Personality Mechanics: Genre Conventions

Now that I've covered the downsides of Personality Mechanics, I thought I'd look at a couple of the upsides. One of the reasons given for having them at all is to represent the genre being played. That people should be afraid in horror, or be influenced in political intrigue.

I'm of the opinion that players should role-play such things, because that's really the point of a role-playing game in the first place, and that any mechanical system will restrict that range of role-play and wreck the players internal model of both the character and the world.

Some genres however are a tid bit different. Settings such as Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands- the Weird West, and Dark Heresy are about creatures and threats that may well not just be frightening- they may actually on a psychic level induce terror and shatter minds. An actual metaphysical attack every bit as real as any physical one.

Thus any result that breaks with the player's model of the character can be viewed in the same light as any outside mind control- it broke the model because it in-game broke the model. This is far more acceptable to me than a mechanic intended to in effective role-play my character for me.

Of the three examples, Deadlands provides the best system both for the fact that it offers a range of results that vary by the 'level' of the threat, and for a good number of Edges and advancement options that allow experienced characters to overcome these attacks much like experienced characters can overcome physical ones. Dark Heresy shares some of these although not to the same extent, while CoC provides little help in this area.

Making the Personality Mechanic external to the character removes much of the sting. Allowing in-game methods to defeat the Mechanic completely overturns it, making it a true force for the character to combat and defeat.

So not all PMs are actually PMs, and not all of them are bad. It depends upon the setting and the use.