A thing to try: don’t make gods for your fantasy TTRPG setting.
Instead, get each player to tell you the god their character follows, then roll a d6 behind the screen.
6: Their god is real, and as powerful as they believe it to be; maybe they even listen to prayers; maybe they even care. Maybe they care more about if your shellfish wear mixed fabrics.
5: It’s a real entity, but whose power is exaggerated - like as a river spirit, but they’re worshipped thousands of miles away from it for prayers their expertise with rivers leaves them woefully unprepared to answer
4: It’s a powerful demon or dragon or monster of some kind which has tricked people into worshipping it - sure it’s powerful, but that power is entirely self-serving, it couldn’t answer your prayers if it wanted to
3: It’s a person who, through real power, political influence or just straight up charisma, has tricked people into worshipping them, or through a series of misunderstandings has been mistaken for a god against their will
2: It was a long-dead person whose legacy has passed into legend - they may once have been a 3, or they may just have been famous in their life and not seen as godly until long after their death
1: Just a wholesale myth with no basis in reality. Maybe your god started off as a cautionary tale a mother made up to stop her children sucking their thumbs and over the retellings the whole “god of war” thing just sort of happened because of the massive scissors, and now the scissors are gone and all that’s left is battlefield chants.
And of course, let the players know about this before you roll. Tell them about their odds, but never tell them about their gods.
Creating characters is fun until they start making decisions without your permission. You sit down to write a quiet breakfast scene and suddenly they’re confessing childhood trauma, or worse, falling in love with the wrong person. You’re supposed to be the god of this story, but really you’re just the exhausted babysitter of a bunch of fictional anarchists.
the way i understand the difference between blorbo and The Character is that blorbo activities are 1. fun and 2. voluntary. when youre rotating blorbo in your mind you’re playing with your tuoys. but when The Character has got ahold of you then you are a tortured artist being plagued by visions
Favorite Friends to Lovers trope is Person Who Just Discovered Their Crush And Is Freaking Out Full Force x Person Who Has Been Deeply In Love And Dealing With It For Years And Therefore Not Showing Any Signs Of Having A Crush Whatsoever. The person who’s Just Realized is looking for any signs that their crush is reciprocated and they’re getting NOTHING. The other person is sooo nonchalant. But really it’s because being in love with this person is like breathing at that point. It just goes so hard
