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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 8958882" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, I don't know if this is too &quot;out there,&quot; but I was having a conversation with one of my RPG-nerd buddies after sword class last night, and we started talking about how different games handle different things. As we started talking about creating systems to handle the different types of encounters - combat, exploration, and social; we started noodling over the difficulty in balancing &quot;roleplaying&quot; with making character building &quot;fair.&quot;While it is possible, if not always easy, for a smart, wise, or high charisma player to roleplay as a character less accomplished than themselves, the reverse is much more difficult.As such, I got to wondering if the ideal RPG should handle personality traits differently from physical ones. By which I mean that, for example, you choose (or roll) your character's physical and magical aptitudes, but that personality traits are handled using a different mechanical system. I'm not exactly sure how it would work, but as a first cut, I'm thinking of something like Savage Worlds' Hindrance/Edge system, where you pick, say &quot;Uncouth&quot; as a hindrance, or &quot;Well-read&quot; as an edge, and the system gives you a minor mechanical benefit/penalty on relevant checks, but you also get in game tokens of some kind (that you can use to influence events, say) in exchange for roleplaying your character's personality well. That way, there's both a mechanical link, and a tangible game benefit for behaving as your character would.Hopefully, that at least makes a little sense. I was just thinking that if part of the problem we keep running up against is in separating the player's personality traits from the character's, why not just lean into the idea that it's different, and create a different system?Handled well, I feel like this could improve both social and exploration encounters. Thoughts?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 8958882, member: 32164"] Okay, I don't know if this is too "out there," but I was having a conversation with one of my RPG-nerd buddies after sword class last night, and we started talking about how different games handle different things. As we started talking about creating systems to handle the different types of encounters - combat, exploration, and social; we started noodling over the difficulty in balancing "roleplaying" with making character building "fair." While it is possible, if not always easy, for a smart, wise, or high charisma player to roleplay as a character less accomplished than themselves, the reverse is [B]much[/B] more difficult. As such, I got to wondering if the ideal RPG should handle personality traits [B]differently[/B] from physical ones. By which I mean that, for example, you choose (or roll) your character's physical and magical aptitudes, but that personality traits are handled using a different mechanical system. I'm not exactly sure how it would work, but as a first cut, I'm thinking of something like [I]Savage Worlds[/I]' Hindrance/Edge system, where you pick, say "Uncouth" as a hindrance, or "Well-read" as an edge, and the system gives you a minor mechanical benefit/penalty on relevant checks, but you also get in game tokens of some kind (that you can use to influence events, say) in exchange for roleplaying your character's personality well. That way, there's both a mechanical link, and a tangible game benefit for behaving as your character would. Hopefully, that at least makes a little sense. I was just thinking that if part of the problem we keep running up against is in separating the player's personality traits from the character's, why not just lean into the idea that it's different, and create a different system? Handled well, I feel like this could improve both social and exploration encounters. Thoughts? [/QUOTE]

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