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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9542337" data-attributes="member: 4937">I know people dislike this conclusion, but how much you dislike it doesn't change the truth of it.I never said that it wasn't.  I don't think you actually understand the argument.If a player is allowed to make their choices or left to make their own choices based on their own store of intelligence, wisdom, charisma, empathy and virtue then inevitably some of them will not be able to play a character that is very different than themselves.  Various devices can be created to give the character's insight on how to behave, but even with that insight there is no guarantee that they will be able to put one and one together and make two.  It's even hard to go the other way.  I know a player who is useless at playing characters lacking in virtue no matter how hard he tries, because his own character is such that he's not able to imagine or comfortably make unvirtuous choices.  He's always bad at it, so that there is no point in him trying to play a selfish or ruthless character.  Likewise, it's hard to fake stupidity.  It's very hard to metagame successfully and consistently against yourself, because there is always a difference between knowing something is unwise or stupid and not knowing something is unwise or stupid.  The only way to deal this is to take away the volition completely and have some sort of engine that makes choices on the character's behalf based on the attributes of the character.  "Your character wouldn't want to do that."  But then the player isn't playing the character, but rather the GM combined with the rules engine is.  The character is now simulated and the player watches while the GM provides the script.This is a conclusion many players find offensive because they have never wanted to admit to limitations in the ability to simulate the world or in particularly their ability to play every hero or villain their imagination desired.  But as a GM, I run up against this problem all the time precisely because I'm called upon to play so many more different kinds of characters.  And I would like to think that I can play more than my fair share of different sorts of characters and bring more than my fair share of NPCs to life to entertain players as part of my GMing skill.  But I can't play every sort of character as not every sort of talent is in me.</blockquote>

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