Author: mbudinsk

One of the most important aspects of an RPG is to create a character with a compelling personality and backstory. If you can make a good backstory, you will become invested in the story and your character.

Yenzin Tealeaf

Yenzin is one of my favourite characters to play because I’ve developed her and her backstory with care. While her backstory is not long, it has all the details it needs, and her personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws were carefully thought of.

Yenzin Tealeaf is a Lightfoot Halfling and a Cleric of the Knowledge Domain. How this came to be is as follows:

As the youngest of her family, Yenzin was always compared to her older brothers and sister. Everyone expected her to turn out the same way.

She did not.

This, it turns out, was a good thing. Her sister, being the oldest, was born to be the heir to her family’s business. However, her sister had no social skills whatsoever and was not the swiftest. She often embarrassed her family, when her mom, dad or nanny was not around to check her behaviour.

Her brothers, the twins, were very charismatic and made friends easily. Because of their (possible) potential, Yenzin’s parents spoiled them to no end. That was a mistake. As the twins grew, they became lazy, spoiled brats. They never did anything for themselves and if they made trouble, there would be no consequences… Ever.

By the time Yenzin was born, everyone thought she would need to be coddled, just like her sister, or she would be spoiled and bratty, like her brothers. No one thought she would be very successful or intelligent.

Yenzin proved everyone wrong. She was charismatic, intelligent and wise beyond her years. During lessons, she would actually pay attention while her brothers goofed off and her sister daydreamed. Yenzin loved to learn and absolutely adored books and reading. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge soaks up water.

One night she had a dream, in which she realized the purpose she had been born for. In the dream, she was sitting at a desk, with a thick tome in front of her. As she opened the book, it seemed to never reach an end. Anything she wished to know appeared in the book as if by magic, before fading after she read it.

When she woke, she remembered the dream with extreme clarity, and from her lessons, she recognized the book as the symbol of Illumater, the God of Knowledge.

She was alive so that she could spread knowledge across the world and unearth ancient secrets, buried long ago.

Yenzin knew that she would have to leave her family, at least for a little while if she was to fulfil her true purpose. When she broached the subject with her parents, they were surprisingly supportive. They could see that she was different from her siblings.

Although her parents, of course, wanted her to stay and take over the business, they agreed to let her go adventuring, stipulating that she must return every few years (at the least), so that she could eventually run the business after their deaths.

By creating this backstory, I can better connect with the character and I become more invested in the campaign.

To develop the character further, I specially created her Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws, which you can see in this Twitter thread.

Once her personality and history were all set, creating a character sheet and assigning stat and proficiencies became easy. For a quick tour of her character sheet, check out this Instagram post.

Role Playing Games are all about storytelling. As a Game Master (GM) or Dungeon Master (DM), there are several things that you should think about when you play.

1. Worldbuilding
2. Questing
3. Characters

If you can create a rich world, with well thought out lore and details, it will help your story come to life.

While you help tell the story, your players are the real stars. Give them lots of opportunities to explore your world. Be ready to improvise.

Well-developed characters are essential in a good RPG. Players create their own characters but they should work with you to find their place in your world. Additionally, your NPCs should be well developed and have interesting personalities. Let your players get attached to other characters and they’ll be truly invested in the game and the story.

Of course there’s more to DMing than just these points, but it’s a great place to start creating a compelling story.

I am a self proclaimed nerd, and I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, so of course, I decided to live tweet tonight’s session.

Due to poor timing, my live tweet happened to be Part 2 of a 3 part adventure, so I had to start my thread with a very brief re-cap of what happened last time.

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Following the re-cap, my live tweets follow the party as they explore the remainder of the Brantifax Chalet. Along the way, the party finds an old journal, the ghost of a young girl, and the one remaining non-feral Wereraven.

After asking the Wereraven what exactly is happening and what is coming through, he offers to open a portal to the Shadowfell so that the Party can fight and destroy Ornathak before he can breach the Material Plane.

