a rose from the void

that's right

The other day, the intern and I are out at Subway. Van saying "lift trucks" comes by. Picture on the side? You guessed it. Forklift.

"Skip," my intern explains - I don't like to be called boss, and he's nice and doesn't do that - "that's what the manufacturers want us to call them now. A forklift is too reductive, obscures nuance. Imagine if you had a huge shop full of these things, you'd need to know the difference between a reach truck and a stacker."

He makes an excellent point, which I admit by silently chewing on my Mesquite Chicken Power Bowl. I have ordered it meticulously, in order to accommodate my unique dietary needs. Some people think that's unimportant, and I should just get one of the combos and not explain myself to the Sandwich Artist every time. They're wrong, it's critical that I be recognized for who I am. Safer for everyone, too.

The structure of the game manages to hit a remarkable number of features that folks who think "RP forward" actually means something and isn't just a marketing phrase would typically regard as categorically excluding a system from being "RP forward", while looking nothing like the kind of game you'd tend to picture based on those features.

You don't want the mechanics sticking their nose into every little thing? Chuubo's is so intensely preoccupied with mechanising the mundane that forming intentions to do things is a rules-mediated action. There are specific target numbers for stuff like "do it correctly", "look like you actually know what you're doing", and "be happy with the result", and without a relevant skill or resource expenditure, the best outcome you can ordinarily achieve is "make everything worse".

You want to do stuff because it "makes sense for your character", and not because it gives the most points? As far as Chuubo's is concerned, those are the same thing. Just living your everyday life is framed as a kind of quest, with milestones and XP triggers and whatnot; this is a game where you might actively look for excuses to "have a conversation in a poorly lit place" or "gaze contemplatively over a large body of water" because your personal quest line awards XP for doing that.

You want a game that will let you make up whatever character you want and doesn't expect you to faff about with "classes" and "levels" and such? Not only does Chuubo's effectively have both of those things, it's so strongly opinionated about what sorts of characters are appropriate that it recommends you use pregenerated characters until you get a good feel for the milieu. One of those pregens has a character sheet that's twenty pages long – and you might assume that means most of it is just a big tedious lore dump, but it's not.

The only reason to actually play this game beyond novelty is if you have a supreme case of writer's block and are running behind to turn in a manuscript of an azumanga-esque 4koma chapter

Not true.

Would you say the game is fun?

step two: contort absolutely all stimuli in my environment to relate to the my wound in some manner, ideally one which justifies random acts of unbridled aggression and vengeance