Post originally by John Nephew at 2003-05-22 15:10:35
Converted from Phorums BB System

> If you do something that shows off your
> behavior, you get a reward, and the system
> is really as simple as that.

I really like the subtle elegance of this.

Why do people have personality traits in real life? Well, one possible reason is that they have learned behavior that is, for them, rewarded. Reward reinforces the behavior; consistent patters of behavior is one way of describing "personality."

If a character has a personality trait in the game, in the fictional world there is presumably some kind of reinforcement that occurs. Maybe whenever the character embraces pacifism, she gets a rush of endorphins as she is reminded of the praise (or chocolate cookies) she always got from her mother when she was a little girl when she did that.

The game mechanic of a personality trait provides a parallel structure in the rules of the game, rewarding the player (in the form of experience) for the same behavior. Be a pacifist, get an XP cookie. The game-play conditioning of the player thus leads to acting out the personality of the character.

(In theory, this form of personality rules should work better than alignment, which is essentially a punishment-based rules approach, providing rules penalizing players whose characters stray from their alignment. Positive reinforcement -- rewarding desired behavior -- is supposed to be more effective than punishing undesirable behavior.)

This kind of rules insight is one of the reasons we really, really like publishing Chris's work.