We have different understandings of the weight to give to different words. When you say that people do not understand the vote they took, you are, in effect, saying : they are wrong about what they do.
Wrong is one of those funny words like judge which can depending on the context carry or not carry a normative evaluation. Let's just say that I don't think that every vote was fully thought out. Some people voted in error. So long as you understand 'wrong' to carry no judgment of the worth of the person, then yes they were quite possibly 'wrong'. This is indeed not a terrible thing. People are often wrong. Indeed, I may be wrong and it is likely that at least in some cases I'm wrong. I definitely keep that possibility open.
For example, I would have guessed what the most popular answer would be, it wouldn't have been "I do both in equal measure." That's an inherently difficult thing for a human mind to do, and its particularly difficult because the answer here doesn't merely mean, "I do first one, then I spend an equal amount of time thinking about the other." It means rather I do both first! Color me skeptical. I'm not sure I've met the RPer in 30 years of play of which I could say that. I've worked with a lot of players on character approval, and I can't think of one that actually did both in equal measure right from the start. Much more typical is to see some sort of refinement process where the player either starts with WYA or WYCD, and then after getting one or the other mostly worked out, works out the other on that basis and then after that goes back and starts refining the initial conception.
Apparently, I was wrong. I don't think however I'm wrong about why the most popular answer is something I didn't expect and don't observe from my past experiences. No one has in fact outlined a thought process that could fairly be called, "Both first." In fact, most people in explaining their process generally described WYCD first, regardless of what they called it.
Still, I may reassess that with further data.
That's what I'm trying to call out : it may not be confusion on their part.
No, if you are using the language of classes, traits, abilities, and so forth you are using the language of WYCD. That's not confusion on my part and I'm prepared to defend that. If you say something like, "I prioritize WYA. First I choose a concept like strong fighter, then I begin choosing feats that enhance that.", you've clearly stated to me that you don't know what WYA even is in this context. Strong fighter is WYCD, and to the extent that you confuse the two its likely because you've so strongly absorbed certain stereotypes about how WYCD implies WYA, that you don't think about them or question them.
Of course, if the definitions of WYA and WYCD which are yours are shared by them, you are correct.
Well, this is why I tried to begin by defining my terms.
I say preferred language in the context of the post : since I offered that other words which you claim are WYCD have WYA value, the alignment words are the words which you prefer be used to describe WYA over the words which you say are WYCD. In this context preferred refers only to this discussion and not to "the words you yourself actually prefer to be used for this out of all words that exist".
Ok, that's clearer.
There are cases where game systems try hard to mechanically describe WYA, and in those cases the mechanics are actually mechanics primarily of WYA and not WYCD. Pendragon is IMO the premier example here, although just about every system has some bits and pieces of mechanics that are primarily WYA. D&D has alignment. WoD has natures and demeanors. Certain advantages and disadvantages (but certainly not all of them) fall into WYA rather than WCYD - 'curious' for example is primarily WYA rather than WCYD. Many Forge inspired games will have a Relationship with a mechanical value, where relationships are primarily WYA. This isn't to say that a player might not take various WYA features primarily from a mechanical 'what can this do for me' perspective, but to the extent that they do it wouldn't prove that they were either prioritizing WYA or even thinking about them equally. If you take 'curious' primarily for the 10 build points it gives you, that is NOT thinking about WYA and WCYD equally.
As such, when some people use words which some find firmly in the WYCD camp, they are using them as WYA (and the other way around!)
Ok, here is that word again. They are wrong.
If you say something like 'Warrior Mage' is a marker of WYA, you are just wrong. To the extent that you think that it is a marker of 'who you are', what you are really doing is saying, "All warrior mages fall into this common categorization regarding who they are. They have a common personality and set of beliefs." But you would be wrong. You are just accepting the stereotype. 'Warrior mage' is pretty much independent of WYA. It's on a fully different axis. When you use words like that to describe WYA, you've made the definitive tell.
A classic example would be : "I want to play a knight!" There are MANY possible layers of meaning here : do they want to play a character with the knight class? If they refer to the "archetype", to which parts of it are they referring to? Are they of those who have most of their knowledge come from a certain line of novels and see themselves as an extension of a pre-existing character?
I agree that 'knight' is going to offer very little information in and of itself, for a couple of reasons, and that it is an excellent example of your point. First, because I'd have very different expectations about what a person meant if they were from Sweden, England, or the USA - each of which carries a very different understanding of 'knight'. But on the other hand, only a very small percentage of those meanings carry any real WYA weight, and only those that involve importing stereotypes of a person who takes his knighthood very seriously so that it is a defining aspect of their personality. My strong suspicion here is that, regardless of whether we quibble over whether that is WYA first, or WCYD first, or something of both (hypothetically all possible), the overwhelming majority of cases will be proof that people never think deeply of WYA because they think it is enough to say, "I want to be an [archetypal] knight.", and that to them as far as they are concerned says everything you need to know about both WCYD and WYA and after that its just a matter of figuring out the details of WCYD.
I was offering the possibility that it was never about WYA and that its simultaneous decline of use with its mechanical applications might lend credence to this possibility.
I've been in enough alignment arguments to have encountered that opinion. I agree that its possible to discount alignment as WYA. I don't agree that that is the intention.
As such, when a sheet read "good", that was indication of WYA over WYCD or the other way around without asking the player the initial reason for the choice.
