The developers of “Power and Roses” introduced this gameplay feature where players could write their own character backstories, originally intending to enhance the game’s fun factor and deepen player immersion.
However, players ended up using character backstories as exploits.
“Power and Roses” is a traditional medieval-style game without any fantasy elements. Although players can choose professions, the abilities of these professions are based on reality.
For example, they can choose combat professions like Adventurer, Knight, or Archer, but the abilities of these professions aren’t skewed toward fantasy. The strongest combat professions are designed based on what humans can realistically achieve in real life, without excessive exaggeration.
—That said, people in the 28th century have evolved through technological advancements, and the difference in physical fitness between them and medieval people is as vast as heaven and earth, not to mention combat prowess. For ordinary players, it’s manageable, but for those who are already strong fighters in real life, in the game, aside from a few NPCs and players, they are practically unmatched—terrifyingly powerful.
Of course, this doesn’t mean such players are invincible. After all, the game’s focus is on political intrigue. NPCs might not be as strong as players in combat, but they have many other ways to eliminate players. If their own combat abilities are insufficient, they can mobilize their armies, issue bounties, or hire mercenaries. Many players who rely solely on their physical strength without using their brains end up dying this way.
And “Quan Mei” doesn’t support player resurrection, so once a player dies, they can only create a new character and restart the game. Apart from inheriting the previous character’s wealth, everything else has to be redone.
Therefore, to excel in this game, one must also use their brains.
But many players refuse to think when playing games. Instead of reflecting on their flawed playstyle, they believe they keep falling into various dead ends and having to restart because they aren’t strong enough.
That’s when someone discovered they could use character backstories to make themselves stronger.
Leveraging their wild imaginations, they wrote the most outrageous past experiences for their characters when crafting their backstories. Some wrote about having hidden identities, others turned themselves into non-human entities, and some even fabricated all sorts of special abilities. Under the backdrop of their identities, a perfectly traditional medieval political intrigue game took on a fantastical hue.
Initially, the developers didn’t stop players from doing this because many game streamers started live-streaming the creation of character backstories, showcasing how fantastical the final player characters could be, which in turn attracted even more players to the game.
But as more and more players adopted this approach, with increasingly wild imaginations, the game’s style grew stranger and stranger, even disrupting the game’s balance. The developers had to consider restricting this gameplay.
Soon, an approval system for character backstories was added to the game. Those overly outrageous backstories could no longer pass the approval system’s review, and many existing settings were banned. Everyone had to rewrite their character backstories to continue playing.
Then players could only revise and revise their character backstories, racking their brains to figure out how to give their game characters magical abilities while still passing the review system.
With such an officially sanctioned “cheat” available, Theresa naturally wasn’t going to leave it unused.
After summarizing the experiences shared in various forum posts, she wrote herself a character backstory that pushed right up against the limits of “Power and Roses” to pass review.
Theresa didn’t spend much effort on her appearance. As a mixed-race individual, her features were more defined than those of typical Chinese people, which already suited this Western-style game quite well. Since she wasn’t particularly skilled at character customization, when creating her character she only changed her hair color, darkened her skin tone, and increased her beauty by 20%. This transformed her from a fair-skinned beauty into a honey-toned stunner, complete with subtle muscle definition—looking particularly healthy and wild—allowing her to indulge in a tanning fantasy she’d always wanted but never achieved.
After the 20% enhancement, unless someone knew her well, it was nearly impossible for others to connect her game character with her real-life self.
As for the name, noble surnames in the game’s setting were already predetermined, leaving players to choose only their given names.
Theresa couldn’t be bothered to think too hard, so she simply entered her less commonly used English name.
Then came the most important part: the character backstory.
Theresa was glad she had set herself up as someone who had studied abroad for many years—though in this era, women rarely studied abroad, and even within their own countries, only some church schools accepted female students, with curricula focused on cultivating young ladies into proper gentlewomen. Most nobles preferred hiring private tutors, considering it more respectable. This way, even if she wasn’t very familiar with Atlanta’s customs and culture, it wouldn’t seem too out of place.
