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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8979750" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think it may be that we simply have different ideas of what drives characters. When I say 'character driven' I am focusing on elements of the character itself, largely outside of any consideration of setting. Takeo Takeshi is haunted by memories of his lost homeland, the Island of Shimayama. His primary motivations involve three things, loyalty to his friends the Wandering Souls, his obsession with Shimayama, and a somewhat obsessive attention to 'caring for' the orphans of the orphanage where the Wandering Souls originate. He's also a scary, brutal, psychically damaged killer. So all of those are factors in motivation and 'drive'. Specifically things which impact those areas will very likely induce him into action. From there the specifics of fiction will naturally provide the grist for the resulting narrative. If he's confronted with people who threaten the orphans, he kills them, etc. But what happens when he has to choose between his different drives? Or if an ally/friend becomes an enemy or stands in his way? These are the things we will explore.I think, in your version of character driven we are talking about the character having some interests, possibly agendas supplied by the game or ones developed/invented by the player, which motivate them to interact with the setting in a fairly structured way. Like "I'm going to go explore the dungeon to find some treasure" and then various plans and actions and possibly motives spin off of that. It can approach the same sort of territory as my BitD character above, but I pretty much defined the above with NO regard for the setting whatsoever. That is, largely at character generation. I knew it would fit in, thematically, but in all cases you could say that the REASON Takeo did something was always one of those 'internal' drives. Furthermore, the setting in that game would never impose on the players in the sense of giving them a purely externally derived goal or problem to solve. You might bring into play, say, an Orc Tribe and use it to challenge the PCs, and then they might develop motives attached to that, like the rulers of the town want them to deal with the orcs. Again, this could approach what BitD does, like a character might be said to really love his town, so he's going to save it from those orcs.Well, Doskvol is the only really developed element of the world in that game, and the rest of the world is very hostile. So you could adventure to Iruvia or whatever, but BitD basically considers those other places as kind of secondary. Of course BitD has been generalized under the rubric 'FitD'. Games like Scum and Villany, AFAIK, are basically almost the identical mechanics, simply transposed into different milieu, like Star Wars. You could certainly directly translate BitD to other settings where basically the same "warren of gangs and criminals" setup could be used. Honestly, something like Lankhmar, or Dark Sun, would be barely a lift IMHO. Doskvol has a fairly significant amount of lore though, but admittedly it is 'fit for purpose'. Still, a lot, like the entire street map of the city, is presented, along with the major power blocs, leaders, many NPCs, and a lot of general background stuff like how the police work, etc. Its not cast in stone of course, but neither is any other setting, really.</blockquote>

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