You are correct. That's why I've posed the question in the way I did. What did you think about first? I can't tell post-hoc what had primacy, but I can tell what had primacy if I observe the process by which the parts were assembled. Most players choose alignment as one of the last things that they choose. Most players fill out the character sheet and then give thought to the background. Most players establish the profession and skills, and then worry about the quirks and personalities. They do this I think because most game systems present things in that order. Even the ones that encourage you to see WYA and WYCD as being mechanically the same and could easily avert this, tend to in practice produce a lot more, "Deadly ninja skills" and "Crack shot" than they do "It's not my life to give." or "'Harm no one; do as you will' are words to live by."
A very plausible reason could be both : I want to play a knight charged with holy (in the sense of good) power for his deep belief in the goodness of the human heart. Perhaps you see a first here, but I see simultaneity. There are mounds of both WYA and WYCD here.
"I believe people are basically good." is WYA. "I'm charged with holy power." is WYCD. The two are not really related, in the sense that a character could have one and not the other. I'm not surprised you see simultaneity, because you are seeing a certain archetype. That does in fact bring you along a lot of baggage including some WYA (but less who you are than what), and some of which is you the real person's baggage (what you believe is deserving of receiving power, what you see as holy), but even looking at the way you wrote your sentence, WYCD has priority. The WYA is the back story, the explanation, in that little character concept. The emphasis is on the WYCD. It's the subject of the sentence. It's the first part. You could have wrote it as, "I want to play someone who has a deep belief in the goodness of the human heart, and so he becomes a knight charged with holy power." If you did write it that way, I think you'd see why the putting the WYA first calls into question the concept and its assumptions far more than the reverse. Someone who really believes deeply in people's goodness, is unlikely to see warrior as a first vocation. There is an oddity present here not present in WYCD comes first, when you are putting on the archetype and not exploring WYA nearly as much as you are exploring WYCD (all those thoughts of armor wearing, horse riding, righteous avenging).
Possibly, but I very much doubt it. Such games as you mention (or versions of them) are ancient beyond belief[1]; had they the kind of draw to the kind of people who like what we call RPGs[2], I am fairly convinced it would be as you ponder[3].
[1] The free form, improved-based games which you referred to (who's line, etc) have been around for a good long while.
[2] If these kinds of games were as enjoyable to the many different kind of people who play RPGs as a whole and had an equal or greater appeal as the RPGs that have been popular.
[3] If the two previous statements were true, I believe the RPG market would be along the lines you presented. Since it is not, I believe at least one of the two above statements are false.
I don't think your logical table holds up.
The innovation of an RPG was to take a free form game and systematize it. Actually, that's an oversimplification. The real innovation was taking a system and making it more free form. But once that revolution happened, once there was one instance to draw from, that sort of thing is the sort of things that appeals to and naturally occurs to wargamers, since they are used to systematically abstracting things in order to simulate them as a game. Improvisational theater games are ancient, but in adults they are almost entirely abandoned after about the age of 12. After that, it's really only a small community of actors - and not all of them, who would be familiar with a theater game as a formal activity. Neither the bulk of young role players nor the actors practicing improvisation are likely to think of the idea of formalizing, systematizing, and abstracting the elements of play. Improvisational theater doesn't generally deal with the central conflict that the wargamer has to resolve: "In the event of a contest, who wins?" And the psychiatric community that was interested in role-playing, where interested in very different sorts of techniques for practicing conflict resolution than a typical RPG. Ancient though they may be, it took the RPG community to even innovate conflict resolution as much as playing rock-paper-scissors to resolve the outcome of such play, instead of relying on dramatic instincts.
Just because this was what was on the market, doesn't mean that the market for other fare doesn't exist. Right from the start, D&D and its immediate children were criticized for focusing too much on WCYD and not WYA. C&S was an almost immediate response to this. Within a few years we start seeing RPGs with a very different focus of play than a table top wargame. It's not necessarily the case that because a person doesn't like Call of Duty, that they don't like video games. There is a market out there for WYA focused play, and even in WCYD focused play, I think there is a desire for more WYA elements to play.
And yes, I think a lot of people whatever they do in chargen would like play itself to be a harmonious blend of them both.
An example for my side of the fence on this (if you see this being possible, feel free to share how) : An easily-slighted, outgoing, friendly person if you have abysmal social skills. I feel the world would have beat you into something different.
Sure. I've actually met easily-slighted, outgoing, friendly people with abysmal social skills. That is a certain sort of obnoxiousness that is almost a trope - the person that is just a little too eager to be your friend, just a little too loud, just a little too much into your personal space, just a little to intimate, who is rude when they mean to be funny, and insulting when they mean to be flirtatious and when rebuffed retaliates by angrily denouncing the person. As a theater game, you could easily write set the scene and assign the character as a part.
In the end, the world just about never beats the WYA out of anyone. Most people don't change. Many people just can't learn. Most of the time they don't realize they need to change, and wouldn't know what to do if they did. Fundamental character runs deep and habits are just about impossible to break. Change is the surprising result! The repetition can go on for years and years. It's the epiphany we write stories about precisely because it is the interesting and unusual event.
Of course WYA has bearing on the actions you take. If you have pages of WYA and it doesn't inform the actions that the character takes, then you WYA is wrong. Your character is something completely different than you described. But WYCD isn't nearly as tightly bound to the actions you take. People regularly choose to take actions that are completely ineffectual. Conversely, they can build effectual skills that are fairly trivial and without having a meaningful epiphany. "He's a good poker player" doesn't have to tell us anything about who a person is. It might suggest something about the person, and in the context of a game setting where stereotypes are often the building blocks of a character probably 99% of the time those first thoughts are accurate. But reality is far more messy.
But then again... 
