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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5723784" data-attributes="member: 4937">Then why make them?  I think you are on to something important, but I don't think were you are going with it is going to be best for your game. Sure, my NPC's do it.  And I pretty much wouldn't have an NPC doing something I wouldn't allow the PC's to do.  If the snake blooded sorcerer wants his magic missiles to look like hissing vipers, I'm ok with that - 99.99% of the time it won't matter, and the .01% it does (NPC has a snake phobia) is not bad for the game but good for it. Back in my day, we didn't need a feat to mark that a PC had gained a noble title.  It was just something that happened and was took into the accounting, like the fact that the PC's were big heroes in village B because they'd saved the town, but were considered bandits in village C.  The problem with having 'role playing feats' of that sort, is that if your role play is of any significance at all, you're going to be adding several of these a session.   What makes a PnP game better than a cRPG (on some levels at least) is that a programmer could hardly program for all the 'role playing feats' that accumulate after a while.  Favors, enemies, friends, mentors, admirers, vendettas, esteem, scorn, status, reputation, trust and every other marker of human social relationships just pile on with every NPC interaction.   All have their advantages and disadvantages.Now, that being said, the ironic thing is that I do have a 'Noble Rank' feat in the event that someone wants to begin the game as a noble with the rights pertaining to same.  In fact, if you are really daring, I have a 'High Noble Rank' feat that lets you be close blood relation to a soveriegn ruler, just for those players that want to actually play a prince or princess out of a fairy tale.  So, I really do see where you are going with this, but I really honestly think that after character creation you do injustice to the game to overly characterize it.  In fact, one of the things that drove me away from GURPS was the implication that all of this role playing stuff had to be characterized and paid for in play.  If the player wins a kingdom, or rescues the damsel in distress, I don't want to be checking to see if he has an available feat to pick up the 'Founding King' or the 'True Love' feat.  It has happened, and the mechanics are secondary to that. So in short, all my role playing feats, the ones that have 'necessary background' as part of the prerequisites are stuff that you choose to buy at first level (that is, they are Traits).  This is so everyone is starting from basically the same spot and can't argue for mechanical advantages on the basis of a background.  It also doesn't hurt that if you arent' sure what is going to happen, you've previously brainstormed what the likely mechanical effect of roleplaying event might be.  But on the basis of what they earn in game, they can have anything that happens good or bad without paying for it, and indeed they must take what they earn whether they like it or not.  If you acquire treasure, pretty soon you end up Wealthy and if you squander or throw it away you cease to be.  In either case, I don't add and subtract a Trait.  Likewise, once the game starts, there isn't a metagame coin so valuable that it can be used to purchase any esteem or property or followers in the shared imaginary space.*  All that has to be bought with something that is real in the imaginary space.(*As you might imagine from my insistance on this, there is no Leadership feat as well.)</blockquote>

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