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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 3524866" data-attributes="member: 3649">Don't focus on 'political intrigue' too much; that is a very, very hard style of game to pull off- if even one person isn't all-out interested in it, it will spell the end of the campaign quickly. So don't get worked up over doing an 'all interaction' campaign any time soon.Instead, focus on the character. How do we do this, though. Take a walk or something and think about that characters past a little bit. I don't mean every piddly little incident and I don't mean 'write up a ten page essay on his life'. I mean think about his reactions to things. Let's start with Class. Let's say he's a fighter. Why did he choose to live by the sword? Where did he learn his weapon skills? What was it like the first time he killed a man? An orc? A woman? Answering questions like that will let you into that character's head. Let's say he learned his weapon skills at a fancy training school. That answer opens up more questions. Were his parents rich and sent him to learn a fancy sword style, or did he manage to impress the leader of the school? Does he look down on people who don't have his level of training?Now, all this is a fair amount of work; we want to do this kind of up-front work for a PC, but seldom does an NPC merit even the broad strokes we're talking about up there. That's where the use of stereotypes comes in; they're useful for a very good reason - they give other characters an instant handle on how to react to them.More advice: read more. Pay attention to how incidents in a character's life build on each other. Watch more movies and steal NPC's from them. The next time you need a French waiter, slip into Bruce Campbell's portrayal from Spider-Man 3. Need a stuffy british hotel owner? Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. Don't be obvious; steal parts of the characters and mix-and-match. Otherwise your players will get to talking about the movie or show.Another thing to do: look at a good book for writers on character development. It will describe the process in better detail but also teach you how to do it quickly and easily, so you don't get bogged down in endless detail.</blockquote>

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