micro as macro

[gfish]

Fun question stolen from theferret: What do your RPG characters say about you? What is the common thread?

For me, my characters are almost always about seeing the world through an unorthodox technological filter. My high school Masquerade character was a scientist convinced vampirism had a viral cause. In the D&D game corivax used to run, I was an elf who had been banished for his tendency to use his nature magic to create Frankensteinian chimeras out of cute fuzzy animals to solve random problems. My 4th ed D&D character last year was a neolithic ranger and master flintknapper sent into the wider world to discover if this new "metal" menacing his tribe was a force for good or evil. Less well developed characters tend to be techies, weak in combat but always looking for clever hacks to get around it.

I'm always a sucker for technological metaphors. They're how I primarily tend to understand the world -- and therefore learning new technologies means learning new ways to understand the world. Being able to take that to a radical extreme is absolutely a form of wish fulfillment.

So, what's your story?

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I used to try to do interesting things with clerics - I liked people with interesting religions, and to whom their religions were really integral to their lives. Most RPG clerics have struck me as rather dull, really. I got bored of that, though - partly because to do it right you really need to have the right GM. And partly because after some years of playing mostly magic users of some sort or another, I got pretty bored with the concept.

More recently... Jezanna was a dancer (well, she was a rogue, but she identified as a dancer). Low wisdom, moderate intelligence, high charisma and absolute self confidence. She tried to lead the party, because she always had ideas she was quite committed to. It was kind of appalling (well, mostly funny from my perspective) how much of the time people were willing to go along with this.

Skinner was a hillbilly halfling ranger. I had really looked forward to playing her - she was competent, uncouth and gregarious. A right pain in the ass, really. Sadly, Kendrick was also in that game, and our characters had some unfortunate overlaps (a contest to see which undersized character had the most disgusting dietary preferences?)

And of course you remember the six foot tall mute but musical praying mantis chemist... I *liked* him. The whole I have come from a hive mind, but have become independently sentient bit was fun.

I guess I'm much more interested in role-playing and storytelling than I am in characters who are powerful or competent. I do tend to try and seek out characters with different motivations and perspectives, because it's more fun for me that way. They also tend to be a fairly cheerful and straightforward lot (recently - I've certainly played angst bunnies in the past, and a few mysterious types). This might be partly because I value straightforwardness in human interactions a fair bit, but a lot of it is just practical - they're fun to play, and are more likely to go out and do interesting things while angst bunnies stay home and write emo poetry. Playing an introvert is just boring, unless someone is really applying the thumbscrews. (Oh, and I'm all for torturing characters.)