My Players Statblocked Each Other and You Should Too

[KOLE]

It started simply enough.

We realized that two of the players at my table matched their favorite play style to an absolute T.

One player loves Dwarves and Paladins. He himself is shorter than average (5’5”), rarely gets sick and runs marathons (high Con), is buff (High strength), and basically has made religious oaths, as in he’s considered becoming a priest but wants to raise a family, is very pious, and religiously/supersitiously avoids using the Lord’s name in vain and strong drink.

We concluded his D&D/fantasy self would be most close to a Dwarf Paladin.

Another player is biracial, abnormally tall (6’5”!), very imposing build, and freakishly strong. (The closest to a Half-orc you’ll ever meet in real life). He also lacks formal education, hedonistic, impulsive, and has a bit of a temper. His D&D self is very easily a Half-Orc Barbarian, which he plays very frequently.

The game went on from there. We all know each other well, came up with a concept, and put it to a vote. Another player was also abnormally tall, rail thin, a bit eccentric and pursuing a post grad degree. High Elf Wizard stuck easily. Another, very intelligent, always talking philosophy, computer major, yet with a streak of pyromania and a love of guns. Human Evocation Wizard, natch. One of the other players was hard to place, but after much discussion we pegged him as a Great Old One Warlock, Human. (The story is probably not very interesting to those that don’t know him.)

When it came to me, I was quite surprised by the answer, but the unanimous vote was Half-Elf Lore Bard. Their justification was that I’m tall, have a mixed backround (my past is marked by a war of political ideas), have worked so many odd jobs and been so many places that I had to be Lore, and was surely the Face of our real life party. Didn’t expect it, but that makes it all the more real.

My point for this is not to tell bragadocious stories, but to suggest that you try it at your table. The conversation came up after our seasion, and we all stayed late laughing and discussing in a very animated manner, then proceeded to build our fantasy equivalents. Right now, we’re planning a campaign where we play our fantasy selves, and are all cery much looking forward to it. It’s been such jovial fun, and I think the campaign will be a riot. I think tou should all try it. If only for the rush of excitement that comes with people analyzing you and deciding your fantasy equivalent. The results may surprise you.

[Occasional Sage]

It started simply enough.

We realized that two of the players at my table matched their favorite play style to an absolute T.

One player loves Dwarves and Paladins. He himself is shorter than average (5’5”), rarely gets sick and runs marathons (high Con), is buff (High strength), and basically has made religious oaths, as in he’s considered becoming a priest but wants to raise a family, is very pious, and religiously/supersitiously avoids using the Lord’s name in vain and strong drink.

We concluded his D&D/fantasy self would be most close to a Dwarf Paladin.

Another player is biracial, abnormally tall (6’5”!), very imposing build, and freakishly strong. (The closest to a Half-orc you’ll ever meet in real life). He also lacks formal education, hedonistic, impulsive, and has a bit of a temper. His D&D self is very easily a Half-Orc Barbarian, which he plays very frequently.

The game went on from there. We all know each other well, came up with a concept, and put it to a vote. Another player was also abnormally tall, rail thin, a bit eccentric and pursuing a post grad degree. High Elf Wizard stuck easily. Another, very intelligent, always talking philosophy, computer major, yet with a streak of pyromania and a love of guns. Human Evocation Wizard, natch. One of the other players was hard to place, but after much discussion we pegged him as a Great Old One Warlock, Human. (The story is probably not very interesting to those that don’t know him.)

When it came to me, I was quite surprised by the answer, but the unanimous vote was Half-Elf Lore Bard. Their justification was that I’m tall, have a mixed backround (my past is marked by a war of political ideas), have worked so many odd jobs and been so many places that I had to be Lore, and was surely the Face of our real life party. Didn’t expect it, but that makes it all the more real.

My point for this is not to tell bragadocious stories, but to suggest that you try it at your table. The conversation came up after our seasion, and we all stayed late laughing and discussing in a very animated manner, then proceeded to build our fantasy equivalents. Right now, we’re planning a campaign where we play our fantasy selves, and are all cery much looking forward to it. It’s been such jovial fun, and I think the campaign will be a riot. I think tou should all try it. If only for the rush of excitement that comes with people analyzing you and deciding your fantasy equivalent. The results may surprise you.

I actually play characters that are quite different than I am in reality. I already *am* me, so I don't see the appeal. I certainly have played characters that have maybe a 40-60% overlap if we were Venn Diagramed, but the non-overlap is where the interest generally is for me.

Maybe it's an age or experience thing. I've been doing this for 35 years, it takes something unusual to make my characters not feel like a retreading of something I've done before.

Like, you know... myself.

[CantigThimble]

I'm just going to leave this link here: http://easydamus.com/character.html

There are a lot of 'What D&D character am I?' tests, but what I love about this one is that the questions aren't just blindingly obvious in where they're going to shift you and it actually does have some genuinely tough questions that are revealing of your character. My group all tried it out one day and all the answers were just eerily accurate. Like, the answers the test gave us made more sense than ones we would come up with ourselves

(I'm a lawful neutral Monk/Wizard apparently)

[KOLE]

I actually play characters that are quite different than I am in reality. I already *am* me, so I don't see the appeal. I certainly have played characters that have maybe a 40-60% overlap if we were Venn Diagramed, but the non-overlap is where the interest generally is for me.

