Creating a Character Who's Inextricable From a Game's Theme and Mechanics

christinakerr394
Oct 31
2 min read

This blog post is a bit of self-indulgence. I deeply enjoyed creating my character for an upcoming TTRPG campaign, and found a lot of satisfaction in linking her backstory to specific themes and mechanics within the game. So I wanted to write about my process.

First, a little about the game world and system. Remedial Magic, created by my friend Aimee Hyndman, is a table-top role-playing system in which the players are mages-in-training who failed their first semester at a magical university. (Aimee is also the GM for our campaign, which we're turning into an actual play podcast!)

With this premise in mind, the obvious first question is "why did my character fail?" My friends drew on their experiences with neurodivergence or being a first generation student, so I decided to draw on my own experience with a disabling injury.

From there, Miranda Moss was born. An academic overachiever who suffered a magical injury and must deal with not just her disability, but with failing at something for the first time. (That part is also more like me than I'd like to admit...)

When deciding the nature of Miranda's injury, I turned to the magic system that Aimee created for the game. I found my opportunity in the spell described below.

Level 1: Combustion
You create a small explosion using combustion.
Your opponent must make an easy difficulty
reflex check or take one damage point.
➢ Level 2: Delayed combustion
You set a small object to explode when you give
the magical command. You may delay the
explosion for up to one hour. Anyone nearby
must make a medium difficulty reflex check or
take two damage points.

In the world of Remedial Magic, first year students are only allowed to cast level one spells. But Miranda is an overachiever, perhaps even bored in her classes, so she tried to create a delayed combustion. She did not succeed. The explosion triggered immediately, destroying her left foot and ankle and blasting her backwards.

Miranda's struggles since the injury reflect many of the themes in Remedial Magic, including privilege, ability, financial hardship, and the deeply inaccessible state of higher education in the US right now. Maybe once we begin playing, I'll write a follow-up blog post about how the character premise has actually fit into the campaign in practice.

Either way, I'll post here when the Remedial Magic podcast begins airing! Thanks for reading!