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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7917421" data-attributes="member: 42582">Pithy and true!It's possible to have RPGing where character is central in the way you describe here, but there aren't the sorts of dramatic arcs that are described in the OP. A lot of my 4e D&D play has been like this - the events and concerns are particular to the PCs, but the fundamental nature of the PCs often is not at risk. (Sometimes it has been. But often not.)But the converse is, as you say, not possible.I think it was [USER=87792]@Neonchameleon[/USER] upthread who gave examples of character arcs from an Apocalypse World game. But AW doesn't have mechanics for flaws, aspects etc in the way that some systems do.Burning Wheel has Beliefs, Instincts and Traits for PCs, but there is no mechanical system whereby they are changes as a direct outcome of play. A player is free to rewrite his/her PC's Beliefs and/or Instincts at almost any time. (The GM is allowed to delay a change if s/he thinks the player is trying to change them sim;y so as to avoid a hard situation for his/her PC.)What makes character development take place in these games is that the GM has both the tools and permission to push the PCs (and thereby the players) hard, and the players have permission and even an expectation to respond to that, including by sucking up big impacts on their PCs. I've seen similar stuff in Rolemaster and even AD&D, though these are a bit more wobbly when participants start pushing hard so I wouldn't necessarily recommend them for this purposeNone of the above is to disagree about the potential utility of social/emotional resolution mechanics (below in this post I have an example that involves the use of them). But to the extent that they operate on the PCs (at the initiative of either the GM or other players) I think they're just one tool in the box. They're not fundamental. (I think player-to-NPC social/emotional mechanics are much more important, virtually fundamental, for the reasons I've already posted upthread.)I think this is all true.If the unstructured agreement is about GMing approaches (eg framing scenes on pressure points) then I think that can work fine. If the unstructured agreement is about laying some combination of GM decision-making and loose table consensus over the gaps in the formal system's finality of resolution, I think that creates a much higher degree of instability even with the best will in the world, because the player who cares about his/her PC has such a strong incentive to push back. I would say that, in those sorts of cases, and everything else being reasonably equal, moving to greater finality in resolution (either via informal drifting or changing systems) would probably be a good idea.This is why, personally, I tend to play systems where the mechanics can't themselves, directly, produce arcs - but they can produce PC-affecting outcomes that recast the circumstances a PC is in and thereby lead the player to take his/her PC in new ways.I think I may already have posted this example upthread:I  would guess that this is not quite as gut-wrenching an arc as the OP has in mind. But it is an arc, and has continued - while travelling to the Holy Land on crusade Sir Morgath became infatuated with the Countess of Toulouse (via my use of a GM fiat ability - that's a feature of the system), and has since been joined on his travels by his wife Elizabeth, which has made things even more difficult for him. The player has a certificate whereby he could, if he wished, Suppress Lust and thus end his infatuation, but to date has not done so. (There is no "certificate economy" comparable to the fate point economy in Fate, but some of your remarks upthread about the balance there between player choice and GM force I think are also apposite in the context of this system.)It doesn't depend on there being any "personality" or "flaw" or "goal" mechanics. It does depend on there being conflict resolution mechanics that result in binding finality for all participants, supplemented by a limited supply of both player- and GM-side fiat options. And I think that the fact that those options extend to social/emotional aspects of the PC is a big help.</blockquote>

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