It's what my character would do

>why did you accept the character in the first place?
Normally it's because the player in question is either a friend or a friend of a friend and simply rejecting them may lead to OOG complications.

>GM didn't said a word about incoming campaig
>Players were given a free hand
>Suddenly you end up with a party consisting of a paladin, a cleric, a kindly scholar and a fucking half-demon evil cultist performing weekly virgin sacrifices for his magic power
I saw similar shit happening so many times I ended up thinking that people realising their character doesn't fit is a GOOD thing. The worst you can have is a party consisting of characters that simply don't fit together and don't mesh in any way, but somehow continue to stick together and help each other no matter what.

>join a game late bc i couldn't make it to session 0 character build session
>we are fighting orcs in some temple
>I get swarmed
>other party member goes to "guard" a hall where there are clearly no orcs, the orcs are spilling in, literally spilling in from the front
>I go down
>our healer refuses to heal me period
>"my character doesn't know you, why would they heal you?"
>orcs still swarming the place

Thats a thing i did in the next campaign

>stuff happens in norfolk, i've made like 4 quests that have the overarching theme of mythos stuff happening
>made the players part of delta green so there was no way they'd pussy out
>they go into houses i haven't mapped out
>they don't find anything interesting
>want to turn back through the door
>no door
>suddenly Nyarlathotep stuff happens

It was fun DMing that.

If you have this attitude, you are either a horrible GM or a god-awful player. Probably both.
And here is why:
You are imposing an artificial limit on yourself as a player and are too lazy to do something the players want to do.

Also, there is a simple case of player deciding to get his or her character out of the scenario, knowing things are going to shit and it's way beyond the fixing point. So either want to leave with some dignity intact or to keep the character alive for another adventure/party.

>I am a shitty DM that can't create situations that encourage cooperation
This coin has the other side, thou.
"I'm a shitty DM and I'm strictly enforcing cooperation, even if players really don't want to and it doesn't fit their characters".

Personally I think at certain point of playing TTRPG there should be an obligatory series of Paranoia games, so both players and GMs could learn how to work for their own goals and handle it all. Not because lack of cooperation is better or other bullshit, but because sometimes you just shouldn't cooperate.

In my previous group I had a situation when players early on were still thinking in "we are players, our characters thus must work together for their goals". So it lead to the situation where honourable knight ended up slaying innocent people, because greedy mage in the party fucked up his extortion scheme and then started instantly hurling weak-ass spells into the crowd, "forcing" the party to defend him.
Few months of playing later they've all finally learned that goals of player A is not the same as goals of the whole group and it helped immensely, making them much more careful and allowing in-depth roleplay, then they could side with NPCs or against them based on their character stance on the situation and general "morality", rather than "player A wants this, so I will help"

>>It's what my character would do
If it is an RPG, that is the thing to do.

>My character has no reason to come with your party
Then they get left. Everyone else will have fun now. How is this even an issue?

>Make a new character.
A sound plan. Not having more character ideas than chances to play them is real shit tier.

>It's what my character would do
Yeah, because that's the entire fucking point of TTRPG.
The real problem is that someone has to give this explaination, because it's not obvious for the entire group.

I spent all my income on buying things for the rest of the party because it's what my character would have done

Now when you say there is nothing outside the city do you mean that the city is floating in the nothingness or you just didn't come up with anything because either is a possibility in a cthulhu game.

Why is it what your character would do ?

I've been in a situation where my character used to have reasons to work with the party but circumstances changed and my character had no reason to continue working with them.

So I rolled a new character. One that had reasons to work with the party.

>'Okay, make a new character.'

This is sound advice.

Do you honestly think these characters have
>Will be a complete retard
written on them?
Sure there are many red flags, but if you're playing with a friend, or friend of a friend, you'd assume that they would find a way to make it work.
It's only games with unknowns that you should never accept a red flag raising character

>My character has no reason to come with your party
I really would love to see someone try to pull this in my game. A shame I only do text games, I'd love to see the look on the player's face when their character just gets left behind and the others go on with the plot.

