Number 6 of Kurt Vonnegut's rules of writing is:

The brightness comes from the characters. That's the "in order that the reader may see what they are made of" part. By showing what they are made of, by bringing light to the darkness, player characters become so much more than a collection of numbers and abilities and become like characters in a novel.

As GMs we are only responsible for the latter, for doing horrible things to player characters and in so doing setting tests before them. Overcoming those things, showing what these characters are made of, that's the Player's job.

>rules for writing stories
>relevant in any way to tabletop roleplaying games.

not everyone on this board is murrican and the man is literally irrelevant outside of The States

Author. Mostly active around the 50s if I remember correctly. Most famous book would be Slaughterhouse five. Read it, was interesting, vaguely reminds me of Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. While I don't expect you to know who he is, loudly announcing you don't doesn't make you sound cool.

OP has a point, plenty of DMs are actually trying to write a novel, they just don't realize it themselves.

>That rule
>Ciri

By the Gods, there is not a character that quote applies to more than Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon.

Yeah, I'd say so.
Awful things lead to difficult decisions and those reveal a lot about the characters.

Just take care that those "awful things" match the tone of the game.
If you're running a game of MAID, discovering that you've run out of milk just as you're preparing tea is a much more appropriate "awful thing" than, say, having a family member kidnapped.

Right, gonna pull out the 'said it better than me' book:
>"Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them."
Put simply, let your players build badasses and then pit them against a challenge only badasses have a prayer of living through.
There's nothing more rewarding than suffering your way through the miles of hard work and seeing all of your work pay off in the final showdown. It's why every football or martial arts movie has training scenes, challenges, and failures. Because what the heroes do is hard, and it's impressive and satisfying that they're able to overcome the challenge.

...

I'm overprotective of my familiar.
If anything attacks my familiar, I go out of my way to murder that thing. I often throw myself into harm's way just to keep my familiar from getting hurt. Probably the single most important facet of my character.

So, at one point, my DM decided to have my familiar stolen from me by some guy who collected rare creatures. One of the worst things that could be done to my character, and probably the most emotionally devastating.

But, it was there that I had a bit of a decision to make, because I could actually quite easily dismiss and resummon my familiar. Could have done it immediately even. Wouldn't even break a sweat. The entire plot point the DM had set up could have been basically overturned without any effort.

But, instead, I decided to avoid doing that, because my somewhat unfocused character now had a very direct and clear goal, and I had a perfectly good excuse to leave a wide and bloody trail of carnage as I ransacked a castle in order to rescue my familiar and punish everyone who was involved in the capture in the process.

Overall, I think the awful thing happening to my character was ultimately a good thing, because it really allowed them to express what's important to them and what they care about. There might be no better way to define a character.

And, when I finish killing nearly everything in the castle and burning it to the ground, that's a fantastic time to reveal to the last remaining survivor that I could have summoned my familiar back at any time.

As a forever GM, I can say your GM is proud to have you.

Point, in MAID we call it surprise invitation for a visit, transport included.

I made the mistake of the inverse of this in my first tries at DMing. Party gets all sorts of neat, home-brewed toys, big piles of gold, told about mildly OP class options rather than being made to go find them themselves. It was bland and uncompelling. I mean, the dice rolling and time with friends was pretty good, but the actual game fell flat, felt stale. I started killing guys, breaking their toys, throwing nigh-insurmountable hells at them (with some amount of warning) and the story improved and the fun-having didn't seem to suffer. It is regarded as one of the great campaigns in that group of friends, though we haven't had a chance to get back to it since players started getting married. Ah well.

So yeah. I think you can make a case for nice things for players being an important part of play, but so are bad things. Almost nothing exciting or meaningful is going to happen in-game without some element of struggle, I think.

As far as American literature of 20th century goes the only name considered worth a mention in European school system is Hemingway.

am I one of the only people that really enjoys the plinkett star wars reviews not because i like star wars that much, but because of the actually good writing advice contained within?

Wait where the fuck do you get mascara in Witcher's vaguely-medieval slavland setting?

Mascara is older than the Pyramids.

Maybe she picked it up when she was running around different worlds.

I like it because it's funny.

That's regular tears, she got fucked up mutant eyes.

>some guy named william shakesman had once said: brevity is the soul of wit
>this just means don't waste my time

No, you're not the only one. If I had a penny for everytime someone uses that quote incorrectly while not being aware of the context it's said in...

Who?

If you actually wanted to know, you'd just use google.
Seriously, you never had to read Hemmingway in school?

one of his works was inspiration for Abaddon the Despoiler

Actually Kiera Metz gives a very good recipe using ashes and egg white in the Witcher 3.

