#i think im here cause Ive reached the emotional intelligence and maturity level high enough to handle this but god

[system-of-a-feather]

Good god though we fucked up huggggeee. On clean up duty and doing good to repair and make amends but honest Data went full Our Dad mode for a minute and partial for like half an hour around our fiance and he was not doing well before so

*deep breath*

We got shit to fix and make up and trust to regain but damn. Simply damn.

Talking about it and doing everything our dad didn't but damn.

Shits a lot worse and more surreal now that I'm actually here talking one on one about it.

We havent really had a moment where abusive behavior came up in like 5+ years so its not great and not good

Anyways TLDR the aftermath and healing of trauma is often ugly and thats the unfortunate aspect of working through it a lot.

[savrenim]

Do you have any role-playing tips? Especially for a more ~serious~ character? Cause i want my character to bond with the rest of the party, but im not rly sure where to start, especially since ive established her as kind of closed off

OH WOW OKAY

super honored that you asked

gods lemme see, I have a lot to say and some of it might be contradictory because so much of improvising and character creation and motivation is character, so this is going to be stream-of-consciousness under the cut

things that you can do that are just you—get comfortable improvising things, DnD and roleplaying in general is improv, it’s all say “yes and” and “go with the flow”

—but also get comfortable saying “yes” to yourself and not second-guessing yourself

—ie if you say something or do something don’t second-guess it, let it have happened, let it be canon. and then from there, ask yourself why.

—seriously, the most interesting thing I have ever done and best way that I’ve ever built characters is I thought I had an idea who they were, and then they said or did something during a session that made me go “oh shit, why did they do that”, and it either connected to a thing in their backstory I didn’t realize or indicated that they had a stronger feeling about something than I realized and letting the thing that I’d done be canon that then I post went back and extrapolated from allowed the character to grow and mature and develop better than if I’d been wishy-washy or had stopped myself from doing the thing that came to mind in the moment because I was worried about whether or not it was “in-character” enough

—and you can use that to reverse-engineer a character that better fits the overall party dynamic

—for example, for the department campaign I’d completely accidentally created a character who was a bit of a prissy field librarian here for linguistics and to be the arcane consultant and had never seen a death before and believed strongly in all life was utterly irreplaceable and precious for a party that was way more classic DnD and way less character-driven and VERY murderous even though we’re the good guys on a classic “save the world from demons” quest just very chill about murdering moochs, and so slowly from interactions and reactions it turned out her upbringing was a more extreme high class controlling mother and her morals developed into a way more interesting “I am privileged and detached and am trying to say that I care about not killing but tbh as an elf who’s essentially immortal and the rest of you all die in 50 years anyways it is kind of weird to care about your lives and my family thinks I’m weird and really going through a phase for doing so and it’s hard to stick to that when you all seem chill with killing people so okay I guess we’re murdering people now, gotta stop the demons” and the more I leaned into that, the more interesting it became, because as she became a more powerful arcanist I started leaning into the “the more high level spells she cast the more she started power-tripping/the power affected her brain and the less she stuck to the morals she cared so much about at first that her friends didn’t” that, like. this has been a hella interesting, hella engaging character for me. if I had gone “Seraph Maewel has never seen anyone die before and she refuses to be a part of intelligent humanoid killing so we have to make sure we only knock people out and just kill the monsters and I’m going to throw up after every single fight that we accidentally do murder people” it would have been static and boring and sure, what I initially established, but it turns out what I initially established wasn’t best for the campaign and this was an interesting, in-character transition that happened naturally because I did things as I did them aligned with what I understood about the character and then thought about afterwards how it fit with everything I’d established before and what it implied that maybe was different than I thought

—also people change it’s okay and in fact VERY fun to do character growth arcs you don’t have to feel married to your initial conception of a character

—there’s another concept that’s a little bit tied? that is pretty much IC vs OOC choices, of, like, and this is my strong opinion because I’ve been a counselor who’s been in charge of making LARPs fun for little kids for years now? but basically, on a larger scale than the tiny individual interactions, it is your *job* to come up with IC excuses and still make genuine in character decisions that serve the party and that serve the narrative

—like, for example, a while back, I played a character who actively was planning to leave the party after a year. they hadn’t told the rest of the party they wanted to leave, because it was their business, but they were in a point in their life where absolutely nothing was going to convince them to stay with this group of people, *especially* the fact that they cared about them, mostly because they wanted to Prevent An Event That Had To Do With Their Backstory From Happening To Everyone. out of character, I knew that I couldn’t just Leave The Party, so I made sure the DM knew how my character felt, knew that I wasn’t *actually* going to leave and that my character might be getting uncomfortable or look like they were making plans to leave but that I trusted the DM to do the rest, and the way that it was resolved was my character really didn’t *want* to leave their new friends and just cut it too close when they thought they had more time and the Event Happened and after it happened there was no reason to leave. but I found IC excuses to keep choosing an OOC action that served the narrative way better than going “my character really wants to leave so guess I’m going to leave.”

