Roleplayers: Do you play someone you are not?

[Vemynal]

Hi! First to be more specific about what I mean.

I've noticed that I and several of my friends tend towards certain roleplaying...niches so to speak. But the oddity of it all comes from the fact that each of our "niches" seems to be inverse to how we actually act in our real lives.

Two examples; I tend to love the concept behind playing the paladin class and in fact still enjoy playing it with *all* of its faults. Though I think I've come up with something recently that has the same feel at around a mid tier 2 range =). Playing a "Righteous and holy hero of good" differs from my real life personality in the fact that I'm atheist (sorry if this skirts the religion rule) and I tend towards a chaotic neutral personality myself. I tend to make excuses for my failures instead of "committing to be better" and I will do whatever good or bad deeds will get me what I want. Admittedly I'm rather amoral =/.

On the opposite side of things I have a friend who you could quite easily describe as Lawful Good but he *loves* to play evil characters. In fact, in the last 5 years of gaming with him I've never seen him play a character that wasn't Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic Evil. He loves to play the character who's willing to commit any atrocity necessary for his side to win. And believe me, he's done some messed things O_o.

So my question to you all is; do you tend towards a specific role in your games and is that role at odds with how your real life persona is?

And do you think that this is simply because "we are role playing. you don't play what you are" or that we might be living vicariously through these roles?

This also could apply to the big guy/jock who loves playing the gnome wizard. Or the skinny, "wimpy" guy who loves playing the muscled hero. Though I don't know any examples of that one myself.


Just wondering how common this is outside of my friends since this seems to affect all but one of us. And the 1 exception is my friend who I don't think I could attach an alignment to always playing True Neutral characters.

[NikitaDarkstar]

Lets see here. I have a tendency to play rogue'ish, highly agile characters, usually either true neutral, chaotic neutral or chaotic good. Even if it's a fighter, it's a dual wielding fighter. If it's a wizard it's a scoundrel wizard (not nessicarily one going for the most powerful spells in the book... just unusual applications.) MY current fighter/bard is probably the one who deviates from the norm the most. He's calm, tends to think things through, actually has survival instincts (yhea.. so the rogue who jumped of the back of a dragon 75ft in the air to land on the back of an enemy short swords first? Yhea, she didn't have much of that.) and is generally just a nice, friendly, good guy. (Neutral Good)

Myself? Well while my characters tend to match my personality decently well (exaggerated, but we do have things in common) we don't have much physically in common. I have some decent raw strength yes, but agility? Yhea you'll see the fridge do back-flips before me. :p

[Lonely Tylenol]

My first character was a pretty apt interpretation of myself (intelligent, bookish, blunt, sometimes arrogant, always looking at the bigger picture, but fairly short-sighted, and often missing the elephant in the room; Chaotic Good; physically weak, but quite dexterous).

I can and have played characters with physical appearances, attributes, personal moralities, lifestyle preferences, etc. vastly different from my own. This isn't necessarily of a tendency to play people drastically different from my real personality of characteristics, so much as it is a tendency to play a diverse range of personalities and characteristics (I also happen to be a stage actor, though only of the bit-part variety, so this is more or less consistent with who I am in real life as well).

[SleepyShadow]

Hmm, an interesting thought. I'd like to get some folk from my group to answer this too Let's see ...

1st Character: Excitable dwarf fighter that was very prideful of his beard. Nope, not me. Didn't even have a beard then.

2nd Character: A witty yet socially inept elf fighter/magic-user. He had a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth, especially around women. Definitely me in my youth, though not terribly spot-on these days.

After that character was retired, I never got to be a player for more than the occasional one-shot adventure someone felt like running. I've been a GM 95% of the time for ten solid years now, so when I get that rare opportunity to play a PC, I tend to make it quite different from myself.

[Ziegander]

I consider myself a good actor, so my experience may be somewhat atypical, but I don't think I've played a character that I don't identify with in some ways. For example, I consider myself to be of Neutral Good alignment and a generally helpful, nice guy. I'm slightly built with average strength, above average dexterity, exceptional toughness, exceptional intelligence, average common sense (but with max ranks in perception and sense motive), and above average charisma.