Also Mascara has been around for thousands of years.

I'm sure we did read Hemmingway but I forgot. The English poet that made the greatest impact on me was Wilfred Owen.

Kurt Vonnegut was a hack, and randomly hurting nice characters is the cheapest trick an author can use to provoke emotional involvement from the reader.

I'd guess that's why OP has chosen a picture of her to go with that sentence.

Did you and I read the same quote?

You don't even cover Bradbury?

>" Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of."
That's not a rule of writing, that's a recipe for the cheapest shock effect drama.

stop reading shit from people like GRRM if you think that's true

Eurotrash please go.

(Fight bait with bait.)

>stop watching HBO butcher GRRM's writing if you think that's true

Fixed

Yes, well, not like I'd expect anyone from Europe to look at World War 2 and say 'yeah, that was a bad idea, I hope it never happens again.' Clearly, you're all more of the 'if we just ignore history, it will go away and leave us alone' school of thought.

The man behind 232.78 Celsius, right?
Nope, not a mention.

>Hemingway
God, that hurts. What a terrible author.

2deep4u

I heh'd.

>dark fantasy

These are universal rules that apply across the board.

It doesn't need to be full Dark Souls or 40k levels of grimdark, but the main cast must be hit with some form of adversity and bear witness to dire circumstances or scenes.

Meanwhile, the America has reached the point where they given up on making citizens read completely. Instead, if a story is worth knowing, they will make a movie of it.

Well, considering the recent situation, reopening the camps starts to sound like a tempting idea...

On more serious note - there's lot of anti-war literature both for WW1 and WW2, and plenty of it is German. But people forget fast and Cold War situation / commie legacy is more recent memory.

Exactly. Build in bits and pieces, small bite-sized chunks at a time. Don't dump lore in impenetrable walls of text.

You seem to have world-building and exposition confused here.

It applies to both.

Why, though? What possible problem is there with having "too much" worldbuilding as prep work if you're not shoving it in peoples faces?

There isn't any, hence

Stop watching shit anime by hack writers.

Pic related.

I know this is about the lowest hanging fruit I could possibly reach for, and I don't care either.

...

Pretty much this

The Witcher novels are straight up Game of Thrones level brutal.

>Code Geass
Are you saying that Lelouche "I wanted to be a Shakespearean actor goddammit" Vi Britannia is not a hilarious character.

No, he was an annoying second rate V rip-off.

But what I was really referring to is how all 3 of those shows have the same character. This modest demure, pure as the driven snow purity sue who gets killed in a stupid plot twist for cheap shock drama.

THE MORE SHE DRANK, THE MORE SHE SHAT

GRRM is a mediocre writer.

I don't understand this meme.

Are you trying to argue that GRR Martin is secretly a scat fetishist and there everything he's ever written is shit?

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
In other words, I'm not allowed to spend a single *sentence* describing the environment and society surrounding my characters and action. I'm not allowed to worldbuild at all, paint a picture with words, make the reader feel immersed in the background of the scene. Every sentence must reveal character or advance action and that's it. Every sentence, no exceptions. When the human main characters get to the elf city, I'm not allowed to say how it's different from human cities. Exposition is heresy. Got it.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Wait, what? You just said there's a large category of information I should never give under any circumstances!

The meme is that danny got disentary and GRRM went into detail about her shitting habits.

Never, for the love of literature, ever put exposition in a wall of text outside of a historical document.

I literally only know of one of these shows and that's only because vidya game world is still something I want to see done well, I was disappointed with SAO.

>Vonnegut
2deep4me

I tried reading one of his books. I think it was Timequake. Well I did not get too far into it until I was just kind of lost as to why I was still reading. Put it down and now I don't even know where that book is.

Obviously cause if good things happen to your PCs all the fucking time, nothing interesting happens

>When the human main characters get to the elf city, I'm not allowed to say how it's different from human cities. Exposition is heresy. Got it.
Are the differences between the elf city and the human city relevant to a character or the plot in some way? Exposition is completely ok so long as it either gives insight into a character, contains information important to the plot, or drives the action in some way. What he's advising against is spending time explaining things that aren't going to matter to the story. I don't want to read several paragraphs talking about the intricacies of the elf city's architecture if those details aren't important to the plot.

>I don't want to read several paragraphs talking about the intricacies of the elf city's architecture if those details aren't important to the plot.
Well I want to read at least one sentence describing a location, or else it feels unfinished, floating in a void.
If that's badwrongart, I guess I'll stick to visual media.

