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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8528088" data-attributes="member: 7006">I think a lot of the success and the conflict of what you're questioning is going to also come out of the style of the DM and game in question.  Certain styles of game might lend themselves to more successful "character individuality" with a certain type of desired play while others might stifle it.For example... if we suggest for the sake of argument that we have a player wanting to express their character's individuality via some background plot points they have that they'd like to pursue or see / acted out during the game... if this game is being run by the "neutral arbiter" style of Dungeon Master that just acts as referee in the game of open-world sandbox... that DM might not put those backgrounds in front of the player and the party.  Instead, they might just place them out there somewhere in the hexgrid map to be discovered if/when the party reaches it.  Which then puts the impetus on the player to go looking for said background stuff to interact with.  But that means the player declaring they want to go to X in order to hopefully reach this plotline they'd like to act out, the other players have to either go along with it and follow, or tell the player they don't want to and go somewhere else instead.  We thus get a conflict between the players of the game.With another style of DM though... perhaps one that is more about "creating a story"... that DM might just place the background bits the player wanted right in the path of the direction the players as a group were already going.  So the player can get their individual interactions as they wanted, without needing to ask the the rest of the group to forsake the path they wanted to go-- both things occur at the same time.  But it does mean there's more narrative "coincidence" that things the players and their PCs want just happen to show up at opportune times in whatever direction the party is going.  That sort of narrative deus ex machina will irritate several types of players.And neither side is right or wrong in this, because you can also get the flip side of some combat and strategy-centric players wanting to express their individuality via how they interact with the mechanics, while playing at a table with a DM who is very lacksidaisical with the rules and just wants to go with the flow.  That will also cause conflicts obviously.  So what it means is that that every member of the game group should do themselves the favor by figuring out what type of player they are and what styles they do or not not like or prefer, because trying to express your individuality as a player and a PC can be made more difficult if it runs counter to what the others at the table want.  So if you can, you'd really want to find a table where you all feel relatively the same way towards RPGs and the styles you like to play them, and thus you are more inclined to get support from others when you express your individuality because the other will be expressing theirs the same way too.</blockquote>

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