Two Important Considerations

Of course, if players are going to meet only three members of the group and hear only one line from each of them, you'd be wasting your time evolving a complex Diamond for the group or race. You'd never have any way to reveal the group's Diamond.

Indeed, the amount of dialogue in most games is sparse. Players are looking to engage that world and the characters or entities within it primarily through action, not through talk or reading.

So you might have some great ideas for your group or race, but is there even room to bring them into the game?

The second consideration involves the importance of the Traits you give the group or race. How do they figure into the plot? How do they figure into the gameplay? (There will be more about this in Chapter 2.30, "Tying Story to Gameplay and Mechanics.")

For instance, if you say that an alien race is "war-like," we can see how that can feed into gameplay.

But let's say they also love playing music. Well, that could certainly make them more interesting, and perhaps that's reason enough. If you want to make it factor into gameplay, however, the challenge is harder. Some ways this could be achieved are:

• Maybe their musical instruments are so fine that they're treasured throughout the land (or this sector of the galaxy) and you can trade one for items of great use to you.

• Perhaps you befriend one of the female musicians, and her music has healing powers you need at some point. Because previously you did something for her (like defending her from an enemy), now she will heal you when your life force is almost expended and you're on the edge of death.

• Maybe you can kidnap one of their top musicians, bring the musician to someone from whom you need a favor (if this character had said earlier that he'd do you the favor if he could just hear his favorite tune one more time).