>Every sentence must reveal character or advance action and that's it. Every sentence, no exceptions. When the human main characters get to the elf city, I'm not allowed to say how it's different from human cities.
But describing the differences in the elven city FROM THE EYES OF THE HUMAN (that bit is important) is advancing the character. You're going to get a feel if he is in awe or disgust, if he finds the elves above, below, or equal to himself, you're going to see how well traveled vs insular he is.

Now you need to bend the rules a bit when you're doing it in an RPG setting because you need to feed that information to the players so they can make the character reactions, but as an author no one really needs to ever see what is there to get the reaction.

Look at the arrival in Lothlorien in The Fellowship of the Ring, you get one paragraph describing the awe of the setting and that is from Frodo's eyes as his blindfold is removed. The language tells you that you are supposed to be in awe and feel at peace in the place, and it is further reinforced by Frodo staying in pace and soaking it all in when everyone else continues on their way. This happens after escaping Moria and avoiding orcs in the edges of the woods so it is the first bit of peace since before the dark seemingly endless mines (probably since Elrond's, but I don't remember the details THAT well).

even description of setting can be bent to be useful towards those purposes. the word choice of your perspective is just as important as what's actually happening. whether snow on the ground is 'soft sheets blanketing the hills' or 'blank mush undermining the footing as I climbed' matters. in your example the humans can remark on the things they notice as different, and what they choose to comment on can give information on them. a nimble and antisocial character might look at the buildings and think about how the irregular heights of rooftops will make his work harder, or a noblewoman might pay especial attention to the people in the city and their business. exposition is to be nested into and alongside other tasks in writing. information is important but is subordinate to the ultimate task of telling a story.

these are writing tips, Vonnegut was a novelist, and it's stupid to take them as logical rules that must never be crossed, as if you were a robot capable of being shut down by 'this sentence is a lie'.

what is this thing?

the 'axis of terrible taste' it seems. three mainstream anime written with varying and inconsistent quality, but never rising above poor.

Thing is, you can't just throw horrible shit at the characters (PC's) all the time, you need to take a step back and get away from the grit, otherwise it just becomes boring and predictable.

"Oh, that NPC we really like ended up being kidnapped/raped/murdered/etc. again? O~oh, how could we have not seen that shit coming?"

Hell, even in Berserk, it's not 100% dark, there are points of levity and everything bad that happens serves a purpose.

Yeah but Tolkien is kinda pretty bad at actual storywriting.

>You're going to get a feel if he is in awe or disgust, if he finds the elves above, below, or equal to himself, you're going to see how well traveled vs insular he is.
But I'm not going to know the shapes and materials of buildings and other objective facts, which makes me feel like the environment doesn't exist.

>But I'm not going to know the shapes and materials of buildings and other objective facts,
Which is why the DM tells you. Or does the entirety of your game consist of shifting miniatures and rolling dice?

Same. I just got to the bit where Bonhart butchers the Rats in front of her and then forces her to watch him saw their heads off.

>Which is why the DM tells you.
I was talking about Kurt Vonnegut's unbreakable rules of writing a NOVEL, not a game.

...

I thought so too when I was a kid.

That's only a character's perspective. I care about what is true.
Furthermore it's unrealistic to have characters verbally remark upon every aspect of the environment. If you're going to do that, you might as well just spend a single sentence describing it.

Cat's Cradle is always going to be my favorite Vonnegut novel. He sure lives up to that rule there, holy crap.

No wonder every millennial European comes off as an uneducated twat.

in modern novel writing 'what is true' is no longer considered worth writing about. the words 'tree' or 'elm' will never actually describe the same tree for both author and reader. instead the relevant parts of the character perspective is preferred. similarly a reader has certain tropes and representations already in mind when reading, so the author need only call on them and note the important parts that need to be certain.

of course it's ridiculous to have characters exposit all your details. only the details relevant to the story should be mentioned. to 'spend a single sentence describing it' is possible but that single sentence must come from a viewpoint, and whatever that viewpoint is will color it. a 'pure' third person omniscience is impossible.

>That's only a character's perspective. I care about what is true.
But those are truths. Both descriptions tell you there is snow on the ground, which is true. The thief observes that the elven city has a lot of oddly shaped roofs while the noblewoman notices that there's a lot of people wearing a symbol that looks like an oak tree, both of these are true facts.

>Furthermore it's unrealistic to have characters verbally remark upon every aspect of the environment. If you're going to do that, you might as well just spend a single sentence describing it.
They don't have to remark on every aspect of the environment, just the ones that are relevant to them. They don't need to do it verbally either, it could be a part of their internal monologue. The character doesn't even have to state it directly, it could be remarked on by another character or implied through the narration.

