Character Choices: What Makes Us Pick the Ones We Do?
Have you ever sat down and really thought about WHY you choose the characters that you do? Do you choose strong characters? Incredibly diplomatic characters? Beautiful characters? Charismatic Characters? Snooty? Wise? Intelligent?
So, what makes us choose one trait over another? Have you noticed a shift in the type of characters you play; was it one type in the beginning but a completely different one now? Do your character’s become personal to you?
Let’s break it down:
Why do we choose the traits we do?
I think we choose the traits we do for 2 different reasons. First, I think, like some, you create an ideal of yourself. The character is everything that we want to be. They are either incredibly intelligent or wise or beautiful/handsome or cunning or witty or super strong. Game play allows us a chance to take parts of ourselves and make them better and while we are playing we in a sense become that character.
The second reason I believe we take on the character traits that we do is because they are the complete opposite of ourselves. We choose someone conniving if we are very naive or we may choose someone particularly dumb if we find ourselves to be intelligent or someone who is ruthless if we are kind.
Now, looking at my own character I am playing, I feel like she is a combination of these 2 reasons. There are some traits in her that I wish I possessed and there are others I chose because they are the complete opposite of my demeanor. How do you think your character stands up against your personal traits?
Do the types of characters we choose as new gamers change over time?
Some of the long time gamers we play with pointed out that in the beginning they always played the super strong, fast and heroic types but as time went on they changed and began to play different things. Instead of a Dragonborn they play a cunning halfling and so on.
I personally am already finding a shift in the character I want to play. I have loved my Eladrin Wizard. She is beautiful but cold and that’s been a fun challenge for me. Now that we are discussing our plans for a Forgotten Realms campaign I really want to be something completely different. While we have been taking on Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labrynth I have been almost cross training my wizard. She is known as the thief in the group. I have added feats that allow me to pick locks better than the rogue. I have also taken on some feats that allow me great proficiency with daggers/swords and quarterstaffs.
I like to fight. Therefore, in this next campaign I am looking at playing a warforged. How much different can you really get? I think she’s going to be a rogue or a fighter but I haven’t fully decided. I do know that I am picking different traits. The personality will be much kinder and gentler, more like I am; however, she will be a very tough/strong fighter. Something that I’ve always wanted to be. As a complete aside my dream job would be double agent/assassin. Crazy, I know, but that’s what makes character creation so much fun!
What about you? Have your characters changed over time?
Do your characters become personal to you?
I think in some ways our characters are a signature of who we are. For instance, just as I started playing my wizard I had also just finished with a miserable pregnancy; therefore, I informed my husband the DM that my character under no circumstances was allowed any romantic liaisons and especially those that would lead to pregnancy…hahaha.
Joking aside, the truth is, this character has almost become my baby. She was my creation and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. When we are finished with the Thunderspire Labrynth portion of the campaign and we move on, I want to keep her in a state of flux. I want to be able to pull the character back out in the future and use it again. Or either that I feel she should die in an absolute flame of glory. That’s another option.
So, I guess the real question is what do you do with a favorite character when their story is over?
Well, thank you for sharing my musings on character creation. I like to share the ideas bouncing around in my head. Have a great day and make a great character!
When I first started playing, I think I just wanted to play something cool. I probably did try to make it an idealized version of myself but, through the years, I’ve simply tried to play different characters. I will sit down and try to think up a character concept and, if possible, make it something I haven’t played before. Yes, I have played characters that were more like myself but they were easy to play and, really, where’s the fun in that?
As for characters after the game is over, I have two characters that I absolutely fell in love with and they are my favorite characters ever. One of them is currently the main NPC in an adventure I’m writing, so it’s been great to see him again.
When I started playing I was already an aspiring creative writer, so I always wrote characters I would like to see in movies or in fantasy novels. After a while as I became more jaded with D&D 3.5 (the system I was playing at the time) I began doing a lot of self-parody and hardcore optimization (which would end up with self-parody as well just to level the blow – the CoDZilla running the game is much easier to put with when he forgets his buffs or that he has wildshape that day as part of a joke and gets walloped in an encounter or two). But usually, I built a character – I created a concept and fleshed it out. Often I play female characters, mostly because as a writer gender roles interest me, and furthermore, it ends up with players who don’t know you being nicer to you. At least in my experience. Wow I’m a dick.
When my games are over, I recycle characters more endlessly and shamelessly than the Sonic Team. For example, Sicily Blanche now appears in every single game I run (and in the campaign setting I’m writing) as a business mogul and/or owner of the mystical Sicily Store chain, which sells magic items at 5% off whatever that idiot around the corner is trying to sell them for, until he’s out of business.
I tend to play my characters with high mental and social stats, for several reasons. One–yeah, that’s my ideal. Two–I get really bored during combat anyway, so why not make a character who’d be good at disarming it before it gets going? Then there’s the most important reason: while I’m a bit socially inept in person, for some reason online games bring out a veritable fountain of eloquence, social perception, and out-of-left-field but workable ideas, and I find that effect so enjoyable that I want to be able to use all of that without being fettered by my own numbers. They’re also usually something wildly different from me, so I can try to figure out how that personality or this collection of emotions likely to spring from the concept works.
I’ve done a lot of character recycling, mainly because some of my favorite concepts either never finished arcing, or lasted three sessions or the equivalent thereof before the game fizzled. In general, if they end up as NPCs in my game, I’m expecting never to use them again. The idea of what to do about a successful character is another matter entirely, and one that’s given me some really interesting writing ideas: what happens to a character hooked on save-the-world-adrenaline when she runs out of threats to foil?
I’ve played a amazon warrior priestress (yeah) for years back in school. In may way, the very opposite of me.
Since I started playing again, I’ve tried various builds – the charismatic and enigmatic sorcerer, the somewhat dumb but wildly wise monk and, until recently a bard (for once, one that I built more towards my strength).
With the switch to 4e and curses from my DM (who perhaps was tired of having me sing my spellsongs and play guitar at the table), my bard got cursed and turned into a woman (not that it is a curse per se) and thrown into 4e as a warlock. Quite a challenge.
So basically, as a player, I’m at a point that I like to roleplay anything that I haven’t played before.
When I first started gaming, we didn’t roleplay much, so I didn’t think about it. Now, my characters are pretty diverse. The last couple include a Man-At-Arms with a bit of magic and an impressive charisma score, and a smuggler who was supposed to be a fearful glass cannon but ended up running head-on into the enemies half the time.
This proved to me that the one thing I absolutely cannot play is a coward. I usually play low wisdom, because gaming is my chance to cut loose. I like to feel useful, and I feel most useful as a fighter-y type. But I also get bored just swinging swords, so I tend to throw in some magic, some diplomatic skills, or both. Most of my characters are downright conniving, probably because I am a very good liar who never gets a chance to use that particular talent in real life.
My favourite characters of the past don’t usually show up anywhere else, but they do still hang around in my head. I’d really like to play a couple of them again some time, but most of them are so specific to the setting in which they grew that they’d be hard to run anywhere else. I don’t think I’d ever use my characters as NPCs – the characters I play as a player are used to having the spotlight, and I’m not going to betray them by sidelining them, nor risk upstaging the players.
I think both of your main points are good– I do play a more idealized version of me as a baseline, or when I’m lazy. Opposites though are key– they’re why I’d rather imagine this character going through cool stuff. Blending the two [especially heightening ideals to counterproductive levels, twisting the "best" into an opposite] can be a great way to make a character you understand, but broad enough to be a pulp hero. [Or villain when you're GMing.]
System has an effect– I’m willing to work for some characters, but my default is to avoid tedium… like 3e spell memorization.