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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7916280" data-attributes="member: 87792">I'm going to disagree with you about that part of the game, but suggest you've been looking at the wrong games. A fundamental rule of ... quite a lot of things is "Measure what you value or you end up valuing what you measure".And this is where D&D and a lot of other games fall down. In D&D the numbers basically only go up, and they don't relate at all to the character's place in the gameworld. 5e has the background which helps flesh your character out, but mechanically it's immutable once chosen - it's your background. So the rules in D&D don't do a thing to help create this sort of change other than by getting more powerful. And because rules provide focus this easily gets seen as unimportant. (Dungeon World is not substantially different from D&D this way).Meanwhile better are games where you can develop sideways. [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] has already used as an example the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying system which encourages you to make decisions (including romantic ones) - and taking another good example Fate Core has advancements that include re-writing an aspect - in other words fundamentally changing your place in the world.But the game that has provided the best character arcs to me is Apocalypse World. This is for two reasons:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Your playbook (character class) is literally your place in the world. Which puts a lot of weight on your place in the world. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There are ways to change it. In specific with XP once you've reached a certain point in the game, and it's one way to come back after you run out of hit points (you can only do this once). </li> </ol>The setting is post-apocalyptic and playbooks are things like the Hardholder (the  town boss), the Gunlugger (the combat monster - one optional move is literally called "NOT TO BE naughty word WITH" in all caps), the Angel (the post-apocalyptic medic), the Hocus (the cult leader), the Brainer (the creepy psychic), and the Maestro D' (who runs the local entertainment establishment). A lot of those are really tied to the character's place in the world - and as mentioned they can be changed in play under very limited circumstances.So how does this work in practice? I ran a game for two complete newbies and someone who'd never played Apocalypse World before in late 2018 for six sessions. At the start we had three characters - a creepy psychic who always wore a Hazmat Suit, a confident leader of a disparate group that he called his family, and the hermit who lives in the woods. By the time we were done the brainer had mind controlled the cult leader into leaving his "family" behind and the cult leader (also thanks to an unfortunate snake eyes trying to heal one of his family) felt he'd failed them and was working for someone in the rival town, the near-pacifist cult leader had poisoned then shot the mind controlling psychic, leaving him for dead - and his essence bled out into his mask. An NPC had found the mask, torn parts away, and put it on - at which point he'd been possessed by the essence of the psychic which was whispering dark thoughts into his mind (there's a literal playbook to do this called the Faceless), and the loner in the woods had started looking after the cult because it was quite obvious they couldn't fend for themselves so someone had to look after them. All a consequence of the story progression and the rules as written encouraging character arcs.</blockquote>

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