The first season of Log Horizon does a fun job with the video game setting, though it's more high fantasy than science fiction (I would comment on the second season but I got distracted by vidya and wound up never finishing it).

If I decide the buildings in my elf city are covered in an unidentified seamless plaster-like substance that glistens like the inside of an oyster shell, can I write that, or am I forced to only write "the character is in awe and finds the elves above him"?

Now you're just being obtuse. Never write, you're an idiot.

you should write what the character thinks about the substance and how they perceive it, and then shitpost relentlessly about mother-of-pearl as a building material. whoever the character is will change how they describe whatever this material is, what aspects of it they pay special attention to (like its 'seamless' nature making it hard to climb on), and how you write their reaction to the material. if they think it's an amazing wonder material and are in awe at the elves' expertise, all power to you...

luckily for all people involved in creative pursuits, they are never forced to do anything, and if they want to take a dump in the street they can squat as long as they want. sometimes their waste is exactly what you'd expect, and sometimes you get hookworms from poor choice of squatting location. other times, you invent the outhouse because everyone else builds walls around your squatting hole so they don't have to look at you.

Hey, I've been relatively polite here. Can you explain what you mean?
Whether I describe the architecture as narration or as internal monologue, I'm writing the exact same sequence of words.
The rules in OP's linked article were quite clear, never spend even one sentence on setting the scene unless it says something about a character. Well what if no characters are present who would have a strong opinion one way or the other on the building materials of the elf city?

>forced
No one is forcing you to do anything. It's a list of writing tips, not hard and fast rules and Kurt Vonnegut is by no means the end all be all authority on how to write a good story.

To answer your question yes of course you can fucking write that. Write whatever the hell you want, it's your story and your world. In fact write both sentences, a city made out of an unidentifiable, seamless, glittering substance is a pretty good explanation as to why the character is awed by the elves.

Bare hooks won't do, user.

if you have no characters then you don't have a scene, you have a piece of scenery. it may be very pretty and all but it is kind of pointless on its own. if you have no characters who care...then why should your reader care? it's obviously not an important detail. if you want to give your readers a perspective outside your stable of characters, then another character observing them is necessary, even if that character is the narrator.

narration and internal monologue are fundamentally the same thing. whether the narrator is a character or is a separate intelligence relating the characters' experiences to the reader, there must be flavor to the writing. there are so many ways to describe a particular scene that the vast majority of the possibilities will be bland and uninteresting. whatever you do choose in the end will either lose reader interest, if you give a tasteless and realist Wall-o'-Text-o-meter, or will drive everything forward as part of a cohesive work.

>Well what if no characters are present who would have a strong opinion one way or the other on the building materials of the elf city?
Paint it. It has no bearing to the story or the medium of words unless you're getting paid by the word.

Are you trying to instill a sense of wonder about Elvin architecture? Then you put in the blank slate that is the main character to be awed by it. It connects the reader to the world through the character.

>Whether I describe the architecture as narration or as internal monologue, I'm writing the exact same sequence of words.
Are you really? A character's internal monologue usually isn't written the same way as an external narration. At the very least the pronouns are different.

>The rules in OP's linked article were quite clear, never spend even one sentence on setting the scene unless it says something about a character.
Or advances the action, the plot doesn't take place in a vacuum and the surrounding environment is often important to the events that are going on within it.

>what if no characters are present who would have a strong opinion one way or the other on the building materials of the elf city?
Unless someone is blind, unconscious, or otherwise distracted they're probably going to notice what the buildings around them look like. Which means they can tell what the material looks like, although they may lack details or not give it much thought. And if none of the characters care about it then why should the reader? If it is an important detail than introduce a character that does care about it, or use an external narrator.

No, the meme is that Martin writes using an extremelly poor lexicon; only varying it a little in dialogues to make the world seem more medieval. Also sentence construction is repetitive and awfull. We don't care that he decided to go on about Daenery's dissentry for so long, we care that he's a shitty writer and he still gets to bully way better authors than himself on his blog with 0 reason except ego-stroking.
You can't "butcher" roadkill.

>>in modern novel writing 'what is true' is no longer considered worth writing about.
Modern novel writing sucks.

90% of everything sucks. we remember all the hits of 100 years ago but no one remembers the flops so it's easy to say modern writing is somehow worse. that said, it's been made easier than ever to get a 'novel' published, so by volume there's more shit than ever.

but more specifically, I just articulated an old opinion from about a century ago that's still common among writers and critics today. realist writing hasn't been relevant for multiple lifetimes.