Been doing a good deal of thought lately regarding characters. Specifically, what level of information - and types of information - are useful for getting a decent picture of the character as an individual. I'm not talking combat-specific stuff, or what-not: I'm talking more like ethos, emotions, history, that sort of thing.

One of the things I've been focusing on lately is the idea of emotional state. Unlike an ethics system, though, this would be a lot more fluid, so it would have to be significantly easier to deal with. I also want it to be easily represented visually.

I happened across the following image, which seemed to fit the bill.



Ignoring the categories between the eight primary emotions (which I'll get to in a bit), this gives me eight emotions, with three levels of intensity. That seems a fair basis to work from.

The idea, then, is that every emotion is basically a status effect. For instance, sadness might make you less responsive in all situations, so (for combat) your initiative would be worse, etc.

Each emotion would have a base effect, and then intensity would modify it (so grief would give worse penalties than sadness, and "pensive" would have reduced penalties).

To represent the idea that emotions are complicated, and that the sum of an individual's emotional state at any given time isn't necessarily composed of just one emotion, you could have two emotional markers on the grid at a time. So you could have one at sadness and another at fear, giving you the effects of both statuses (and these could potentially cancel out). This also allows for the in-between emotions listed on the graphic, without getting into the idea that they're separate things that are tracked (so "love" still exists mechanically, but isn't spelled out as such).

Throw in some axes on this graphic, and you could talk about effects that modify your emotional state towards or away from a given axis. Effects could intensify or lessen your current emotions. Or events could just straight-up give you an emotion for a small time.

So the question is - is this too much? Is this an interesting idea worth pursuing? Does the value gained (having a mechanical track of a character's emotional state, and having character emotions matter to players) outweigh the additional burden of tracking this?

I think that bizare eoris game had similar ideas and look what happened to that.

Either you have roleplayers that try to do this stuff and don't want mechanics or you have guys that want to kill things and take their stuff who don't need this either

Quote from: GnomeWorks;547536Ignoring the categories between the eight primary emotions (which I'll get to in a bit), this gives me eight emotions, with three levels of intensity. That seems a fair basis to work from.

For whatever it's worth, I think the wheel is a poor model for a variety of reasons (e.g., boredom is not a more mild form of disgust and loathing, mild anger often starts out as frustration rather than annoyance, etc. -- a lot of the relationships shown there don't make sense to me and the categories in between have problems, too).  

This is part of a broader issue that also creates problems whenever a game tries to break attributes or skills into neat symmetrical categories with each category containing an identical number of subcategories, and so on.  The real world often isn't reducible to neat symmetric categories and subcategories which inevitably leads to the tale wagging the dog, in that filling out the neat symmetrical categories and subcategories with entries, whether they fit very well or not, becomes more important than having terms and distinctions that will be useful in an actual game. They also don't handle cases well where lower categories combine in uneven ways to inform the higher-level categories.  In this example, that would be emotional categories that are created by more than two emotional tracks.

So I'd urge you to be very cautious about building a game around a neat symmetrical graphic representation of attributes like that rather than an analysis of what players and GMs will actually need to play the game.  

That said, I think a character's emotional state falls firmly into the role-playing responsibility of the player and it's not something I'd have any interest in either tracking during play or using to make decisions for my character.  Such a system could possibly be interesting to me if it were used to perform some sort of post-session review analysis of the emotions the character experienced during play.

Quote from: jibbajibba;547540I think that bizare eoris game had similar ideas and look what happened to that.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

QuoteEither you have roleplayers that try to do this stuff and don't want mechanics or you have guys that want to kill things and take their stuff who don't need this either

You... seem to have missed the point, I think.

This has little - if anything - to do with the player. It has everything to do with modeling the character, and the character's emotions, and the effects - mechanical game effects - emotional states have on your ability to do things.

This has nothing to do with roleplaying. While it could - and ideally would - it doesn't have to.

I'm also not designing for hack 'n slash players. Other games do that well enough. I'm focusing elsewhere.

Quote from: John MorrowFor whatever it's worth, I think the wheel is a poor model for a variety of reasons.

Fair enough! It's a rough concept, at the moment. The wheel was an incredibly convenient thing I found, to help illustrate what I'm gunning for. I'm planning on looking more in-depth into emotional psychology (I'm minoring in psychology, anyway), so hopefully I'll be able to arrive at a more reasonable model.

QuoteThis is part of a broader issue that also creates problems whenever a game tries to break attributes or skills into neat symmetrical categories with each category containing an identical number of subcategories, and so on.

Hrm. Fair enough. But I think you're focusing too much on the precise model I'm using as an example. This isn't an end product, it's a concept.

QuoteThat said, I think a character's emotional state falls firmly into the role-playing responsibility of the player and it's not something I'd have any interest in either tracking during play or using to make decisions for my character.

Much as with jibbajibba, I think you've missed the point to some degree.

This was the Eoris game - http://www.eorisessence.com/2011/

It has some emotional tracking with effects on play mechanics.