If you have a group of mature players, the best solution is to make a session zero where the GM tells the themes of the campaign and everyone makes their characters together. It helps roleplay tremendously, meta-knowledge is easy to ignore, and the GM can always set a player aside if he wants to introduce some big reveal later in the game.

session 0 should fix that stuff

user, there is no need to explain that, as I know it.
Thing is, a shitload of people don't do session zero and GMs often expect from players to at least bring a semi-finished characters so the scenario can be tailored for said characters and just filling cards upon first meeting.
Saw it too many times in my life (I'm in the hobby since '98) to pretend this is not a widespread practice that creates more problems than it solves.

The proper way of handling new groups, especially when they are dominated by green players, is first having a meeting or two to just talk about what the hobby is like, what the game can be like and then give them few days to think if they really want to get into it.
Then you make a session zero, they check things out and if they enjoy it, you start playing "for real".
But the problem is - such approach, while the best one, also takes a fuckload of time, as you must dedicate about 3 days on doing nothing and first game is spend also on doing nothing "real", so most GMs prefer to just grab players when they have a chance, throw them in the game and then hope for the best they will figure out things as the game rolls.
Which contributes to 3/4 of posts in That Guy/That GM threads.

>player makes black character on a whim
>party face
>demands he be illiterate
>entirety of campaign is now polluted with hip hop references and behavior
>only character to survive multiple campaigns and voluntarily retire

>not doing a trial session for new players to ensure that they aren't trolls
you kinda asked for it.

If it makes you feel any better, your story has become my go-to example of being on board with the game as intended:
>When playing Call of Cthulhu, you play investigators, you investigate, and you don't fuck off on a roadtrip to Miami for no reason.

... and?
Because I don't get your point. Without the context of the setting, type of scenarios you were running and other details, I've just imagined a campaign based on late 80s/early 90s action series, where bunch of not!mercs are doing cool stuff and help people in need.
And the character in such context sounds great.

See
Everybody needs to be on the same page.
If you all agree to plat a game with a goal, then it's not cool to spontaneously decide to ignore the goal.

>So either want to leave with some dignity intact or to keep the character alive for another adventure/party.
This isn't too terribly unreasonable, but then the player needs to quit playing or make a new character.
If you get tired of poker, you can fold and leave the game.
You don't demand everyone switch to gin rummy.
Players that expect the game to change from what was agreed upon, based on their whims, are problems.

>Everybody needs to be on the same page.
Different user and you are wrong.

It entirely depends on the game you are playing and your goals as both a player and a character.
I fail to see what's the problem with letting the guy quit. He wants to quit? Go on - let him. He just went out of the game and can't continue the ongoing scenario, on own demand. Why you shouldn't allow it, aside being an idiot that for whatever reason wants to force player into doing something he clearly don't want to and then throwing a tantrum.
There is a saying in my gaming circle. It fails to translate properly into English, but let's try it:
"The door is there".

>Why is it what your character would do ?
THIS

I have a houserule that if you can't stretch an excuse to justify why your character would reasonably do something, they don't do it.

Wait, wait, wait.
You are saying to me there are people who say "my character would/wouldn't do that" without in the same sentence saying "because X"?

>It fails to translate properly into English, but let's try it:
>"The door is there".
"There's the door." is a saying here too.

I think the language thing might be the source of confusion.
I am okay with a player quitting or a player retiring a character.
I am not okay with a character quitting but still playing.
As in, ignoring the eldritch investigation because it's spooky and instead expecting the GM to run a game of them goofing off and having fun misadventures in Miami.

Everybody *always* needs to be on the same page.
If you have a serious, lethal, tactical game and one player keeps pulling silly, random hijinks for laughs, it can be a problem.
If everyone agrees to play a lighthearted good versus evil fantasy game and one player keeps trying to push political ideas and issues and attempt to create edgy drama, it's a problem.
If all the players want to explore and seek treasure and combat and the GM wants them to solve a mystery full of political intrigue.

If the game is intended so that nobody works together and everybody works at cross purposes, then everyone needs to be onboard with that too.

Yup.

