@Zachiel I think "tranquil goals" isn't necessarily a problem. "Pragmatic means" can definitely be, though.

@AlexP I've seen beliefs such as "I want to become a god" work really well in my D&D persistent world... because they got divided into reasonable chunks, knowing it was impossible. The characterr was built to fail or to change her aim. And in a world where there's like 100 PCs, not replicating the same objective is hard.

Also, I have problems translating "pragmatic means" into my language.

I also noticed that if I make a PC that is doomed to change at some point, I'm reclutant to deem any event significative enough to start the change.

I guess stopping to RP at all is the only one solution to be but I told myself I would never let that happen to me, after seeing people stop gaming. I was all "is it like this, to became an adult?" and "I won't let this happen". So I'm kinda morally forced to go on even if I feel like I'm utterly failing at it.

@Zachiel What I mean is that I find it hard to have a character who is too practical about how they get what they want. It tends to lead to boring play, especially if what they want is also very reasonable to accomplish.

@Zachiel My problem with Keys is that your Idol key and your friend's Idol key are exactly the same. They erase the differences between how the two characters approach being or wanting to be an Idol. So the keys are making your goals more generic than they are in your head when you play the character.

I see

@Zachiel Goals you can divide up are awesome.

So, my wife, in real life, is very pragmatic and strategic. And has simple goals. This causes her problems when she creates similar RPG characters.

Because they naturally kinda stop being protagonists.

They set reasonable goals, compromise easily, and don't overreach if they already have what they want.

I don't think I have this problem

I try to get goals that don't interfere with other character's goals, because I don't want to oppose them

I like objectives like "protect ...'s life"

which is unreasonable in D&D

most of my characters end up failing and commiserating themselves forever for not being able to not-fail

@Zachiel Well, is that last part fun for you?

I could see failing and then being all like, REVENGE!

the character that I named before, the one that wanted her boss to decide in her place... she was a proud soldier, until she realized how weak she was against monsters with high AC and Damage Reduction, or against Wizards

As an alternative.

@AlexP No, it's not fun at all. Actually, I'm trying to plan a character that's able not to end like that

@Zachiel That's a tough one. When the system says you're kinda screwed.

But, since thee stronger a character is, the stronger will the opposition be... it just really depends on the mood of the DM

@Zachiel I have a tendency to make characters I don't actually enjoy playing, too. Their personalities get a bit too... petulant, I guess?

I'm not sure how to describe it fully.

I think the heart of my problem was that I make characters who can't fail gracefully.

Failure hurts them too much and jeopardizes their ego and stuff.

So I play them like crap.

That character had a fight in a tomb... a reckless sorceror child accidentally set off an avoidable trap and three elder elementals were summoned (all but water, and the air one didn't go tornado. Also, the GM "forgot" to roll some AoOs and some damage, which made me feel weak for my level)

Also, the sorcerer went K.O. and I was severily injured when I teleported everyone out. The Tempuran warrior (forced to retire, which is against his faith) was pretty angry at me for letting a 16 y.o. weakling in. He was even more angry at me supporting his magical "I'm a half-elf guard" disguise.

Did you at least manage to keep the kid safe?

I saved him. And had a lot of fun teaching him why he should have not used a disguise

But it was my character who was in charge

so she made a bad reputation for herself

She got so much bad reputation in the following monts I had to retire the character (it's only part of the reason but now I fear making another character because I'm unable to foresee the consequences of my in-game decisions and Iìll probably end doing the same mistakes again and again. And that's why the character asked someone else to decide in her place - she didn't want to be held accountable for responsabilities... and that means not being the protagonist of the story)

One way to fight it is to be clear about the intent of your actions. That at least fixes the immediate consequences.

There's still the bigger-picture in-character stuff.

I have to work hard to write characters who can fail. Who won't be destroyed by failure.

@AlexP hard to do when the other players scream "metagaming!" when I try that

harder to do when it's consequences of omissions. How comes you didn't realize the idea of that other character was bad and you, who were in charge, did not stop him? Only those who have IRL gifts for recognizing those situations can win. Wishing for a game where things work differently than in real life is sometimes called "you have wish-fulfillment fantasies, stop it".

(why do I still want to play this game? Because those who are good at it have lots of fun.)

@AlexP The most frustrated players I've ever seen are the ones who designed characters with personalities that had no room for failure.

A character who has room for failure is one that won't be destryed by it, right?

I would presume so.

Not that the character has to be okay with failure.

But their personality must have some ability to respond to it without melting down.

Most often, I've seen it when a player designs a hypercompetent character: he never imagines the character failing, and so when the dice roll poorly he cannot figure out how the character might respond to that.

Dice-based RPG characters are unlike characters in most other stories, because the dice are cruel and whimsical: failure is basically inevitable, so you have to plan for it even if your character doesn't.

I once ran a character whose personality was so confident and bombastic that he never noticed his own failures at all. Naturally, this led him to even greater failure; he was a tragic/comic figure.

@Zachiel That makes me sad.

