People are more rounded/complicated than the basic idea that I''ve put forth, but I think this idea would help in making characters in a game closer to that reality - even if it''s tunneling them into another stereotype, at least they are not motivated to be mindless killing machines. (I think this is starting to tie into some of the other threads
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When I do stuff that goes well with my world view, I will be more motivated to improve myself, while if I do something against my world view, I will not be motivated, and could sink into a depression, etc. For example, I am very much against stealing, and if I were forced into a situation where I had to do that, I would not be trying to get better at doing what I was doing, and that would probably affect other areas of my life as well.
And yes, I am looking at this as a mechanism for skill advancement - possibly being tied into another system. An alternative was applying traits to the character, that would affect their abilities/gameplay in a variety of ways and be determined by their behaviour/motivations.
I feel that it is sort of like an alignment system, but coming from a different angle. It is not a question of good or evil, law or chaos, it is a question of following your own personal goals/desires. I think that this would be applicable to any setting, be it fantasy, science fiction, or modern, multi-player or single player. The original game idea that inspired this was not even an RPG... Perhaps this is part of the reason for the over-simplification/exageration of personality.
This is an attempt to change the fundamental dynamic of gameplay - hopefully giving characters more depth. By using a reward system for the appropriate behaviour, the player will {hopefully} be encouraged to identify with their character more, and really play out the personality they have chosen. By not penalizing this will allow for greater depth of personality, a character can make that other choice without a noticable penalty. If they do it all the time, however, it will become noticable - a sort of penalty for going too far against the personality by denying reward. The idea is to expand the possibilities, not limit them. Hope that makes some sense.
Another way of saying this, is why reward the behaviour we don''t want? If we want players to "roll-play" then reward them for doing so, but if we want them to "role-play" then that is what should be rewarded.
And thanks for the great discussion so far
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-pwd