This will be an unusually brief post, inspired by Johnn’s reprise of his hits-and-misses when it came to his 2009 resolutions, which you can read here, and by the fact that this post will appear on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

It all revolves around some thoughts I had while pondering the question:

Why do people make the same New Year’s Resolutions year after year?

Reasons for failure

There are many possible reasons for the failure to fulfill a Resolution, leading to it being listed again and again on someone’s “to do” list.

• Some are meant frivolously, and are treated that way by the people making them.
• Others fail because priorities change in response to outside events.
• I’m sure that people lose interest in them sometimes, and that can also be a valid reason for the failure.
• Sometimes, fulfilling another Resolution takes so much time and effort that something we had previously achieved goes by the wayside, so it has to be listed to do all over again.
• And it’s not all that uncommon for resolutions to depend on outside factors that the maker has no control over, or for a resolution to be completely impractical.

It’s when we get to resolutions that the person is both serious about, and capable of achieving, that things get more interesting.

• Sometimes, what we’re talking about are low-priority tasks that don’t get fulfilled because other (more interesting) activities distract the person making the resolution.
• Sometimes, the unexpected forces a deferment of the fulfillment, but when that happens repeatedly, we have to start looking at the previous answer with suspicion.
• Sometimes, the person making the resolution severely underestimates the difficulty or inconvenience that’s involved in keeping the resolution.
• And sometimes, the person simply has no willpower for the keeping of the resolution – they make it as a promise to themselves because they think it’s expected of them, with every intention of actually fulfilling it, but they don’t really want to do whatever it is.

Three Types of Resolution

To my mind, there are three types of resolution. These are the ought-to-do’s, the self-improvement, and activity resolutions.

Ought-to-do’s are Resolutions that are something the person thinks they ought-to-do, or ought-to-want-to-do. These are trivial and meaningless because they are never backed by serious intent.

Self-improvement Resolutions are a statement of intent to change something about yourself or your habits. It might be to lose weight, or learn to speak publicly, or whatever.

And Activity Resolutions are a statement of intent to do something more often, or do something less often, or begin or complete or at least further some particular activity or objective. It doesn’t matter whether the goal is to eat fewer peanuts or write the Great American Novel, but it’s some concrete and objective task whose progress can be monitored. It might take minutes or all year long to achieve.

Note the difference between the latter two types – the objective might be to lose weight (by whatever methods are necessary) or they might be a specific goal (eat less cake) whose health benefits are a side issue.

Character’s Resolutions

At this time of year, I’m often tempted to ask players what their Character’s “New Year’s Resolutions” are – and, equally importantly, if they fail, which of the above will be the reason they expect to put forward, if speaking honestly.

Like all such questions, the actual answers don’t matter a whole lot (though GMs can use the information as a resource in planning scenarios during the year); the real value comes from having another tool to get inside the head of a character.

The question applies equally to NPCs, of course.

The Virtues Of The Question

In fact, it serves a quadruple benefit to whoever answers it; not only does the question itself define an objective of the character, and offers an insight into the character’s thinking, it helps to define what the character considers important, and – by implication – describes what the character percieves as a fault or flaw in themselves or their lives at the current time. In an NPC, being able to key all of that to the answers to two simple questions makes it enormously quicker and easier to define the NPCs personality succinctly.

That’s a lot of soup to get from such bare and simple bones.

But why stop there? Every organisation has plans and objectives – “New Years’ Resolutions”, if you will – that they want to achieve. Some realistic, some pie-in-the-sky, some with detailed action plans already in hand, and some waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

I know some players and GMs don’t take such questions seriously, and that’s fine; but if that’s the case, why not try it sometime and see if it rewards you?

Have a safe, prosperous, and happy 2010, everyone.