crossposted from twitter at @scampir's request: the secret to good character creation options in tabletop RPGs is to figure out what the chuunis want

YESSSS, YESSSS

This is totally my wavelength. This is the kind of shit I need to read to get hooked. This is what had me fall in love with FIST, ICON, Robins, and Spire: The City Must Fall.

I had D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. Also 4e. And like, maybe these games are different now but it has one fatal flaw to this desire I had. And it's that they all start you out as small-scale door kickers.

THAT'S NOT WHO I NEED TO DREAM OF BEING

I, PERSONALLY, NEED THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRAP, NO SWADDLE MYSELF IN THE DRAMA OF THE CHARACTER. AND I HAVE ALWAYS NEEDED THIS.

That moment where I wanted to be someone special, and so did all of my friends, but we had no idea on how to engage with each other. It was a lot of fandom-centric nicknames that we would assign each other or pull off of personality quizzes. That's how we were engaging with fandom in middle school! that's what we did as play! And the key moment for that via text rp was talking through just the rawest, most messy character drama that we knew about.

TTRPGs as, horribly dramatic things that happen to incredibly powerful people is just, it's the formula for this. All I have here is self-reflection but I think that there's something to ttrpgs making a space where people can enjoy making those characters and roll through the game's feedback in the relative safety of play.