When Do Limited Options Become Stifling?

[Tanarii]

I guess there's two ways of looking at it - how much is excluded, and how much is included.

And no matter how much is excluded, there's an unlimited set of characters inside just about any kind of bounds - even single race, single class, or single alignment. Most characters in most fiction are just plain vanilla humans, with no special abilities, and yet they are still very distinct.

I think there's clearly a point at which a line is crossed ... and that line depends heavily on the system.

If for example we're going to play the Spartans from 300, we can all be Human Fighter (class) Warrior(backgrounded). But the system better give us more to do during a fighting sequence than "I attack".

Personality can only make one stand out so much. Going back to 300 ... I couldn't distinguish between the warriors at all once they had their helmets on. It wasn't until afterwards when someone was talking about the narrator and the one guy & his son that I realized that I didn't even realize the narrator had left the battle nor that there was any difference between narrator and the one guy and his son. There was the Leader, and there were Line Troops.

Incidentally this is why Hollywood always wants to show the audience faces instead of helmets, personality alone isn't enough to make characters stand out. The same principle applies to TTRPGs, personality alone isn't enough, it's what the character is seen to be doing at the table that counts. (Which can of course be driven by personality.)

Of course, what many players forget is that under the same principle, no one cares or even remembers that you are a Goblin or Catfolk or Edgelord instead of a human. Unless it becomes relevant at the table. And even those players that don't forget that tend to try and address it by hamming it up.