EsperBot
My DWRP hot take is that all the popular game formats suck and that this has been the case for as long as I can remember.
EsperBot
DWRPs use a game format that doesn’t involve all characters immediately going through a traumatic experience which will then be ignored by 99% of the players because it has nothing to do with the game’s actual appeal challenge 2022
EsperBot
The spooky jamjar sucked the murder game sucks let’s have a game where people are willing participants or, you know, just live here.
EsperBot
These are workable formats for like horror but they just suck up all the oxygen in the room
EsperBot
Okay actually you want to know my REAL hot take
EsperBot
The most common reason people say they don’t want to do AU games is that they want to play the character as they appear in canon and not some other version of them
EsperBot
To me this complaint isn’t just wrong but completely backwards.
EsperBot
A character ripped out of their original context and thrown into a game is much more different from the original character than an AU adaptation of the same.
EsperBot
A character isn’t just a face a voice and a set of superpowers, they’re motivations and arcs and relationships and context.
EsperBot
When you AU them you can keep that larger structure intact in a way that violently transplanting them to a brand new context doesn’t.
ArtIsArt
I tend to agree and love AUs.
AzureChrysanthemum
I ran AUs more or less exclusively for a decade for this reason yeah
AzureChrysanthemum
They're far more narratively satisfying
Levi
I really can't count the number of times I looked at a game and be like "every possible character I would play in this game would literally do nothing but want to go home" half the time
EsperBot
Exactly
Levi
I think a lot of people really underestimate how much a character's environment, upbringing, lifestyle, existing relationships, etc. impact them
Rogal Dorn
yeah I kinda prefer aus for that
Levi
like it's not that I would play whiny characters, it's because I would play characters that like. you know. care about people and things.
EsperBot
I think a lot of players just breeze past that because it’s not really why they’re here and anyway they’ve already played it out before and it gets old
Levi
anytime I did play in a classic "jamjar" game it would be because I was able to work with the setting or game mechanics to figure out a way to shift my character's priorities to the actual game setting
EsperBot
But like...you could just not
EsperBot
There’s no actual reason why it has to be like this
Levi
Ryslig like, made it easy. Premise of the game is you turn into a man eating monster, boom, there's a reason why your character may no longer want to return home, they don't want to go home and eat all their friends.
THE BRAWLER
a friend of mine has run a few short-run games where part of the premise is "your character is willingly coming along for a reason you determine" and even if it does kind of limit what characters you might be able to app i think it's a cool thing more games should try
Quinneapolis
the one time I tried to run a murdergame, one of the questions on the app was "what would motivate this character to commit, then try and conceal, a murder"
THE BRAWLER
i think it's definitely easier with a short run game because instead of languishing in the setting indefinitely it's like "okay we're going on this cool interdimensional mission for reasons and then we get to go home (if we don't die horribly)"
Levi
but yeah one of the things that gradually made me lose interest in DWRP was just how much the settings and premises and game was just not interacted with
MundersOWundus
my absolute favorite DWRP was one where every two months people travelled to a new plane with the option of AUing into it
MundersOWundus
(this would be Synodiporia, it ruled)
EsperBot
My last shot at DWRP was making a non-AU game where characters were recruited either personally or through some organization they belonged to for an exploratory mission
EsperBot
Unfortunately, very little interest
Dragomorph
yeah, it's like
Dragomorph
people aren't ACTUALLY interested in the full premise most of the time
Dragomorph
they're interested in forming ships and stuff and occasionally traumatizing their characters via selective choosing of what events they care to pay attention to
AzureChrysanthemum
Yeah in general it's a difference in goals and expectations
Dragomorph
it's like MMOs where people barely touch the actual game mechanics because all they want is to ERP or look cool or whatever
AzureChrysanthemum
A lot of players have goals and expectations based around CR formation and the game itself is an excuse to place characters into a situation in which that can be done easily
Dragomorph
I think that's why I fell out of DWRP overall, because I am very much a "let's do stuff and get trauma THROUGH the stuff I'm doing" type rather than a shippy type
AzureChrysanthemum
It's a very different style from what folks who tend to favor TTRPGs expect/want
Levi
I love character and relationship (not necessarily romantic relationship) driven stuff so DWRP should be my forever hobby, but it started to feel extremely stagnant
Levi
The times where I got some interesting character relationships and scenes with those relationships where things happen with both the CR and the game and its setting affecting those things I do treasure as very fond memories though
Levi
And I do look back on those times as some of my best writing
Sun Pumpkin
Super duper extra spicy hot take: I like ocs. I like that aspect of table top. I would like a dwrp that was all ocs
Sun Pumpkin
I like the idea of creating characters that fit the scenarios! I know Mary Sues and Gary Stus are a thing…but honestly in dwrp you can still find existing characters which scratch those itches, so
Quinneapolis
honestly are mary sues a thing
Quinneapolis
or is self-indulgent fun actually really good
AzureChrysanthemum
Mary Sues are a huge problem when femme people write them, when masc people write them they get paid thousands of dollars for their trouble
Awe
and that's called the modern light novel industry
AzureChrysanthemum
Never forget one of the main original lore writers for League of Legends wrote himself in as the person who ran the Summoner newsletter and was canonically dating the Champion Nidalee
EsperBot
My favourite example is of course that James Joyce made his life the subject of every single one of his prose works - including, somehow, Finnegans Wake, which reads like fucking this: http://finwake.com/...
Sun Pumpkin
I’m just not sure they’re enough of a problem we need to discourage people from creating their own characters?
AzureChrysanthemum
Honestly the only bad experience I've had with an OC is having to head of a particularly... special one in SRWUG