However, in the process, players have found out things about themselves that were previously unknown or very low key. If you've ever experienced this, and don't mind sharing, then by all means...go ahead!
We tracked 35 rolls of a d20, as many 7+ as 6-.
I had 3 attempts to pick a lock with 50% chance.... since that lock was to get into the building the adventure was supposed to be in my char had to go home and watched TV for that adventure.
The loss of imagination?
I like to think of it more as a "maturing" of the imagination. ;)
For example, when I was 12 I might have thought this was a "cool" design for a katar:
Today, I just kind of shake my head and sigh.
Maybe I would put up with it if it were a magic item and thus had a conceivable reason for actually functioning.
These days I subscribe to the school of thought that magic existing in a world is not an excuse for the non-magic things being ridiculous.
I am capable of tactics/strategy if called upon to come up with it, but it actually doesn't interest me all that much. Same goes for "optimisation."
Live-action role-play bores me to tears.
I have a natural tendency towards "lawful" behaviour, but I really enjoy making myself act "chaotic."
I feel some jealousy at the table if someone else builds a character capable of whipping more ass than mine, but really, I just want to have something to do where I get to be the star for a few minutes.
I think it is monumentally lame to create a game located in a particular milieu or genre and then immediately turn around and ignore that genre. It can be done well, to great effect, but it can also be the lamest most pointless thing on Earth.
When I was younger, yeah, that would be a sweet katar, and stuff like "Saving the dwarven kingdom" at level 3 was awesome. Now, I just scoff at stuff like that. I have lost my interest in D&D, because it just doesn't make sense. Any of it.
I don't know what I have learned from myself, but I have learned a lot about others. Most people have a commonality behind all of their characters, and that is a major point of their IRL personality.
D&D - Light and fast dual-weilding katar-user (something physically plausible, not that obscene mess of a weapon above) that uses ambish-assault tactics instead of sneak, kill, run like a baby.
D20M - Long range, real-life style sniper with a backup SMG if he gets caught.
I also realized that I'm more of a leader in D&D/D20M than most of the players in the traditional "leader" roles and classes. I come up with strategies, am more willing to negotiate, and tend to have the right blend of paranoia and logic that lets me pinpoint the real BBEG somewhere during or between the first and second encounter with the false one.
I absolutely suck at rolling dice - either luck or a ****** wrist has caught me rolling an average of a 6 on my d20 rolls.
I hate playing good and lawful alignments. Where I originally thought myself the good guy in fantasy/etc stuff, I realize I'm more the casual Chaotic Evil, but usually end up saving the world and hunting baddies anyway.
I found out the hard way that my GM & I have different ideas of what 'good' is.
He ran a module he grabbed online, and after that game we stopped gaming D&D as well as Modern together because we are so opposed to what a LG should do:
[INDENT]There was a cursed LG cleric that was killing folks (turned into an Ettin).
The module had the option to solve some riddle (very semantic verbal answer) or kill him.
My paladin decided his order could provide a Remove Curse and the restored LG cleric could spend his days atoning for the killings by rebuilding & raising the folks he hurt. Win-WIn,
.. the ettin will be gone (really gone, unraisable cause it dont exist anymore compared to just killing it)
.. the town will get rebuilt by the guy that wrecked it
.. the killed will get raised by the atoning guy that killed them
.. we dont have to force the guy to atone, he is a LG cleric & should want to
.. my order should provide the scroll, just a 3 day walk & back and we just have the townies come with to keep them safe[/INDENT]
NOPE. We apparently have to have my paladin kill a known curserd LG cleric, leave everyone dead and the town wrecked, and steal the loot from everyone that died.... rather than my Cure Heal Raise Rebuild & Attonement solution. Heck, I was even punished and assigned attonement for not killing him, seems I was supposed to just assume that after we lost the Barbarian and Mage enroute the remaining 3 guys of a 4th/5th level party was supposed to be able to kill an frickin Ettin.
Anyhoo
Now we dont game anymore.
I cant play 'good' to meet his views of it (eg: he doesnt like me taking sentient RandomEncounters in a warzone prisoner and turning them over to the Provost of my order/keep), and he is renown for punishing evil chars in his campaigns.... and my "Just leave me alone" Neutral is constantly accused of evil (they didnt leave me alone so I commited Taverncide... hey, one of the minstrels got out alive)
3P1T4PH: It sounds like you were just railroaded into a contrived plot rather than it having anything to do with alignment.
backstabbist: "**** me off and I'll kill you" is not neutral. A "good" person usually tries to find a way to avoid killing people, and they certain don't take it so lightly that they'd commit "taverncide" over small matters.
