my new work team, a few people instantly 'clicked' with me. The intangible connection that you feel with some like-minded people can really go a long way if you don't resist it in your roleplaying games. Some good advice I can give to prevent artifical damaging of those inherent connections is not to typecast your NPCs.

Let them have shades of grey and personality quirks that will endear them with the players. Capitalize on those connections as they occur and don't resist them just because you had a certain idea in your head when you made that character. Let them grow and evolve just like player characters and they will serve your storytelling much better than the alternative railroaded NPC.

The main takeaway from this discussion is to let characters be characters, regardless of who is running them. Let their interactions and first impressions occur, and then evolve as the characters grow. You'll end up forging some strong character relationships that will serve you all throughout your campaign!