Although in my personal experience, it's only because the player has a great idea that they arrived at through metagaming, so we have to come up with a valid reason their character would do it.

>not exploring the inner struggle and thought process inside your character's head, that led to this situation, together with the rest of the table

I'll tell my story of when I said "It's what my character would do"
Our party of CN murder-heroes are desperately trying to save our dying world.
My CG char was the only good aligned char and although I had made some mistakes,
I was mostly a shining beacon of virtue compared to this fucked up world.
But because our party trying to save the world, it also meant we were in the spotlights.
So when I performed a minor breach of etiquette, I was dragged of to be sentenced to death.
My party did everything they could to stay my execution, enemies and rivals were dragged in to help me.
Bargains and pleas were made and after half a session of intense roleplay they got my sentence to a life of servitude.

>I would rather die than server in your army of evil! Draw your sword and we will settle this like men in a duel.
mfw his goons rip to pieces

The rest of the party just facepalmed.

>So it lead to the situation where honourable knight ended up slaying innocent people, because greedy mage in the party fucked up his extortion scheme
What's the problem exactly? This just means the knight is throwing his honor due to the company he keeps. Players are more important than characters.

Okay if you got fun that way, but to me it's like letting the guy who wants it most, win at poker every time, because players are more important than the game.

This reminds me of a Mage campaign where well, essentially the characters uncovered a huge corrupt conspiracy within their own order. They maneuvered to combat this, and then at some point shit went south, andd they were tribunal'd. The GM had PLANNED to not let this be the end of the campaign, just a low point before they recover. But it didn't turn out that way. The character was an outspoken man, and in front of the tribunal he accused his very judges of corruption in scathing words. He called the trial a fake and he said future generations would understand his actions and see how a good man had been broken by the corruption of the system.

He was totally right. Now they couldn't let him off easily either. He was de-maged and mindwiped. The other characters mostly dropped off the radar, and one other died fighting.

The point is, to everyone playing, the campaign and especially the end are still very memorable and cool.

"You have a great weekend in vegas until Azathoth pops every living thing on earth's brain with half-thought"

It doesn't give the funny word-play, that's why it translates badly.
>I am not okay with a character quitting but still playing.
Yeah, now it's crystal clear and the player was an idiot then.

But I still won't say people need to be on the same page. Play Paranoia. Seriously.
Even in other games you can easily have different goals as the party, hell, pulling pranks, and yet it will be a serious game, say, a post-apo die-back of humanity. The setting being serious doesn't mean you can't play as someone who laughs at it, be it a coping mechanism, a mental disorder or really finding it funny. Or the situation calling for it.

The only thing when players need to be on the same page is not doing retardation like the one you described, when they come to play scenario about X, but then realise in the middle of it that it doesn't suit them, so they derail the game.
But other than that - full variety and free will.

I've run recently a game where party had in the same time escaped slave with a grudge against the whole institution (duh) and a slave catcher. They knew about their background, hell, the slave catcher was taking every possible chance to capture "fresh meat". Half of the fun of the game came from them being at each other throat all the time and those two players definitely NOT working together, while rest of the party doing their own thing.
I guess then it's more about different people, different playstyle, but I really don't see the appeal of enforcing party unity or pulling self-censorship and other means like that so the party likes each other on the basic premise of consisting of PCs. One of the best ways of teaching your players to manage with that is running old-school stuff, where the party consist of, say, 5 PCs, and then there are another 8 NPCs in it, that aren't just a scenery dressing or hirelings.

But tabletops aren't poker. Poker is competitive, RPG's are not.

Not him, but have you ever heard about the concept of role-playing? When you are pretending to be a specific character, with own set of goals, morals and ethics?
And you are basically saying it's ok for a paladin to lay waste, because hey, other party member is in danger!

ily

...

It's a group game and if you didn't learn how to play nicely with everyone else in kindergarten, it's your own responsibility to make your character actually fucking workable

I think the difference between us is the motivation why we're at the table. To me, the character and his motivation which I came up with, is as important as the plot. It is my contribution to the story and within this space I have the right to meaningful choice to influence and drive the plot. I don't throw this away just to be able to roll dice against monsters - that's an afterthought. Dice rolling can be fun, but it's not mainly why I am at the table.

