"guiltily roleplays like a kindergartener with severe ADHD"

[celephais]

hola, comrades.

i've been playing 3.5 for about a year, and despite my deep, sometimes ridiculously ironic bromo sapien-esque friendship with my DM (yo, he's my bestie and essentially has been training me to figure out how to play since day one), i can't help but feel as if i've royally screwed up sometimes with my rping and gameplay in general.

example:

i first played this really, really amazingly bad character, who i designed myself out of some desperate attempt to live vicariously through a star elf psionic who had a penchant for not wearing clothing and occasionally (okay, every other move) attempting to seduce other PCs. she was totes cool, but had some weird back story about finding her demon-spawn daughter who was raising up a religious cult. you know, because stripper princess elf could barely register the fact that her daughter was a //prude//.

so i asked my dear DM to write in this dramatic, horrible death (he gave me several chances to stay alive) where stripper princess elf died on the battlefield. giving birth. eating a sandwich. truthfully, it would have been utterly beautiful, in a meta sort of way, if i had not asked for it in the first place.

second character is this super cool other daughter of first character from an alternate plane of reality. she's totally freaked out about landing in this dimension and essentially drinks her way into sleeping with some undead dude who gets her pregnant through his undead powers. because zombies.

anyway, i just feel really, really crappy about not being the best! player! ever! and even worse about being an amazingly ****ty TV trope, so what, my dear forum peeps, what the actual butt can i do to repair all of these shenanigans?

seriously; what?

[Jay R]

In your long description of the situation, you left out the actual problem you want solved.

Who, exactly, is having less fun because of your actions?

If the answer is "Nobody", then you have no problem to solve.

If you have a name, that's the person you should ask.

[Phoenixguard09]

I have no idea.

Are you in a group or is it a solo game?

[Ralanr]

Are...are we supposed to know who is angry here?

RPG's have done a lot of crazy ****. One Player's hell is another's heaven.

[ShaneMRoth]

Make more characters until you get it right.

[TheThan]

I wouldn't sweat it. Most people's first character are terrible; it's sort of a tradition.

My first one was a Elf druid with a boa constrictor animal companion and a negative strength score.

[Nifft]

anyway, i just feel really, really crappy about not being the best! player! ever! and even worse about being an amazingly ****ty TV trope, so what, my dear forum peeps, what the actual butt can i do to repair all of these shenanigans?

seriously; what?

Are you getting looks of annoyance from the other people at the table when you do your thing?

Or are they being entertained by your tomfoolery?

Because entertainment is great.

Annoyance is bad.

[Vitruviansquid]

It's fine. That you are now embarrassed of your first characters means you are growing as a roleplayer.

[Eldan]

My first character was an elven wizard. Not that bad, right? Except that I also wrote into his backstory that he was grim and mysterious and totally the deposed true king of all elves. Also lawful evil, because evil is cooler than good.

My second character was a kobold druid two-weapon fighting with scimitars. That was back in the age where weaposn didn't come in different sizes, so kobolds had penalties with scimitars.

[Anonymouswizard]

Nothings wrong as long as you are a) not annoying and b) at least kind of consistent.

Considering that I have a character lined up specifically designed to annoy any mages in the party (but not their players) by claiming that tech can solve any problem more easily than magic. He refuses to let anybody do magic on him unless there is no other way, which will actually help keep mages from exploding (even if the winds of magic are calm enough so that minor spells pose no risk).

[Jay R]

anyway, i just feel really, really crappy about not being the best! player! ever! and even worse about being an amazingly ****ty TV trope, so what, my dear forum peeps, what the actual butt can i do to repair all of these shenanigans?

seriously; what?

First level Fighters and Wizards are not very good, and have to gain a lot of experience to get better.

Starting football players are not very good, and have to gain a lot of experience to get better.

And yes, first level role-players are not very good, and have to gain a lot of experience to get better.

The solution, in all three cases, is to keep at it, face more encounters, learn more, and get more experience.

[Think what a lousy game it would be in the long time if you were already "the best! player! ever!", and knew you would never get any better than you were when you started.]

[Gravitron5000]

hola, comrades.

anyway, i just feel really, really crappy about not being the best! player! ever! and even worse about being an amazingly ****ty TV trope, so what, my dear forum peeps, what the actual butt can i do to repair all of these shenanigans?

seriously; what?

How about trying simpler concepts. Farmhand turned adventurer due to too many bad seasons on the farm. Rogue trying their hand at adventuring due to too many run ins with the law. Magicians apprentice being foisted out into the world due to an erratic wizardly whim. It can be a lot easier to keep shenanigans under control when you give yourself less pressure to be *cool* or *edgy* and just focus on a simpler more down to earth character.

[Doxkid]

Stuff that hurts me

So long as everyone is having fun it doesnt really matter what you are playing or why. That said, your post rubs me the wrong way five or six times over. That is my problem though.

[TeChameleon]

Wellp, if your issue is that your characters have a decidedly unfortunate tendency to sound like about two-thirds of a Mary-Sue checklist, a simple remedy exists for any future attempts; write a quick character bio (much like you gave us in the OP), then read it out loud. If everything goes black for a moment, don't worry- that's just your eyes rolling too hard and getting stuck briefly You probably shouldn't play the character, though

If you don't trust your own judgement on this, find a cynical friend, preferably one who doesn't entirely want to listen in the first place but will if they have to. If they complain everything's gone black, then yeh... back to the drawing board.

