I agree with much of what you are saying but it’s perhaps not necessary to cut off character creation completely but maybe the writers could be better to include it in the story/game they write *say you are wearing something intimidating and you get a +1 in a intimidation choice*
lots of elements to think about tho
That’s kind of a crux of the discussed problem, like 90% of the games force you to pick eyes/hair/build/whatever and never mention it again, do not acknowledge or incorporate it besides maybe mentioning it twice in 300.000 words of text. This is just pointless, its no different from me “hallucinating” my appearance.
As long as it makes appearance part of the narrative and gameplay - i’m all for it.
I’m not advocating for cutting it off, i’m advocating for ultimately incorporating it into the narrative in a meaningful impactful way. But if it’s NOT incorporated - there is just kinda no point in it.
I wish I remembered the story, but I remember once playing one where I put the description in and then…never saw a mention of it again. I sat there thinking “now why the fuck did I do that?”
I like customization, so long as it’s mentioned. I think there’s something sweet about even the smallest change of prose—for instance, in a romance story, reading “She hesitated, then reached out to brush one of your dark curls behind your ear” feels more personal and does a good job of investing me more than “She hesitated, then reached out to brush a lock behind your ear.” Or reading that a romance gave me a necklace with a citrine pendant, and then I as a reader realize it matches my MC’s eyes; instead of reading that he gave me one that matches my eyes.
Do I think it’s funny when they all follow the same setup? Of course I do. But it’s a good, easy way to give an illusion of control over the MC to the player—so long as it’s actually followed through. Or done fairly—there’s another story, one in Twine, that I read where we customized our hair colors and the author legitimately just went:
Blonde MCs are described with hair the color of gold and sunshine
Redhaired MCs are described with hair the color of fire and roses
Brunette and black-hared MCs are dark-haired.
I was sitting there thinking “Bruh, what did I do to you???”
Totally agree with you!
I’ll actually give a counter-argument to this and argue that even purely aesthetic customization can have its value as an accessibility option.
I’m the opposite of you in that as a player and as a reader I actually have trouble imagining things–I can see the vague shapes and forms in my head, and vague distinguishing features like hair colour, hair length and body type, but nothing super detailed. So the more in-depth the customization and descriptions are, the easier for me to imagine the details of any given character.
I’d love to have customizations and MC descriptions that impact the plot and interactions in subtle ways, obviously, but for me if that feature isn’t present it’s not a big deal, bc I’m already getting a lot out of the customization just by virtue of it making it easier for me to visualize my character.
(Hard agree that there should always be a note of what your character looks like in the stat page tho, it’s super easy to code and there’s really no reason to not include it at all.)
Am I the only one who is doesn’t actually imagine how mc looks?
You’re not the only one, I don’t really imagine the PC when I’m playing. At most I’d probably picture a scene like I’m playing a videogame with first-person perspective.
That’s exactly how I imagine when I play. That may have also contributed for my dislike of customisation. I think the only time how I perceive my mc different is when there is a class system in the game.
I think that’s an additional difference then. I never really perceive the MCs as “me” even if they act in ways similar to how I would. There’s always a certain degree of separation, and I always see my character more from a third-person perspective in my head when I read a story, which is why I need a certain degree of customization for it to be comfortable to play.
I’ve never really cared about customization. I can just imagine the PC looking however I want. Dont need the game to validate my imagination.
I’m the opposite of both of you, so now we’ve reached a triangle!
With which I mean I don’t imagine appearances at all, and no amount of description is going to help me imagine it because it still isn’t happening at all. I’ll just glaze over all character descriptions of all charcters. (Well, unless someone’s described as a rock troll or dinosaur or something, I guess. I’m very particular about my dinosaurs.) In 99% of cases, I wouldn’t suffer if nobody’s appearance was ever mentioned, because it doesn’t do anything to me, and I’d be happy if I didn’t need to describe anyone either, because I don’t know how they look like myself! I need to work to decide it, sometimes a lot, and that work is time I can’t spend advancing the plot!
Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the “meaningless” (as in, purely cosmetic) option to pick a scar (as long as the game doesn’t immediately invalidate my imagination by telling how you got it by being clumsy) or tattoo (MC got a tattoo after a messy breakup? Phoenix, obviously!) on a non-visual level, because there it moves from appearance to characterization to me.
But I also know there’s a subset of players to whom it’s important, so I don’t mind. Also I wouldn’t want people to be punished for, say, wanting to play a long-haired guy; I see nothing wrong with a little wish fulfillment in that regard. So I wouldn’t want it integrated to the story too deeply, either (the random mentions of “your X eyes” instead of “your eyes” always feel super arbitrary to me, unless you’re going above and beyond color-coding a costume or something).
I personally think the “skip customization” option makes most sense in most cases.
I don’t know where my first-person-camera thing fits on the Spiderman spectrum but it’s really interesting hearing how other people envision things! Unless I sit down and really concentrate, I don’t picture written scenes like watching a movie but if I do that, I can conjure up an image of the PC without any assistance from what’s written in the text.
When I’m writing games I definitely think of the first-person thing because I want to imagine how it feels to be moving around doing the things being described.
I picture it if it’s immersive enough, always from the third person viewpoint. Things which break my immersion shatter the image. Things which aren’t descriptive enough shatter the image. I’m perfectly capable of filling in blanks, but if I wanted to do that, I could do it for free.
I enjoy a good character customization section for immersion + the ability to actually decide what I want my PC to be. I generally dislike it when I’m just dropped in the middle of the story and that opportunity never comes, because I don’t know enough about the setting or the vibe yet to decide what PC I want to play, and then I get stuck with a character name like “Skylar” when everyone else is named something like “Marg’areth”. So I like when a character creation section has options listed out that give me a little information about the “standard” for this world (like a list of names and then an option to input your own, so I know the vibe of the world and can create an MC that would fit within it.) And I usually come up with what kind of character (personality, behaviorally,) I want my MC to be during character creation, as the options give me ideas that make sense within the world.
The way I like to play IFs is by imagining my MC as another part of the cast alongside the other characters, fully enmeshed within the world in the same way, so when I’m forced to play in a way that doesn’t allow me to get my bearings on what that means for my MC, I have a hard time suspending disbelief. You’re saying all of these things to my MC but I don’t even know who they are yet, so I don’t know how they would respond. + me wanting their appearance to work alongside the rest of the cast and be like. Cohesive? Again, as if they all were in the same show; so I specifically make my MC so they don’t look too similar to other cast members (unless we’re related,) but they still “mesh” with the overall style and vibes. The same way that animated shows will make sure their protagonists are differentiated and recognizeable as their own characters, while being in the same artstyle and having similar design rules.
…this also brings trouble when character creation happens at the very start in a way that’s not built into the story. I hate that so much!! I can’t come up with any ideas for a character without some narration to go off of. And then you have me creating an MC that entirely doesn’t mesh with the story once it starts. Like wdym he’s broke and leaves his clothes everywhere and is depressed that’s not what I created this character to be 
I wouldn’t have made them the way they are right now if I had known this information about the MC prior, his hair would NOT be this put together!
There are some cases though where I just imagine my MC as a grey featureless “Y/N” style character, but that’s only in sort of meta IFs or IFs that don’t feature a lot of relationship building or romance.
