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Comment by honestoHeminway | Hacker News Reader

Roleplaying in my eyes suffered from this arbitrary stats rolling. It could have greatly gained, if for every usefull exp on level up - your character would have to take on some psychological malus. +1 on Dexterity? Congratulations, you are now a cleptomanic. +2 on Intelligence? Obsessive compulsive mage. +1 Strength. Great Scotts, youre an alcoholic. +2 Wisdom? Post Traumatic Stress Syndrom.

It would have got the game so much more interesting. People who would have to play actual characters, instead of walking, golden statues.

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You might find upcoming RPG No Truce With The Furies[1] interesting. From a developer post[2]:

"For the real lowdown — instead of telling you how the Attributes help — let me tell you how they make things worse.

INTELLECT A high Intellect makes you overly confident – a cocksure intellectual. You’re vulnerable to flattery, and easily lose yourself in details. (The game becomes longer). While having a low Intellect makes you dim and superficial, prone to superstition and being plain wrong.

PSYCHE A high Psyche comes with emotional turmoil – an unstable psychophant. Great willpower clashing with wild imagination. You may even lose your mind. While a low Psyche makes you uninspiring, inept at influencing people. Unsavoury things come out of your mouth.

PHYSIQUE Okay, you’re strong but so is your death drive – a mad man and a psycho killer. A high Physique needs to be tested, needs addiction, sex and physical confrontation. You lose your shit over small things. While being un-physical means vulnerable, un-streetwise. Lacking in animal cool.

MOTORICS A Motoric character is too high strung – a bit of a cokehead. A quicksilver superdetective focusing fast and then reacting (too) sharply. While being low on Motoric means you’re locked into yourself. The world has trouble finding you. You’re clumsy and slow."

[1] http://zaumstudio.com/ [2] http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2017/01/19/introducing-m...

Something like that is used in The Dark Eye and also in Ars Magica. For every virtue or advantage your character has, you should also select a flaw. This makes for some interesting and quirky characters.

Some flaws are "easier" to manage than others (having large debts is a good story hook and not that problematic for adventurers, I think. A character having memory issues however is not easily compensated, but may make for interesting role playing).

That works better in real life, doesn't it? It's harder to have a computer game enforce obsessive compulsion, or alcoholism, or kleptomania.

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