Storyboard: Archetype discussion — a brief conclusion

Filed under: Lore, Opinion, Roleplaying, Storyboard, Miscellaneous

Before I started writing up the archetypes that have made up a 10-part series (with two meta columns including this one), I only wrote out a very brief preamble in front of the Soldier column. As I said at the time, the goal was to provide character templates that work, in a broad sense -- characters that adapt easily to specifics and serve as a good jumping-off point for making something more original.

It's a good way of glossing the series, made only slightly worse by the fact that it's not altogether true.

From the first column, the archetypes I've been discussing have a long list of blanks for players to fill in, and that's been by design, because -- when you get right down to it, archetypes aren't characters. I touched upon this a bit when I stepped into the meta column, but now I want to be more explicit: Archetypes are at their core about motivation. They're not set to answer any questions about your character except for why he or she is out on the road, adventuring and questing and doing all sorts of unpleasant things.

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Storyboard: Archetype discussion -- a brief conclusion originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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