Character 'types'
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@thenomain The lore of shang is very very cool if you delve into it, but I never did in my times there. I admittedly was just one of the constant sandboxers during my tenure.
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I have a few threads that tend to run through my most successful characters. It took me probably... I don't know. Seven or eight years in this hobby to recognize them, and once I did, my success at creating new characters who were successful right off the bat instead of painful for me to get into skyrocketed.
So I sort of consider having a 'type' to be a benefit rather than a detriment. I've learned to recognize my limitations and my strengths and it's made playing both more fun and easier for me. I freely admit that I recycle certain character traits and certain personalities, and I often get into a new character by thinking 'she's like X, but with Y's flirtatious attitude and Z's ambition thrown in'. It helps me get into the head of new characters quickly - which is a plus, because I'm someone who has always struggled with character building.
My types tend to be smart, capable, confident women (it is so very rare for me to play a guy), either snarky or flirtatious-as-a-means-of-hiding-something. They usually have a pretty good logical/tactical mind (though they may hide it) and some sort of driving passion, which is either something they are trying to accomplish/revenge/uncover/discover or something they are trying to hide/recover from/run from. Or both. Learning to build the passion in to a character has definitely helped me hit the ground running in terms of having a story to pursue from the get-go.
I play out of type very occasionally, but usually for a specific purpose and a limited time, because it's harder. And I'm lazy.
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I'm not really sure what my type is at this point. I am repeatedly drawn to characters with story themes about identity. Who am I is a question I enjoy playing with.
All of my characters end up with a fucking dorky sense of humor.
For some reason.
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My characters generally fall into one of two or three types:
- Experienced mercenary, usually snarky, often irreverent and/or flirty. Usually morally gray.
- New, gung-ho soldier just out of training (usually flight school) who is often a nerd, closeted or not. Usually a goodie-two-shoes.
- Bombastic politician, often with a military background. Usually intends to do good, but finds themselves sliding into darkness due to good intentions.
Yes, I like military characters, because I enjoy tactical scenes.
Most of my characters are male, but I've played a half dozen female characters over the years and enjoyed them.
Most of my characters tend to be talkative too, because I like words. However, if I have a character who is particularly loquacious, I will usually make an alt who is sparse with words, if only to make it easier to differentiate when I'm playing both at the same time.I will occasionally judge others if they lose/give up a character and come back with a character who shares a large number of traits with the former character. It's especially bad if you can't tell the characters apart besides the played-by.
As for views expressed, as someone who played quite a few Children of the Light on WoT games, I don't judge for IC views, but if the player also seems to exhibit those views OOCly, then I start getting judge-y. As with what @Kanye-Qwest said, if a character plays a lot of slavers or racists, I'll start to judge them (and yes, I realize that's a bit hypocritical, given that I just said I played a lot of Children of the Light).
To @Roz's point about passion, I find that if my character doesn't have a driving goal (preferably one that cannot be accomplished on-screen, but has steps which can be), their story will often start to drift and falter. So I've tried to create characters with driving goals, and it seems to work nicely for me.
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There are really two types of character I usually play, though I could certainly branch out into something new if I found a really nice place for it.
The first type is shy, bookish, easily flustered, and really wants to help from a supporting role. Often busy or distracted and a little clueless as to the severity of whatever problem is affecting X place. This sort usually gets brought out in historical settings, though I've played a couple starship mechanics or pilots like this. Tends to be a goody-two-shoes at heart, even if she ends up in the wrong crowd.
The second type is sneaky, sassy, and confident, though she usually has a secret, big or small. I like playing spies and charming saboteurs usually in futuristic settings, but it would be neat to try one in a historical setting sometime. Usually morally ambiguous, with a sly 'It's just good business' attitude.
I try not to judge, but I tend to avoid people who are just malicious jerks IC for no good reason. Especially if they are the sort to cackle gleefully about it. I get that it's just their character, but I will probably avoid them as much as possible.