Maybe it's an age or experience thing. I've been doing this for 35 years, it takes something unusual to make my characters not feel like a retreading of something I've done before.

Like, you know... myself.


I understand your point completely. That’s why what I’m saying is to have other people pick it for you. It doesn’t work as well if your table isn’t made up of close friends (We’ve all known each other coming up on a decade now). When your compatriots assign you the race/class/archetype/backround, it makes it more interesting, since the goal is they’ll assign you something closer to the truth, as in, their perception, vs. your perception, which is likely to be less accurate.

I never would have picked half elf or bard for my equivalent, but they unanimously agreed. So playing a version of myself that’s both those things makes it a lot more interesting, especially considering my proclivity against playing Bards, as I dislike jack-of-all-trades archetypes.


I'm just going to leave this here:
*snip*
(I'm a lawful neutral Monk/Wizard apparently)

What’s funny to me is my results of this test are what inspired the conversation to begin with. According to it, I’m a True Neutral Cleric. All my friends strongly disagreed with that. If it worked for ya’ll, great! And maybe I’ll talk the others into trying it and see what they get.

[CTurbo]

I've often thought about trying to stat myself, but it's just too hard. I'm 6ft, 225lbs. Athletic build and decently muscular although I do have belly fat.

I'm really well rounded so Jack of All Trades seems fitting. I'm thinking Valor or Swords Bard with no dump stat for me lol



Ironically, my wife is 5' 1" and like 105lbs and she always plays Goliaths, Half-Orcs, or Dragonborn

[ZenBear]

I do this habitually with all my close friends. Especially my old gang from high school. I still intend to write a story about those characters someday.

[Contrast]

Not so much with D&D but my group of friends always loves to play ourselves when we play Call of Cthulu and the like.

I hate it.

I don't play RPGs so I can roleplay as myself and spend my time trying to phone the police or hide :smallyuk: I enjoy the escapism. It's slightly amusing because in one group I'm known for playing a certain type of character who is similar to me personally. But thats primarily because the setting they play is one that fits that type of character. In other groups and settings I've played wildly different characters and probably enjoyed that more :smallbiggrin:

It's even worse when we play the apocalypse systems from FFG. The system encourages you to play yourselves. You allocate stats but then everyone else as a group gets to vote your stats up or down if they think you over/under estimated yourself. More than once people have been offended when a stat got voted down (this whole idea just seems like a fundamentally bad idea, particularly when playing yourself, to me).


Another player is biracial, abnormally tall (6’5”!), very imposing build, and freakishly strong. (The closest to a Half-orc you’ll ever meet in real life). He also lacks formal education, hedonistic, impulsive, and has a bit of a temper. His D&D self is very easily a Half-Orc Barbarian, which he plays very frequently.

It's great that you had fun and I'm sure it wasn't meant as such but I can easily see how someone would have taken offence to the snippit above. As always in social settings, be careful of telling other people what they're like is I guess my summary as they may not agree with you :smalltongue:

[JellyPooga]

For myself, I've always enjoyed playing characters that were close to my own mentality, but physically or educationally different.

I'm pragmatic and a decent person, open to change and generally easy to get along with (I think) but by no means gregarious; so I always struggled when I tried to play a character that was selfless, staid or socially inclined. Trying to play someone that was of "extreme" alignment or belief, like a Cleric or Lawful Good, was always hard for me and rang false at the table...I'm not much of an actor, so "playing out of type" felt like a chore.

On the other hand, I enjoy being able to put the "fantasy" into a game by playing characters that don't have the same slight build and quick wit that I do; so whether I was a Barbarian or a Wizard, so long as my personality matched mine, any character Class, Background or skill-set was great.

For example, some of my favourite characters have been (not all 5ed D&D);

- A burly druidic healer that turned dark-side when he found a powerful artefact of the dark arts.

- A cheeky Halfling Thief

- A rough-and-tumble Half-Orc mercenary (Barbarian/Rogue)

- An upper-crust, over-the-hill antiquarian with a penchant for old books, good whiskey and very large firearms

About as diverse a range of "fantasies" to play, but at the core they were all "me". Some characters I couldn't quite come to terms with included;

- A devout Paladin

- An aloof and traditionalist Elf from a remote monastery

- A flamboyant Gnome Bard

Their personalties and modus operandi just differed from my own outlook too much for me to really get into the role.

[Sariel Vailo]

I would like to do that. Ill get my friends together and ask them

[MilkmanDanimal]

Way back when some friends and I used to play the superhero RPG Villains and Vigilantes, and the conceit behind that game was you would build yourself in-game, and then roll to see what superpowers you wound up with. This meant we were ourselves superheroes, which, as teenagers certainly fit the whole instant power fantasy aspect of things. That poor local mall, though. Got destroyed so many times.

I think Lore Bard would fit me pretty well; I've got a couple liberal arts degrees but wound up as an IT professional, and am very much one of those "knows a fair amount about 1,000 things rather than a lot about one thing" kind of person so Jack of All Trades fits. I'm even a guitarist, so theme!

Based on my ability to get regular colds along with a couple major joint surgeries, my CON kind of sucks, but INT and CHA should be fine.