Professor RP · @ProfessorRP
27th Apr 2014 from TwitLonger
#Lesson -Your Character, Our World: The magic of Location and NPCs-
You are in a black room. There is a single door. What is behind it?
-You open it and find snow. You react with shivering, turn to go back in. You find the door is gone.
-You open it to find a jungle. What is in it?
-You open it to find a city. You hear the bustle of the crowd. You see the cars driving by, smell the exhaust.
You, nor your character, exist in a vacuum. There are others; there are shopkeepers, there are dentists, there are accountants. There are animals, there are plants.
There are possibilities.
In writing an SL, an important thing to decide with your co-writer is the location. A lot of it can be written on the fly, but the location should be logical, the changes thought-out. If you are in the city, you wouldn't be expecting to see a lion (unless one escaped from the zoo). If you are in the middle of a dense jungle, it is unlikely that you would expect to find a Starbucks.
That being said, location defines normality; it defines logic.
Now, NPCs.
NPCs are essential in any SL, any RP. Why? Because they fill in a world, give it character and culture. You are doing more than simply writing a character: you are introducing another character to your world.
If you're writing a super hero, one would expect there to be super villains, muggers, and the sort. If you're writing a wizard, I expect to, in some way, see how magic has affected and built your culture. I want to see the Bazaar.
And more than that, it presents possibilities. An encounter with a strange NPC can move your character beyond its normal actions. Tripping on a vine and falling over a cliff can have strange consequences and lead to strange situations.
And all of this leads up to a simple line of thought: If your RP is boring, you can always make something happen. Don't limit yourself only to your character, or even your world: Let the world be a character as well.
It does, after all, exist to entertain you.