D&D 4e character perks?

Nimoy

I'm getting ready to DM a game for a group of my friends who have played very few pen and paper style games. I've introduced to them to this kind of game before and while they enjoyed it, it was very hard for me to get them to think of their characters as anything more than mindless weapons.

This time I'm thinking I want to give them an incentive to giving their characters a more distinct personality by attaching mechanical advantages to a list of broad traits they can choose from. Is there a source book that already includes something along these lines or maybe some home brewed rules in a forum out there I can use?

Esh

I know the Forgotten Realms book has country of origin based perks/traits. They should be in the Character Builder program. Do you use that? It will also have a ton of other things from Dragon and all the other sourcebooks.

You might try asking in the Dungeons & Dragons thread over in Critical Failures. They'd have a much better idea and they're really active in there.

Terrendos

Esh is referring to Backgrounds, an optional benefit you can provide to a character. In general, let the players pick something notable about their character's backstory, and give them

An additional choice for their class skills that's related
A +3 bonus to skill checks involving that skill
A proficiency with a weapon relating to that backstory

So for example, perhaps Yelthor the Half-orc Fighter used to be a woodcutter. You could let him take Nature as a trained skill, give him a +3 bonus to Nature checks, or give him proficiency with an Executioner's Axe for free.

Other than that, you can check out the Dark Sun Campaign Guide for information about Themes. Some feats offer perk-like bonuses, too. But if you really want to get your players to roleplay, try giving small attack bonuses when a player describes their character's attack really well, or experience rewards at the end of session to the person(s) most in character that night.

Hahnsoo1

While the more recent incarnations of DnD (both 3/3.5 and 4th edition) lend themselves to combat-oriented play compared to other RPG systems (and that's part of the appeal!), it's definitely more dependent on the gaming group than the rules involved. Maybe the group really likes the combat-oriented play and the mindless weapons that they push/draw on battlemat. In my experience as a GM, you can't really force anyone to invest themselves in their characters. It happens spontaneously based on the situations that you present, and if it doesn't happen, that's okay, too.

The "game" portion of "role playing game" is sometimes the most entertaining aspect. In the past, I made scenarios in my campaigns where there is a choice of combat or no combat, no matter what the threat, to gauge how my PCs are feeling about combat in general. If they choose combat every time, then it's pretty clear that they enjoy the combat and prefer that sort of play. If they choose combat, but give character justifications for the combat, they might be more amenable to less combat in the game. My current gaming group typically avoids combat as much as possible, oddly enough, but then again we all have been playing Shadowrun for years (where all-out combat is often the option of last resort).

If you do a background system which gives incentives for a background story, I wouldn't look at a big list of traits or force your players to do so. Instead, I would do it more organically, following a set of flexible set of guidelines (similar to what Terendos is saying). Or, you can set down guidelines for giving bonuses for character development to encourage writing up backstories, etc. In my gaming group, we give a small bonus to earned experience for posting drawings, character stories, backgrounds, etc, and it seems to be a really good incentive for doing extra work to making the character their own.