backstories
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Series revisits ARM's humble beginnings, BBC Micro and all
If you read our interview with ARM co-founder John Biggs, you know the company behind the processor in most smartphones had quite modest beginnings, what with an office in a barn and all. But Biggs is only part of the story, and Reghardware fleshes the rest out with a two-part series on the "unsung heroes of tech": Sophie Wilson, Steve Furber and Herman Hauser, the team behind Acorn Computers, the British PC company that spawned ARM in the mid-80s. We'll let you click through to the source links to take the journey yourself, but here are a few highlights: earning a computer contract with the BBC, happening upon ARM chips' low power consumption by accident and striking gold thanks to a partnership with Apple.
Reporting from the front: Marv Wolfman on the chronicling of PlanetSide 2's war
Let's face it: First-person shooters aren't typically renowned for their intricate lore and detailed backstories. When you're mowing through a herd of alien bugs or a room full of terrorists with a plasma rifle and grenade launcher, "story" takes a backseat to "Boom! Headshot!" So why, then, is Sony Online Entertainment making a concerted effort to slather its upcoming PlanetSide 2 with a healthy layer of story? To answer this, we sat down with famed comic writer Marv Wolfman, who has once again teamed up with the MMO studio to provide the backstory for PlanetSide 2 in the form of several short stories (the first of which can be read on the official site right now). Wolfman, who has been working on this project for several months already, sees story as essential to the game experience. "Sooner or later, you want to know why you're here and doing what you're doing," he explained. The first PlanetSide had a paper-thin backstory that tended to escape the attention of most of the players, which is why SOE is trying to give this "reimaging" a solid grounding in lore. Sure, not every player cares about it, but for the ones that do, being able to read about the history of the world and the reason behind the conflict is important. PlanetSide 2 isn't just a mindless shooter to the company but a war with depth, meaning, struggles, and purpose. This is where Wolfman comes in to work his wordsmithing magic. Hit the jump as we investigate the scope of these stories and how you wish you had a history class that covered war in such a cool way.
Storyboard: Swapping tales
A few weeks back, I took the opportunity to explain why roleplaying is most definitely not storytelling. So this week, I'm going to directly undermine every single part of that column and talk about running a steady story via roleplaying. If you haven't noticed by this point, I'm a big fan of subverting expectations. My usual impish sense of humor aside, the two exist rather comfortably alongside one another. A long-running storyline in-game doesn't require you to have arcs and movements and motivations planned out -- rather, it's the natural outgrowth of character arcs and interactions from months or years of play. You lose much in the way of narrative consistency or overall theme, but you gain a sprawling organic network of developing plotlines. So keeping a long-term story running is more a matter of letting time build on an existing base. But getting that existing base functioning and keeping it on an even keel isn't always a simple task, and that's what we're going to examine. There are a lot of ways to keep a story going in the game, but the better the foundation, the better it'll be.
Storyboard: A man of many talents
Rejoice! After the columns of the last two weeks, the specter of relationships has been forever vanquished! (We're using "forever" in the same sense you'd see it in a comic book here. In other words, give it a month.) Diving back into the haphazard series on character creation, today we'll be taking a look at generating a character based solidly upon their abilities -- a method that seems a bit odd at first glance and almost ridiculously simple upon further consideration. Think about it for a moment. If someone asks you to describe yourself, odds are excellent that you don't start with a recounting of your personality or your history unless you're on a date. Most times, you start with what you do -- hobbies, profession, and any other pertinent diversions on the road toward the grave. It's not a real cognitive leap from being accountants, clerks, and waiters to being warriors, mages, and rogues. The big question is extrapolating backward from the ability to figure out the sort of person who would go into the profession in the first place. Because it's such a broad field, in fact, I'm going to take a look at it from three different angles.
All the World's a Stage: Descriptions done right
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening. Except for this week, when it is more like the early afternoon.Your usual AtWaS columnist, David Bowers, has found himself a tad busy this weekend. Due to this, I'll be nosing in on his territory for a day. Don't worry ladies and gentlemen, I'll take good care of you. Just yesterday we discussed a little about RP descriptions. That is, the physical descriptions you can give your character via addons such as FlagRSP2 or MyRoleplay. David seemed to think this was a pretty good topic, so we're going to go a little more in depth into the right and wrong way of writing these.Right and wrong in this case is naturally up to the individual, but in general there are some pretty solid guidelines you should keep in mind. The first and most obvious is that you should always proofread your writing. In general, roleplayers gravitate towards people with at least some grasp of the English language. A sloppily written description is the first thing someone will see, and it's going to set off alarms in the heads of other people.