At the same time, she was also a mixed-race individual born with extraordinary strength—the kind capable of lifting massive cauldrons—and exceptional combat talent.
In her backstory, her mother was a female warrior from a primitive matriarchal clan.
Her father, while adventuring abroad, met her mother. Her mother, finding her father handsome, wanted to “borrow his seed,” while her father was intrigued by the wild beauty he had never encountered before. So the two hit it off, spending a sweet and passionate time together before Theresa was conceived.
Originally, Theresa’s character was supposed to be raised by her mother within the clan. Her father had no objections to this and would visit them in the tribe every year or two, bringing goods from the outside world and engaging in barter trade with other tribe members.
—It was from that time onward that Theresa’s father transitioned from an adventurer to a part-time merchant. Although the tribe’s living conditions were indeed primitive, they had an undiscovered gemstone vein, and the pelts and bones of the rare creatures they hunted were also valuable commodities in the outside world. Thus, her father’s business grew rapidly, and he soon became a wealthy merchant.
Theresa grew up in this environment until she was twelve.
As she grew older, her curiosity about the outside world grew, fueled by her father’s tales of adventure. Around that time, her mother was injured during a hunt and unfortunately passed away. With the tacit approval of the tribe, she followed her father and left the clan.
For the next five or six years, Theresa followed her father everywhere. She inherited excellent looks and talents from both parents—not only possessing innate great strength but also highly developed motor skills. As a child, she learned hunting techniques from her mother, and after leaving the tribe, she followed her father in learning horseback riding, archery, and swordsmanship.
However, her father’s health began to decline when Theresa turned sixteen. After that, he no longer took her on further adventures. Instead, he brought her back to the Atlanta Empire to live for a year. Before his passing, he found her a university in another country with strong faculty and a willingness to accept female students, sending her to study knowledge that, in the Atlanta Empire, was only available to boys.
And now, just as she was about to graduate, she received a letter from Count Golden and hurried here, becoming the new Count Golden.
Theresa’s character backstory wasn’t too far-fetched. After passing the system’s review, she now possessed innate great strength and mastery of various combat skills, including her professional expertise. If nothing unexpected happened, relying on these abilities—as long as she didn’t court disaster—she wouldn’t fare too poorly in the game.
In fact, if Theresa didn’t want to inherit the title, she could leave Goldenburg and experience life in the Primordial Stone Tribe.
But now she had crossed over, and at this very moment. Since she could experience the privileged life of a noble in a relatively advanced society, Theresa had no desire to become a member of a primitive tribe.
The game’s character backstory granted Theresa enough strength to protect herself in this crossover world without special abilities. Unlike before the character backstory system existed, where players had to learn skills from scratch in the game and gradually increase their proficiency.
Coupled with Theresa’s already formidable combat abilities, she truly feared no battle now.
Moreover, when Theresa originally wrote her character backstory, she didn’t do it casually.
Generally, in full-immersion games, a player’s abilities are not only granted by the game but are also closely related to their own physical qualities. If Theresa didn’t actually know the things she wrote in her backstory, she would find after entering the game that these abilities were significantly diminished. Without diligently grinding proficiency, they would be nothing more than superficial.
Abilities like innate great strength were usually retained, but their effectiveness would be reduced—from being able to lift a cauldron to carrying two or three barrels of drinking water at once. Various skills would mostly become superficial; they might be usable in the game, but only at a basic level.
So, after a player’s character backstory passed review, they still needed to spend time in the game learning and practicing these skills to master them completely. With the game system’s assistance, as long as they were willing to invest time grinding proficiency, they would eventually succeed.
The difference with Theresa was that her own strength was already considerable, and due to years of training, even though she was a newly generated character, her strength was already impressive. While it might not yet reach the level of “innate great strength, able to lift a cauldron” as described in her backstory, she could easily snap a tree branch as thick as an arm.
Moreover, whether it was archery, horseback riding, or swordsmanship, she had already mastered these skills and could even be considered proficient. Therefore, the effectiveness of these abilities was not significantly diminished. She felt that her performance was entirely at its original level, and with the added bonus of her innate divine strength, her combat power soared dramatically.