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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6936753" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've never played one and don't know much about them. I was thinking of more-or-less mainstream tabletop RPGs.From the OP:Broadly speaking, a character's mechanics establish that character's functions, capacities, etc.In the most recent session of MHRP that I GMed, Wolverine recognised an old foe and dealt that foe trauma (by killing him with his claws). That is the function assigned to Wolverine by the "Old Friends, Old Enemies" milestone. In doing this, Wolverine also killed someone in front of innocents - which is the function assigned by the "And what I do isn't very nice" milestone.The player wasn't just making up a personality for Wolverine and acting it out at the table. The player was filling the Wolverine role. Obviously this produces a very different game from what Gygax had in mind with classic D&D, but that's because in the intervening 40-odd years RPG designers have worked out new ways to give characters functions, capacities, etc. (That said, you could see Gygax's alignment rules - which he regards as part of character function - as a very embryonic anticipation of the sorts of personality mechanics one sees in a game like MHRP.)I never said that it did.From the OP again:You seem to think I'm saying something that I'm not. I'm not asking what the essence of roleplaying is. I'm asking posters "how they primarily think of roleplaying". I primarily think of it in terms of function. That's why I like MHRP, and respect Gygaxian D&D very much though I'm no good at it either as player or GM, and don't really get into 2nd ed AD&D. The distinction that I drew in the OP is, for me at least, a useful way of trying to explain these preferences for some RPGs over others.</blockquote>

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