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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KismetRose" data-source="post: 6349260" data-attributes="member: 27605">Sometimes, when I get the rare chance to play, I start with a class or race or other option that I haven't tried yet and then see which personality traits come to me from there.  I focus on the system and the type of game I've been told it's going to be first.  Then I find a personality concept to match the mechanics concept, and the background will tell me how they mesh (or have failed to complement each other).Other times, I have a strong personality come to the fore, often with history and related NPCs and everything, and I look for mechanical concepts that will blend well with it.  Many times, I pay attention to how that person differs from me and from other personalities I've portrayed in the past.  (I try to do something different each time.)Either way, I strike a middle-ground between what makes sense for the personality and what makes sense for the mechanics so that they remain effective in their role(s) but also remain internally consistent.  And either way, I work on both aspects of the character so I have a more complete place to start from and more of an idea of how to actually portray the person.  I started out in Vampire: the Masquerade and was taught that mechanics and personality should reinforce each other and align with each other (at least if you were doing your job as a player).  You should be able to explain every dot placed on your sheet not just due to what you want but due to what the character has lived through and practiced.  I just took that attitude with me to every other game I've played since.Sometimes my own habit and expectations have let me down because I've been in games that only want mechanical concepts and have no real room for personalities.  Background is treated as superfluous and is never used; rationale isn't just unnecessary, it's discouraged.  And such games have seemed to me to be equally imbalanced in their execution, with DMs who were unable to portray a single person or to pull off a single scenario that was based off of anything except mechanics.  And it became mechanical in a way and degree that I did not enjoy - but others seemed either equally disengaged but unwilling to say anything or perfectly content with the situation.  I've noticed that more systems are trying to encode personality options with mechanical benefits or drawbacks, in extended ways.  Pathfinder has more background options than you can shake a stick at due to this move not just to offer inspiration but to offer mechanical support.  Some gamers would like to make more nuanced characters but aren't sure how; background generators offer a familiar format along with many seeds and even incentive to try to build more of a person.  Because building well-rounded people can be difficult, especially when gaming options take considerations well beyond the literary.  Make no mistake about that.I think that it is possible to go overboard with presenting personality-building options, to the point that you overwhelm players (particularly new ones).  5-10 pages, perhaps, can give ideas without flooding the readers.</blockquote>

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