Let's put a team together

Last semester, we studied character development. Please review the lesson from Oct. 30th, which is listed in your packet. We also studied story structure, which is paramount for creating manga.

These two lessons are going to be significant in today's assignment. Today, we are beginning to plan our campaign in a Dungeon and Dragon's role playing game designed specifically for the Edwards Middle School.

What is Dungeons and Dragons you might ask?

Dungeons and Dragons is a dice based role playing game that is the influence to just about every fantasy based game since its inception; the Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and many others base their whole game system upon the setup of Dungeons and Dragons. The only difference, however, is because Dungeons and Dragons are done with pen, paper and dice, the only limitations are those of your OWN imagination.

In Dungeons and Dragons, a team is established by players. The team is then placed into an enviornment and they are given a problem (or in D&D terms, a quest) which needs to be solved.

Do you see a pattern? to play D&D, you go through the Will Eisner Story Structure which is:

INTRO/PROBLEM/DEALING WITH PROBLEM/SOLUTION/RESOLUTION or END.

The person who establishes the WORLD is called the Dungeon Master. I will be filling this role.

SO: as a class, you are not yet aware yet of the environment your team will be placed in. BUT know: There will be monsters. Goblins. Zombies.

You will have to work as a team to deal with these problems.
If you are working as a team, you are going to have to develop characters that counterbalance each other. This means strong characters, fast characters, intelligent characters, balanced characters. If you think of the X-men, or the campaign in the Lord of the Rings movies, there is a mid range of people.

Assignment: I want you all develop characters, ... but attempt to put together a group of characters that counterbalance each other. Do not allow genre to interfere with your characters. if you want to make a cyborg, or a wizard, or a ninja, go for it. This will be a post-modern D&D game that will not fall into any particular guidelines.

Use the D&D sheet to think about your character. THEN: do a drawing of your character IN ACTION. I do not want characters just standing up straight. have your drawing of your character jumping, mauling or in a state of action! Consider expressive anatomy to showcase what your character is about. Give me as much information as you can. Next week, we will begin the campaign that will be the basis of our upcoming animations, mangas, etc.