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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6345563" data-attributes="member: 4937">First of all, I'm not going to take the bait on that.Second, I didn't actually question the sophistication or quality of the role-play circa 1978, which no doubt varied widely, but noted instead the differences in the presentation and sophistication of the supplemental adventuring materials from the late 1970's compared to much of what came later - even by say 1984.   That individual tables had evolved sophisticated character driven stories seems obvious.  That the state of the publishing hadn't caught up to those high aspirations is equally obvious. By beginning your argument with, "In my experience", you've made it inarguable.  I can't argue against your experience.  But equally, by making your point anecdotal you've also trivialized it.Well, I must say, your experience sucks.  I'm sorry that nothing you've encountered in the last 24 years is as good as the good old days.  I can't help but think maybe this is more experience and anecdote and that maybe what you are seeing isn't actually representative of the state of the hobby as a whole.I never said it was.  However, some systems actively encourage and promote background development, and D&D traditionally has not been one of those systems.  In fact, one major branch of game design has repeatedly over the years departed from D&D precisely over this question.  Consider Chivalry & Sorcery, Pendragon, Ars Magica, etc. particularly as a branch distinct from departures like Rolemaster.  Nothing prevents or precludes you from doing so and nothing prevents or precludes character background having a huge impact on play, but its something added to the system by tables not an inherent aspect of it.In this we once again see that system is less important than how you think about play. I'm not sure I see these things as separate as you do.  Suppose I have a character who is extraverted, boisterous, and good humored.   It's going to be natural when this character is presented with a problem to seek out the people involved, discuss the situation, negotiate solutions, and try to inspire people to help him with the problem.   So it would be natural for such a person to develop a lot of 'people skills'.   But conversely, a character who is introverted is is not naturally going to develop a lot of people skills because there natural approach to a problem would be to do research, perform experiments, and plan out a solution.  So they are likely to develop skills associated with performing those tasks.   Of course, that's not a hard and fast rule.  A very advanced and complex character concept might be a character who naturally eschews the solutions he's actually good at and who always first tries a solution that involves skills he's utterly inept at, whether because of delusions of competence, conflicted feelings of morality, or outside pressure from someone he has a relationship with.    In the right hands, such a character might be very fun, but to tell you the truth I can probably count on one hand the number of RPers I've met in 30 years that I felt could pull off such a character.   And to be frank, I doubt such conscious and complex RP was really the norm in 1978 either.</blockquote>

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