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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4719028" data-attributes="member: 3424">To follow a little from Reynard's and Ariosto's posts, here are a couple of initial thoughts on what it means to roleplay a character:1. Personality: First of all, a role-played character will have personality traits, likes, dislikes, beliefs, goals, etc. which will distinguish him from another character of race X and class Y, powers A, B and C, and feats D, E and F. Ideally, he should also have sufficient background to explain how and why he came by those traits, likes, dislikes, beliefs, and goals, either defined as part of his back story during character creation, or (even better) established during actual play.2. Relationships: In addition, a role-played character will have relationships to other elements within the game world, such as NPCs, locations, organizations, etc. Ideally, these should go beyond basic relationships such as "place I'm exploring", "guy who gave me a quest" and "evil cultists I'm fighting". Friendship, loyalty, rivalry, affection, and even hatred can help to flesh out a character more fully, and integrate him into the campaign world.3. Consistency: Finally, a role-played character will take actions and make decisions consistent with his personality and relationships. I think this is where system elements can sometimes interfere with or hinder role-playing, when the mechanically most optimal action or decision is not consistent with the character's personality and relationships. When another choice is significantly superior in a mechanical sense from the choice that would be most consistent with the character, it creates a great incentive on the part of the player to make the mechanically superior choice instead of the consistent choice. Incidentally, in the area of character creation and advancement, this is the basic argument why more "balanced" rules interfere less with role-playing: when each choice open to a character confers approximately the same mechanical benefit, the player will not feel that he is giving up much (if anything) by selecting an option that is more consistent with the character.</blockquote>

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