Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9416978" data-attributes="member: 82106">Maybe the needs and wants are paper thin and pretty meaningless because they're not central to the conflicts that are being expressed in the setting and adventure material that is presented. Or they're just plain so basic and obvious that they don't represent anything unique.Think about your Strahd example. EVERY SINGLE PC EVER will have this goal, bar none. There's nothing at all in it that speaks to the -albeit imaginary- person that is that PC. Of course it won't produce anything but thin RP if that's all you have.And expecting that, post initiation, the material presented in the adventure will immediately become central to, and thus engage, the core elements of the character, one that may well not really have a well-defined history or connections to anything, is IMHO asking a lot. In fact you are expecting THE MOST DIFFICULT of all RP tasks from the players in this case, to ab initio produce deep engagement and strong connections and motivations in PCs about which they know little and for whom it is not in any way defined what their relationship with things might be.This is why, IMHO, something like Stonetop or Doskvol (BitD) is enormously easier to manage and achieve consistent results with in an RPG sense, because there's, by design, a deep set of connections and sense of place built into the premise. But even if you play a game that is more like core Dungeon World or something along those lines with no established myth, at least you have the players pointing to what needs to exist, and having things like bonds that help shape it and give it life. TB/2 interestingly kind of falls in the middle, there's an expected type of milieu, but it is not spelled out in detail. The characters have some circles and an ally and/or nemesis, etc. but it is less constrained than BitD or Stonetop. Plus the harsh environmental aspect creates a fairly clear impetus to center on the 'survival game' to at least some extent.I think something like 5e is actually RP hard mode. BIFTs were kind of a half-hearted thing. Certainly groups can easily go for it anyway, but most more casual players without the exposure to good RP are in the deep end there.</blockquote>

Verification