TinkeringTurian
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The future of character sheets (+ poll)
🕑 Added 2019-10-02 19:52:31 +0000 UTCThe past year, I've spent a lot of time writing background stories for various characters of Kobold Adventure. These stories grew larger over time, culminating in the massive dump of text that was Javert's character sheet. All well and good, but we've kind of reached a point, where we are out of characters to write meaningful backstories for.
Everything that had to be said, apart from a few minor details, has already been divulged. There are, of course, some important characters that have not yet been featured, but their backstories will most likely be contained to the game itself.
What does this mean for our monthly character sheets? They will keep coming, for as long as we have characters to depict. And boy, howdy, do we still have a bunch of guys and girls to show you! But, future characters sheets, starting with this next one, might not have such an expansive backstory.
Instead, they will contain smaller, more concise summations of a character's history, who they are today, what they aim to accomplish, or perhaps just general worldbuilding for the setting of Kobold Adventure. Think Seki's backstory, but maybe even a bit smaller than that.
Why are we making this change? Several reasons. As mentioned before, the most pressing character sheets have already been written, leaving mostly side characters and background actors to be detailed.
Furthermore, lowering the character sheet word count, will cut down on the writing work needed for each sheet, and thus hopefully trim down the monthly time investment, leaving more room to work on the actual game itself.
Lowering the backstory-requirements for character sheets, allows us to explore more characters, for who I do not have the means to write full-length stories. Take Emeraude, for example. You pretty much know his entire story, without him getting a sheet of his own. I can't write a huge amount about him, without repeating things you already know. As such, we simply could not make a sheet about the dragon prince(ss) before. We can now, but it'll be a smaller one.
Finally, while I could come up with intricate backstories for a bunch of characters, they will ultimately not come into play as much, as the ones already established. Those stories would be fluff, for the sake of fluff, which does not strike my fancy as much as story-related exposition.
There may be some more big sheets in the future (a character you have yet to meet, called Manus, comes to mind), but in general, character sheet length will be lower than before. I hope you understand the reasoning behind this decision, and I hope you'll still be happy with the fun things you know I'll be writing still.
And now, without further ado, have a larger selection of characters to choose from. Pick wisely.
