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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8190767" data-attributes="member: 29398">Other than some trivialities which for these purposes don't matter, I agree with this.Ah - here we get to it: I see the heart of roleplaying in an RPG to in fact be that characterization and portrayal piece; as the developed characterization and personality is then going to (ideally!) directly inform or even outright dictate my decisions on what my character tries to do in a given situation, with game mechanics often determining whether that attempt succeeds or not.In other words, the characterization is what drives the decisions; not the other way round.That an RPG gives more latitude than a scripted play isn't in doubt; and reading this it's possible we're trying to say much the same thing in almost-opposite ways. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I think there's a lot of parallels, particularly once a stage actor does any ad-libbing.  But yes, actors are in some ways robots doing what they're told; the best ones overcome this and make the role their own.Authorship is to me a side effect of play rather than a specific meta-goal.  In the moment my main meta-goal is usually to entertain those at the table, much like an actor's main goal is (usually) to entertain those in the audience; with the differnce of course being that an actor can't often expect the audience to provide entertainment in return where an RPGer, one hopes, can.I suppose I see it that while I, the player, get to make up the actions my character takes,* I also have to accept that there's some built-in limitations that go with it that are sometimes going to get in the way whether I want them to or not; and some of those limitations are represented by the numbers (and other things) on my character sheet.* - the last word in that quote really should be "attempts", in that while many things can quite reasonably stop an action from succeeding nothing can stop it from being tried.</blockquote>

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