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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7379321" data-attributes="member: 29398">Every one of these is a single relatively-isolated incident, which might tell me what the character is thinking in that moment but doesn't tell me much overall until I start seeing a pattern over time.  Does War Machine treat every date that way, or just this particular one because he really wasn't all that impressed with her?  Does the invoker who betrays Vecna have a past history of betrayals and disloyalty or is this a sudden departure from the norm?  Does Jobe's first thought on exploring an area always turn to treasure, or is it just this one item that he wants and otherwise he's not an avaricious sort?Is the Traveller PC asking the bishop about mysterious mental abilities in his religion because she wants to learn them or because she is gathering information in preparation for launching a war against his church?Is the skinchanger always looking for the tricky solution or did he just happen to have a flash of inspiration this time?etc.Action declarations can only tell me things (or reinforce prior knowledge) over the mdeium to long term.  A thief searching for a secret door once tells me nothing.  A thief searching for secret doors at every opportunity even when just sacking out in a room at an inn tells me the character is either highly inquisitive or somewhat paranoid; and other things he's done or said over time will tell me which it is.Further, I've learned to determine character through what the character says and does over time in the game rather than what the player might say or write on the character sheet.  An example from the party I DMed earlier tonight: there's one PC about whome whose player would say that while he's not selfless he's certainly helpful and somewhat self-sacrificing.  In play, however, he's much more self-serving and self-preserving than that description would lead you to believe.I kind of agree with what Kubasik says here up to the last bit: I don't agree that to make a character all or even most (or even any?) actions must grow out of goals, if goals are defined as anything bigger than dealing with the immediate here-and-now situation.  Also, 'not every action is true to a character' strongly (and wrongly) implies a character must never act out of character, and combined with the next clause also implies a character should never be unpredictable or chaotic.Doing things haphazardly just for the sake of doing them can in fact BE the goal of a truly chaotic character. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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