Creation of P5D

An Ad On Reddit
Sometime in September, Hina posted an ad on the Reddit forum r/roleplay with the hopes of finding someone willing to GM a Persona-based game for her. Zephyr saw the ad and reached out. The two hit it off and moved from Reddit to Discord, where things were planned out.

Getting To Know You
Hina and Zephyr built up a friendship as well as a writing relationship. One odd tidbit of information is that the two share the same month and day of birth, though Hina is two years older than Zephyr. Though the pair began writing formally out-of-character, they quickly caught on to each other's comfort level and began texting in shorthand and memes.

Changing Things
Obviously, a text-based RP cannot hold the same functions as the actual Persona 5 video game. New mechanisms were brainstormed and created to fit the story and the format. In addition, a few plot points were changed. While the beginning is mostly the same, Hina will find that the path of divergence branches further as the story progresses. Zephyr has also expressed excitement over a "huge plot twist" that she has planned. There is a list of differences here.

Gamemaster Challenges
Planning a game is difficult. Even though the plot of Persona 5 already exists for Zephyr to tweak as needed, she ran into some problems along the way. "Writing a new plot is easy," she said. "But there is one part in the beginning that I wanted to keep the same plot-wise, that Hina wasn't comfortable with. So I needed to change the parts she wasn't cool with while still retaining the game's major events. That was really hard, but I'm really proud of how it turned out." The part in question is the entirety of Kamoshida's Palace.