#the need to win the game tends to trump the desire to roleplay properly a touch too often….

[vagueiish]

….so. like. how do you break someone of the notion that he’s only worth something if he’s useful to people when he’s the player character in an rpg? (this is about bg3 and my current tav)

it’s fun bc it gives an in-character reason to be a completionist, but from a writing perspective? while trying to keep things in line with how my actual gameplay goes? this belief is super reinforced over and over again. esp since there’s no real built in way to be useless. failure is technically an option, but my guy has been rather lucky on the major dice rolls. i suppose i could just throw up my hands and let his actual development come post-game. because i do have some ideas for that. but it’d be nice to have some development happen during the events of the game

…and this is getting a bit longer than i intended so…

maybe i could purposely fail a dice roll during a super important quest or something and see how he copes with the aftermath, but like. idk. he already accidentally destroyed the whole crèche, but that was less him being useless and still loved and more a ‘stop being a dipshit, think before you act’ moment. and it happened organically, which is nice. i don’t want to necessarily force anything, but at the same time, i’m almost gonna have to if i want some change to occur in the game timeline, right? put on my god pants and divinely intervene and all for the sake of character growth

i have this idea that maybe something happens late game where he’s out of commission for a while and needs to be taken care of by the squad. which he absolutely hates because he fully expects them to resent him for it and hate him and so forth, but no. he’s spent the whole journey taking care of them, now it’s their turns to have his back. but then idk how exactly to put him out of commission for a while in a way that doesn’t kill him or something because, d&d universe, magic healing, it’s not like they’d let him stay injured like that. especially since he’s at ‘exceptional’ with all the homies by the end. and also it can’t be something super long because, y’know, mother brain is trying to break free and all that…

or. oh. maybe they see him struggling. the weight of everything is finally to the point that he can no longer smile and wave off concern and redirect any such conversation convincingly. everyone collectively decides he needs a break, so they force him to sit this one out, lmao. and he’s fucking miserable, spending a good portion of the time thinking they’ve deemed him useless and it’s only a matter of time before they get rid of him completely. and it’s double bad, actually, because once he stops moving, The Anxiety asserts itself and The Thoughts start nagging at him and he starts to spiral even further. and instead of opening up, he sets off on his own to take care of a quest or whatever and ends up getting Fucked Up and he needs to be taken care of anyway, but this time with a nice side-helping of lovingly getting chewed out by his companions….

idk. maybe i’m looking in the wrong direction? or maybe i’m thinking too much about it. it’s not necessary to have a character arc to play the game. but, by gum, i fuckin wanna figure this shit out. as a writing brain exercise