...As a fan of Star Trek you'll find no argument from [me] about 'character development' being necessary for a story, Star Trek is a show about ideas, it's about the interplay of philosophies and how men and women of reason deal with problems, that said if a character from Star Trek doesn't change after years on the frontier of space, that's development in itself, it takes a lot of effort not to change too...
I had hoped to use this as an example of how character arcs are not the same as character development or how a character changing over the course of a story isn't the same as a character arc.
I wouldn't say a story about characters necessarily needs character development. Unless by "story about characters" one specifically means "a story about how a person changes/hero's journey". Otherwise? Imo it should be on case-on-case basis (this character is forever changed by certain events, the other has stable personality and remains mostly the same).
What you're describing is like a Jim Jarmusch film, or certain slice-of-life narratives. John McClane, James Bond, and Captain Kirk are (in most cases) characters whose stories are about overcoming challenges with their character unscathed, a perfectly valid character arc. I would also avoid equating emotional trauma with changes in character, that might be what turns you off but its hardly a big part of genre fiction, which I think it's safe to say most RPGs qualify as.
Yes, this is something I've thinking about a lot. The Protagonist Spectrum (as I call it). I'm actually planning a long post on it in the context of BG3, though it probably won't be soon, haha. (Procrastination...)
Look forward to it, this topic is very much what interests me about videogame storytelling. I was personally let down by the interesting direction Larian took wtih DOS:II with multiple characters with their own storylines and character traits, but none of them really went far enough to feel either like a character you seriously effected, or as a character with a compelling story you're 'diving' through.