If you want to have some brain-melting fun (especially if you can get your DM to play along), make yourself a (male) minotaur barbarian or something similar. Make sure that you emphasize that they're nothing like Stripperelfa- they're huge, muscley and grim, with very little in the way of a sense of humour and no time for nonsense. Plus they're not exactly attractive, given, y'know, bull head. Make sure their backstory includes the phrase 'FOR MY HONOUR!' at least twice, bellowed in as deep a growl as you can muster.

Then watch the heads explode as you start playing him as if you were still playing Stripperelfa

[Socksy]

http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm is a test for these characters, which can help if you run their backstories through it.

And yeah, play a big hairy male character, or play your female characters as if they were big hairy male characters.

[slaydemons]

I also say don't sweat it like one of the earlier posters. I can only describe how I go through character creation and that is a few steps

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1. Figure out what they do when they don't adventure or before they started to adventure
2. Figure out why they are adventuring
3. Figure out how they will get along with the party.
4. Also have fun with it. Its super important

As for my first character, I was a half-elf samurai because I liked half-elves, and I liked ninja's and samurai.... I died in my first session

[JAL_1138]

How about trying simpler concepts. Farmhand turned adventurer due to too many bad seasons on the farm. Rogue trying their hand at adventuring due to too many run ins with the law. Magicians apprentice being foisted out into the world due to an erratic wizardly whim. It can be a lot easier to keep shenanigans under control when you give yourself less pressure to be *cool* or *edgy* and just focus on a simpler more down to earth character.

Seconding this. Keep it simple, and start off small. Some of my favorite characters to play are average joes who got wrapped up in the current adventure because they happened to be one of the only people (along with the other PCs, of course) with a weapon available when [insert monster here] was spotted at [insert location here], and things snowballed from there.

Gravitron's suggestions, quoted above, are great and I'd recommend trying one of those. Don't try and force yourself to play THE COOLEST CHARACTER, and don't try to make the character cool by piling on relationship drama and extraplanar origins and extensive backstory. That can all come later, when you have more experience, if you still want to do those things. Sometimes the coolest characters are the ones who aren't trying too hard to be cool.

Personality-wise, don't stretch too far. Maybe start with not much more than the short, simple character description in mind, and just let a personality for the character develop organically over several sessions.

Ease into it. Very, very few are great at first. Making the character too complicated or over-the-top is like trying to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the piano before you've gotten the hang of the black keys and where middle-C is.

[Jormengand]

I wouldn't sweat it. Most people's first character are terrible; it's sort of a tradition.

My first one was a Elf druid with a boa constrictor animal companion and a negative strength score.

Modifier. Tell me you meant modifier.

[Hawkstar]

If you want to have some brain-melting fun (especially if you can get your DM to play along), make yourself a (male) minotaur barbarian or something similar. Make sure that you emphasize that they're nothing like Stripperelfa- they're huge, muscley and grim, with very little in the way of a sense of humour and no time for nonsense. Plus they're not exactly attractive, given, y'know, bull head. Make sure their backstory includes the phrase 'FOR MY HONOUR!' at least twice, bellowed in as deep a growl as you can muster.

Then watch the heads explode as you start playing him as if you were still playing Stripperelfa

I second this idea wholeheartedly.

[BootStrapTommy]

I would probably hate you as a player. And as DM I would constantly plot creative ways to kill you. Er... I mean your character.

Your title sounds accurate. That being said, are your shenanigans detrimental to the entertainment of your peers? If not, to use a tropey sounding turn of phrase, keep on trucking.

If so, maybe think of a character who is not some how acting out your weird sexual fantasy.

[BWR]

In your long description of the situation, you left out the actual problem you want solved.

Who, exactly, is having less fun because of your actions?

If the answer is "Nobody", then you have no problem to solve.

If you have a name, that's the person you should ask.

As usual, Jay makes a good point. Unless people are exasperated or annoyed by your behavior there isn't anything wrong. If people are (and you yourself might very well be the only one who feels the need to change and grow) then you can do one of two 'easy' things. You can either ask straight out what elements people are finding annoying and get advice on how to tone that down to something palatable, or you can start from scratch and make the most boring, generic, lifeless piece of cardboard you can think of and gradually add (and possibly quickly remove) elements of color and personality to it until the rest of the group seems comfortable with the result.

[Joe the Rat]

If you want to have some brain-melting fun (especially if you can get your DM to play along), make yourself a (male) minotaur barbarian or something similar. Make sure that you emphasize that they're nothing like Stripperelfa- they're huge, muscley and grim, with very little in the way of a sense of humour and no time for nonsense. Plus they're not exactly attractive, given, y'know, bull head. Make sure their backstory includes the phrase 'FOR MY HONOUR!' at least twice, bellowed in as deep a growl as you can muster.

Then watch the heads explode as you start playing him as if you were still playing Stripperelfa

I second this idea wholeheartedly.

As DM of a mildly humorous campaign ("normal" campaign world, gonzo players), I would approve this character.