Kazumi Okahara Chin

I haven’t been able to go through this thread yet but it’s actually a wonderful summary of the state of ttrpg designhttps://twitter.com/jaceaddax/status/1224707062044811267 …

I mean are we really surprised that in a game about coercive violence they made a character that enacts coercive violence

Anyway these are my random... lyrical thoughts tonight, in my attempt to complicate agency and theorize a game in which we at once grant total agency but also the total responsibility such agency entails.

What happens when we give people all the agency in the world to commit terrible deeds, knowing also, though, the consequences such a deed entails in the space of the game (literally ending it)? What if murder itself in game space affects the socia contract outside of it?

Reunion When someone dies, the game ends. To kill, tell them they are dead. They must, at once, die. What do you do? (What happens when we understand the ease with which a game ends? How do we play, knowing this? Also, knowing: without a death, we play forever?)

Hartman: “To take delight in, to use, and to possess are inextricably linked and, moreover.. enjoyment entails everything from the use of one’s possession to the value of whiteness, which can be considered an incorporeal hereditament or illusory inheritance of chattel slavery.”

Addendum: Of course, PCs can find ways to exist within this space as well. But what I am advocating for, for myself, telling myself, urging myself, even, is to write that which is wholly my own, and no one else’s, and to believe that such a thing is useful and valid and fun.

I don’t just want an Asian-themed world carefully researched and co-written by Asian people. This is nice and good. But what I truly I want is NPCs at odds with those structures that hope to render them expendable... but NPCs who, even in this wreckage, still manage to find love.

So that’s where I’m at in terms of representation. I want to represent myself in NPC form. I want characters who inhabit the world you play through, well-developed characters, with agency, action, desire.

If I write characters, actually characters, not quantum characters that contain features x, y, and z... Not customizable pieces for the players to mess with, but actual characters who feel as if they really exist as such... I don’t know why I haven’t tried this before.