I think What JM and I are trying to get to is that the sort of player that is into this stuff will be a strong roleplayer who will very likely use the emotional state of their PC to make non-optimal choices. So the angry PC charges the gnolls even though they know they are doomed to die or the secret agent on seeing his lovely partner eviserated by the giant weed whacker doesn't resist as the bad guys grab him.

Then there is the whole group of roleplayers who have no interest in whether LuBok the Mighty feels remorse after slaying the last dragon on earth or feels sad on the aniversary of his brothers death.

Quote from: jibbajibba;547715I think What JM and I are trying to get to is that the sort of player that is into this stuff will be a strong roleplayer who will very likely use the emotional state of their PC to make non-optimal choices. So the angry PC charges the gnolls even though they know they are doomed to die or the secret agent on seeing his lovely partner eviserated by the giant weed whacker doesn't resist as the bad guys grab him.

I don't... you're still missing the point entirely.

I don't give a rat's ass about the roleplaying aspects of this. They're fine and dandy, but they're a side benefit, not the purpose.

Potential example of what I'm going for: a character that is angry gets bonii to combat-related things, penalties to tasks that take a long time, and some bonii and some penalties to various social-related things (ie, intimidate would get a bonus, bluff would get a penalty).

The point isn't to get everyone to "get in touch with their character's feelings," or whatever you seem to think I'm going for. I don't care about the player-to-character connection. I care about representing what the character is feeling, mechanically, regardless of what the player is doing, on a systemic level.

QuoteThen there is the whole group of roleplayers who have no interest in whether LuBok the Mighty feels remorse after slaying the last dragon on earth or feels sad on the aniversary of his brothers death.

I don't give two whits about this kind of player, and again, that's missing the point of what I'm going for.

It doesn't matter, intrinsically, if the player is concerned about their character's emotional state at all. If they do - great! If not, the ramifications of that emotional state still affect the character. I don't care if you roleplay it or not, the emotions are still there, they still affect the character.

This isn't about forcing players to deal with roleplaying, it isn't about forcing players to interact with that aspect of characters. It's about dealing with that aspect of the character from the system-side, and engaging it and making it relevant systemically. Really it isn't any different from saying a character has a Strength score or has a combat skill, and having that impact how the character behaves mechanically. That's what I'm going for.

Does that make the intention clearer?

I don't personally find the idea of systems deeply modelling character feelings interesting, but I've seen enough designers trying to build systems that do it that someone has to be interested in it.
 
In existing RPGs, White Wolf type games usually seem to have a number of emotional indicator stats that do various things - Exalt character flaws or Rage in Werewolf or conscience rolls in Vampire. Pendragon has its personality traits and FATE has its aspects. Such things works to an extent - just that its an idea best used in moderation. 8 values may be a bit much.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;547712This has little - if anything - to do with the player. It has everything to do with modeling the character, and the character's emotions, and the effects - mechanical game effects - emotional states have on your ability to do things.

This is why I wouldn't consider it an idea worth pursuing. The game is all about the players. The character is merely some stats on a sheet, meaningless numbers and notes without the actual player to give him/her life.

Gnomeworks, are you familiar with Pendragon?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;547765I don't personally find the idea of systems deeply modelling character feelings interesting, but I've seen enough designers trying to build systems that do it that someone has to be interested in it.

It's not for everyone, I'm fine with that. I'm not trying to design something for everyone.
 

QuoteIn existing RPGs, White Wolf type games usually seem to have a number of emotional indicator stats that do various things - Exalt character flaws or Rage in Werewolf or conscience rolls in Vampire. Pendragon has its personality traits and FATE has its aspects. Such things works to an extent - just that its an idea best used in moderation. 8 values may be a bit much.

They're not values, inasmuch. The idea here is that they're essentially a list, and you have one or two at a time, and they effect you in a particular way whenever you have them.

So it's not like a Pendragon-y thing where you've got multiple values competing against each other. They're static effects, and which one(s) you have changes over time.

Quote from: ExploderwizardThis is why I wouldn't consider it an idea worth pursuing. The game is all about the players. The character is merely some stats on a sheet, meaningless numbers and notes without the actual player to give him/her life.

I heartily disagree with you, but that's not a discussion I'm interested in having again, and if I were, this wouldn't be the thread to have them in.

Quote from: Black VulmeaGnomeworks, are you familiar with Pendragon?

Yep. My ethos system is heavily influenced by Pendragon.

OK...
Having feelings operate as 'status effects' may work. That part of it seems fairly straightforward: e.g. Rage adds intensity level to damage, subtracts from Diplomacy checks, or Fear adds intensity level to running speed and subtracts from Intimidate checks. Or whatever. 8 separate conditions then -not too hard.

Where it gets tricky is determining when a condition takes effect on a character. That would seem a difficult problem for a ttRPG system, since characters are going to respond differently even to the same stimuli based on their underlying attachments to different concepts, people or things. Doing it without a wholly GM-fiat system needs character personality worked out in a fair degree of detail.