Monday, February 21, 2011

Discussion: Character Trends

Whoops, sorry, forgot to get everything in order for this week. So, let's start the week off with a discussion.

Role Playing, like a lot of other things people do, involves a lot of decisions when it comes to choosing your playing piece. Unlike other things, there are a lot of subtle choices that can have a large impact on the feel of your character that you might be missing. Now, everyone plays for different reasons, and those reasons can be reflected in your character. However, you'll never grow as a player if you only stay in your comfort zone, so figuring out your default trends is a key part to your growth.

How do you find them? Simple, ask the other people in your group. They've probably noticed a few things that come up with your characters. For example, this last Friday my group got to discussing, and when I asked about my character trends someone pointed out that my male characters are almost always leaps and bounds more creative than my female characters. My female characters on the other hand, are generally more angry than my male characters. Other trends I've noticed in my own play, is I prefer smaller, fast, agile, and precise characters over the stronger and bigger ones. I attribute this to being a large person IRL, and it is a trend I've seen a lot of people do, and also do the inverse of. In a world where the average height for a PC male will be 6'2-6'3, my chars will top out at 6', and be more likely to fall into the 5' range. For females, they're lucky to break 5'6 without specific setting needs.

So, what about you? Do you have any trends in making your characters that slip by or you've been thinking about confronting?

4 comments:

  1. I have two types of characters that I tend to play: those that charge in and ask questions later or those that sit back quietly and watch what happens, jumping into conversations only rarely. The first type never tends to be the proper class for charging in head-first: wizards, warlocks, druids and the like. The second type is always the opposite: paladins, fighters, etc. I guess I pretty much pick a class that typically fits into a certain role and then play it to fit into the opposite role.

    I prefer GMing to playing a character anyway. I get to play every role possible and I get to be new "players" every day in the form of monsters and NPCs and even traps and dungeons. Plus I'm not bound by the limits of the player characters.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been GMing so long, I don't know if I have a trend. In the past I tended to find a trait or attribute that, if taken to an extreme would tend to break a game system's balance and then exploit that. I used to rules lawyer a lot because I was more interested in the mechanics than the story.

    In the Palladium system it was. . . Hmm that was a long time ago, Agility?

    In SW 1st and 2nd ed, it was Charm.

    Lately my characters (all 3 of them) have been geared more toward intelligence and strategy. I've played them so infrequently (because I'm usually GM) that I haven't really had time to develop them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nothing to do with actual characters, but my GM just admitted to us that when we walk into a tavern he keep seeing it as the same exact layout and decoration down to the how the chairs are positioned if that counts for a trend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Onedtwelve, role reversal on what your character should be doing is a common thing. However, that doesn't make it not fun.

    Emmet, ah the curse of GMing. It can take away from the ability to play at times. Why I'm so glad that there are GMs in the group I play with. Much as I love GMing, it is just fun at times to dive over the screen.

    Lone, I suppose that would depend on what the reason is for that. If it is because you always enter the same way, yep. If he just really liked that scene, or has it stuck in his head, well...that's more on the GM.

    ReplyDelete