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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoutonRustique" data-source="post: 6350846" data-attributes="member: 22362">While you may be correct - it is very dangerous to say : "most people are wrong, but I am right". It can be true, but should be said with great caution.Again, be careful as many of these terms are often something quite tangible as concepts to many people making them not WYCD but actually WYA - I've personally found it fairly common for people to be disappointed when the character could not perform (or performed too well) actions that were part of the character concept (or antithesis to it). That would indicate that they were building by WYA w/o paying much attention to the WYCD...Note: I am referring to action in its broadest sense - talking to the king, holding court, dealing with merchants, swinging a sword, basically everything and anything one can do, attempt or talk about, is an action in this sense.I would argue that nothing by itself can ever define a personality - all words are clues that whittle away at the "infinite" possibilities making the picture clearer and clearer.Also, that your preferred defining words are not prevalent may also be due to a "recent" general discarding of such terms precisely because they are so vague. There is also the "meta" consideration that alignment threads are often source of mod intervention and much bad blood -there has been a good deal of "training" done on these (and many other) boards that encourages avoiding the use of the terms. It is possible that their avoidance has become a bit of a "habit" (that is not the proper word I want... I want the word for : Lorsqu'une personne évite de prendre une action par habitude encouragée par des renforcements fréquents. I'm pretty sure there is one... damn.)Lastly, in the specific case of alignment, that they (almost universally) used to be used to define a character was in part because of mechanical implications. The fact that the mechanical implications and the popularity of use dwindled at the same time could be read as suggesting that it was never, in fact, about WYA... (but as I, myself, and many others feel an obligation to point out : correlation does not equate causation.)Possibly, but I very much doubt it. Such games as you mention (or versions of them) are ancient beyond belief; had they the kind of draw to the kind of people who like what we call RPGs, I am fairly convinced it would be as you ponder.Final note and "disclaimer" : I am of the firm belief that IRL, who we are is what we do. There is no mind reading. All we can know of another is what we can perceive. Who we are to the world is what we do while in it. The "true fondamental nature of your deepest true thoughts and motivations" are irrelevant. This being said, I would urge all to not be so stupid as to limit the scope of what action means - if someone is doing something out of spite and lets it be perceived as such, it is not the same action as someone doing it out of kindness and lets it be perceived as such. All perceivable parameters are part of the action.This is why I fail to see a proper disconnect as you seem to be insisting upon with WYCD and WYA - while I agree that this is a useful "catch phrase" which leads to a meaningful thought process, this process like all human thought, it is not a straight line from A to B; it is more like a multi-parametered continuous self-correcting feedbacked system. Like in many such multi-input systems, if the time difference between which is first and second is sufficiently small to be without impact on the end product, pinpointing which is the actual true, no, no, not that one, I know you want that one to be it for X and Y reasons, but you actually thought the other one first is without purpose.I hope I have not offended.</blockquote>

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