My group thinks the same, and we enable each other to do this, especially if it derails the plot, and forces it into an entirely new shape. We are able to be pissed at each other in-character only. In rare cases we can even kill each other in character without having bad blood between the players. And the GM respects our choices and we respect if the GM says: "Okay that's your choice - so now you die."

I'm with this guy, since it was originally my argument (the knight slaying innocents, because other player fucked up and dragged the party into own shit with "but muh party" argument). People don't have to work together and it can work wonders for the game. All it takes is everyone in the party knowing they are NOT obligated by anything but staying in-character to perform actions and making choices.

If I could I would have wriggled my way out of it. Lied, cheated, whatever.
But they were already pulling out the magical contracts and "obey or die" spells.
My character wasn't noble or above begging and groveling for her life.
But becoming a meat puppet to people that allow blood magic and the sacrifices of virgin girls is a bit too much.

Of course I'm not saying it's the only way to play. I am just saying I wouldn't want to miss it from my games.

No, I've never heard of role-playing, it's never been mentioned on this board. If any given character's "properties" or whatever don't match the situation the people at the table want it should just be edited.

You're missing the point. The only reason anyone is at the table is to partake in a team building exercise to strengthen community bonds, the dice and the narrative are just there for superfluous leisure entertainment that humans regrettably require for psychological stability.

The only true way to play tabletop RPG's is to sit at a round table and declare your allegience to the group until you believe it. The true role is your role in society, the true playing is living and the true game is the greater good. That's how we did it in kindergarten, it's how Gygax did it in kindergarten and it's always been the right way to play, you all are just degenerate imperialist pigdogs.

I hope you are just baiting.
I really fucking hope this is just a bait.

Because if you seriously thinking even third of this bullshit, then I wonder why the fuck you are even bothering with the hobby at all, rather than, you know, go and simply hang with your friends in a bar or take a slow stroll together and talk.
Are you by chance autistic, in literal, medical meaning? Or have some sort of social anxiety? I mean this fucking serious, not as an insult.

It's either clearly bait, or he is Hannibaccolo Lectervelli, grooming his personal cult via role playing. Chick warned us, but we didn't listen!

Sincerely, go play Settlers of Catan or Diplomacy. You are obviously performing a wrong form of group entertainment by playing tabletop RPGs, while you should be rather into a non-zero sum board games.

>When you know something game changing OOC but you play dumb at your own expense because that's what your character would do

How the fuck is TTRPG's a zero-sum game? What kind of a crowd of egoists do you have to surround yourself with for someone in the group to lose? Next you'll tell me your DM actually allows anyone to die unless it is by unanimous democratic consensus of the party!

Meanwhile, it never happend to me. Each and every time when players say "my character would never do that", they instantly switch to OoC (I always teach them to just lift their fist up to communicate things OoC) and provide reasoning in the same sentence. This usually happens when the group tries to do something or I fuck up things (this happens sometimes even if you know the characters and their story for months) and try to tempt with NPC a PC to do something.

Honestly, it's so natural to provide explaination why your PC wouldn't do something I never even though it's possible to just say so without providing explaination why

I guess reading comprehension is not your strong side

But at least we now all know you are just baiting.

>But the problem is - such approach, while the best one, also takes a fuckload of time, as you must dedicate about 3 days on doing nothing and first game is spend also on doing nothing "real"

This was going to be my reply to your post. Ain't no one got time to do 3 sessions just to figure out what the game is before the real shit even starts.

That amount of preparation is maybe okay if you plan to do a 1-2 year campaign. If you're doing a 1-4 evening one-shot, just throw em in the thick of it really.

>mfw nearly every character I play does this

Original user here and the point was about introduction of new players to the hobby and how often it's get totally mishandled by a GM due to own lazyness.
The sole point of demanding from players to come up with a character before the game, just so you can know what to expect and tailor a scenario is opening not just one can, but entire cargo container of worms in single decision. This is how power-gaming, low initiative, lack of ceativity and whoring starts. This is how plot tailored for the party becomes a standard for a group and makes things bland really fast.

