Roles You Play?

[Allan53]

So, I've noticed in the groups I play with that people tend to fall into the same 'roles' ,regardless of their character. I, for example, almost always end up playing "the good guy" who tries to do the right thing. Oddly enough, this happens even if I try to play a more dubious character, but since they need to have some value to be interesting, that always seems to end up where they are. Another player often plays combat-powerhouses from noble/wealthy backgrounds, and often takes the role of plot-pusher, largely due to his knowledge of the canon (our group doesn't really alter canon very much, much though I'd personally prefer otherwise).

How about you? Do you tend to fall into certain roles in your games, or play certain character types?

[thedonnie]

I tend to end up being the paladin of the party. You know, the white knight that is insanely good at combat. But, if we have that, then I can ease back and I get to play the sly manipulator. Now, someone I play with always seems to like to play the genius crafter (by crafting, I mean the person who creates gadgets, magic items, so forth and so on). We also have another person who likes to play the guy who plays characters that just lurk, which is odd since he is not like that when we are not at the table.

[cerealkiller]

I tend towards characters that are paranoid and over thinkers. Mostly because I'm paranoid and an over thinker I just transplant that part of my thinking into a character concept which allows me to fall into the role better )I've done this role for everything from ex-kgb agent who was a consultant, to current Green Beret, to investment banker, to biochemist hunter looking for a cure to lycanthropy [obviously real werewolves]).

However, I rotate between Jekyll and Hyde mentally due to BPD type 2 and when I start going into hypomanic areas I get even more paranoid and put away my soft fun toy and break out Chief. Chief has actually become kind of an urban legend in our gaming group. I played him the first time I played nWoD and based him off of Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest but he's evolved since then. He's a Bruja vampire in nWoD with max dots in berserking and Brute Force fighting styles and protean 4. He is also part of Belials' Brood (even though GMC didn't update them at all and actually made most of the investments useless with the new protean). Chief has been credited thus far with: The destruction of the entire United states, Destroying Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, beatin a cop to death with an empty magazine from a handgun, single handedly killing the entire Ventrue population in Central Florida and accidentally summoning an Eldritch Horror in place of a demon. I don't bring him in unless the ST requests and its the end of a chronicle. He's basically just a plot device at this point but when players see him they know something big is going to happen and he's helped shape our gaming groups personal metaplot. There are a few other things that have done the same (such as the TF:V cell all named after characters from Reservoir Dogs or Crompton the promethean.

[Papa Bear]

"The Unpredictable Guy"

Maybe he's got a bad temper and will fly off the handle at the oddest things.

Or maybe he's been really quiet this whole time, not showing off his skills much, then pulls something out of his ass and saves the day.

Or maybe he's been seeming to be a little whipping boy of someone, then the Guy turns up dead with the whipper as the primary suspect, but then he's not really dead and no one has any clue how he pulled that off but the STs.

One of the reasons my circle of friends insisted that I ST all the time was because they got a little tired of me pulling off stuff they weren't prepared for and wanted to see that skill put to good use.

[Shadowflame]

The "druid." Primarily a loner and as a result tries to be the jack of all trades capable in most situations. And godly at higher levels.

[ArcaneArts]

In terms of mechanical play style, I tend towards support roles or mobile offensive types, but that's not what we're talking about.

The Alien Stoic

Not necessarily alien as in physically outsider, but I have a tendency to play the person who brings the foreign mentality to games. Whether it's just playing a Indian in a group predominantly of European characters or being the only spirit/demon in the room, I play the one who's clearly got the strange outlook. I can play funny aliens- hell, one of my favorite characters is a familiar of a mage, and I took LSD with another mage and try to put out a fire in our minds by flooding the mansion we were in, and that's just one hi-jink. But in a strange turn of events, my aliens tend to get battered into positions where they do become the stoic if I don't emphasize that to a certain degree to begin with. Still, these characters tend to be analysts and effective as a result of their sight, if their skewed perspective doesn't get in the way.