—you honestly probably do things like that anyways? in terms of, like, there is a Plot Hook so you find an IC reason to care about it. but it’s a very useful skill to develop to look at a narrative, go “what serves this narrative best?”, and then once you answer that question go “so what reason does my character have to try to do something like that or as close to that as they can?”

—right now all of the above advice kind of sounds like “yooo change your character” and the answer is also, *don’t*. balancing meta stuff is a…meta thing? just make sure that you’re having fun, and that you’re playing the character that you want to play, and that you have Strong Feelings and act in ways that give you the Feels that you want and that you’re playing for you too. compromise is compromise all around you aren’t going to get anywhere if you’re the only person who gives any leeway then it’s not fun and easy to get bitter, roleplaying is collaborative and other people should work to reach out to you too and give you hooks

—biggest and maybe most important bit: your DM is your friend. esp if they’re trying to facilitate deeper roleplaying. tell them how yooo you want to try to get closer to the rest of the team, is there any sort of challenge that they can throw at you all that will facilitate teambuilding? a little bit of “we all saved each other’s lives” or “oh fuck we got stuck in this cave in together and have to work together in ways we haven’t to survive” or “oops we all have to be undercover and are relying on each other to keep up this act” or just any situation in a story or piece of fanfiction that you would see and go “aND NOW THEY ARE A FOUND FAMILY WHO CANNOT BE TORN APART”, well, let that happen to your group.

things that you can do immediately to have reasons to care about the party as a whole:

—if you can learn their backstories, do? group bonding happens with sharing of personal backstories, and, like, OOC, everyone wants to talk about their character and stuff. if you don’t like them, a good in character reason is maybe you’re paranoid and don’t trust them and want to do some goddamn background checks on the people that you’re working with. but once you know more things about them, you have so many more reasons that you can use to go “ah yup and here’s something my character would hella care about and maybe might be the start of a bond”

—as a closed off brooding character you still can have feelings that you are just the Dramatic Person In The Corner that you don’t show them but they’re there, that is everyone’s favorite character in tv shows as they wait for said character to Crack and admit that they have Emotions

—for example maybe pick another character in the party and oh wow you love them so much, they are your tiny son, you would never show it but nOpe they are yours now and nothing touches them

—pick another character that you absolutely hate and grumble about and glare at, except they are your asshole and nobody else outside of you is allowed to pick on them and if anyone threatens them you will murder that person

—Marian Daywrym, yet another DnD character of mine, has done both; three of the four other characters in the party are 16-ish year olds and Marian is a gruff 56 year old who oops has adopted three more children because tHEY ARE CHILDREN, and then there’s Djin, space rogue, her ex co-captain of a ship that broke up when they had a huge fight a decade ago and at this point the way that she interacts with Djin is mostly being incredibly passive-aggressive and mean to his face but pretty clearly would Die for him and if anyone else tries to be mean to him she is ready to Fight, and that is how my grumpy standoffish “I’m the medic and I’m here to do my fucking job and stay the fuck alive” space mom captain, who also has a policy of “don’t bond or poke into each other’s personal business no drama on this ship we all just want to scavenge in peace” ended up being So Emotionally Attached To Everyone

—but there’s actually another potentially interesting route to go, depending on what kind of Brooding, Closed Off character you are that isn’t “oops secretly now I love and would die for everyone”? which is basically…find someone in the party that you decide that your character maybe admires in some way? of, like, maybe they have an Ideal of they’re going to be a Hero Of Justice and you had that ideal as a kid and it only brought you suffering and pain and you never reached it and so fell off that path and that’s one of the reasons that you’re closed off and it’s Painful watching this person with such hope in their eyes try and you don’t know if you want them to succeed where you couldn’t because they deserve to succeed or if that’ll hurt more too, and that gives you reason to be emotionally invested in their storyline and find yourself taking them under your wing and also for everyone else to go “hey are you okay want to open up?” and for you to maybe feel vulnerable enough to talk about your backstory, looking at someone who reminds you of a less broken you. or not even ideals that you had, ones that are “wow are you really the sort of person that I wish I could have been?” or hey, maybe you’re the idealistic one, then is there anyone in the party that is essentially a “wow I resent you so much for starting from a similar point that I did and falling off the path and/or am fascinated because am I looking at what’s in my future, I need to figure out what makes you tick even though it’s like looking at a train wreck in slow motion of whether or not it’s going to happen to me”

—those are all the thing that come to mind to me right now but if you want me to Tell Me About Your Character And Your Party And Your Game I am always down to listen to people talk about their DnD characters (midterms season is coming up so I might be on and off of here but I swear if you ping me I won’t be ignoring you, just answering when I can)