Not sure I'm following on the symetriclaly developed?
I've got the four main characetrs mostly written up but I will probably have to tweak them as I write up inter-related characters. I also added a few more details such as Physical Description, Psychology and Short History (prior to the start of the story). So the Template I am working form looks like this;
• The character's name
• A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
• Character Description/Appearance
• Personality and Psychology
• The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
• The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
• The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
• The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
• Short History (prior to the start of the story)
• A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline
I play/played a Samurai Role-Playing Game called "Legend of the Five Rings" which has a beutiful system but more importantly a Character development tool which is a Modified version of "Twenty Questions" which helps flesh out a characetrs history even more (There is also an extended version with another 20 or so questions) . As aprt of playing this game and the Serenity RPG I discovered something called a 3x3x3 which is a quick list of three friends, 3 acquantinces and 2 enemies/rivals. As a GM I asked for them from players prior to game start to help in fleshing out the game world. As a player I used it to help me get a better grap of the characters personality.
I may try using both of those tools on at least the 4 main characetrs to flesh them out some more and maybe a stripped-down version for lesser characters. It would be a lot more work but I beleive it will add a lot of depth as well.
Hrm...now that i think about it I may try to come up with a 20 Quetsions for the Story and World itself as well...