The Moral Heart, But Not For The Sake of Morality

It's weird, but my most moral characters have also been among my most selfish characters, I just realized. Namely it's because they wrap up their morality in perceptions of them or because they have larger issues where their selfishness lines up with doing the right thing. But however you swing it, I tend to be the one who asks if what the group is doing is right while not caring about morality itself. It's always circumstantial reasoning, and it's interesting for me to find out why these sorts of characters end up how they end up caring about right and wrong without actually giving a damn. These characters tend to be quick with tempermental issues, I've realized.

It's a little hard to properly map out mine-they've been decently varied-but those are the two commonalities in terms of persona that pop up most frequently. Sometimes they mesh-my favorite character was as alien as you can get(For those who read the Two Become One Thread in Ascension, I played my killer), and all kinds of screwed-up...and at the end of the day still managed to be more moral than the rest of the group. She was funny too!

[Sorwen]

Jedi. I tend to play some caster with a sword. It was after I had been playing TT games for many years that it suddenly struck me that is exactly what I was doing. I would stray from that a bit, but never for long. Damn you Lucas. Well for that and the "Enhanced" movies...and Jar Jar...and Midi-chlorians...and.....

The moral of the story is watch what your children watch at 3 because it actually can affect them even after they are 40.

[Just John, Forever...]

I am known (by those who game with me, at least) for having diverse characters and for roleplaying them all very differently from each other (irony of this post: two characters I've played regularly over the past 2-3 years -- one of whom I originally made/played around 25 years ago -- are somewhat similar in temperament and only require a little shifting between playing them; I did this, though, because we had been playing two games on our gaming day each month -- an "A" game and "B" game, as it were -- and it minimized having to change mindsets/roleplaying in the few minutes that usually separated sessions). However, one internal point that has been consistent with me since I started gaming over 30 years ago is that a character's weaknesses, limitations, drawbacks, obstacles and personal challenges have always been much, much, much more interesting to me than their strengths, advantages and perks. In that respect, I always play characters who have various Achilles' Heels, troubled pasts, or some facet of themselves that needs to be overcome (or learned to be lived with/accepted over time). Sometimes these things are obvious and "simple" (Drea's need to consume 5 gallons of water/fluid everyday, lest her internal energies begin to erode/weaken her; Ah'Brahnt's metaphysical inability to harm any living entity -- not a metaphysical *prohibition*, but an actual *inability*... literally, no action he ever makes is capable of harming a living being, and if it would "normally" occur as such, by accident, the action is altered to accommodate the modified reality, or Ah'Brahnt simply vanishes back into the ether before the action takes place; Starguard's constant, low-level radiation that he emits, even with his containment cybernetics, making it impossible for him to be around ordinary people for anything more than a brief period of time; Joshie's Malkavian-like, obviously neurotic insanity, even though he's a Caitiff; Keeps-With-Care's inability to shift from Crinos form, coupled with his relatively functional autism, per his layered Metis Deformity; etc...), while other times they're subtle and complex (Americanna's existence in an alternate timeline -- which everyone else has adjusted to, but she still has lingering feelings/memories of how reality was/"should be" --coupled with her slowly muting emotions that make her feel less connected to people and her sense of self, resulting in her gradually becoming a being of ethics but no morality, as such, or emotional drive; Andreas realizing that the imperative given to his avatar/fount/god-self two and a half millennia ago by his then-incarnation has run its course in this current lifetime... meaning he has to find some greater wisdom/understanding of reality beyond what he has known over the past 17 awakened incarnations ( with no incarnation unawakened, and over just 2,500 years!) or possibly risk having his next incarnation lose the accumulated understanding that it/he has gained, or at the very least not advancing his spiritual strength and failing to Awaken, which would be a considerable failure compared to his other selves' work over the centuries; Tyron manifesting in various worlds, seeking escape without realizing he's *trying* to "escape" -- always having a nagging feeling that something is just behind him, that something about where he is, what he's doing, what's he's *being*, isn't quite right, and his newfound compatriots always remark on how he shouldn't worry, that everything is fine ... only for him to "awaken" again as a statue in Castle Ravenloft, where he has been imprisoned for centuries gone by after being turned to stone...[that's been since 1983, in real life play-time, too!] ).