I don't think I've ever played an Evil character or a character that wasn't at least of above average intelligence. I've played characters at every spectrum of Neutral, arrogant sellsword brutes, absent-minded genius Wizards, and all sorts of characters in between. My favorite character of all time was a patronizing, misogynist-yet-genius Dungeon Crasher Fighter named Rufus Mallory, an old soldier, turned mercenary, with a chip on his shoulder, whose good conscience often got him into more trouble than he cared to deal with (Fighter 6; Str 22, Dex 13, Con 17, Int 17, Wis 12, Cha 8). But I never played a character that there wasn't a little bit of myself in, and I'm not sure anyone ever really has. I would say that when players play "the opposite of who they really are" that they are definitely living vicariously and doing things in game that they, maybe only very rarely, think of doing in real life but ultimately feel that they cannot.

[Alleran]

Parts of me almost always bleed through to my characters. Not necessarily to any great extent (though that varies as well), but it's generally going to be there.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Well, the majority of my characters tend to be good, but I've played my share of neutral and evil characters, and I've played everything from bruisers to casters, tanks to sneaks. Let's see what characters I can remember...

Chaotic Good Crusader
Lawful Neutral (Later Evil) Necromancy-Specialized Wizard
Chaotic Neutral Awakened Cat Sorcerer (I think this bears mention for how strange it was...)
Chaotic Good Rogue
Lawful Good Warblade
Neutral Good Druid

I know there's more, but that's the most memorable characters. 4 Good characters, 1.5 Neutral, .5 Evil; 2 Lawful, 1 Neutral, 3 Chaotic. So, a lot of Chaotic and/or Good characters, which matches my outlook pretty well, I'd say, but a non-insignificant number of other alignments. I should note that this list gives a rather skewed proportion of casters to non-casters, but I've played countless more non-casters and only one or two more casters.

[missmvicious]

Our group noticed that we were stuck in a role-playing rut, so we started doing some single-session-game RP exercises to get us out of our funk. It's working pretty well, and we already have some great new ideas for characters we want to play.

But, previously... let me think:

Spoiler

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Ellywick the Gnome Bard, CG:
My first character, and I almost always played her when I was buzzed on some good alcohol. First session, I tried to set a school on fire. I don't play drunk anymore. I guess that means I played her as CE

Aika the Human Barbarian, CE:
Everyone suggested Barbarian since I like being chaotic. Weirdly, I played her LG. I don't know how that happened. The game didn't last long. I think it lasted 3 sessions.

Eliana the Dark Elf Bard, CE:
I played her as LN. It was an unremarkable campaign that ended badly. I don't remember much about it.

(Can't remember the name) the Goblin Cleric, CE:
I played her so evil. Just so shamefully evil. I did things I'm not proud of in that campaign, but I'm going to say that I probably played her LE.

Linsey, the Wizard, LG:
I've been accused of playing her NN... they're probably right.

Kira, my avatar, the Genasi Swordmage, LG:
She was delightfully creepy, but only seemed evil. She was the closest to in-character I think I've ever played.

I think my habit is to play in a way other than how I intended to play her. IRL I really struggle at doing what I'm told. Maybe that bleeds into my tendency to rebel against alignment restrictions.

[Need_A_Life]

In short, yes.

Now, apart from not being an orc, elf, vampire, spellcaster or a thousand of other things I think it's part of the charm of roleplaying.

I've played...

