PC Personality Choice

[Thimblerig]

I'm just curious - since people often write things like, "Oh, my PC was totally thinking X," or, "My PC would never do something like that"...

 

When you make up a new PC, how do you decide on the personality? Always the same/tried and true? Something a little different each time? Kinda like you translated into the setting? Cross gender? Whatever is appropriate to the class? Do you let it develop through play?

 

Me, they tend to be a bit different every time - a melancholy LN fighter-mage, a profoundly troubled chaotic thief, a thoroughly nice but kinda insipid fighter-type... I mostly play female characters, and tend to stay away from Team Evil. The newest kid is a Half-Orc Swashbuckler* with a fine sense of the ridiculous, a Big Brother complex towards Imoen, and we'll see what else happens once he gets out of Candlekeep...

 

I'm interested in how others work these things out.

 

* (Because there are people in the world who can realise that it's possible to play a Half-Orc Swashbuckler with a floofy shirt and a rapier and not immediately want to play it, but I am not one of them.)

[Kulyok]

I'm not interested in roleplaying or pretending to be someone else. When I start a new character, I play myself.

 

The game's world calls, though, and it's hard not to assign value to certain story choices. When the game tells me that this character is going to be a scared lost orphan(NWN2), this character - a fearsome and fierce Dark Lord(SWTOR), and this one - a good-natured lad with a sense of adventure(Mask of Eternity), I say "okay" and make adjustments in my head. If a story looks more interesting when I play evil, I play evil - and again I make adjustments, because a character who kills innocent people for a very good reason usually undergoes a drastic change of personality. When you gain power or kill your old mentor or are forced to kill a guy you actually agree with, again, the character changes and evolves.

 

So, my character = me + story adjustments. I try not to play opposite gender.

[jastey]

What Kulyok says is 100% how I do it.

 

For me it's always fighter, female, human. Sometimes, if I feel really noble, it's paladin. Once I chose half-elf, but only to make Xan being interested in me (at least a little).

 

I am really bad at role playing. Well, I do role play, of course, because I am not the "I'll be the first one running to the enemy and start smashing with my club" kind of personality in RL, but that's how far role playing goes for me.

 

I played a male PC only once, in DA - to be able to enjoy Zephran's romance without having to dump Alistair again...

[Jarno Mikkola]

My PC(in BG, a male ... in more modern games it's curiously a female... ) doesn't have a personality, it's an extension of this worlds avatar... the choices I make for it are always mathematically calculated and as the worlds call out mostly the good guys, I am pretending to be such, until I sometimes go on a killing spree for just that extra bit of equipment, or then I go barbarian bad ass(Evil/Renegade/Darkside/Legion) if I was the good guy already, as the math actually allows that in most of today's games.

[Domi]

I am one of the people who do create a certain personality that goes with the PC. I am actually miffed when I have to deviate from this concept. I do have a few favored types, perfectly Mary-Sueism in-game. I like playing mature and cold females as a Jedi; sensual and funny rogues, fast-talking bards and serene healers. Lately, I prefer physically strong females who can hit hard to purely magic types. I do not like playing the typical teen wide-eyed adventurer with POWERZZZZ, but I played a couple of those too. One thing I do not like playing is a half-breed; I like committing to a very typical lore profile for a racial/species choice (or what I can gather about them). My Zabraks are lawful, my Elves are mystical, mt Twi'leks are playful etc.

[daveyd]

I tend to roleplay as a character with similar moral compass or worldviews as my own; so basically Chaotic Good / Neutral Good. I like to help people in need, do the right thing and generally treat NPCs with kindness . I don't necessarily have qualms about stealing from the obscenely wealthy though; so I often end up sort of playing a Robin Hood-esque character. I have tried a few times to play an evil character in various RPGs that allow it and find I have great difficulty. Part of the problem is I actually feel bad (recall feeling really awful trying to play evil in KOTOR once my companions started reacting to it). The other problem is the way it is usually implemented in cRPGs; BG 1/2 and NWN 2 really seem more suited for good-leaning characters. Most of the quests involve helping people in some way and while I suppose you could only complete the ones where there is a monetary incentive, but that inevitably means skipping a lot of quests (and missing out on EXP or unforeseen rewards) or breaking character. I really want to complete an evil playthrough of BG1 &2 sometime but especially in the first game it seems difficult to stick to. The stories of most RPGs I've played just tend to fit good or least neurtal characters better than evil. I'm hoping that Pillars of Eternity may be different since the storyline supposedly is not about saving the world.

