Brief Retrospective

Today is April 3rd, and it has now been 14 months since PnF was created. I still play it, sort of- my playstyle has honestly morphed into pure writing so much at this point that it's hard to even say xD. Anyways, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on PnF.

I feel like the biggest takeaway from this system for me is that it abstracts something very complicated into something very simple. Character flaws and relationships are turned into a word and essentially a binary bit. In a way this is awesome because it makes the game very simple to run, but I feel like it also reduces complexity to a harmful extent for the sake of the game mechanics. If you have an interesting character, then their thoughts and feelings are honestly more complex than PnF's emotions allow for, is what I've slowly come to realize.

Maybe instead of having two emotions, you could instead write down a character sheet as a whole list of different character traits that give minor bonuses and penalties, and maybe also a broader emotional state that changes over time (like anger or fear). Just kind of spitballing here.

I do still want to focus on characters the way PnF did, though. The idea of actually focusing on their emotions and personas is vastly more interesting to me than just their capacity for punishment. And in that way PnF was definitely ground-breaking in my own little world.