When you get a bunch of writers together, what do we talk about? Characters, of course. (Also coffee and the overuse of the semicolon.) At Penny Arcade Expo this year we gave TERA fans a chance to peek behind the curtain and get a little taste of what it’s like to be a writer at En Masse Entertainment.
The overall theme was “Emotional Rewards Through Storytelling”—an unofficial motto for the writing team. After a quick look at the many kinds of writing you’ll find in TERA, everyone in the room got to collaborate on the creation of a character for the game. In short, it was an audience-participation version of the exercises that the En Masse writers do in front of the white board every day.
Working together, TERA community members and the En Masse writers created a questline involving a soldier who’s stationed at the edge of a precipice—a precipice she finds far more terrifying than the enemies she fights on a daily basis. Aided by writer Fran Stewart’s improv-acting chops, we duplicated our creative process in front of an enthusiastic audience. (The open bar helped