Guilty_Part's Not-Reddit-Account

Not who. What.

Since making my post pointing out the mythological connection with Baku, it makes me wonder if there may be one with Nem as well.

Nem as a Zeztz character

First, the information that the show tells us flat out. Nem is a commercial idol and spokesmodel that seems to make a living based off of endorsements, given that we constantly see her in adds. She has the ability to move through people's dreams similar to how Seven can, and seems to do so often given that she apparently shows up in everyone's dreams, or at least in the dreams of a lot of different people (showing up in the dreams of a young unemployeed man, a slightly older professional woman and a middle aged burnt out man implies to me that she isn't trying for a target demographic). Nem also doesn't appear to have an issue supprting Seven in his missions and clearly isn't too thrown to not act when Nightmares show up. Actually, based on this and everything else above, Nem is out of the current cast who I'd expect to becomeca rider later (thee clear future evil rider doesn't count.

There is something kind of sinister about Nem's behavior, but in a corporate way. Nem appearing in everyone's dreams has certainly increased her profile in the real world, so you could say that she's taking advantage of people to increase her popuarity. She might be trying to make up for that, though, by taking on all the roles she has seriously and therefore still putting in the work.

I'm not sure if her dream walking/lucid dreaming is super important or not, or if it's just something that some people can do. My impression when the show started was that Baku could do this too even before the Gun Nightmare, but we only ever see him in his what looks like his own dream. So this could just be a thing that a very low percentage of people can do, or if it means something more, like she's already another agent.

Also, I'm wary on trying to find meaning in her name like you can for Baku. Keep in mind that Nem's never actually met Baku before; she's men Seven, Baku's alter ego that, let's be honest, is a lot more confident and suave than Baku. So likely Nem is the same: an alter ego for someone in the waking world with their own name that we haven't met yet, who may also act and even look a lot differently than Nem. I especially think this because Nem is an idol, a profession where one's image is extremely controlled, and because Zeztz seems to be focusing a lot on the differences between the conscious waking world and the unconscious dream world.

Of course, I can't ignore...

2. Nem as a Kamen Rider character

One of the things that makes Kamen Rider as a franchise more unique is that unlike other shows like Super Sentai, Kamen Rider can go very dark with it's storylines. Reoccurring and/or innocent characters can be brutally killed, often just to emotionally damage the main characters. Betrayal happens constantly and on multiple levels (I never trust any large organizations in this series). A season can start traditionslly heroic and positive, and then rug pull the audience into tragedy several episodes in. There are exceptions in both directions (Fourze stayed relatively light hearted while Geatz started with the last round of a death game), but it still constantly goes into darker territory and the audience can expect it.

That can paint Nem in much more different ways:

She could be a secret agent like Seven, or even an agent working against him, to deconstruct her role as a friendly face to Seven.

She could be a Nightmare herself or working directly with Dr. Nightmare for the same reason as above.

She could exist in the plot to be killed by a Nightmare later to give Baku character development without the apocalyptic situation of a Nightmare killing their dreamer.

She could be used as a negative example of someone "living in their dreams" instead of the waking world, to contrant Baku who can only help people in dreams.

She may emotionally break down over time as the plot gets more and more serious.

Conversely, she may end up being Baku/Seven's only emotionsl support, since the detectives are investigating him, his sister wants him to stop trying to help other (I assume) so that he'll stay safe, and Zero maintains a professional distance and just needs him to do his job.

It wasn't just a dream!

LMAO

Despite its dickriders' claim to the contrary, pbta is the world's worst system for character-based stories on the planet.

To elaborate; nearly every game in that system's 'class' requires a set of severely restricted backgrounds for your player character. Nuance, orgininality, and subversion of tropes is something you have to absolutely fight to incorporate into one of these games

Also, the fucking. mechanic of forcing you to adapt a multiple-choice answer of preselected questions as to how your character apparently relates to the rest of the party before the game begins is absolute bullshit. A newcomer has NO way of knowing this and is forced to rapidly alter their own backstory to include pc's they've just met and don't understand, with no session 0 to make it smooth. fuck your ideas, story, and chance to meet in-character, I guess.

pbta dickriders' only defense for their system's shit mechanics is just "well not everyone WANTS story depth or freedom what about THAT" which just tells me none of them have good taste in like. Anything.

d6 are ugly boring cubes, who the hell wants to do ttrpg with solely the fugliest cubes

I don't think I've heard a lot of claims that PbtA games are for character-based games. I've heard them talked about for narrative-based games, but not so much characters.

Yes, PbtA does give you specific archetypes to play as. It's also very upfront about that. PbtA games areall trying to invoke different types of stories nd gives you the potential types of characters that occupy that space. Again, PbtA is concrned with serving the type of narrative it's going for, not necessarily to be an open character space.

So first of all, I don't think that I've seen a playbook that gives multiple choice options for character relationships. Most of them have prompts to ask other players, but those are open ended not multiple choice. Also, what games were you playing that allowed for no Session 0? In most PbtA games it's a requirement because a lot of character/world building has to be done as a group.

First, every system has flaws and anyome who pretends otherwise is wrong. Second, every game has some degree of rule restrictions. Third, I'm surprised someone made this defense, because PbtA is usually pretty good about allowing you to take whatever actions you want (Act Under Pressure is a general catch all move, for example, that can cover a wide variety of actions) as opposed to systems like D&D where you are generally much more regulated (action, bonus action, etc.).

This...isn't an actual complaint.