I'll leave the fidelity claim to one side. But the second claim is an empirical one. I'd be curious to see if it's true. Personally I doubt it - I don't have experience with Exalted, but in my experience with other systems that provide various sorts of systematic support for engagement with PC motivations and emotions the range of characters played - when considered in proportion to the overall number played - tends to be increased, not narrowed.
I think the best way to address that is to ask, what character from such a system can't be played identically in a D&D type system (assuming same overall setting etc).
On a side note: I do think the typical D&D character is likely more basic (maybe more cartoonish) than the ones such systems always produce. So there is the degree of mandating a more complex character that is appealing. But I don't think D&D is incapable of producing such complex characters even if the players playing it may fail to typically do so.
Anyways to answer the question - every system has characters it can't produce. The more structured and formulaic the system, the more characters it can't produce. For example, in the exalted example, I don't know 100% sure how it works, but likely players have to choose a set number of personality traits about their character for each category. By doing this you have already excluded any character that has more or less personality traits than is mandated.
Anyways, Since D&D largely leaves personality free form, then all the personalities allowable in exalted are available in D&D and all the ones not allowable in it are as well.
But in this post I want to make clear that what I am talking about, in trying to convey my view as to how a character conception can be challenged in the absence of mechanics of the sort that @
Campbell has described, is - at least to my eyes - nothing like what you (Frogreaver) describe here.
agreed
I'll put to one side the GM making a Persuasion roll and telling the player that result, as I don't see what that adds to the situation - mechanics work as mechanics, but I don't see what work they are meant to do as guidelines.
I find it helpful at times when the DM doesn't orate the whole conversation word for word. But sure, set that part aside.
With that put to one side, what we have is simply the GM telling the player that a NPC wants such-and-such from the PC. I can't see any pressure there. Any tension. Any challenge.
To who? The player? The PC? I think we are teetering back and forth between player and PC to often here.
Anyways, one potential challenge for the player is determining if that is a persuasive argument to their PC.
For the PC, the persuasion attempt is a challenge only if it makes the PC stop a moment and debate back and forth on what the right course of action is.
Often times, when the player is struggling to determine whether the NPC persuaded their PC, it's because the PC is having an internal struggle as well over what they should do.
The player can weigh pros and cons, try and calculate consequences, even decide non-rationally based on feeling if s/he likes, or a coin toss, what to do. But I can't see how this puts the least bit of pressure on the player's conception of his/her PC's character.
How could it not? If the player is playing in character then the only reason the determination of what his character would do would be difficult for him is if the attempt framed the situation to the PC such that it put two motivations/traits/etc in opposition. That then becomes a defining moment of the PC's character.
And the focus on "out-of-character" reasons is very strange. No one in this thread (as far as I can tell) is talking about the source of motivations that the player draws on. What's at issue is whether or not the character conception can be challenged. I don't see that it's possible in the approach you describe for the player to discover (as opposed to decide) that his/her PC is different from what s/he thought.
When I play I discover many things about my character due to what I decide. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive as you appear to suggest. If my character is faced with a hard choice due to multiple traits/goals/etc being put at odds then whatever I decide is also a discovery as it's a situation I've not thought about before.
So you will never have moments of play that evoke such classic narratives as Lancelot discovering that he values his love for Guinevere over his loyalty to Arthur. Or Rick (in Casablanca) discovering something like the opposite.
Of course you can! That's the whole point. Why do you think that narrative can't be had by the player choosing?
Your Ad Hominems bore me. Either respond to the arguments I make or don't respond to me or talk about me.