I'm almost sort of the inverse of a powergamer -- while I often play very powerful characters, my thoughts/ideas about them have always focused on experiencing their limitations/hindrances, sometimes working through/overcoming them, sometimes learning to accept/live with them (poor Tyron!), while other times roleplaying the situation with "x" problem(s) and having them ironically turn out not to be an issue (Laundra's human-level strength among her superior-strength race puts her at a considerable disadvantage should the appropriate situation arise... which, in 3 decades of running her, it never has. <shrugs> ). But that's how I roll...

[miss_minty]

I always play a social character. In vtm I usually was a ventrue s d once a very flirtatious lasombra. Mostly or for the better part of a decade I've ran games. But my next character if I ever get to play is going to totally be a tank.

[Odd_Canuck]

Crafter/Booster. In Exalted I favour Twilights, in D&D I favor crafter-wizards or Clerics (typically of either a crafting or a healing focus)

And broken characters. Generally in the non-typical ways. I've had a pacifist vampire clone that used a modified pistol to deliver enough drugs to give an elephant a party, all the way out to a martial arts who was master of "Your Fist To My Face Style" and killed several people by the power of having them beat him up (while politely asking them to please stop and resolve difference over a pot of tea).

[Thorbes]

I am the patch of the group. Wichever niche is discarded by the rest but is needed is the one I fill. Usually it tends to be the tough, physical one, or the "warrior" of the group. In the next V20 game it seems I get to be the brain, wich is nice.

[AnubisXy]

I tend to vary it up a lot. The last character I had was a very stoic, serious front line fighter who tended to prefer to kill things rather than ask question. The character I am playing at the moment is an obnoxious, loud mouthed spellcaster with a heart of gold, who tries to do the right thing even when it's hard.

For me half the fun of roleplaying is creating stories with totally different characters. But many people I play with often end up making similar characters in game after game. I'm not too sure how they can have fun doing that.

[cerealkiller]

I think my favorite character was a Hive World Scummer in a Dark Heresy game named Antony. He was loud, obnoxious and never stopped talking to the dismay of the GM. The main reason he ended up that way was I was playing over the net with a bunch of hikkikomori NEETs and they were a little on the shy side and didn't say much, including the ST. I decided to add some flare to the game by just making up bizarre stories and telling them when not much was going on. Antony got killed pretending to be a commisar and wearing a huge silly cape and the hat while standing on the back of a rhino with a sword and shouting orders.

[Lundgren]

Not sure I have had enough characters as a player to have a pattern

The ones I can rememer have been thoughtful magic users (for a game that ran for 15+ years); down to earth police officer (for a one shot ghost story); young noble who barelly made it through education, trained with swords against his father's wishes, and acts before he thinks (kind of a sequel to the 15+ yearr long game). The only thing I can think of they have in common is they are all male.

[nofather]

Good guy who makes really bad choices, whether in trying to be good to the detriment of a larger picture, or just being curious enough to doom everyone. My first World of Darkness character, in Werewolf, was full of good intentions. But what do you do with an enemy you don't want to kill? Something worse. It was very much a road to hell paved with good intentions. I think my last character managed to be the most heroic, which was surprising since he started out as sort of a himbo. I guess I sort of played stupid as good, in regards to some of his decisions.

I tend to be very evil curious, when it comes to these games. I want to know how bad guys operate, what makes them tick. I find the concept very interesting, since in the World of Darkness there can be actual reward for these things, rather than short-term satisfaction. I ST more than I play so I get to handle a lot of villainous characters and really enjoy coordinating their actions alongside the players own plots.