As we know, a great many people play RPGs to win. And that's fine - despite them generally not being fixed, it is nonetheless true that almost all RPGs have some sort of goal or win condition: you want to complete the adventure, or you want to level up, or whatever. Even a totally plotless dungeon crawl is motivated by the "kill things and take their stuff" approach - where the goal is XP and GP.
But this can lead to a fundamental misunderstanding: that an RPG should be a basic power-fantasy and that nothing bad should ever happen to your character.
And so, the PC is carefully crafted to have no weaknesses, to be immune to all attacks, or have a super-high AC, or whatever else.
But this post isn't about that.
This post is about the other thing that tends to happen: the PC who has the carefully crafted background so that he has absolutely no ties to anything. In the extreme case, he's an amnesiac orphan with absolutely no ties to anything or anybody. Because if the character has any ties, the GM can and will use those ties to attack the character and, by extension, the player.
(And, in fairness, there's no shortage of GM's who will do precisely that, and will do it precisely to get at the player. Unfortunately, player and GM pathologies seldom come about in isolation - they usually feed on one another.)
The big problem with the amnesiac orphan, though, is the problem with Baldrick's story in "Blackadder". (For those who don't know: "Once upon a time, there was a little sausage called Baldrick, and he lived happily ever after." Also, shame on you!)
The problem is this: the character has no motivation, which means nothing ever happens, which means it's just dull.
For the sake of a good story, it's really rather better if the PC does have those ties. Because those ties provide motivation, and that motivation gets the character moving and on to his adventures. Better still, with those motives in place, the adventures are personal - they reflect something about the character, which makes for more involved play and better storytelling.
And that's why Wolverine, who is in fact literally an amnesiac orphan, is very quickly linked up with Rogue, who he takes under his wing, then to Jean Grey (love interest), Cyclops (romantic rival), and Professor X (father figure) - five ties that then serve to drive the character's story forward.
(And, indeed, in the otherwise-poor "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", he's tied further to a brother, several friends in a mercenary crew, and Striker. It's the same deal - give the character ties to give the character motivations, in order to drive the story.)
Ultimately, though, I think this is about mindset. As I noted above, one of the reasons for avoiding those ties is the fear that the GM may use those ties to attack the character, and by extension the player.
But I think this is a case where it's actually best to draw a bright dividing line between the two. This is a case where, for the benefit of the player, we probably want bad things to happen to the character. Indeed, those bad things aren't an attack on the player; they're better thought of as being the character being "charged up", all ready to spring into action and do cool stuff.
(There is, of course, a corollary to this: the GM should be sure to target those "bad things" in such a way that they do charge up the character, rather than knocking him down. "The bad guy has grafted adamantium plating on to all your bones" is rather better in this regard than "the bad guy has chopped all your limbs off, and now you are helpless"! As I said, GM and player pathologies tend to grow together.)
So, then, my advice for the "better player" would be to make sure to pay some attention to what can and does motivate your character to adventure: is it ties to one or more NPCs? Is it some principle that the character just can't let lie? Something else? (Ideally, your character would have several possible motivations. But, really, it comes down to this: the question "why should I go on this adventure?" should always have an answer.)
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