April A to Z with Character

My strategy for tackling this year's A to Z blogfest is coming together nicely. I am going to focus on character development and roleplay issues. To help me organize my thoughts, I put together a list of my anticipated topics and began to notice three intertwining sub-themes to my character posts. I have labelled these themes 1) Building a Better Villain 2) Building a Better Hero and 3) Interactions (the last category might need a snappier title)

The posts will focus on moving beyond stat sheets and dice-roll mechanics to develop characters an interactions that are deeper, more memorable for your players and which will hopefully result in a more exciting story and/or experience at the game table.

The first week's topics are pretty solid at this point and will hit the following subjects:

• Arch-enemies
• Back stories
• Companions (alternates still under consideration are "Code of Honor" or "Causes")
• Diplomancy (one of the stickier points on the dice vs. roleplay continuum) - This post may also need to do double-duty for the monthly Insecure Writer's Support Group
• Evil
• Flaws
• Get-aways