Non-player character creation, part II: gazing into the abyss
"Lula," I said to myself, "if I am to create the ultimate character profile, then I'll have to look at a lot of character profiles. Where can I find the largest aggregations of character profiles on the Internet?"
Well, social networking services, unfortunately.
I've spent this entire weekend signing up for, and filling out profiles on, every social networking web site mentioned in this Wikipedia entry, and a few others it doesn't mention. My head is still spinning with media overload, but so far my favorites are GamerDNA, Geni, Orkut, and Shaadi. Orkut is my favorite all-around, but Shaadi.com is great for completeness of information, GamerDNA for specialized functions, and Geni for relationship and history tracking.
So having dragged myself out of the organizational hell of multiple social networks, I think I'm ready to move from the "list the fields on all these sites" phase to the "create a comprehensive and final list of character profile fields" phase. But I've also thought a lot about the kind of data a game master needs to compile, not only about characters, but also about campaigns/storylines in general. I figure that four standard things need to be recorded for most campaigns:
1) Item
2) Character
3) Group/Organization
4) Story
As a game master I could use standard forms for all these things. Given the necessity of creating relationships amongst these four things, I figure a wiki is the best format I could use right now. I'm going back to work on #2-more as I keep working ….
Well, social networking services, unfortunately.
I've spent this entire weekend signing up for, and filling out profiles on, every social networking web site mentioned in this Wikipedia entry, and a few others it doesn't mention. My head is still spinning with media overload, but so far my favorites are GamerDNA, Geni, Orkut, and Shaadi. Orkut is my favorite all-around, but Shaadi.com is great for completeness of information, GamerDNA for specialized functions, and Geni for relationship and history tracking.
So having dragged myself out of the organizational hell of multiple social networks, I think I'm ready to move from the "list the fields on all these sites" phase to the "create a comprehensive and final list of character profile fields" phase. But I've also thought a lot about the kind of data a game master needs to compile, not only about characters, but also about campaigns/storylines in general. I figure that four standard things need to be recorded for most campaigns:
1) Item
2) Character
3) Group/Organization
4) Story
As a game master I could use standard forms for all these things. Given the necessity of creating relationships amongst these four things, I figure a wiki is the best format I could use right now. I'm going back to work on #2-more as I keep working ….