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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4960162" data-attributes="member: 3820">The answer is probably, as usual, "for my benefit." The game ultimately takes place in your imagination, and if that aspect of the character is present in your imagination, that is for some people enough. Untrue. It adds something to the game for precisely one person. That's all that really has to be justified, in much the same way that a player isn't obligated to take 30 seconds of roleplaying every now and again to play up that she possesses Dwarven Weapon Training instead of just an ordinary proficiency with axes, or that she gets a racial +2 to Wisdom. If other people feel that the absence of these details detracts from their experience, they have the power to politely ask for those details. I just don't think it's fair to talk of the value of character description as valuable only if it impacts other players and not place any responsibility on those other players for eliciting these descriptions. Well, your original question was essentially "Why would someone write 'elf' on a character sheet and not play that choice up at the table?" That question was, I think, answered. Maybe the player isn't all that interested in the roleplaying aspect. Maybe some choices are of solely mechanical interest to the player, and not aspects he's interested in having affect his character's personality or bearing. That may not be your favorite style of play, but I think it'd be lousy precedent if there was a movement to ban people from making character selections that they didn't intend to roleplay. If we're going with the more specialized question of "If you want all the choices on your character sheet to have a meaningful impact on the group's roleplaying, why don't you call attention to them?", then no, that hasn't been answered. But at that point I think we're talking about entirely theoretical people. If people want a choice on a character sheet to be meaningful to the rest of the group, they'll let everyone know about it without prompting. If they don't or they don't care, this advice doesn't apply to them.</blockquote>

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