How I learned to Role-play my PC's and NPC's becoming a better DM.

When I left school and settled down to working for a living, I was lucky enough to meet a friend around the area where I lived who was also interested in AD&D. He had some of the books for 2nd edition and since I was still single I already had most of the books available at the time. He had told me of his home-brew world he had created and the two of us started our own little group of just playing one on one games with each of us taking the role of heroes and villains in the story line.

We would play the pc's female or male depending on the storyline involved and where we were in his world. Sometimes playing as many as 2-3 characters each. Now maybe that seems like a lot, but it helped me be able to become a better role-player as I began to give my characters backgrounds about why they were in the area of the world, what motivated my pc's (greed, adventuring, alignment, etc.). This helped to bring the pc's alive in my mind so that I was able to get into the character of the pc effectively bringing him/her to life. So that when we played the game it was more than just rolling the dice it was developing a storyline about my pc's and what goals I eventually wanted them to achieve.

This in turn led me into expanding on his world and fleshing out more of the areas associated with it, to the point I developed my own continent and Kingdom that I ended up running within the gaming group we had formed. I had developed some major story arc's, villains, detailed cities, some maps, etc. I believe this is what helped me become a good DM, (I am not saying I was a great Dm having all these totally new ideas, but we had fun) because of all my role-playing various pc's and all the work of creating my own parts of the kingdom I was able to give the players of our group very detailed descriptions, as well as each races view of the kingdom.

So that when the party set off in one direction or the other, even if they did not accomplish the goal they had been assigned or acquire certain treasure they were after, it would set off other chain of events throughout the kingdom affecting everyone involved so that the settings were never stagnant, always giving the pc's new adventures to embark on, as well as my villian(s) plotline continuing on even if the pc's failed to stop it.

Included is a link to my homepage that talks about the world I had helped create and some of the rules I had come up with for the pbp I ran with some simple maps I had made using Pro Fantasy software at World of Arcynia*. Take a look at the sight let me know what you think and then how you eventually came to be a role-player, not just a dice roller and what skills you developed to become a better player or Dm.

*Any and all content to the World of Arcynia is the sole property of Art Brown & Lloyd Keefer.