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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7509651" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think my views are similar but not identical. I think some parts of a character are foundational colour for that character and/or the way the character engages with the gameworld, and typically aren't put at stake in the actual play of the game. An example is in my Prince Valiant game - the premise of that system, and hence my game, is that at least some if not all of the PCs will be valiant knights. Now I'm a political and social philosopher, and one of the players is an international relations scholar, and the other three while not academics are reasonably politically and socially conscious and engaged. So of course wry comments and even jokes about mediaeval class structures and hierarchies come up; and there are even situations in the game involving Robin Hood-type bandits and rebellious peasants that reinforce this.But there is a limit to how far this can go within the context of playing the game. The PCs may well join with the Robin Hood-types to oust or reveal the corruption of an evil noble. But it's simply beyond the scope of the game for the PCs to show that King Arthur himself is a manifesttion of an evil social order that needs to be radically transformed. In that sense, the legitimacy of individual noble virtue and legitimacy is "backgrounded".I'll add: there are mediaeval/fantasy RPGs for which what I've just said needn't be true: Burning Wheel is an example. I'm deliberately choosing Prince Valiant as my case study in the previous paragraph. And for what it's worth, I think that D&D is far closer to Prince Valiant than Burning Wheel in this respect, and that D&D would have to be drifted very radically to be capable of raising and addressing the sorts of social and political questions that BW might be able to: both the mechanics of D&D (not only classes but also, at least, character advancement) and its fiction (not only of classes but also most of the tropes around monsters and treasures).To give a different and maybe more banal example: in a Marvel Heroic RP game Captain America's shield, the Punisher's Battle Van, Dr Strange's connection to arcane forces and dimensions - more generally, all these character-defining aspects of colour and backstory - are largely if not totally "backgrounded".And to put the same point in positive terms: I think nearly every RPG puts some aspects but not all aspects of a character into play. Some of this is about the individual table - which I think is how [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is seeing it - but some of this, in my view, is also about system. Of course if one doesn't want the system to put a limit on what is, or might be, at stake then that would be a reason to avoid eg Prince Valiant and play eg Burning Wheel. Or to make what I think is the same point slightly differently, I think there is a meaningful distinction between light and heavy systems where I'm not talking about mechanical weight but thematic/emotional weight. Burning Wheel has the potential to be, and I think in play almost certainly is going to be, more demanding in these respects than either Prince Valiant or Marvel Heroic RP. This I fully agree with: both the observation that there is an "undercurrent of suspicion" with respect to "entitled" or "problem" players; and your vision for the GM-player dynamic.I don't think I need to add anything to it.</blockquote>

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