u/Miowfu

I do not in any way intend to be rude here. the person in question is a friend. they have been for a while.

A lot of the time instead of holding conversations where things go back and forth. They dominate the conversation. They talk at you instead of with you.

They don't ask questions. Expect me to listen to really long expositions about various topics that interest them. (Yes they are autistic, and so am I lol, and so are many others)

I just don't know what to do. Lately my best option has been to sort of distance us because I genuinely don't enjoy our conversations in this way.

I try to engage with them. But they always tend to bring it back to themselves. They talk a lot about how the relationships they get into never work. I can't help but think this is part of the issue. I don't know how to discuss this with them in a way that wouldn't damage the relationship.

And believe me ive tried before. I've brought up certain frustrations about their behaviors and things. It just feels like they never quite change. I'm not sure what to do from here, I want to be a good friend but I'm struggling to find joy in the friendship and I think that's an important part of being friends, is to properly enjoy one anothers company instead of coming up with excuses to avoid it.

I do not in any way intend to be rude here. the person in question is a friend. they have been for a while.

A lot of the time instead of holding conversations where things go back and forth. They dominate the conversation. They talk at you instead of with you.

They don't ask questions. Expect me to listen to really long expositions about various topics that interest them. (Yes they are autistic, and so am I lol, and so are many others)

I just don't know what to do. Lately my best option has been to sort of distance us because I genuinely don't enjoy our conversations in this way.

I try to engage with them. But they always tend to bring it back to themselves. They talk a lot about how the relationships they get into never work. I can't help but think this is part of the issue. I don't know how to discuss this with them in a way that wouldn't damage the relationship.

And believe me ive tried before. I've brought up certain frustrations about their behaviors and things. It just feels like they never quite change. I'm not sure what to do from here, I want to be a good friend but I'm struggling to find joy in the friendship and I think that's an important part of being friends, is to properly enjoy one anothers company instead of coming up with excuses to avoid it.

ive already decided against a lot of names, i prefer single word names. i didnt like "the ocean plane" or similar things like that. i want something thats... cooler?

heres some examples of what i mean from other planes.

Orange or a "chaos plane" - Helion.

Red or a "fire plane" - Crucible.

Green or "life plane" - Verdance.

you see what i mean? i want something that feels fantastical, that i can use for water/ice. ive been wracking my brain for a while but havent figured it out.

I am attempting to build a rather complex TTRPG with a lot of different moving parts.

Right now, I am faced with an issue where the method of dealing damage, is far out scaling the method of preventing damage.

I will try to keep the descriptions brief.

Damage prevention, a system called thresholds. The idea is a you have a very high number, a number that in theory should be difficult for any creature to hit at any time. Then you have a middle ground, a little difficult to hit but doable. then you have a low ground, easy hit. anything below that counts as a miss.

If you hit the low or middle ground, it lowers the difficulty to hit the highest point, the highest point being the only part that actually injures the character, for this reason, you have a rather limited health pool. starting at about 3 HP and on the very high end 7ish HP. because it is difficult, to deal damage, but you have methods of reducing said difficulty by repeatedly attacking. So eventually the idea is, you wear them down. And eventually the Go down. And theoretically, if you rolled insanely well. It would still be possible to bring them all the way down in a single go.

Then you have damage. or the rolls that make it all up. I wanted a simple system that makes you roll everything youve got all at once. I also wanted a system where different actions could stack up with eachother. The system also has dice ladder 1d4 - 1d12 with exploding dice under certain conditions.

When all was said and done I realized the big issue.

the high ground threshold system was severely lower then what the average person could roll every turn using the stacked actions and everything that they should have at their disposal.

quick note, no action can stack more then 3 actions. And there are some that are easier to stack, and some that are harder, its a whole thing. but for this demonstration were gonna assume someone is stacking 3 different actions.

Heres a description of what that might look like in combat.

A person with a longsword goes in for an attack -
Longsword 1d10 (This is part of an action stack) - average 6
they use strength for a stat dice bonus of 1d8 - average 5
They include an ability of theirs as their second action stack, it adds 1d6 to the total. - average 4
They include the last action which also adds another 1d6 to the total. - average 4

Plus proficiency bonuses to the weapon they are using adding +4.

using the current math, the high end of a defense might be 29 middle ground 24, and low end 19 just to try and keep up with the numbers that exist here. But with the way things are going these are still far too low for what the average person could do every attack they make.

so now in total, and on average if they keep this up. This character is rolling 23 on average. and thats not even including what they could do with explosions involved. and other abilities they might use, not to mention i included a resource that could allow more rolls to be used on the off chance that the total was significantly bad, this usually only occurs in skill checks where the player only has 1 dice to roll which is the stat dice associated with the skill check, for an example they might roll a 1d10 athletics check with +8 because they are proficient with athletics, and the athletics score is very high. so that person might roll a 1, +8 for a 9 total, which isnt the worst, but they can use this resource that is available to roll again.

the skill checks function perfectly and the way they are supposed to. But I have no idea how to dumb down the scaling issue I have created with attacks without losing the core ideas ive built the system around. Which includes the action stacks. I want that to be a feature of the system, but i dont necessarily want to break the system which is whats happening right now. Im not sure what to do about it.

