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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zappo" data-source="post: 498803" data-attributes="member: 633">I second the general trend of not docking XP. Handing bonus XP isn't the panacea, either, though it probably won't hurt. Good roleplaying is something you have to do because you enjoy it, not for extra XP.Designing plots around the characters' background definitely helps a lot. Unfortunately, if you just let the players make whatever character concept they can come up with, you'll more than likely end up with 6 unrelated characters. Even worse, it could happen that at least a few if not all of the players will catch the tragic figure syndrome*.It'll be hard enough to find a reason for them to adventure together, let alone finding a plot that involves all of them. I haven't found a viable solution except making sure at creation that their characters have some kind of tie already, and that this tie is a major part of their background.*"Tragic figure syndrome" is what I call when a player makes a character who is the son of a virgin mother, has received prophecies from three different messengers of the gods, bears a number of birthmarks, has a bunch of ancient family relics, and was cursed at birth. Ok, maybe that doesn't really happen, but the last campaign I DMed featured three characters with strange prophecies attached, one of which had 40 pages of background explaining how he was the leader of a great army, but lost his memory (and levels) due to a magical artefact and was banished on another plane and... I'm talking about 1st level characters here.Trust me, that kind of characters just might work in a novel or movie. Not in a RPG, and really not if there's more than one. The other players want to play, too.It's far better to have a character who is more interesting than your average character of the same level, but not much more so.</blockquote>

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