Let's talk about Roll Playing Part 4

How do you encourage to players to be philosophical explorers?

I was talking with my wife about this and sort of discovered two things. It's not really philosophy that I want the game based on, it's just good story telling and I think the best way to achieve that is to HAVE clashing philosophies. It really falls to the GM or the adventure module to come up with hard questions the player would need to answer, as I can't think of a way to build that into a game itself. This means staying in character should be paramount for the game. This isn't exactly for hack-n-slashers.

As such, we set a standard when the character is being created. Pick a race, then pick an archetype. If the archetype fits with in the race, you start with a set amount effort points you can spend. Call it, Attunement. Then pick a philosophy or creed to follow. A strong belief of the character. A god? A way of life? A faction? We can come up with this list later on. Players are rewarded 1 point of Attunement for good roll playing and staying with in their archetype or philosophy against strong opposition. "Sticking to their guns," as it were. Lastly, players should pick a long term desire. Something the character really wants. If it clashes with their internal belief system, all the better.

Attunement can be spent as non-free effort in place of experience, but the sum of experience and attunement players use cannot exceed 3 per task, just like experience. Attunement isn't experience and can't be used to upgrade the character, so what is it for? Well, if you spend Attunement as a resource, you free up experience used for upgrading the characters later on.

I'm breaking the rule here, because I'm changing the foundation in order to stay within the spirit of Annalow. If we want to talk about philosophy and belief in a Roll Playing Game, it would have to be by example, and not arguing philosophy verbally. That would just tie up the game and that's no fun. Instead, the philosophy will have to be made manifest int he factions alone.

A note: Tho Experience points may be given out for completing challenging tasks, It should be noted that points would never be given out for winning a battle. The benefit from battle would be surviving to the next day.