The party agrees and finds themselves in the eerie plane that is the Shadowfell. There some denizens of the realm begin to swarm them, including a swarm of living cobblestones, some giant bats and some leech-like creatures called Wretched’s.

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At this point, the time between posts slows significantly, as I only posted the major points of the battle. In D&D, combat takes a lot of real time, (no need to get into the mechanics here, but a battle that lasts minutes in-game can last for hours in the real world), so while tweets become less frequent, they are still in real time because I had to wait for those major points.

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After finishing off the first set of threats, the party continues on to find Ornathak. Unfortunately, it got too late in the real world to continue playing, so the session had to end, leaving the final boss until next time.

What is it?

Now, the thing about Zombies, Run! is that it’s not just a story. It’s actually a running app. The gist of the app is that you are a character in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse. Everytime you run, you take on the persona of Runner 5 of Abel Township, one of the last bastions of civilization.

Runners using the app listen to audio clips as they run. Over the course of (currently) 9 seasons, Runners 5 of Abel dodge and distract zombies, run vital missions, and make friends (and enemies) of other characters, all while trying to discover the source and, hopefully, a cure to the Zombie Apocalypse.

The Medium

Zombies, Run! has a unique storytelling method. By using the medium of a running app, the creators, Six to Start and Naiomi Alderman, have to create compelling, motivating and strong stories and characters. They cannot rely on visual media – you can’t watch a video or scroll through pictures while you’re running.

It’s not even like a novel or audiobook where characters’ actions are described to you. Instead, it’s up to you to visualize what a character is doing based on a variety of sound cues, such as footfalls, gunshots, or radio static.

The medium is also unusual because you become a part of the story. While you can’t actually affect the storyline as Runner 5 or talk to other characters (at least in game – I’ve gotten some interesting looks when I accidentally yell at characters out loud), you are the main character and Runner 5 goes on some important missions.

By getting to play as Runner 5, you can immerse yourself in the world and the story.

Compelling Story

The story is compelling, and trust me, motivating, especially when zombies start chasing you. Before I started listening, I hated running. Now I consider myself a runner, and always want to find out what will happen next.

The story’s driving question, at least up to where I am in the story (about halfway through Season 3), is “what started the Zombie Apocalypse?”

Before I go on, beware, there are spoilers ahead.

From Mission 1, you are thrown into the midst of the Apocalypse, very literally when your helicopter crashes into a horde of zombies. As you make your way on foot towards Abel, you are warned that you may not be let in unless you detour through the now abandoned hospital to retrieve some CDC files that may help lead you to an answer to that driving question.

Each mission brings you a little closer to the answer, but many missions open a lot of new, secondary questions as well. If you ever want to find the answers, you have to keep running.

Strong Characters

Each character is well fleshed out, with strong characteristics that complement or foil each other perfectly. They are all dynamic, capable of change and they act like real people (a testament to the writers and actors).

Their diversity comes not only through characteristics and personality, but also through ethnicities, sexualities, genders, etc.. As the game is set in England, most of the characters are British, but there are also Canadians, Americans and African Americans, Australians, and mixed ethnicities, such as British-Chinese, among others.

There is also a good mix of genders and sexualities. The game does not make a big deal of its characters being male or female, straight or gay, bi or ace. They just are who they are.

Your character, Runner 5, can be exactly as you are. Other characters never use gendered language about you, referring to you most often as “5,” so whether you identify as male, female or any other gender, you can feel comfortable being the character.

By having such a diverse cast and being vague about Runner 5, Zombies, Run! makes itself very relatable. Runners can see parts of themselves in other characters, and Runner 5 can fit anyone’s identity.

Try it!

Zombies, Run! is an incredible story. The medium adds a new dimension to storytelling, and gets you active while you listen. The storyline itself is interesting and compelling. The characters are relatable and well developed.

If you decided to try it out, get ready for some highs and lows, be ready to laugh and cry (beware of Season 1 Mission 7 “A Voice in the Dark”) while you run. Be careful of responding to characters out loud, or get ready for some weird looks from passersby. And most importantly, run!

Stay safe out there!