A long time ago, early 90’s, i was heavy into tabletop D&D. At the time i had a very strict Dungeon Master who was huge on sticking to your Alignment, creating backgrounds, and mostly having good reasons for what your character is doing/did/will do based on all these factors. That experience stuck with me all the way until now, maybe because i saw the benefits of having a strong and well rounded character which helped with immersion and also for any future bumhole that wanted to question, “Why would your character do THAT?” I actually see that DM’s face in my mind asking that same question when i make a new character for any RPG based on this next part of the story:

We were starting a new campaign, and he stated that for a change i could, with approval, use any monstrous humanoid-type creature as a playable character in his game. So after some thought i decided it would be fun (and challenging) to play a simple Goblin. My DM then “flipped his wig.” He began to berate me stating “why would this simple goblin want to leave his tribe?!” and a long list of other questions that meant basically i needed to make a 4 page essay just explaining the details of this goblins past. I eventually just said “Forget about it” and the events that happened after are blurry and inconsequential.

However, as i said that experience stuck with me, so now when i make new characters for Fallout or Oblivion or GTA or any other RPG i am not satisfied until i can rationalize why my character would just “Go in that abandoned mine,” or “Why would i save the world?” and i now question every ****ing thing my alter-ego would do. I never liked “writing essays” for backgrounds because i always believed that the experience of the ACTUAL GAME helps define who your character is as much as what happened to him in the past. Now on the other hand i have made some of the most remarkable characters that could ever be created and will stick with me forever even long after the game is played by using the “Rationalization Method,” for lack of a better term, so its a catch-22.

I have literally created the most uber-1337 bumkickers for some games but halfway through, and with a pile of bodies in my wake, i think back to my old DM berating me for my poor goblin that was never meant to be and i realize that the decisions that i made with the 1337-bumkicker could never be rationalized and i scrapped the game. Thats right i actually erased the character and started over. This is why i am unable to finish RPG’s, maybe because i know that i lack the creativity and effort to actually create in depth PC’s (like the goblin’s background,) but i am never satisfied with just your average 1337-bumkicker who hoards/grinds and quest-whores.

edit for clarity: TL;DR = RPG’s for hoarding and grinding or back-story and motivation?

No trolling, you must try to logically argue the OP so i may be clensed.

lol i tried to play online RPG’s at some sites, simple hack and slash ones, but somehow i think it is important to create a realistic character that can rationalize his decisions and i usually just give up, frustrated and unsatisfied

yes, thats what im talking about… back-story and motivation. But is it NECESSARY or are most RPG’s doomed to be just hoard and grind?

im glad you agree, but this is hurting my ability to enjoy RPG’s.

The more i think about it the more i would love to just abandon the whole “backstory” thing and just create a 1337-grinder whos “RP Decisions” are limited to what weapons i will use and if im “Good or Evil,” like ForumWarz. Log in to see images!

Maybe RPG’s are not meant to be for creating “another personality” at all, and that kind of immersion is actually counter-productive to enjoying the game.

I took the inherent strangeness of the protagonist’s actions in Bioshock to be a subtle cue that there was more to the character than someone who happened to end up there, not as bad storytelling.

Fie Posted:

I took the inherent strangeness of the protagonist’s actions in Bioshock to be a subtle cue that there was more to the character than someone who happened to end up there, not as bad storytelling.

I just figured it was like in other games, where it sets you down and says “Here, have a gun, there are some bad guys over there, have fun”. Much prettier than said other games, but at the time it seemed much the same as the rest – do things because they’re on the objectives list.

If the story comes back and explains itself later on… well that’s nice, but it still seemed dumb to begin with.

It’s possible to rationalise anything, yes. If the story/setting is built that way and you want to play a character such that it happens to make sense.

The complaint I had was that the setting in the opening of Bioshock didn’t really offer any convincing hooks at all for a normal person to want to do the things you have to do to progress the game – that’s the annoying part, feeling railroaded into doing things that feel like they make no sense (even if you could theoretically come up with a character bio where they would make sense… or in the case of Bioshock, if the character is later revealed to have hidden motives you had no idea about at the beginning).

man-man Posted:

....... Seriously, I didn’t even realise what it was, just stepped near the syringe and the next thing I knew it was in the character’s arm. ......

SoronTheBeast Posted:

.... If your guys figures out he becomes more powerful every-time he kills something, “XP,” then he WOULD go around killing everything if he is only motivated by ‘power.’ ....