Thread: BRP Conversions
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Old April 4th, 2008
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lawrence.whitaker lawrence.whitaker is offline
Loz
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
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So we are going to use a skill to enforce roleplaying? Or at least judge role playing?
I think that's an extreme way of viewing things. Ultimately it depends on the capabilities of the players and the GM.

The Love/Hate rules I've developed aren't designed to either enforce or judge roleplaying. They're there as a measure of a particular passion and how that passion influences other skills and abilities. The personality traits found in Pendragon and BRP (for NPCs) are again used as a measure of strength of feeling - an aid to the roleplaying rather than a strict enforcement of it. There are times when emotional and social measures can't be easily roleplayed and having a mechanic to introduce how they can have an effect is, IMHO, a good thing. We have skills for all manner of other things that aren't easy to roleplay, so why not traits, passions and, in your example of Oriental Adventures, honour and allegiance? For example, in one game I'm playing at the moment, my character is a nasty piece of Fagin-like work with a sadistic streak. I'm not sadistic or confrontational by nature, and whilst I can roleplay the traits to a certain extent, I find that using a skill roll like Intimidation helps greatly to bringing about the effects that I wouldn't be comfortable roleplaying to the full (nor the GM necessarly wanting me to!)

So I think these things definitely have a place. I don't think they either enforce or judge roleplaying, but they're a very useful device for simulating how personality or depth of feeling influences or impacts on a character's other skills, abilities and interactions.

This particular discussion, BTW, perhaps deserves its own strand? Its a very good, thought provoking debate, but not necessarily to do with BRP conversion? Just a thought.
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