Ironically, there is a much, much simplier solution for first game, while still having a script tailored for the party and situation:
Making a pool of characters yourself, as a GM. Players come it, are given already a character to pick (just make more characters than players) and you have a story that can accomodate said party. Each of them has a short background, too, so players know what their characters are like and know they must pretend something that is set in stone by the GM him/herself.
This way a win-win situation is achieved: the scenario is tailored for the characters, players aren't scared with character making or that their character will be "wrong", there is no enforced conformity between them and they can't exactly make a party that covers tactical paper-stone-scissors combo, as there is only a pool of the characters at hand.
And it doesn't take much work, unless you are a totally green GM yourself.

Why people are not doing this for zero session is a mystery for me. This solves so many fucking issues, without exactly railroading anything or enforcing on players (hence at least twice as many characters than players) and being super-friendly for newcomers.

Do not listen to this man, he is a cuck.

This is how I've made a decision yesterday during the game and only reinforced myself as the session unfolded to drop my current group and look for another one

GM created a specific scenario and asked as to provide a story. I've decided to play as a petty chief, leaving 4 wives and over 20 kids back home to earn a pretty penny for them, as the wives are spenditful like no other women. As the story unfolded, said family was taken into "custidy" by the duke sending us on quest and sending to our PCs a thinly veiled thread that either we continue to search for another artifact or our beloved ones are going to be stripped from the "protection" and left on their own
Which meant the main goal for my PC was to get to the duke ASAP, take the family and get the fuck out. You know, family man and all. Cue rest of the party, first in and then out of character chewing me from spoiling the adventure and doing stupid decisions ignoring interesting sidequests, just pushing to the court. To the point where when we take the brake they pretty much jumped on me for not wanting to play
By the end of the game I was so fucking tired of being both railroaded into going on that search (which was really poorly executed introduction to dungeon-crawling into a generic ancient tomb of evils) and the utter disrespect for character agency I was just sitting quiet for last hour, only doing absolute minimum of actions.
And it was especially annoying, because other players just shrugged, despite their homes being seized and families (at least for those that had families) captured, even if the quest started out a la Sorcerer: bunch of poor bastards doing suicidal mission to have money for their families and themselves to just survive

It's been almost a day and I still didn't fully processed that game session and what felt like betrayal of the supposedly well-embraced (so far) attitude that character agency will be going first and foremost in this campaign
Leaves really bitter aftertaste

If anything, that user provided the only good content in this thread, you fucking pleb.

>It's what my character would do
Within limits, this is reasonable, good, fine and dandy.

>My character has no reason to come with your party
Then let's create one together.

>mfw there is nothing outside of the city and the player wants to leave the fucking adventure
Either learn to improvise and get them back on track or just state outright that the player should find a reason to at least stay in touch witht he others.

>"my character doesn't know you, why would they heal you?"
Abandon ship. Fast

>because greedy mage in the party fucked up his extortion scheme and then started instantly hurling weak-ass spells into the crowd

Wow what a stupid fucktard. Why do these assmunches exist, again?

It was an introduction scenario. The mage in question was run by a power-gamer (which I've figured out in said introduction scenario and how his character was made and used) and he greatly over-estimated his power, under-estimated the sheer numbers of potential enemies and foremost, didn't exactly grasp when the grateful monks (western-style) offered as a quest reward provisions for the trip and a good word to other monasteries of their congregation (basically providing players with free lodging each time... if they of course didn't end up butchering inhabitants of the monastery and setting it on fucking fire in the end).
On the plus-side the player get eventually killed during said scenario AND dropped from the group, mad at everyone, but not himself. Meanwhile I've ended up with an useful tool in my hands, since the rest of the group did after all take part in said slaughter.

Someone post the screencap of the people that are supposed to stop an evil eldritch but they get sidetracked trying to legalize gay marriage in the kingdom.

Best GM reaction to derailment ever.

>session zero
>provide pool of character to pick
I feel dumb for never figuring it out myself.

