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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9251852" data-attributes="member: 8461">I disagree; starting out with a character that's already everything you want them to be absolutely KILLS my motivation to keep playing that character. There's little left to explore about them, as their most salient characteristics are already established. More often than not, it seems to lead to the player becoming bored with the character when they find out that they aren't being regarded as the most important person in the campaign, and which then leads to awkwardness when they decide they want to retire the character (or said character dies) and the same impact that they were striving to make now leads to a void in how things unfold. I've played so many games where characters were all bringing something special to the table, and just like Syndrome noted, it meant that none of them were...or at least, not enough to be worth remembering, since (as I noted before) it's actions in game that seem to make the most impact, not your character's backstory.It's not so much "low key play" as it is a notation that what a character does (not in general, but in terms of actual events that they partake in over the course of play) is vastly more important than what they are. Characters who want to overturn convention, at least insofar as their characters go, tend to be more focused on the latter, even though the former has been (in my experience) what really resonates with people. Particularly so when it's something achieved rather than something they simply start out with. And it's easier (again, IME) to achieve something in the setting when the setting's conventions are well-understood as something to be utilized, rather than being seen (wrongly, I'd venture) as a straitjacket. You can have a bewilderingly diverse array of options via sticking to the conventions of the campaign world, which is what makes it so bizarre when I hear people talking about it like it's some sort of antithesis to engaging, dynamic play. Yes, some options will be closed off, but that's good thing! Boundaries, when presented alongside a wealth of existing options, tends to abet creativity, rather than restrict it. Just ask everyone who's complained about high-level wizards being able to do everything and make the rest of the party irrelevant.</blockquote>

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