Concept for a personality system

[garrowolf]

Sorry it took me so long to replay. The phone app for this site wasn't letting me see my notifications.
Yes it is for a generic game but it didn't pan out.
I came up with a different idea that I think will do something similar but work even better.
I really like flaws in games but most of the time I see people using them to min/max. So I came up with the idea that you get a certain number of flaws. Each skill has a bunch of suggested flaws. If you add skills you add flaws. You don't have to spend them all in the same skill. The whole concept is that your character has issues. Each level you can change one flaw for another as you deal with some problem or develop a new one.
For instance you could start with a hatred of Elves but through your experiences you no longer hate them but now you hate Orcs. Or maybe you have a fear of water but you have a friend of yours keeps startling you and you fall in to water. You realize that the water isn't so bad but you really hate to be startled now. The old flaw and the new one don't have to have anything to do with each other either. You could add a new skill and discover that you have some quirk with the way you deal with that skill.
Anyway it means that characters have flaws, they experience them, and they overcome them. This is the core of good storytelling.

 

[GMMichael]

Cool idea. I have no idea where to start, with the complexity of personalities and all. The first thing that comes to mind is that your system should have a sort of closed loop. Set up options that are all-encompassing and mutually exclusive. For a familiar example:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500"] [TR] [TD]Lawful Good
[/TD] [TD]Lawful Neutral
[/TD] [TD]Lawful Evil
[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Neutral Good
[/TD] [TD]Neutral
[/TD] [TD]Neutral Evil
[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Chaotic Good
[/TD] [TD]Stupid
[/TD] [TD]Chaotic Evil
[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]
And for the sake of the players, keep the options well-defined, lest they get confused or start roleplaying a different attribute.

 

[GMMichael]

So I got to thinking about a personality system. A little more in-depth than my previous post. The idea was that a personality or a mind may have objective characteristics, similar to the objective characteristics of a spelled-out ability system like D&D's six stats. The stats I'm looking for are supposed to be hard-wired - not nature over nurture, but fundamental features that inform all others.

For example: a person's interest in being a soldier is a mental characteristic, but that characteristic is based on the person's desire to follow orders, or desire to take lives.

These are the stats, scales actually, that I have so far:

Gullible - skeptical
Selfish - giving
Leader - follower
Social - antisocial
Dependent - independent

I'd like to know if any of these scales are actually/potentially derivatives of the others, or if you can think of any other fundamental characteristics to personality. Note: I've considered that several interests, like political standpoint, are either arbitrary or derived from the above scales.

 

[Morrus]

Optimistic - pessimistic

 

[GMMichael]

Optimistic - pessimistic

Interesting. What derivative characteristics would this scale inform?

For example, take the dependent-independent scale. A character's dependence is his need to be with others - so a high dependent characteristic might make a character a follower (derivative characteristic).

This also suggests that the leader-follower scale/characteristic is derived from the dependent-independent scale, AND the social-anti-social scale. Maybe I'll scratch that...