I’ve seen a LOT of talk about prophecies in this specific thread, and I wanted to put my two cents in. Because I used to be in the “I hate prophecies” boat until I thought about all of the stories that included prophecies that I really liked. So I do quite enjoy a lot of prophecies! There’s just a specific way of handling prophecies I dislike, and that’s when the prophecy requires One Specific Person to do a task, and the narrative doesn’t give us a good reason as to Why. It’s always just, “because that’s what the prophecy says” but there’s no internal logic to the prophecy choosing this person (especially when they actively don’t want this,) and there’s no explanation as to how prophecies work in-universe. I understand that the vagueness is part of a lot of what makes a prophecy a prophecy, but it makes the narrative unsatisfying to me, because neither me nor the protagonist want to be there. It’s hard to care about anything happening when it feels like it Doesn’t Need To Be Happening. And I don’t mean an unwilling protagonist is always bad, but I want there to be a Reason it’s the protagonist and not someone else, something like “they have a special trait (power, part of a bloodline, cursed, blessed, etc.) which means they Need to be there and a part of the Task because the task requires it” or just that this person is incredibly skilled, maybe in ways that would specifically help this task, so they’re the Best candidate or something. When that’s not the case and there’s no conceivable reason why This Person Specifically has to do all of that, and someone else who’s more qualified could easily get everything in the prophecy done with equal issue, it frustrates me. Because, again, it’s not like any of that was specific to the protagonist. Nothing that happened in that narrative had to be done by This Person, there was nothing stopping someone else from doing it.
Anyways yeah a good prophecy story that’s playing the prophecy straight should justify its prophecy, even if not at the beginning.
ONE CAVEAT this is a thing that follows this but I HAAATE this trope; when the narrative tells you a guy is Normal and the narrative makes a point about how its just this Normal Guy doing all of this, and not someone crazy important, and then randomly at the end or middle of the story it turns out that they’re actually the most Specialest guy ever, from a long lost line of Special Guys and they just didnt know their whole life, and thats why they beat the prophecy or succeed at any part of the narrative. Not because they were skilled enough, they were just Innately Special, and actually normal people who try really hard can’t accomplish these things and if they weren’t secretly special the whole time they wouldn’t have succeeded at any of that. Like. I want my characters to succeed of their own merit and personal and physical growth? not because of a deus ex persona. It always feels cheap, and like the character didn’t need to learn or grow or do Anything in the story, and i just haaaate the message it sends.
To be clear this is when it’s in a “the only reason they were that smart or that skilled and succeeded at those tasks is because they were born innately special and not because they tried and learned, and no one who’s not Special can succeed at those things” way, and not in a “they’re special in a Specific (oft magical) way that allows them to do things that the average person literally cannot do (like shoot fire from their hands)” way. When it’s things that the average person would absolutely be able to do if I suspend my disbelief, and the whole time the narrative is like “woah how crazy and awesome is it that this normal guy can achieve all this!” and then at the end they go “actually he wasn’t. so sad for everyone who got inspired lmaoo you’ll never be able to do that.” like. damn. why would you make that your message
This reminded me of Naruto 
.
Following this logic, there has to be a person or a group of people behind this prophecy, and we need to ask them, “Why put out this prophecy in the first place?” The 5 Ws and the H of journalism need to be applied here.
In the case that this is true, there’s merit to that, but I actually push back against this bc I do think most “prophecy” plots have it be like. A message from a higher power/the universe that is then passed to someone (a prophet, an oracle, etc.) So that prophet/oracle isn’t the one w/ the agenda behind anything, they’re just the messenger, and whatever being/force “put out” the prophecy isn’t exactly reachable and maybe not sapient or tangible.
My issue is less watsonian and more doylist, because I do think there are ways this narrative works just fine, it’s how it’s handled that I have trouble with; again, if the logic isn’t satisfying and there’s nothing else to make up for that the narrative becomes uncompelling to me. I’m not given a reason to care about the prophecy because the prophecy isn’t really given any validity.
This is a really interesting point. On the top of my head, I cannot think of a story that actually proves that a prophecy is valid. I am sure there are countless examples but if I had to say one, I couldn’t.
I was reading a Webtoon a while ago that actually explored this guy that every culture had a prophecy about. So he got dragged from one group of people to the next to fulfil some random prophecy he didn’t know about until he arrived. And every time, he did do something, but it never gave the people what they assumed it would and left them dissapointed in him when he had no control over what happened.
Unless prophetic events have occured repeatedly, I think it is very strange that everyone believes in some mythos about what is usually an unborn child at the time of the great prophecy.