The "casual C/E" you guys are referring to is really typical, frankly. "I want to do anything and everything I feel like without consequence and I want the game world to treat me like a hero and/or venerated leader."
Just saying...
backstabbist: "**** me off and I'll kill you" is not neutral. A "good" person usually tries to find a way to avoid killing people, and they certain don't take it so lightly that they'd commit "taverncide" over small matters
Lawful Neutral: If I tell you your choices are to leave me alone or die, and they choose Die, well, I'm kinda bound to fulfill my commitment to that... arent I. If fewer folks went around knowingly making choices that kill them, I would have a lot fewer Zeros on my wanted poster.
Why dont they try NOT pestering the homicidal maniac eating a sandwich.
They never go for Live & Let Live.
'I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone... I'm just having a HamSamwich in the tavern'
But they never do
Some people you just cant reach, so we get what we had here last week.
Which is the way they want it, so, they get it.
I dont like it any more than you do.... I'll have to get all your blood of my ham sammy.
Thus I say: one of the things I've learned about myself from table-top RPGs is that I like being a Big Damn Hero. Anti-heroes bore the snot out of me. 99% of the time, they're just villains with delusions of morality. I like saving the city from mobsters. I like heroically turning down the reward. I like taking down the bad guys (i.e., the homicidal maniacs) and then turning them over to the cops. That's way more fun, for me. Bad guys are just so mundane.
Just enjoy being a bad-ass bad-guy if that's what you're into.
I'm not a bad ass, I run away whenever I can.
I value human life,
apparently more than those particular humans value their human lives.
My goal is to NOT kill anyone while having lunch,
but they just wont let that happen.
I am a SecondStory man, a catburglar.
The plan is to avoid fighting. I'm not a Rogue, I'm an oldschool thief. I dont want your life, I want your stuff while you are not even around to whine about it. Burglery is a far cry from Robbery.... I wanna burgle cause its safer (apparently "safer" for them)
The paladin says we cant cotton to evil, it must be eradicated
... and the evil folks of the world that pester a guy having lunch get eradicated, eviscerated, irradiaded, and discombobulated
all because they couldnt play nice with others
... others being the 3rd most lethal entity on the plannet
Defending the orderly & good folks sometimes requires killing the chaotic and evil despots, and sometimes those despots get killed in ther beds while sleeping by the heros of the world (like me)
Sometimes the Judge is Roy Bean or Dredd... or that guy in the corner with a samwich
I think you were right the first time: homicidal maniac.
It might be helpful, here, to point out that how a character sees himself is not the same as the character's alignment. Alignment is ostensibly objective, while a character's self-image is, by definition, subjective. He thinks he values human life? He blames people for "making" him kill them? Fine. Those are interesting character traits to play. But that willingness to kill people in order to obtain material goods is practically the definition of evil.
So let me get this straight... you're character is a burglar who occasionally gets interrupted while burgling, presumably by the people he's stealing from. They have the temerity to try to stop him, and he kills them. All. And that indicates that they don't value their lives...?
No, Im a burgler that spends hours of game time
gathering the intel to find a profitable score
seting up patsies to lure the owner out of the place
setting up other fallguys to (noncombat) engage the guards directly
then sneak in & out without encounter
and foget where I was supposed to meet the other guys to give them their share.
What happens is I put on a disguise and go to taverns at the other end of the city from my inn,
pass a Gather Intel check by plenty and go home,
and then the next 3 nights I have different disguises at different taverns,
and the GM gets bored with me not fighting so some clowns in the tavern want to start a fight
which leads to me running away and presto-change-o out of disguise and successful sneak back to the inn,
and then I leave town to let it cool down and try it again ina nother town up the river,
so the second I step into the inn these locals want to attack me for breathing too loud...
I cite Adam Ant: Friend or Foe
anyone in that tavern that was content to watch me get attacked by some losers is going to get an abject lesson what penalties Depraved Indiference bear:
To constitute depraved indifference, the defendant's conduct must be 'so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes a crime. Depraved indifference focuses on the risk created by the defendant’s conduct, not the injuries actually resulting.
The paladin told me not to coddle to lawbreakers,
they must be dealt with severely.
So it is my civic duty to Taverncide them.
Any 'good citizens' that want to sit there and watch guys engage me with lethal force
are doomed to suffer the same fate as the pending deadmen that attaked me unprovoked
(boring the GM is not grounds for assault with a deadly)
I am a coniving second story burgler.
But I am the worlds worst burgler
due to the GM attacking me before I can even get anywhere near the score. Gather Intel gets me attacked (passes as well as fails). Hiring the patsies gets me attacked. Sleeping in my Inn gets me attacked. Eating a ham sammy while waiting 3 days to be fully healed gets me attacked.
