An OCEAN of Personality Traits

The OCEAN theory of personalities gauges five criteria:

Openness

Interest in new ideas or different points of view.

Conscientiousness

Placing value on doing what needs to be done.

Extroversion

Attraction to other people and social situations.

Agreeableness

General likability, without implying leadership quality.

Neuroticism

Susceptibility to emotional hurt.

I have no idea whether this is even remotely scientific (although it seems a heck of a lot more plausible than Meyers-Briggs), but it occurs to me that you could use these to cobble up NPC personality types using a 2d6 scale and rating each aspect from two to twelve. If an event occurs (a PC-NPC interaction, for example) that looks like it would strain or test one of these aspects, roll 2d6: if the result is under, the NPC behaves according to the definition of the aspect. If it is over, they violate that behavior.

When rolling for a quick personality, however, it makes more sense simply to set three aspects at seven (not outstanding one way or the other), and select two to be Roll 1d5 to get first aspect, then 1d4 (and skip the one you already selected) to determine a second aspect. For each, determine if this aspect is high or low. Since average aspects are, well, average, you'll want to come up with a different distribution for the other two.

A neat co-incidence appears when you take away the three middling values of a 2d6 roll (6, 7, and 8): there remain exactly twenty dice combinations. Ergo, you can roll 1d20 for the two aspects, and consult the following chart:

d20	Equivalent 2d6
1	2
2-3	3
4-6	4
7-10	5
11-14	9
15-17	10
18-19	11
20	12

A result of 2 through 5 is Low, 9 through 12 is high. 2 and 12 are extremes, but the following charts only take into account whether the result is Low or High.

High - High correlations:

Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Extroversion	Neuroticism	x
Polite	x	x	x	Conscientiousness
Lively	Bossy	x	x	Extroversion
Sychophantic	Obessive/Compulsive	Volatile	x	Neuroticism
Empathetic	Curious	Un-filtered	Sensitive	Openness

Low - Low correlations:

Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Extroversion	Neuroticism	x
Boorish	x	x	x	Conscientiousness
Glum	Whiny	x	x	Extroversion
Cruel-hearted	Sociopathic	Self-sufficient	x	Neuroticism
Secretive	Shifty	Unnoticeable	Single-minded	Openness

High - Low correlations:

Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Extroversion	Neuroticism	x
Smarmy	x	x	x	Conscientiousness
Aloof	Sedate	x	x	Extroversion
Charming	Diligent	Amiable	x	Neuroticism
Diplomatic	Driven	Sly	Anti-social	Openness

Low - High correlations:

Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Extroversion	Neuroticism	x
Dour	x	x	x	Conscientiousness
Pugnacious	Reckless	x	x	Extroversion
Obnoxious	Lost	Asocial	x	Neuroticism
Pessimistic	Flighty	Observant	Calm	Openness

This gives us the following 40 possible traits:

Aloof

Pleasant when engaged with, but not seeking attention.

Amiable

Easy to get along with, dislikes conflict.

Anti-social

Not necessarily hateful, but doesn't like people.

Asocial

Doesn't seek company of others; is likely to take offense at imagined insults.

Boorish

Blames everyone for his/her problems; causes most of them.

Bossy

Has firm ideas and tries to enlist others to enact them.

Calm

Engaged, to the limit of their intellectual capacity, with others' ideas.

Charming

Likeable, if not inspiring. Can be a clown, or a true leader.

Cruel-hearted

Dislikes people; tries to assert dominance by hurting others.

Curious

Fascinated by philosophies, but has firm ideas of his/her own.

Diligent

Unafraid of hard work and long study.

Diplomatic

Tries to sway others to his/her point of view, tries not to be swayed.

Dour

Hard-working, resentful of those who look like they're having a good time.

Driven

Centered on a goal. Does not stray far from that center.

Empathetic

Able to see and feel others' ideas and emotions.

Flighty

Will agree to things that others say, but not stay true to their ideas.

Glum

Down on the world, and the people in it.

Lively

Up on the world, and the people in it.

Lost

Tries many things, rarely if ever sees a project through to completion.

Obessive/Compulsive

Like Driven, is centered on an idea, but may not know why.

Obnoxious

Loud at gatherings, but quick to take offense.

Observant

Sees the world of people mostly from the outside.

Pessimistic

Sees the down side of everything. Thinks they're doing people a favor by this.

Polite

Sees manners as a way to grease the wheels of social interaction.

Pugnacious

Willing to get into fights just to prove some ephemeral point.

Reckless

Thrill-seeking. Wants an audience, or co-conspirators.

Secretive

Doesn't like people asking questions about them. Their secrets are usually petty.

Sedate

Mindful of own business, and persistent at it without getting heated up.

Self-Sufficient

Keeping to oneself.

Sensitive

Wildly romantic and imaginative, but prone to mood swings.

Shifty

As untrusting of others as others should be of them.

Single-minded

Like driven, but less focused on action and more on simple faith.

Sly

Likeable, but slick.

Smarmy

A yes man, but not trustworthy.

Sociopathic

Willing to take from others, and living by an obvious double standard.

Sychophantic

Wants to be liked. Agrees to anything as a result.

Un-Filtered

Says whatever's on their mind, even if inappropriate.

Unnoticeable

Tries to be self-sufficient; may or may not succeed.

Volatile

Friendly one moment, ready to snap the next, something else the next.

Whiny

Sees no value in people who don't agree with them; never sure what they really think.

cheers,
Adam

Treasure Finders, but not Treasure Keepers?

If we assume that the g.p. = x.p. equation can be hand-waved away by saying that the challenge in finding/retreiving the treasure is figured into the value, the question still remains: at what point do those x.p. accrue? There are three obvious places:

1. When the treasure is found. Open up the treasure chest and bang! -- you get the x.p. It was hard to find, and you fought or outwitted the guardian or traps that protected it, so now you get the benefit.
2. When the treasure is taken out of the dungeon. The rationale behind this is that part of the difficulty with treasure is hauling it all out, so you can't really say the equation has been balanced until that happens.
3. When you spend the treasure in a character-appropriate way. This seems to be a new-ish idea, coming out of the OSR in the last couple of years. This runs into the "Brewster's Millions" problem, where the players have to find ways to spend them, rather than, say, hiding it in their own vault or investing it somehow.

The first one has a hidden side-effect: since you don't actually need to remove the treasure, there's less incentive to rationalize why, in a quest to stop the ravening horde from descending on the city, you need to stop and pick up every coin you see. I.e., less incentive to play "murder hobos", even while retaining the old-school formula for x.p.

This occurred to me while playing the latest Tomb Raider videogame. Lara Croft is on some expedition on a Japanese island, something something Sun Goddess, something something Chosen One--the story isn't particularly new, and video game dialogue and acting has yet to thrill me. But as she zips around the island, fighting off cultists and drawing nearer to the certain Final Showdown, she can raid various "tombs" (a term used as loosely as tabletop gamers use "dungeon") to find the various artifacts they contain. Although she does, in fact, take them (and gets x.p. for them, and points for "cargo"), they have little effect on the game after that point. Certainly not in terms of encumbrance. She may as well never have touched them.

Of course, x.p. here has less effect than it does in a tabletop game, but the idea struck me that this could be a way to have the best of both worlds, by having character-driven labors and story-derived challenges, and still being able to account for x.p. in the tidy, old-fashioned way.

cheers, Adam