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I tend towards trickster sorts with good social skills. It's wish fulfillment mainly, as I wish I was as carefree, funloving, gregarious, and charming as the characters. This in turn means I tend to suck at playing them. Apologies to everyone who has endured my boorish attempts at not being boorish. Your patience and good humor is appreciated.
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I don't think I have a type, exactly. I do have some traits and types that I tend to revisit, some of which I really shouldn't (why does my character have enormous trust issues and keep everyone at bay on a game with a small playerbase? because I am an idiot), but I think overall, looking back, I have a pretty varied set of characters. Female characters. My male character ideas just die in chargen or quickly fizzle out in play.
I do have a harder time playing the darker shades of morally gray. I also have a hard time playing evil in computer RPGs.
I don't think I judge others for having a type of character. And if someone wants to play an evil racist slaver, that doesn't in itself make me judge them. I probably will be a little more wary at first, but in this case, it's not what you play, it's very much how you play it.
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Yeah, I absolutely have some types. I mostly play men with the occasional woman thrown in over a period of years.
- Dour and grumpy but a good guy.
- Very clearly a good guy-good guy.
- Eccentric and possibly morally ambiguous.
- Strong-willed and usually reasonable woman.
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I don't have a type. I play all sorts of characters from the monstrous to the innocent, to the old and weathered to the young and naive.
It really for me depends on the setting and the environment. I tend to play more female characters in table top or on roll 20, but male characters on MU*'s but their personalities vary wildly.
I tend to play smart characters, because people get mad at me when I play less intelligent ones especially in TT because my gaming group typically relies upon me to be able to out think encounters that might otherwise kill us.
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I know some people who play to certain types and I love their RP, but for me, no particular character is generally like any other I've done, or it becomes boring for me to actually play.
Right now? I have Billy, a slightly nerdy goofball with a heart of gold and who is ernest as hell; then Johnny who is so confident that 'cocky' is a better term, certain everyone wants to swing on his dick; then Josh, a thoughtful and somewhat quiet healer but who is focused and dedicated on helping people; Chance, a vigilante not afraid of violence but driven not by anger but regret; Peter an ernest genius who is a little like Chance but can't bring himself to kill people; Bradin a kid of privilege and wealth that is confident and at ease in the world yet kind to everyone; Case an epitome of a nerd's nerd who can get lost telling you about algorithms and his coding project, but is a horndog; to Nicolo who is a stern, calm, calculating figure who oversees a family empire with the long ambition; to another Chance (no comparison) who is almost the epitome of SJW made manifest and has never seen a cause he wouldn't take up.
Confidence is almost the only common trait. I almost never make self-conscious characters.
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I seem to wind up playing reluctant leaders. Or, leaders who wound up in those positions through some twist of fortune, but who are just going to make the best of it (see: Teodor on Firan, Marius/Turo on Arx).
I would say that people seem to most enjoy when I play some sarcastic contrarian. Those are the characters I've had the best feedback about (see: Nierzen/Vayne on Arx).
I would like to try my hand at playing a female sometime. I'd probably base her off my grandmother, who was awesome. Not sure her story plays well, but she was a cool person.
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I seem to like a strong contrast between appearance and personality. I like playing femme fatales or similar - beautiful exterior, ice cold interior that's either actively calculating or simply completely lacking in empathy. On the flipside, I also like playing monsters with heroic good hearts, or some combination of adorable/sweet and monstrous. I think part of it is just that I'm lazy, and a strikingly beautiful or horrifically monstrous appearance is an easy RP hook. I've also dabbled with characters that were so very ordinary as to almost blend into the background, often with some kind of monstrous thing going on, or terrible secrets.
My current only character Lucrezia on Valorous is a bit of an intentional spin to get away from the above pattern: very pretty exterior with a somewhat scary obsession for knowledge, but she's also probably the most sane character I've played in a long time. She's cool headed but not ice cold. However, her family is, well. Addams Family/Lovecraftian something going on.
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I definitely have a type, looking back at my longest running characters. They've all been terribly sad, wounded people who hid it with varying degrees of success behind a gruff or glib exterior, and they've mostly been better people than they'd like anybody to know. Basically if I can get people saying "Oh, poor <charactername>", I've done my job.
