A lot of people try to run a lot of non combat shit in combat oriented TTRPG's (looking at you DnD community), which creates weird ludonarrative dissonance between a game that encourages combat, and a story that doesn't. But what if a game did this on purpose?
Imagine a TTRPG where you play as a synthetic super soldier, an artificial human built for combat. The entire game takes place in the world after the war you were built to be deployed in. You've been decommissioned, freed from the psycho-technological constraints that kept you under control and forced you to kill for those who built you, and kicked to the curb (because it was cheaper and easier than actually shuting you down/executing you, as you were designed to make that incredibly difficult).
Stat wise you start superhuman, you have an absurd number of combat proficiencies, your health constantly regenerates, and most of the abilities you have are aimed at making you a more effective combatant. You have been psychologically conditioned to follow orders, and it makes you uncomfortable when nobody is there to give you orders. Your ability to read and write was taught only to the extent that it was useful in combat, you can read but struggle to truly be media literate. You struggle to recognise the possibility that you may even have emotions, let alone feel or understand them.
Your character is built for combat, the game seems to be designed to encourage it. However, your goal is much more likely to be something like learning to express yourself through art or music, running a fund-raiser for a local charity, stuff like that. You are built for violence, but violence is no longer acceptable. In fighting to use the games combat focused mechanics for non combat activities, you also fight against your nature as a killing machine, for whom violence is always the easiest option. You must work out how to do things you were never intended to do.
The conflict between what your character wants to do and what the game was designed to enable/encounterage is not a mistake, but the point.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
