Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
RPG's with bare bones stories (and games in general), whose sole purpose is to build your characters stats and abilities bore me to no end. There's nothing to compel you to play the game except a desire to build up your character over time, which doesn't interest me by itself. I'm the sort of person who doesn't just want a good story with characters who are interesting and actually have personality, I pretty much need it to make me want to play. It gives me an ultimate goal in terms of increasing my characters stats. For me, the overall story and it's ultimate conclusion is the payoff to building up my characters since I want to see what happens next. I can't stand building a character and exploring for the sole sake of building a character and exploring.
This is my sentiments exactly. The real problem I have with "Traditional" D20 style American Rpgs is not only the total lack of motivation but the fact it removes the one thing that makes the D20 games so damn fun. A human element. A good D20 game will play like a table top version of a JRPG. Because you usually create characters that can truly intereact with the world, and GM usually makes the characters have important roles within the story itself. You literally create your own world.

The player will remember the wonderful characters you created and how they interacted well with the world and story the GM created. Your basically writing a story with a set of game mechanic rules (hell Record of the Lodoss War was adapted from a D20 game the creators played). Most western rpg's just can't reproduce this very well. There are a few exceptions but nothing really groundbreaking to say the least.

I generally don't play games like Morrowind, Eternal Darkness, and Baldur's Gate cause to me, it would be more fun to just get some friends together and play some good ol' D&D. But that's just my opinion...