• A Dark Heresy Guardsman. Apart from being female (random rolling meant that 4/5ths of the group was female) she was basically a barbarian who provided muscle to "them smooth-talkers an' thinkers." She blew an undercover assignment when someone didn't check in with her on schedule, which led to her massacring our best clue
• A D&D Vow of Poverty Monk, who was basically a martyr without a cause, hardly a sense of humour and a devout believer.
• A D&D misotheistic [hatred of Gods] Archivist, who usurped their undeserved power for his own ends. He was cold, cynical, but well aware that he needed to stay on good terms with the grop Paladin, so I'd prepare rebuttals for the use of every questionable spell he'd see me use.
• A Dark Heresy Techpriest, who manipulates events to never have to fight, all the while being a combat monster with a sense of humour so dry you can never quite tell if he's joking or just alien.
• A Vampire the Masquerade Tremere, who would do anything to "succeed," in whatever failing he was feeling most guilty over at the time.
• A Vampire the Masquerade Malkavian who spent most of his time spreading rumours (true, false or plausible) for his own amusement (note, this was a LARP, so you get better results).
• An Exalted Eclipse Caste Solar (in a homebrew setting, where Exalted took the place of deities), who spent most of his time dealing with trade, bargains and social engineering and who spent an entire combat against the avatar of a pseudo-Christian God flipping through the Gods holy book, looking for appeasement rites, contact information or goals (while exclaiming, on my tick, "This book doesn't have any answers!")

I'm an atheist student of theology, viking age enthusiast, who has practiced martial arts and find religion and psychology to be some of the most fascinating topics imaginable.

So, yes, I think I've played people different from myself. The Malkavian would probably be closest to myself, but that was mostly because I expected the LARP to last for a month or two, not going on its second year, so I didn't want to do a lot of work.

[Grinner]

I remember reading through a couple of RPG blogs where a few atheists reported having enjoyed playing religious characters.

In cRPGs (Elder Scrolls, Fable, etc.), I tend towards heavy melee combatants, so, yeah, you could say that's true about me. I did once play a rogue in Oblivion, though, and had a ton of fun in the Assassin's Guild.

@SleepyShadow: What about your NPCs?

[Lifeson]

For me, I do and I don't. I find it easiest to make a character based on a facet of my own personality and make different facets that go with it. Kind of like keeping the 20 on a D20, but changing the rest of the numbers, you know?

The character I played most different from myself was a rogue who's only interest was number one. Even then, I still bled through into him, as he'd start playing the white knight around the women he met.

Considering my real-life self is pretty much as neutral good as it gets, I do find myself playing a lot of goody-goody characters, even if the ethics scale gets thrown all over the place. Even had a Chaotic Neutral bard slide into Chaotic/Neutral Good because he believed he was the hero of a story and started to shape himself as such to make it a better story, then actually realized that doing good felt good and stayed with it.

[Dienekes]

While originally my first character was more or less me, except as an 8 foot tall lizard, I've since developed to playing pretty much anything. I've played idiots, geniuses, atheists, priests, treehuggers, paladins, and villains. Mostly I tend to take influences from whatever book or books I'm currently reading more than my own personality. Except they all end up being sarcastic. In real life I'm a rather sarcastic and pessimistic person and no matter what their personality starts like at the beginning my sarcasm tends to bleed into them by the second or third session, so now I've more or less given up trying to not be snarky.

What I have noticed about my group though is more than personality we tend to take certain roles:
Both me (though I've been stuck as GM for the last several years) and my one friend prefer frontline fighters. Another has to have a guy who has a ton of skill points. Another tends to do just weird or crazy things.

[Jeff the Green]

I don't play me, mostly because I think I'd be a fairly boring character in an RPG. I'm not adventuresome, I'm a homebody, and when/if there's a cause I care a lot about I much prefer to do work in the background (e.g. PR, organizing, research) to being on the front lines (e.g. protesting). If I were a D&D character, I'd be an artificer or a wizard that never went on adventures, but stayed home and crafted or researched new spells and weapons for whatever cause needed support.

So I play characters that aren't much like me. Holy warriors, suave spies, roguish pirates, or mystic shamans.

There are two facets I prefer my characters to be similar to me, though. First, morality/alignment. I have very strong gut senses about morality, and spend a decent amount of time thinking about ethics. I have a very hard time playing a character that doesn't have some grounding on the lawful/good corner of the alignment axis. I can play a character that is willing to do things for a cause that I wouldn't in real life (e.g. torture, murder) or who believes in deontological morality, while I'm a utilitarian, but I have a hard time even conceiving of what motivates an evil character.