But I'll definitely test it on the new group starting October, since it will be all made out of newfags to tabletops.

If your not playing with retards then there's nothing wrong with using that as an explanation why your char did something.

I participated in a campaign from the start and about 6-7 sessions in my character's own personal "arc" was over and there was no logical reason why he should follow the party any longer.

In another campaign I betrayed the party pretty early on and ran back to my true liege with an artifact I took from them.

As I said, if you do it well, it still works and you can just jump back in a couple sessions later with a new character when the time is right.

>Then let's create one together

This. I have a player who started out as a hermit who was thrown into the party by happenstance and slowly warmed up to everyone. They are now steadfast friends with the group. It can be done correctly.

There is, in and on itself, nothing wrong with playing a character that has no reason to stay with the party.

I know from experience that I tend to get bored with characters fairly quickly. Because of that, I often play characters that only have a short-term reason to travel with the party, such as conveniently traveling in the same direction at the same time or having a personal grudge with a minor villain. If my character wants to leave the party, he will, and if the party wants to kick him out, they will.

Lone wolves can definitely be done right, just probably not in the long run. The problem with lone wolf characters is that in "classical" D&D the idea of a party is so firmly rooted that lone wolf characters can pull whatever shit they want because they are PCs. It requires suspension of disbelief from the other players not to kick your character out of the party, you're doing it wrong. If you create a character at odds with the rest and it generates plot and drama, you're doing it right.

don't understand your dm at all. your backstory and that the family was in danger is an absolute great way for a character based side quest, especially important for character development. Either he could've do it on the fly or just be honest and told you that he wants to tailor some nice character quest for you in the coming session, atleast thats what I would've done

Sir Arthur, why are you surprised that my character would send in the Old Guard to reinforce La Haye Sainte? Wasn't that exactly how you planned to trap them?

Reminds me of when the GM was talking to a different GM about their sessions, and mentioned that the ring the paladin had was a ticking time bomb, I overheard, my character was tired of being shoved around by the paladin, of which thought "as a paladin I am the epitome of good will and all must follow my command.", so I mentioned it to every member of the group in secret, so we could split off from him just before the ring would explode, and it all happened because my character is an manlet asshole theif who will get information one way or another, and it is what he'd do.

upon discovering the fact that I'd tipped most the group off, the GM seemed mad, but decided to give my character an Inspiration bonus for how I pulled that off.

Okay, your character is going to die.
Anyone else want to die with him?
No? Good.

Make a new character.
Now on with the rest of the party.

Because if I turned away every player that didn't give me a proper backstory before the game, there would never be a game.

"My character doesn't feel motivated to follow the obvious campaign hook"

I recall there being a minor discrepancy when my free spirited cheeky rogue girl chastised the "LG" monk of our group for brutally murdering an injured, unconcious and unaware bug man creature.

He found it in this sort of pod in this bizarre alien ship and just ripped it out and started mashing his face in. My character was (rightfully) disappointed.

He's DMing since May, so I guess this is lack of experience... but then again he's playing for almost 6 years now, so I'm not sure what the hell happend.
Either way, it's a past now and I'm looking for a new group

>I'm playing with lazy fucks, but rather than changing my group, I endure their shitty behaviour
Unless you are living in Nowhere, Kansas, population 153, you should look for new players right the fuck now.

That's perfectly reasonable excuse, user. Just off the top of my head:
- a greedy merc not willing to go on a "feel good" mission to help people in need for free
- a paladin/paladin-like character not going on a grave robbing expedition
- a priest not fighting members of own religion
- a bard not feeling ok with going into a fucking battle
And so on and forth.

But it doesn't matter how reasonable the excuse is if it's fucking the game up.

You can be the greedy mercenary not willing to go on a feel good mission to help people for free, but allow your fucking character to be convinced to go along. Whether by the party members, whether by a moment of "hey, maybe I can try and be a better person", whether by realising there's probably an opportunity to score some free gear and you can try and take more than your share because the other characters are such goody-two-shoes that'd do this for free so don't expect any rewards, and so on.