@AlexP Zachiel has discovered a Perfect Storm of bad gaming practices.

@BESW Naw. Because it sounds like you still get to make decisions in this game.

The good thing about coming up with characters who can fail is that they end up being, like, stronger and more interesting deep down. Because they're not fragile.

@AlexP [snort] None that matter, unless you can frame them in a way that appeals to one of the GMs--in which case screw balance and reason, you get whatever you can possibly justify.

@BESW Holy crap srsly?

I'm gonna go ahead and label this "the tyranny of freeform."

The game is nominally D&D 3.5 (and they take refuge behind those rules whenever someone tries to do something they don't like), but one player managed to talk their way into turning the game in Actuarials & Accountancy by justifying being in charge of an international company with a monopoly on major resources; all the players have to be careful or they get cut off from significant resources.

Oh come on you're exaggerating it now

nobody is cut off from anything

and there's no monopoly

I seem to recall you saying that if you tried to work around the practices set up by that company, Bad Things happened.

But it's PBP? Or what?

it's out of any doubt that, in that game of finding what's the best strategy Alex, C Ross, wax eagle and me have been discussing in the past hours, being a merchantile company in such a game is a big advantage, because everybody has reasons to play with people that let you pay less for your equipment (the same goes for crafters)

And I believe this is the same game where someone justifies being power-leveled through content far out of their level because they "married" a higher-level character so it makes sense for them to adventure together, while you get told "tough beans" when you find adventuring with your slightly-higher level friends to be lethal.

lethal adventuring was because that slightly-higher level friend was way more powerful than the epic character

Also, I see the reasoning behind "the married one plays thrice your time, she gets to have thrice the prizes"

Your game makes me sad.

@AlexP PBC

@Zachiel What is C?

chat

Mmm. I'm not gonna get back into this debate. Suffice to say, you describe a game that is not D&D, but which hides behind its nominal structure to justify some of its more egregious practices.

I think you're wrong when you say people "takes refuge behind D&D 3.5 rules". Those rules are used to decide how things get done. How many money you do need to spend to get your message posted in the nearby cities, how many days it takes a crafting task to complete... (with some "ok we all agree it's way imbalanced if clerics start casting creation")

@BESW there's no such thing as D&D

@Zachiel But there is such a thing as things that are not D&D.

I'm perfectly aware we're not on the same page, speaking about the tool)

If you're going to pay attention to how much things costs, but entirely ignore the progression of wealth for players who are eloquent enough to talk their way into situations the game was never intended to handle, you've stopped being D&D in some fairly major ways.

@Zachiel Okay, so the impression I'm getting a little bit is that you're straight-up getting "deprotagonized."

I was gonna find you an image macro that says DEPOTAGNIZE but I got lost, so have this one instead.

What I mean by that is that it sounds like, on top of any kind of other issue, people are just crapping on your contributions for player-interaction-related reasons. Which is not cool.

@AlexP That sounds about right. And the GMs don't consider it their responsibility to control this.

If you look closely, you'll notice the book actually says Dogs on it.

There's over 100 players. Deprotagonistizing is easy. Also, having a boring character with nothing interesting to say does not help

That's why I always tried to make a character that was somewhat special. Back in the days where we only used Core, I had a bard who was ready to became dragon disciple. It was the only one character with huge strength and tusks who was clearly not an half orc. Everybody remembers that one

(how comes I can correctly and without doubt spell wealth and I always spell wrong streng"ht"?)

@BESW I think the issue here is "we have 100 players at our table. If you don't like the game you can go, bye"

Aye, but you've said that they custom-tailor adventures to certain individuals.

they custom tailo adventures to everybody who puts himself in the spotlight

I can't really wrap my head around the game in general. Because my magic gaming number is 2-4.

That's counting the GM.

Right now it is 2, and we are having loads of fun. Sometimes 3 is better, though.

(also, it was not around individuals, but around guilds. True, if someone is better at keeping people under his banner the whole guild gets more benefits. It's like when you play Prime Time Adventures, if you do something that improves the game for everyone you get prizes. Which should be an incentive for everyone to come out with characters that are not "I stay there silent doing what they tell me to do". Unfortunately, I excel at those (I don't like them too, but I find them easier to portray)

oh you should not think of it as a pencil and paper campaign. Think mmorpg. Then someone goes into a mission, and the mission plays like your usual games

(but is usually shorter)

Except that MMOs don't care about spotlights.

My recent experience tells me the ability to create and manage an effective guild is crucial to MMOs

If you are in a guild you manage to organize raids, which means more money for your character

btw, my whole guild disappeared, time to go pillage the guild bank again. Should they come back all of a sudden I'd be a dead man

Just having a chart during instance events telling me I'm not doing as much damage as the others is enough to make me anxious. I think I've lost the head of the chart a pair of times because I was looking at the chart instead of killing monsters.

My favorite MMOG was Guild Wars 1. Because both getting max stats and adjusting your build were pretty trivial.

So the competitive content was reasonably competitive.

And the cooperative content wasn't full of gates requiring you to grind before you could be a good team member.