Second, I have a hard time roleplaying stupid characters. I'm intelligent and well-educated, as are almost all of my family and friends, so it's very hard for me to get into a less-than intelligent character. So almost all of my characters have had at least 12 INT, and usually higher.

[Kiero]

I tend to play variations on me as if I'd grown up in a different place/time. That might be why I can't stand bookish mages and the like. I generally play combat-ready generalists, warriors of some stripe. In real life I'm a lifelong martial artist and upper-tier amateur/lower-tier elite athlete.

[Tyndmyr]

I frequently play variations of me. That said, I have a very high tolerance for danger and adventure in real life.

[CodeRed]

I think I do bleed into all of my characters. I am a really sort of flippant person with a free spirit but when sh%t hits the fan I'm always the guy ready to fix things. In some way or another, whatever my char's alignment, either the witty, care-free nature gets expressed or the steadfast one gets expressed (sometimes a bit of both.)

First Character ever was a 3.5 Paladin. LG and devoted to the core and not once did I ever have a stick up my ass.

The next was also a LG but he was a monk. Despite the class being functionally borked (did not know this at the time) he was strong for the power level our group ran on. Took a bunch of exalted feats and used the Stigmata one to save my party on multiple occasions. After enough self-sacrifice, the DM decided to let me have the Saint template.

Those are the best example of my sort of stalwart, steadfast types but I also absolutely love rogues. I mean, everybody loves being the Han Solo of the group - quick with a joke but even faster with their weapon.

Sure, I've done some NE and LE types but they usually end up still expressing one of those two qualities. I guess the two bigs things about my personality are believing in duty but also that life is too short to always take seriously. My NE wizard was fun because though he may be the guy willing to kick a box of puppies if it would make him a buck, almost everything he did was for the hilarity of it.

[Deepbluediver]

Oh definitely Vemynal.

I tend to think of myself as mostly-chaotic IRL (curious, spontaneous, self-dependent, anti-authority, etc) with a few obsessively-orderly quirks, but in games I love roleplaying as EXCEEDINGLY lawful characters.
My definition of lawful though is more like highly disciplined with a strict personal code of honor. It doesn't even have to be good-lawful; I had a great time playing a lawful-evil mercenary who worked as an assassin.

I think it's that my normal world view is very shades-of-grey-nothing-is-absolute, and it's a lot of fun for me to break loose and pretend to be something very extreme without any of the associated guilt or feelings of hypocrisy (at not living up to my own standards).

[TheEmerged]

I thought pretending to be someone other than myself was the *point* of roleplay?

No, really. No humor or sarcasm tags here at all. I don't get to actually *play* that often, as I'm usually the DM/GM. When I do get a chance to play a character, I make it a point to create a *character*.

Most of my time playing in D&D 3.0, for example, was as a Lawful Evil (Lawful Selfish would be more accurate) kobold telepath in a monster campaign (other PC's included a gnoll ranger & hobgoblin rogue). The real me is much closer to Neutral Good*, so it was a challenge at times to justify him working with others that didn't fit into his chain of command.

*"The Law is a crutch, and Freedom a chain. I will do what is right."

[NowhereMan583]

All the time.

Almost none of my characters can be trusted to work on behalf of the party, and their Bluff & Sense Motive skills tend to be through the roof. My last Mouse Guard character spent so much time sneaking around behind the party's back that most of what I did during sessions was pass notes with the GM. In real life, I tend to go with the flow, and I'm pretty sure I'm working with severe penalties to Bluff & Sense Motive.

My characters are often deeply religious. In the past few years, I've played two cult leaders, a missionary, a theologian, a preacher, and a dangerous religious extremist. Both the cult leaders and the theologian were in long-running campaigns. In real life, I have no religious affiliation, but I do find the concept very interesting.

