character-arcs
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Storyboard: Over, done, finished, finito
The best stories have an ending. And if you want to tell a decent story in a roleplaying format, you're going to need some sort of an ending eventually. The problem is that most endings have a pretty strict sense of finality to them, and really ending your roleplaying kind of implies that your character is riding off into the sunset and possibly sipping martinis. (Depending on the game, they may be space martinis. Lots of things are possible.) So you want to end the story without ending your character's story on a whole. That's a good approach and one that can be handled. But it's also one that's a bit easier said than done, hence my devoting an entire column to it. So let's talk about creating a satisfying ending that manages to wrap up a story without subsequently wrapping up every aspect of your character.
Storyboard: Navel-gazing cardboard cutouts
When you create a character for roleplaying, most of the time your creation is something of a mess. He or she has a huge pile of issues, regrets, fears, mental blind spots, and possibly even physical ailments that should have a lasting impact on telling stories and creating drama. And your goal as a player is to take all of those flaws into account to tell stories about someone less than perfect, whose imperfections you can hopefully see even if the character can't. Unfortunately for everyone, there are two very compelling ways to do this, and neither one of them is right or wrong or even evident at a glance. It's only by roleplaying with someone for a while that you get a sense of what she's aiming for, and it often turns out to be after it's too late to do anything. You might be going for character arcs or character development, and the two are frequently incompatible over the long term.