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I tend to play outgoing and confident characters. I think in part because IRL I have a hard time being so self assured, but in RP I can be that person I wish I could be irl. I like my characters to be kind, but usually harbor a darker side, secrets and all.
But I also like to step outside of my comfort zone, play criminals, or nasty people. I just can't do it when alts are limited, or else I'd feel like I have to be that asshole character all the time. Madika on Firan comes to mind, she was such a fun, in your face, asshole.
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I try to have variety in most of their personalities, but they always end up being mouthy. Sometime's it'll be a shy character that one-lines every now and then. Or it'll be the little spitfire that can't keep their mouth shut. I have trouble controlling my sass, I think.
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I was going to say I don't really have a theme--my characters that stick out most in my mind are a vengeful paladin, an "ends-justify-the-means" warlock, a lich dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge who does nice things because he runs cost-benefit analyses, and a chatterbox scholar who won't shut up about the gods--but I suppose they're all convicted, in their own way. Most of my characters have very firmly set ideals, and they don't tend to listen to others trying to persuade them otherwise. I don't do passive very well.
I did RP a slave once, but that was... squicky. In a lot of ways.
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My characters are usually extroverts with high social skills. Usually, they are in some type of role that requires a sociable character so cops, religious figures, or strippers are always my go-to professions. It's usually a variation of those three.
I cannot help being sarcastic, it will always come out. I usually take a look at what's currently underrepresented and try to gain inspiration from that. But mostly they are characters always striving for something be it wisdom or improvement of others/things. I always try to have my characters visibly grow from their original concept. So being dumb and making mistakes is what I live for in RP.
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I definitely had types, but enough has changed over the past year+ that I can’t say if I would be able to play any of them if I got back into RP.
I tended toward artists and creative types primarily, but there were exceptions. For over a decade, all female. I tend toward ‘support’ charcters that may or may not ‘come into their own’ if events transpire that way, but it’s not something I ever start out with as a goal on the player side, even if the character has the goal in mind. Even in leadership roles, I prefer to use the additional resources and/or authority to enable a ‘support’ style approach: delegate to, create opportunities for, and spotlight others.
Pretty much everything I make has some kind of head baggage built in. It may help shape what drives them (for better or worse), it may be what has them getting in their own way on the regular, and often, it’s both.
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I play a wide variety of characters. Slick politician, quiet schemer, bumbling fool, corrupt mercenary, lazy cop, etc, etc. I guess if I have a type its characters with pronounced flaws. I also like to look at what's on the grid already, and then I go against type. If there's a lot of villains on a game, I'll play a good guy, and vice versa. But even my good guys'll have serious flaws to their personalities. Ie, my good guy earnest cop who tried his best to help people who were in front of him, and who was absolutely faithful and dedicated to his spouse, was also lazy and complacent unless reality forced upon him a choice to do the right thing or horribleness might follow. If he wouldn't see an immense harm in just kicking back and taking a nap on the side of the road, he'd do just that. He was also addicted to pain killers, and had a hit-and-run in his background that kept gnawing on him in self destructive ways.
Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that I honestly have the most fun when I play characters who have big blind spots. I can get caught up in the moment and want to win the game, which I usually regret.
Edit to add:
When it comes to judging other people for the type of characters the play, I generally don't. If they make the character (and/or) the scenes interesting and believable, I don't care what they're playing.
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I would say I have two types.
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Vain, overconfident, witty, emotionally explosive young women who tend to be full of charm and charisma, not content to remain on the sidelines, and who are more than a little reckless when they think it will get them what they want. Often exceptional fighters or at least very good at giving off that impression.
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Cool, confident and ruthless commanders. Often the characters from number 1 will mature into this. Tend to have a brutal and sadistic edge to them, and do not bat their eyes at making morally questionable choices for the greater good - though they will aim the consequences of those choices squarely at themselves if they can.
I, uh.
I can't really say I'm not playing to type right now.
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