Many of my characters have a lust for wealth and power. In the past few years, I've played a white-collar criminal, a mafioso, a handful of shameless thieves, and five characters with the stated goal "rule and/or destroy the world" (only one of them succeeded, and that was in the post-campaign epilogue). In real life, I scrape by on a grad student stipend, and I'm fine with that.

I frequently play reckless, impulsive characters. This is why my Cult of Tiamat never even got close to world domination -- I adopted Baldrick's catchphrase of "I have a cunning plan" to describe whatever I came up with on the spot. At one point, the GM pretty much summed up the whole campaign (I had somehow managed to secure a leadership role within the party) with, "I think there's a slight plan in your flaw." For many of my characters, forethought was something that happened to other people. In real life, I'm fairly methodical.

My characters generally have some sort of conflicted relationship with "rules" and "society". In an Eclipse Phase one-shot, my character devoted all of his energy to attempting to destroy human civilization, and came pretty close to succeeding. In real life, I'm probably Lawful Neutral.

On the other hand, in the longer-running campaigns, character development usually results in my characters gradually becoming more like me.

[Binks]

I have noticed that my characters do tend to fall into the 'Face' role pretty easily. 4 party leaders/faces in RL play and only 2 that didn't fit that role (both of which were secondary characters, one a GMPC, the other me playing 2 characters). I am normally a pretty quiet person, so I guess it is playing a type of character who I am not.

That said, my PbP characters tend to be more varied, if only because I've built far more of them and it's easier to RP more varied people in a play by post environment than RL where you're always on the spot.

It has been something I have noticed, however, and thought about. I'm glad to see it's not just me.

[kyoryu]

I try to. I'm sure some of my personality bleeds through, but I try to give my characters distinctive personalities, drives, and beliefs.

[gkathellar]

I do my best, but I also play what I'm interested in playing, so my own identity usually comes through some. Most of my characters have some dynamic of Choice v. Determinism inherent to them, because I'm a philosophy student with a passion for existentialism and I can't turn that off. Most of my characters are socially ill-adjusted in one way or another, because I'm a solitary, taciturn person by nature and I can't turn that off either.

I think the best anyone can do is roleplay a character who is only like them in ways they're not comfortable with — you can never remove the actor from the part entirely.

[Anderlith]

I find that me & my gaming group play aspects of our personalities. I played a soldier that was argumentative & steadfastly loyal, ultimately sacrificing my self for the groups leader (both aspects I have), he didn't have my humorous side & he was kind of a jerk. Another character, a mage aristocrat was steadfastly loyal (didn't get to kill himself though), but was joking & competitive, he also lied a bit.

I have a friend who plays a gruff half orc barbarian who hardly said two words (he's a bit like that in real life) but then he plays an eccentric gnome wizard who sit didn't say much, but the rest of his character's personality was different.

[Karoht]

Sometimes I play an archetype I can slip into easily. In otherwords, I play a character with similar personality traits and outlook.
Sometimes I play an archetype I have to think about to really play properly. In other words, a character with personality traits and outlook that do not align with mine.
Then there are all the variations in between.

As for class/role, I don't really look at any of those as me. I'm not super smart, but I can play an intelligence based class. I'm not extremely socially skilled, but I can play a social character such as a Bard.

I'm used to a variety of 'jobs' in games, including environments where my 'job' changes rapidly.
Right, so at this moment I'm healing. Uh oh, there's a pack of baddies headed our way, everyone is engaged with other things. Okay, now my job isn't healing, it's battlefield control. Act accordingly.
In games, I tend to enjoy flexible characters that can shift-on-the-fly and react to situations. In life I've been called a social chameleon. Am I an adaptable person in real life? Mostly. Do I play adaptability as my strength? Not always.

[Pisha]

Yes and no.

A pet theory of mine is that one of the things we do when we play is explore those sides of our personality that, for one reason or another, never get to come out and play. (Which would explain why so many very moral people enjoy playing evil characters - it lets them give free rein to darker impulses that they would never act on in real life!)