For context. My family while not being a part of the church now, grew up as a very mormon family, my parents still hold the same beliefs heavily, but dont go to church anymore. Up until the age of 18, i presented as a mormon boy who tried his best to go along with things and be the best "mormon" i could be.

Currently, me 25 year old trans, non binary thing. (Born male)
Parents, in their 40's.
Older half sister 28
Younger Sister just turned 19.

Lately, things have been rough. Extremely difficult, theres absolutely no way I could explain everything. But heres the best summary I could give you.

Last year, I went of the deep end in depression. Part of it was caused by my parents, parts of it were other things, a huge mixed bag. It resulted in my attempted life ending.

For my older sister, she failed me during this time, I ended up spending an entire month in the psyche ward, more then enough time for anyone to try and visit or contact me. I heard through others that my older sister wanted to visit, I (through this third party) asked her to call first. She never did, and she never visited. And we havent spoken since. (its been 9 months now) Just before all of this, the last time we did speak, she tried to tell me that all I had to do to get better was to make the choice to stop being depressed. I havent spoken to her since.

For my younger sister, she was just 18 at the time, I dont really blame her for anything. I doubt she understood the complexity of everything going on, and probably didnt know what to do herself. We spoke on the phone a few times, she never visited me. We still speak on occasion, but I havent seen her since prior to this massive incident last year.

as for my parents. The simplest way I can describe the current relationship issues is to say this. Anytime I have feelings, or emotions about the way they say things to me, or the way they express their feelings or in their own words "the truth" to me. And I get upset, it is my own problem according to them, and they have no responsibility with the emotions that I feel, they are mine and mine alone and they should not take responsibility or apologize for it.

Last year, on my fathers birthday, I went for a visit, the relationship was tenuous at best. We argued a lot, especially as I had come out as trans during this time.

For whatever reason, I couldnt really tell you why, I decided it would be a good idea to start talking about my journey up to that point, it had been several months on HRT, and I felt like talking about it. I probably shouldnt have. I did it anyways. Over the course of that conversation I was told by my mother that she would never see me as pretty. I was told by my father that the choices I had been making were "retarded" I kept pushing. Again not sure why. I told them about the fact I was considering changing my name to what it is now. My mother flipped a little bit. For the longest time I defended her by saying what she told me later on, it came out wrong, it was a joke. etc etc etc. excuses excuses. The actual words that came out of my mothers mouth after I told her I wanted to change my name were "Why dont you just build a fire and throw yourself in it" About 4 or 5 months later I was in the hospital. Again, it was not entirely their fault. There were other issues going on. But they certainly did not help the issue. This isnt nearly everything thats happened, or everything thats been going on. Its just a glimpse.

As of right now. This is how things stand, I am angry. I am upset. I am all sorts of different negative feelings towards my parents. Everyone Ive talked to about this except maybe my therapists have told me that I should simply block them and move on. Maybe it's because of the way I was raised, or the way I see the world. But I cannot bring myself to block them. I dont want to move on. I would give or do anything if I thought it would bring about any actual change. I still cling to the hope and the desire that they might actually choose to love me the way I am, instead of saying they love me, only to refuse to care about who I am now.

I dont want to block them. They still hold extremely mormon values. I have tried so many different things. I hate my old name. As far as I am concerned it is dead. I do not want my parents or anyone else using it, it brings only negativity to me. They refuse to use the new name. I even went so far as to suggest they use it like a nickname if thats what would help. They ignored this suggestion entirely.

On a recent argument (of which we have had millions, and they make my mental health get worse) My mother decided to, seemingly out of spite, use my new name. basically saying "Well (New name) if that is even your name right now, its not even a real name, (uses dead name) is this what you want? is this what you wanted?" She sounded frantic. I know they are scared, I have discussed and observed this at length. They are just scared for me. Worried about me. They want whats best for me. They want me to have a good life. I get that. And yet it still hurts horribly. It hurts every time. I want to be actually loved, for who I am now. Not who I was. My parents just want their son back. The person I was while they raised me. That person is dead though. And I dont know how to get that idea through their heads. He is dead, I am whats left. But they dont want me. I am not sure what else I could possibly do. Ive had to remove them on all social media, I recently threatened to block them if things dont improve. They have largely left me alone since then. I am not sure what will happen next. I just want them to try. Any amount of effort, no matter how small, would be the best thing ever from them. I want love from my family. Im not sure what to do with my sisters, and I dont know how much more I can take from my parents. I dont want to lose or forget my family.

I dont know if I have any options left but to leave them behind for good. I have even suggested family therapy and they dont think we should do that. I'm not sure what else I could possibly do. I know reddit usually gives advice. I am not sure what sort of advice reddit could offer in a situation like this. All I have left is to block and forget. Or keep feeling bad and hoping things change. What more can I do.

Thanks.