As soomeone whose experience has led me to meet more famous people than
most of you on this list, I think that a very high percentage of successful
people are minimaxing powergamers about the things they care about. They
focus their attention continually on one thing. That is, Jimmy Hendrix
hardly spent 10 minutes without a guitar in his hand, Ed Koch barely
spent 10 minutes on anything but politics, Donald Trump sees everything as
a game with money and fame as the goal, and so on. Very few people have
the single-mindedness that a majority of famous people have. So if players
in your game are genuinely playing someone who wants to be a ruler, or a
great religious leader, or the savior of the tribe, or a great warrior, the
fact that their characters are not very complex does not mean that they
are not properly role-playing them. I have met some rich and famous
entertainers, politicians, intellectuals and businessmen who are very
complex, but, in fact, most of them are rather more simple (I do NOT
mean stupid) than most people. The character of Manuel in that
wonderful novel by James Branch Cabell, Figures of Earth, is a close
approximation of that of many successful politicians. Remember what
Francois Mitterand said was the requirement of a successful leader:
"indifference." Jim Chapin
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #418
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html