Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Persephone Imytholin 10-22-04, 07:05 AM	A few times now, I've considered jumping in and writing a series of articles to help tie together characters' mechanics and storyline. This thought popped up after the Paladin thread some time ago; my response seemed fairly well-accepted, and it was kinda fun to hunt around for the information to throw together into that answer to the paladin question. More recently, the 'mad scientist' thread has revived the idea. All the time, I see threads pop up that ask for help on a similar aspect of the character - an alignment, or options for a certain class, or how to play out an attribute. This can be disappointing - the few of us who respond to those question threads generally have no choice but to ask for more information. A kind of roleplay self-help resource could help with better defined questions, and help to create more interesting characters better reflected on their character sheets. What I'm asking for here is your opinions on whether a set of articles on these things would be useful or not. If you think they'd be useful, then I'd also like to invite you to throw out a few ideas for things to help define and develop a character. And, there's bonus points and a cookie if you can come up with a good name for them.
Kolo 10-22-04, 12:36 PM	A few times now, I've considered jumping in and writing a series of articles to help tie together characters' mechanics and storyline. This thought popped up after the Paladin thread some time ago; my response seemed fairly well-accepted, and it was kinda fun to hunt around for the information to throw together into that answer to the paladin question. More recently, the 'mad scientist' thread has revived the idea. All the time, I see threads pop up that ask for help on a similar aspect of the character - an alignment, or options for a certain class, or how to play out an attribute. This can be disappointing - the few of us who respond to those question threads generally have no choice but to ask for more information. A kind of roleplay self-help resource could help with better defined questions, and help to create more interesting characters better reflected on their character sheets. What I'm asking for here is your opinions on whether a set of articles on these things would be useful or not. If you think they'd be useful, then I'd also like to invite you to throw out a few ideas for things to help define and develop a character. And, there's bonus points and a cookie if you can come up with a good name for them. Oh, YES. they'd be helpful for sure, and they would stop this whole mess of "my paladin eats puppies for breakfast and hates all orcs, is he good?" questions. I honestly wonder sometimes how many people actually read the alignment chapter in the PHB. For a while now, I've been pondering wether I should write a sort of 3rd-person point of view on alignment, watching a wizard lecture in some magical college on the definition of alignments and how they affect the world/s in which they live in... with the students posing frequently asked question. Sort of like a FAQ, but with character. I lack the time right now, so articles would be great. Can't think of a name though.
Righetti 10-24-04, 07:51 PM	i would help i got lots of freetime right now....as for a name.........."History of Player Character: Want One?" it sucks but then again it tells everyone what we are doing.
Persephone Imytholin 10-24-04, 11:21 PM	I'm fine with the writing, I just want to know what people think would be useful. Classes? Stat guides? Notes on races? Just throw some ideas in.
zioth 10-25-04, 01:59 PM	Stat guides would be useful. A lot of people come here wondering what intelligence, wisdom and charisma mean, and how various combinations of the three affect the personality of a character. Guides for the simpler stats (str,dex,con) would be useful too -- it might be no more than a list of ways to play high or low stats, including the extremes (3 and 18). As for classes and races, those might be a little big for one person to tackle in one post. On the Character Optimization board, they've put together an Optimization Library (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=213480) with topic names like "The 3.5 cleric build thread." It might be nice to have a "Character Development Library," with corresponding topics. So a "Cleric Development Thread" would talk about ways one might role-play a cleric, hte meaning of clerical spells, ideas people have had for breaking stereotypes, etc.
Shir'Kazan 11-15-04, 10:46 PM	A lot of people come here wondering what intelligence, wisdom and charisma mean, and how various combinations of the three affect the personality of a character. all this stuff is found in the core rule books (there's a short but clear "behind the scene" in the DMG). I cant realy get to the bottom of what you're trying to build in those articles? if they're not character-based so what are they explaining? how to choose a class? abilities? alignment? I am just trying to assess your intention in order to answer your question. Most of the questions people ask here are covered in the PHB and DMG, but as people mentioned here - most people surely doenst read those sections, while others (and can testify on myself) read those sections over again each time they build a character, even though they know it already.
Persephone Imytholin 11-16-04, 12:03 AM	This is the character development board - so, articles would be about building a solid, well-defined character alongside the numbers on the character sheet. This is mostly because the core rules have nearly no information on actual roleplay, and partly because they'd be fun for me to write. They're mostly about personality and story significance, but some might have a bit on how to turn personality and story significance back into mechanics.
Shir'Kazan 11-16-04, 08:44 AM	If something would be fun for you to write, go for it anyway