So for example - one of my standard characters is the smiling trickster - a physically agile character who's clever, witty, lies like a rug, and - although her heart's ultimately in the right place - tends to look at rules as suggestions, and revels in chaos for its own sake. In real life, of course, I'm physically clumsy, tend to follow rules, and can't lie for nuthin'. (Unless I'm in character. Seriously - pretending to be someone who can lie well makes me able to lie well. It's bizarre.) Playing this role (and I've played her, in one form or another, in at least or 4 games) lets me play around with this aspect that's completely unlike my day-to-day self...

...except that it didn't come from a vacuum. That archetype is in me, it's part of me, I just don't (or in the case of the physical aspects, can't) act on it very often.

And of course, like most rp-ers, I don't just stick to the one type - I like to stretch myself and play characters who are drastically different in one or two key ways. Thing is though, if I really look at them, even those characters have something in common with me. They have to. The only times I've tried to play characters that didn't have anything at all of myself in them... I lost interest. There was nothing to connect to, no way inside their head.

[Solaris]

Yes and no.

A pet theory of mine is that one of the things we do when we play is explore those sides of our personality that, for one reason or another, never get to come out and play. (Which would explain why so many very moral people enjoy playing evil characters - it lets them give free rein to darker impulses that they would never act on in real life!)

I've a rather similar theory, though I would've stated it in a less charitable light.

Most of my characters tend to be more like me than not, though they tend to focus on a facet or three of my personality rather than the composite whole. I'm, unfortunately, a rather honest person and a terrible liar (despite being a good actor and storyteller, it's weird). I generally play a paladin, fighter, or rogue (focused on the Int-based and Dex-based skills, not Cha-based)/wizard. I'm usually the idea guy and/or the party leader - I look like I know what I'm doing and have forgotten more about squad- and team-level tactics than most people will ever know.
Of course, hardly any of my characters are as ruthless or mean-spirited as I am in reality. Go figure.

[USS Sorceror]

Well, most of the time I'm on the DM side of the screen, and a lot of villains are what I think I'd be like if I got the chance to be evil. Usually the antagonists I create are conniving, striving towards some great goal, using the "help" to get there (and sometimes letting the "help" think it's the boss). Generally Lawful Evil, though I enjoy a good Chaotic killing spree now and then.

The most recent character I played was absolutely nothing like me: A half-wit half-orc barbarian with an Int of 5 and a Str of 20. Completely stupid, highly naive, and very influenceable (the party took full advantage of this by getting him to rage at the slightest thing in battle). Chaotic Neutral with Good tendencies which is only because of the people around him. He was fun to play.

In reality I'm probably Lawful Good/Neutral with pathetic physical stats and above average mental stats, so yes, I definitely play someone I'm not.

[lady_arrogance]

Several other posters have already said that something of their selves bleeds over to character - and while I *do not* like players playing themselves, still best characters I've seen played have had something of their player in them.

Like the bleed-over from player gives depth to character. Or maybe because character has something from the player, she or he is more invested playing the character.

[Randrew]

Role-playing is often wish fulfillment. As a result, I believe that most people play what they wish they could be, what is coolest to them.

My characters are almost always incredibly mundane. I used to joke that while others will want to be the guy with the huge sword or the powerful wizard, I'll play the tinsmith. I figure that this is probably because I really like being who I am, which is to say, a regular person. Or maybe it's just like that I enjoy outwitting and outlasting people with more power than I have. Or perhaps both.

No matter what type of character I play, I end up in a non-magical support role. That's just who I am and I'm happy to do it. Personality-wise, my characters more recently have been less effective than I am as a person. Less intelligent, less aware, less socially capable. It's been rather odd. Of course, I am now playing a character who is the leader of a political movement and a better person than I am. It stretches me to my limits. I love it.

[Urpriest]

I undergo a bit of evolution generally. Early on with a group I play very careful, intellectual characters who tend to mirror my own personality. Once I'm more comfortable with the group's playstyle I tend to lapse into big dumb characters with silly accents because they're more relaxing to play.