Gostaria de passar para aqui uma discussão que vi no repositório de todo o conhecimento, e que acho pertinente, e que pode ser que dê para se falar e discutir.
É sobre Mecânicas de Personalidade, algo que muito bons rpg's hoje em dia têm
Os Alinhamentos em D&D, as Virtudes em Exalted, os Spirit Traits opostos em Fading Suns, a mecânica de Paixão do Unknown Armies, etc.
Passo aqui alguns comentários lá, para abrir o apetite e deixar o mote à discussão.
[quote=John Snead no rpg.net]I'd more say they are overly rigid straightjackets designed by game designers with tastes very different from my own to force certain types of play I don't enjoy. I avoid them at all costs. Fortunately, they are easy to ignore or rip out of most games that have them and those where they aren't, I don't play.
I am willing to accept mechanical measures of character stress or emotional or mental endurance, like Willpower tests or Resolve rolls, but only to determine if a character can hold it together in a given situation, and even then I don't want it to over-rule immersion. However, rolls that dictate behavior (ie what the character does when they are unable to keep it together) or anything more extensive than that are things that I strictly avoid.[/quote]
[quote=John Snead, no mesmo sitio]There seem to be several different goals for which these things are used:
1) Genre emulation: Pendragon is the most obvious example, but UA and Exalted also count here. The goal is to encourage a certain type of play that fits with the genre. In general, I'm strongly against almost all rules that enforce genre because they usually make settings less internally consistent. However, this is a matter of taste.
2) Encouraging playing in character: Some game designers seem to feel that the best way to encourage people to play their characters' emotions and internal lives is to have rules governing these things. Vampire: the Masquerade is an excellent example of such a game, as is HeroQuest and Fading Suns. I consider this choice to be bad game designer rather than merely a matter of taste. From my PoV, focusing rules on something distances the players from it, because it always replaced player choice with die rolls. When the character is dealing with the physical externals of their world, this distancing is perfectly acceptable, because climb rolls or damage rolls are the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to handle these situations. Also, because the GM is the one who controls these externals, this sort of distance is both inevitable and to some extent desireable. However, players can understand and control their characters' internal lives, regardless of whether (to use rgfa terminology) the player is in author, actor, or immersive stance (IME, the three most common stances players use).
In such games, personality mechanics are seen as a useful or necessary aid to players actually player their characters, when IME, these rules serve to actively discourage this sort of character play, because dice rather than player choice control far too much of the character's internal life.[/quote]
[quote=Future Villain Band, lá]Effectively, you are rewarded when you act according to your Virtues -- by being given the option of spending a Willpower point and gaining extra dice -- and potentially penalized by not acting according to a Virtue -- by gaining a point of Limit and proceeding closer to a temporary bout of Virtue-fuelled insanity.
If you are valorous, you get extra dice when being valorous. If you are full of conviction, then when performing a stomach-churning deed in the name of a cause or belief than you get bonus dice. If you are full of compassion, then you get bonus dice for doing something for the welfare of others. The bonuses are nothing but rewards for acting according to your Virtue.
And Limit Break is not a reward for anything. It's a mechanic to simulate an aeons old curse that forces you to behave like a madman out of myth while simultaneously cementing your heroic identity.
What the interaction between Virtues and Limit does in a Virtue-driven game -- and I've run this kind of game, so I'm speaking from experience -- is force players to make tough decisions, because if they choose expediency over acting according to their personality -- their Virtues -- then they have to roll. The higher your Virtue, the more likely you are to succeed on that roll and act according to the trait, so that means that for a highly compassionate person to ignore the suffering of others, he has to gain a point of Limit. The PC is free to act however he wants within the story. But the decisions he makes, if counter to his personality, have consequences.
That's why Virtues are cool.
A good ST running a Virtue-driven game will continually challenge the PCs with difficult choices, thus making their need to complete a task come into conflict with their own personalities. Just because you're now a shining golden demigod does not mean that you stop being Joe the compassionate gardener. When the role of shining golden demigod coflicts with being Joe the compassionate gardner, the cognitive dissonance leads you closer to a bout of heroic insanity.
The carrot and the stick are completely linked, both by the rules and the nature of the story.[/quote]
Apanhem a discussão na sua totalidade aqui, e podem começar a dizer o que acham destas mecânicas nos vossos jogos, se assim quiserem; por final, para os designers residentes, em que ponto este tipo de mecânicas afecta o vosso design?
