When Do Limited Options Become Stifling?

[icefractal]

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.)

Very true, and it applies to mechanics as well - it's not what's written on your character sheet that matters, it's what results that produces in play. If you have to say "just look at my character sheet* / read my backstory and you'll see that my character's interesting" then it isn't yet interesting, and you should figure out how to convey that interesting-ness in play.

Yes, this does mean that "character who's been involved with all kinds of crazy **** but pretends to be totally normally (and is good at that)" is a rather difficult concept to make work unless you get some help from the GM (having that crazy **** come up in-game in ways that make sense). I've tried this and failed, and I realized the problem was that in media, you'd cut-away to the character's flashbacks or show them doing stuff alone that contradicted their mild-mannered image, but in most TTRPGs that kind of "camera shift" isn't a thing, and would be kinda spotlight-hogging if only one player was doing it.

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.

Also true, but I don't think hamming it up is a bad thing. IME, in the significant majority of campaigns the characters aren't super-deep, are in fact somewhat stereotypical, and that's fine.

*Ok yes, there's also being interesting on a purely mechanical level, like "I made a healer+exorcist without any levels in divine classes", which does generally involve looking at the character sheet, but that's different than being interesting in-play.