I am of the opinion that a character should have a strong foundation in the mechanics - the common problem is that the mechanics doesn't support the play most people are interested in, because the common idea is that mechanics are for combat, everything else is more or less handled by GM/Player fiat.

If my character is driven by his urge to protect his family, in my ideal system that character motivation should make a difference, not just in how I choose to play the character, but mechanically as well.

i tend to go with ergelheight (apologies on spelling).

i think of what a cool 20th level character would be mechanically, then i set up the character with that in mind (mechanically) and see where he goes from there. of course, they never get to 20th level, but that is part of the fun, right? it's like a kid saying "i wanna be a doctor" and then seeing where they end up

Quote from: tleilaxubut that is part of the fun, right? it's like a kid saying "i wanna be a doctor" and then seeing where they end up

Dead in a ditch with a needle in their arm? :ponder:

Quote from: Dr_AvalancheIf my character is driven by his urge to protect his family, in my ideal system that character motivation should make a difference, not just in how I choose to play the character, but mechanically as well.

Exactly. This to me is a very important element of the rules. It's also kind of one of the reasons I changed my position on the whole "rules does not encourage roleplaying" debate.

One of the things, my players are always telling me, is that their character motivations are really not important mechanically. Some, systems - Heroquest(there are other systems, I'm sure ) - deal with these kinds of issues, but on the whole, most systems don't address this during character creation or gameplay.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Dr_AvalancheIf my character is driven by his urge to protect his family, in my ideal system that character motivation should make a difference, not just in how I choose to play the character, but mechanically as well.

Yeah, I'm definitely seeing the value of that.  Exalted has the beginnings of such a system, with the virtues and motivations.  And the new WoD has an attempt at that, but the virtues and vices are pretty two dimensional and the morality system is one-dimensional.  Not to mention retarded.

Any thoughts on what you'd like to see for mechanics on motivation?  My exposure to such things is very limited.

Dogs in the Vineyard.  Know it.  Play it.  Live it.

It handles motivation in a very satisfying mechanical way, and a very enjoyable roleplaying way as well.  You don't do very well in that game unless you really play up the motivation aspect and try to drive things that way.

Quote from: Radu the WandererDogs in the Vineyard.  Know it.  Play it.  Live it.

I might give it a try if the setting was remotely interesting to me.  I could do a new setting for it but it'd take time and it's not on my list of things to do in the near future.

You might also want to take a look at Mountain Witch.  It has an interesting Trust mechanic in it--- you can only accomplish things by giving other players Trust, but they can take that Trust and totally backstab you with it.  The more Trust you give, the greater deeds you can accomplish but the potential betrayal becomes much more deadly.

Quote from: NicephorusAs an example of what I'm talking about, ask most D&D characters what they're currently playing.  (This can be a bad question to ask if you don't have unlimited free time, so do it over the internet, so you can skim over the super long responses.)  You're likely to get responses like "dual weapon fighter"  "working toward such and such prestige class" "wizard specializing in touch attacks."  You rarely get things like "con man specializing in seduction"  or "lordless knight searching for a new home."  Characters are little more than the sum of their feats and special abilities, not defined by the sorts of things that you'd use to desribe someone in literature, movies, or real life.

It's because the rules of an RPG tend to focus on what a character can do and not on what a character does. But this may be a bit out there.

Quote from: Jack Spencer JrIt's because the rules of an RPG tend to focus on what a character can do and not on what a character does. But this may be a bit out there.

I disagree. This effect is not universal to RPGs. It has much more to do with D&D and it's class centric/combat centric design than RPGs in general. Of course with D&D by itself holding such a commanding market share and with that userbase percentage it tends to be the domanant influence in RPGs.  But it isn't the whole of pen and paper RPGs.

Desciptions similar to "con man specializing in seduction" or even shading into goals are reasonably common even in the decades old Shadowrun.  In other RPGs the goals of the character tend to be pushed even further front and center, and those characters tend to receive up to sentences worth of descriptions that include a wide variety of attitudes, goals, and vocations that are not nessasarily combat or "adventure" centric.

I prefer systems where I don't have to decide ahead of time what the character will be far in the future and systems where I can change my focus over time if players are lost from a game without being forever hampered by choices in the beginning.  

I've seen too many parties specialize so every member of the group could be cool and have there own niche only to run into trouble when a couple of players can't continue in the game for some reason.  Trying to unspecialize or cross specialize to cover for things that used to be someone else's area of expertise can be difficult.  It can throw the person running the game for a loop as well if they were assuming you had certain bases covered and now you don't.

In my experience point based systems work the best for this, but an easy going person running the game can usually make things work with any system.  When I play something like D&D its harder to change gears if something happens in game.  I like the fact that D&D has rules for allowing you to slowly swap out spell choices and feats as you level but I wouldn't object to being able to buy pieces of classes piecemeal.

Having flexibility to redefine your PC over time certainly does help to take the pressure off, and also tends to lead more towards descriptions of characters that are closer to a natural language about what the character does and their goals.  It affords a flexibility to sculpt a character rather than pigeonholing them.

Not that pigeonholing due to rules sweet points and quirks doesn't still occur. Or because, for example, being a spell caster of some specification is still pretty damn important to the outlook of the character. But it becomes decidedly less prevalent.

I find character concept and personality only develop over time.
Many times a concept works perfectly in the player's mind, but then doesn't match the rules, or the party, or the DM, or the campaign type.
The mechanics are the foundation, the framework, the skeleton that gets built up and fleshed out over time.