NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6961180" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm familiar with the passage. I typed it out into the thread I linked to in my previous post.I didn't say it's lip service. (I don't see what the relationship is beteen "lip service" and being explicit, either.) I said it plays not role in the actual description, in the book, of how to play the game.If you read pp 107-109, which are not rules but rather are advice on how to play the game, you will see that Gygax does not once refer to PC personality. PCs are treated as fully interchangeable, depending only on their class, equipment, spell load-out and alignment.If you look at the example of play in Gygax's DMG and in Moldvay Basic, you will similarly see no real example of or emphasis on PC personality. It's about what Gygax called "skilled play".Here is how Gygax describes the goals of play (PHB, p 7):By successfully meeting the challenges posed, they gain experience and move upwards in power, just as actual playing experience really increases playing skill. Imagination, intelligence, problem solving ability, ond memory are all continually exercised by participants in the game.Contrast that with the description of the goals of play in the 2nd ed PHB (p 18):In truth, [a PC's] survivability has a lot less to do with his ability scores than with your desire to role-play him. If you give up on him, of course he won't survive! But if you take an interest in the character and role-play him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging, and all-around exciting time. Does he have a Charisma of 5? Why? Maybe he's got an ugly scar. His table manners could be atrocious. He might mean well but always manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He could be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness, something not likely to endear him to most people. . . . Don't give up on a character just because he has a low score. Instead, view it as an opportunity to role-play, to create a unique and entertaining personality in the game. Not only will you have fun creating that personality, but other players and the DM will have fun reacting to him.In Gygax's PHB, the "challenges" of the game are not roleplaying challenges - they are about defeating dungeons so as to gain XP and thereby gain levels. Whereas 10-odd years later, the challenge of the game is the challenge of playing a character well even if s/he has low ability scores.The only references to PC personalities in the 1st ed PHB are in the Foreword from Mike Carr (p 2) and in the discussion of morale (p 106):Get in the spirit of the game, and use your persona to play with a special personality all its own. Interact with the other player characters and non-player characters to give the game campaign a unique flavor and "life". Above all, let yourself go, and enjoy! . . . Your character will never have to check morale status, nor will any other player character, for each player provides this personally. Some are brave, some foolish, some cautious, some cowardly.The contrast with the 2nd ed PHB is pretty marked.You can do this without developing a personality for one's character. The two are quite distinct. (Equally, a player can develop a personality for his/her PC and yet narrate it in the 3rd person.)This is also a tangential point. Interaction between PCs and NPCs has been part of the game from year one.But that is quite different from whether an important goal of play is for players to develop and express distinct personalities for their PCs.You seem to be trying to rebut a claim that I haven't made.Game texts changed over time. As far as D&D was concerned, this was following, not leading - reflecting changes in the broader playing community. You can see it even in individual magazine contributors: compare the tone of Lewis Pulsipher's essay on how to play D&D in White Dwarf 1977 compared to White Dwarf 1981. Over that time, he comes to place more emphasis on the "theatric", personality-development aspect of RPGing - though the idea of "skilled play" is still more important to him.Robin Laws describes the phenomenon in the Over the Edge rulebook (p 192 of the 20th Anniversary edition):Role-playing games changed forever the first time a player said, "I know it's the best strategy, but my character wouldn't do that." Suddenly an aesthetic concern had been put ahead of a gaming one, ie, establishing characterisation over a scenario's "victory conditions." At that unheralded moment, role-playing stopped being a game at all and began quietly evolving into a narrative art form, a junior cousin of drama, film, and literature.He doesn't date it, of course - but it is a change in the way that rulebooks for the game present themselves.</blockquote>

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