Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4536066-20140428041456/@comment-4536066-20140529035849

Sometimes it irks me when a player can't commit a character one way or another. Of course most strong characters are dynamic, and building one that is completely one-sided is sometimes just as hard to stomach, but sometimes it just breeds unrealism.

Take for example a brute character. He's a big hulking lug, like a bodyguard or cage fighter perhaps, who's so uncomfortable at formal events that he looks like he's physically in pain. He can't stand to put on a tie, he had little provided to him in terms of nurture or education growing up, thinks you kill vampires with "steaks," and he's so socially awkward that he thinks it makes him look like a hotshot to say he's shacking up with three women at once when a young lady of high culture comes and invites him to waltz with her. Given all that, it suddenly becomes very hard for me, as a player, to believe the character when you start trying to tell me that he's studied masterfully in dozens of different dances, speaks with the vocabulary and formality of a prince, and regularly attracts so many women that it sometimes becomes a pain to deal with. Unless there's a critical piece of information being omitted (in this example there is not), it starts to feel like you're trying to write a character who's got all the appeal of a rugged, hands-on working man without trading out any of the perks of being one of the wealthy, educated genteel.

tl;dr it's obnoxious when people try to make their characters everything good for every situation instead of building a realistic, dynamic character and committing to it.