Role-playing Workshop

I’ve been thinking about the approach I want to take with documenting the adventures of my D&D character, Rend-fol, and I’ve come up with an interesting tact. Each week, I’m going to summarize Rend’s most recent adventure. Nothing fancy, just a paragraph detailing what happened to Rend and his adventuring party, Str8 Rippin’.

Yes, the party’s name is Str8 Rippin’. Err, at least that’s my name for the party. If you asked anyone else in the group, you’d get a range of denials, everything from bemusement to contempt to weary resignation.

Anyway.

After I summarize Rend’s most recent exploits, I plan to break down Rend’s behavior that week. I envision it as a kind of role-playing synopsis, a method of tracking my character’s actions and attitudes and then comparing that to the background I wrote for Rend and the direction I want the character to go. Really, I see it as a kind of writer’s workshop, only focused on role-playing, a kind of critical analysis of how the session went in terms of Rend’s morality and decision making.

I’m really excited about this prospect because role-playing is a challenging endeavor. My hope is that if I am tracking and then analyzing Rend’s actions and attitudes, I can better track whether or not he’s in keeping with the idea I had for him in the first place.

Once the summary and the role-playing workshop are done, I’ll finish the week with any fan fiction I may have been inspired to write. I may or may not use session events as a basis for the fiction, but I definitely plan on changing names and classes of other players’ characters. I’ve even been toying with the idea of writing Rend’s prequel story, origin tales to fill out the barest of background frameworks I wrote for him.

This could be a bust because very often entire sessions are devoted to massive, hours long fights; there’s only so much role-playing anyone can do when a bullet has your head in its jaws, chewing enthusiastically. So I’m predicting that some weeks will be leaner than others.

Still, it’s worth a try