 

I do also prefer playing males.. Tried playing a female PC a few times but that just breaks immersion. As for other facets of the personality, I suppose I tend to act how I would act. I like choosing humorous / sarcastic dialogue options when available but I am generally not mean or cruel.

[Ardanis]

When you make up a new PC, how do you decide on the personality? Always the same/tried and true? Something a little different each time? Kinda like you translated into the setting? Cross gender? Whatever is appropriate to the class? Do you let it develop through play?

Almost exclusively chaotic neutral human male, which is what I am IRL. Usually a fighter/mage, which I want to be IRL. Sometimes I can start an LG paladin, but it's usually hard to keep with.

If the story is good and I play for the first time, I usually change to chaotic good by the end of game, because I just feel like that. A noteworthy case was in KotOR2, where I tried to play light side, but I've got to Handmaiden base and they told me "put down your weapons and you shall not be harmed" something has clicked inside my CN personality and I've said "screw you all, I'm fed up with pretending to be LG"

 

Tried to play female characters before, didn't sit well with me. Tried again the last year with NWN2, DA and BG2EE - worked out fine, since this time I didn't attempt to identify myself with the character, and was referring to it as "she" rather than "me". For some reason it only works with the gender change, as I still can't play a race/class/alignment that is alien to me.

[Salk]

Me, I usually see my character as an extension of myself. I like the freedom of making choices that I sometimes I do not dare taking in real life. I tend to play good because not only do I feel that's the way I'd behave but also because very often (unfortunately) evil (which is bad) translates into stupid (which is worse), not to mention that the path of "goodness" should, in my opinion, lead to smaller material rewards while instead the opposite is usually true in many cRPG I played.

 

I like to be a jack-of-all trades but I am most fascinated by magic (hence my avatar).

[Twani]

I completely make up personalities for each of my characters, inspired by years and years of pen and paper roleplaying. I generally don't play characters like myself at all: I don't think I'm really that interesting enough to make it your typical fantasy world. Sometimes they share some traits with me, sure, but usually they're very different from me.

 

There are character archtypes I go back to a lot, though- I've played the mysterious, secretive waif with ties to wind and demons as a tiefling sorceress in D&D and as a male demon-blooded Air Aspect in Exalted, just as I've played the righteous but naive paladin, Jedi Knight, Solar, etc etc. In RPGs, it's a bit harder to fully define your character then it is in a P&P game, though, so I try to work with the setting and game as much as I can. My male Hawke warrior who chose a combination of good and aggressive replies in Dragon Age 2 probably has a lot in common with my mostly LS but occasionally DS for the good of the Empire female Sith Juggernaut in Star Wars the Old Republic, even though obviously what they say and the paths they took are very different. I'm trying not to repeat character concepts so often, but there are certain traits I just find more fun to play then others.

 

As a rule, though, I tend to play female's in computer games (oddly, I play cross-gender a lot in P&P), and I tend to play good people who occasionally do horrible things (mostly as few games allow me to really feel like I'm playing smart evil- SWTOR sometimes succeeds (Agent!), but PS:T is the only game I can think of where I truly felt like a horrible, yet brilliant person (Nameless One?) playing evil- that is one thing that game did extremely well, I think... oh, and going evil in Mask of the Betrayer was fun, if not all that intelligent).

[Nilfalasiel]

Oddly enough, in my case, roleplaying comes after picking my character. By default, if given a choice of race and/or gender and/or alignment, I will pick a female NG elf (although I do have one half-elf), either dual-wielding melee or mage, not necessarily because it matches my personality, but because that's what appeals to me most. However, if I find myself doing several playthroughs of the same game, I will imagine different personality traits to differentiate between my girls (one is more pensive, the other more sarcastic, the other sassier, etc). The one game so far where my characters have had very distinct presences in my imagination was DAO, but that's because every race had at least two different backgrounds, which tempted me to try them all out and helped create different personas. This happened in ME as well, to a somewhat lesser extent (because there's no choice of race), because of the different backgrounds you could pick and because, this time, I was tempted to try out the different jobs.

 

The only time I play male characters is if I don't have the choice (PST), if I want to try out a romance that's not available for females (Morrigan in DAO, Tali or Jack in ME) or if I want to distance myself from my character (ran a male in DA2 for the achievements which entailed choices I felt were distasteful, like siding with the Templars). After years of JRPGs where the overwhelming majority of protagonists were obligatory males, I still naturally gravitate towards female characters whenever possible. I've never been tempted to play evil because I feel terrible making those kinds of decisions, even though I don't necessarily identify with my character (it's always "she" or "he" to me, not "me").