Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
The thing with a writing prompt, is that it leads you to think about all that stuff. You can easily start with the prompt of a nameless guy on an island with a box - the first thing you start thinking about is who this guy is and why he's got a box and what he's trying to do. When you write your first draft, it will be one way, and as you go on writing, you'll come up with new ideas and then go back and revise until there's a character who's well fleshed out (hopefully) and a situation that is compelling and makes sense.

In an RPG, what you have is usually a setting and a set of activities that characters are expected to engage in, and often specific sorts of characters that are allowable.

That's the prompt.
Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve committed the Fallacy of Four Parts with the word “prompt”.

However, outside Dragonlance, I’m not sure one will find people playing through more than one “draft” of a game, especially with the same characters. So I’m not sure how to apply the concept that a character is rarely characterized in the first draft to an RPG in any way that makes that sound like a good thing.