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Episode 1730: The Bullet Surprise

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You don't need to be on your own when coming up with a character backstory for a game. Recruit your fellow players to help flesh it out, or to provide inspiration, or even props. If any players have a particular talent that can help, they can assist everyone.

A straightforward example is if one of the players has artistic skill, they can make sketches of each character. A visualisation can be a powerful method of imagining your character in more detail and getting into the personality and story concept.

Less obvious examples: If someone is keen on writing prose or poetry, they could write an evocative character description. If someone has musical skills, they could write a song or jingle for each character. If someone makes jewellery or carves wood for a hobby, they could make a trinket that each character carries, and the players can use them as a focal point to get into character. If someone is a good miniature figure painter, they could customise gaming miniatures for each character. Just think outside the box a little and apply whatever talent you have to making something related to each character in the party, and see what you come up with.

[Reminder: Our guest commentators have not seen Rogue One. Part of the fun is seeing how their untainted impressions re-interpret the movie through the lens of our comic.]

Character development and role-playing can be a major point of development for a player. Here, we see somebody doing this, very probably for the first time.

Do not fault a first timer for trying something small or simple. How many of you have run your first superhero game as a simple variation of "stop the bank robbery"?

(Side note: imagine a bank that has been held up repeatedly in the past, and is now reopening with what is supposed to be a villain-secure security set-up, and the heroes show up because they received a tip that someone is going to try to test it. As soon as combat begins, all the innocent civilians scatter, leaving only our heroes; 30 seconds later, as many heroes show up as there were civilians scattering. Naturally, our PC heroes had everything taken care of by then.)

The epic, heartwarming backstory of his next character? Did we ever find out anything about Captain Antilles?

From what I understand of the method acting approach, to portray a character that hates PowerPoint, you have to personally hate PowerPoint. Or at least, pretended to hate PowerPoint convincingly well enough that you can convince people that you really do hate PowerPoint even if you don't.

In other words, from what I understand of method acting, it's all about being able to have a separate personality that you portray different from your own personality, and being able switch back and forth between them, while keeping them separate enough that the character personality does not leak into your personal personality after the acting job is over.

In other words, you're deliberately choosing to drive yourself insane/crazy.

In other words, I don't understand method acting.

The three frames show some movement of Krennic towards Bria, who has no place to go. And again: why get closer? Why not just shoot, or question, or whatever at a distance? Getting close is just giving her a chance to use whatever kick-ass martial arts she has to kick ass.

— Keybounce

Transcript

Corey: {present day} Wait, wait. Your dad's opinion on PowerPoint changed your whole mind??
Sally: It was his character's story arc!
Jim: Yeah. After learning how to roleplay properly with Padmé and seeing how Annie planned Anakin's story, it was easy!
GM: Jim came to me with a backstory shortly after taking over Bria, and solicited my help in setting up this major turning point.
Annie: It may not have been a very complex characterisation, but he carried it through admirably.
Jim: I took the method acting approach.
Pete: He got me to summarise his backstory in bullet points.
Jim: And you did such an awful job of it!
Pete: I aim to please.
Jim: The experience helped me build an epic heartwarming backstory for my next character.
Ben: But... PowerPoint??
GM: I'll take whatever I can get.


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Published: Tuesday, 13 November, 2018; 02:11:02 PST.
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