Or you can just be a pain in the ass and go "nope, my character wouldn't get involved because of this reason, and I'm not willing to think of a reason why they would get involved". Don't be a cunt, you're playing a character in a social game with other people, there's got to be a bit of give and take.

>The game as such is more important than character agency and role-playing aspects
Didn't we have a discussion about it already in this very thread?

Have it ever occured to you that NOT all adventures are suitable for all sorts of characters, or you were too busy playing the game with the "because that's what the game is about" attitude to bother noticing?

If a character is not motivated for doing something, WHY it should be done? Provide a REASONABLE explaination, rather than "because there will be no game". It's not about being a cunt. It's about role-playing. When I'm playing a paladin, I won't for sure band together to go burn down a temple and kill everyone inside so a strip-mining operation can start there. Even if it's perfectly in motivation for the rest of the group.
It's that fucking simple.

>ITT: People who have never been possessed by the characters
You know, in those situations you can't be held responsible of your body actions, just saying.

This.

I fucking hate this prevailing attitude of "it doesn't matter what character I play, because in the end we are a group of murderhobos and the background was written just because the GM asked for it". If that's how you approach the hobby, why don't you just switch for battle games?
But then again, I'm blessed with GM that does take consequences when people go against their own backstory, job and previous actions.since it's part of the core rules of the system we are using. If you act against your character motivation, you end up with less exp by the end of scenario. Meaning the possible gains of breaking character are not going to make up for the loss of exp, no matter how you count it. So either you role-play through the character you've made, or you quickly end up as a total push-over.

What's the system?

But we don't run the default setting, since we all agreed it's trash.
Instead of aligment or bullshit like that, you set up values for your character, from the most to least important. Makes extremely elastic system and when combined with story easy to judge by GM in a fair and transparent way, so nobody is "cheated".

Unless your party consists entirely from "chaotic neutral" (huge quotation marks) "adventurers" and nobody gives a single fuck about roleplaying through anything else than going from quest to quest, this is singlehandly the worst possible approach to RPG.
And if said party is as described, then congratulations, you have all-murderhobo party.

Thats fine as long as you accept that the consequences are what the universe would do

>If a character is not motivated for doing something, WHY it should be done? Provide a REASONABLE explaination, rather than "because there will be no game".

Because the Greedy Merc is talked by the other characters into it, because he knows it'll store up some good-will, because he'll probably be able to get the lion's share of the loot, and so on. Yes, the reason why you (the player!) are doing this is to keep the game going, because you (the player!) are the one controlling the character, and you (the player!) want to play a game. The character does not exist outside of your control, and it's behaviours - all of them - are controlled by you, the player. You're not a slave to the motivations you've made up for your character.

Now in the Paladin example; the party wants to go and burn down the temple. Don't band together and go burn down the temple and kill everyone - roleplay talking to your party and trying to convince them that this is not the best course of action. Presumably they're operating on the same rules of "if this is obviously going to cause problems for the game, maybe we should allow characters to come to some sort of compromise" and some good roleplay might come from it.

Because when you (the player!) say "it's what my character would do!", you have stopped roleplaying and started trying to hold your game to ransom.

So basically your entire argument boils down "If you forget character agency, you can go on the ADVENTURE, WEEEEE!"

And budging into the second part of your reply:
We've been over in this very thread.
Twice.
Read up.

>You're not a slave to the motivations you've made up for your character
Only that you are. That's the whole fucking point of role-playing, you stupid cunt.

>So basically your entire argument boils down "If you forget character agency, you can go on the ADVENTURE, WEEEEE!"

This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with character agency.

It's about acknowledging that what you're here to do is "play a game (ideally with friends)" and decisions that you take as a player that make it less likely you're going to play a game with your friends should be made carefully.

This doesn't just apply to you, it applies to everyone at the table. The guy who says "my Paladin won't go with you and I'm not budging because that's what my character would do!" is fucking up just as much as the guy who says "my character is burning down the temple and I'm not budging because that's what my character would do!".

This is bait... right?

Jesus, son, what kind of rock you were under for past 40 years?
It's 2017. You "act" as if it was still 1977