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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 4702596" data-attributes="member: 49613">It's good for a player to have an interesting character. It's also good for the player to accept that bad things may happen to his character, that his character may try and fail, and that his character may die (all this happens in Watchmen too).In my thoroughly Old School campaign (1975 Empire of the Petal Throne), we have all kinds. We have a player whose character has a portrait (drawn by himself, since he's an artist), a well-developed personality and who rolls against his character's intelligence to see if he thinks of things (I don't require this... it's a limitation he places upon himself). We have a player of a fairly workmanlike fighter who has yet to reveal any deeper personality traits (we know that she's an amazon warrior chick, that's about it)... and that's entirely sufficient and she participates very well. We have a well-developed priest with a complex backstory, and some other characters who have some development but not so deep.It all works. Each player develops their character as far as they wish and find interesting. Then things happen during play that can be used as springboards, if they player wishes, to further development.What we do not do is have a character enter the game with a pre-approved "script immunity" and a sure destiny of greatness. Greatness is won by proper risk management (i.e. smart play). That is true even though sometimes a player will have his character do something deliberately dumb because it is fun.I think it's a mistake to try to take these things as absolute positions. If you want to play a developed character, go for it. If you just want to be a grim slayer-of-baddies, go for it. Whatever turns out to be fun. Just don't expect the Ref to constantly engineer your survival... when you decide to fight a monster, its blows subtract from your hit points, not from the paragraphs of your backstory.</blockquote>

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