I never get to burgle, because I am always healing up from trying to gather intel to conive a well planned burglery.
Heck has no fury like a GM bored
But enough about me,
What are you guys upto?
Sorry I doubted you, man.
So eventutally his leige knowingly sends him back on the explicit mission to kill the Cursed LG cleric ettin, but I got the last laugh: we manage to take down everything and its just the last 2 PCs and the wobbely ettin... I ping it for a few and it drops.... I frickin Lay Hands the guy to stabilize it and bring it back to the citadel in our wagon and turn it over to the Provost for the courts to administer justice, not me. I did make sure to mention to the city hospice that there was a cursed LG cleric in jail that could pay for a curing once he's cured.
Ha, in the end my Pal still got himself out from killing the cursed LG cleric.
But my GM sys I'm not playing LG right: killing evil is more important than helping people.
So now we dont game, cause I cant play Good or Neutral the way he wants them played
I've discovered that I enjoy plotting and planning, and directing others in combat. I can see where things need to be, and point them out to my teammates. They don't always listen, but the more they do, the more they see why they do, and then continue to do so more often.
And I've discovered that I'm basically neutral. Laws have a vital place in society, but sometimes they need to be bent/avoided/broken. Good is better than evil, but sometimes you have to shank evil in the kidneys and Jack Bauer it into telling you where the bomb is. The term I've heard used to describe it is 'moral criminal'. You also have to have some checks and balances to stop the 'moral criminals' from ruling the world with an iron fist, while still letting them do the nasty things that they need to do to keep the sheeple of the world safe and secure.
In short, my characters almost never shrink from brutality when it's necessary, but almost never engage in it when it's unnecessary. It's a tool in the box, one that needs to be controlled with the utmost care and precision, and only useful for limited situations. But when you really need it, accept no substitutes.
*ahem*
I have learned that any character we play is always some part of ourselves that we either want to be more of, or are afraid to admit to, or both.
I have learned that no matter what you play, somebody else's character will seem to be cooler than yours. This is the greener grass effect.
I have learned that the system (any of them) just doesn't want you to leap on the dragon's back and hack at it from there.
I have learned that the longer monologue you make before your attack roll, the likelier you are to roll a 1.
I have learned that if an NPC has the same name and wardrobe as one of the DM's previous characters in another guys game, then that NPC is Immortal and incredibly wealthy as well as being suspiciously well informed. (This includes all the "NPC's" in Faerun and for the same reasons)
I have learned that when the DM asks you to detail your inventories and points out that if its not in your character sheet its not on your character, you are going into a LOOOOONNNNNGGG dungeon.
I have learned that modern characters have as little remorse killing all the women and children of monsters as do their medieval counterparts. Go fig.
And finally,
I am far more of a pompous ass in D&D/D20 as I am IRL.
This thread about what we've learned about ourselves from gaming seems to be turning into a thread about how we've "learned" that other people are to blame for our bad experiences.
3P1T4PH: It sounds like you were just railroaded into a contrived plot rather than it having anything to do with alignment.
backstabbist: "**** me off and I'll kill you" is not neutral. A "good" person usually tries to find a way to avoid killing people, and they certain don't take it so lightly that they'd commit "taverncide" over small matters.
The "casual C/E" you guys are referring to is really typical, frankly. "I want to do anything and everything I feel like without consequence and I want the game world to treat me like a hero and/or venerated leader."
Just saying...
Eh, I get called evil a lot because my characters are willing to torture enemies and bargain with other evil creatures without any moral repulsion. I always thought of it like "I'm good to good people, but the bad guys earned being treated like dirt". My DM decided this means I'm the bad guy.
Squeamish GM: Don't you have allegiance to good?
Me: Yeah?
SGM: Why are you torturing that terrorist, then? Shouldn't you be using more moral techniques?
Me: Hell no! He's trained to resist that crap!
SGM: But isn't that a bad deed?
Me: *skips moral debate* I'm doing it for the benefit of good, aren't I?
SGM: ...@#$@.
I'm a bit more diplomatic out of game than in-game (oddly enough). I can't think of squat when we're chatting up an important NPC, but when it comes to getting people to stop being mad at each other out of game, many times so we can keep gaming, I'm really good at that.
My in-game diplomacy is improving, though...
I've also learned that my GM hates Intimidate, allowing an enemy to auto-save on a twenty against my Psion's total roll of ~37.
I really enjoy house-ruling.
Aaand I think that's all of the original ones I have. :P
Aren't you aware that this is the D20Tangent board? :P
I'm done.
so we can get the off topic stuff out of our systems
Anyways, i've discovered that I am best at playing supporting characters (second in command) and naturally gravitate towards that role.
I have also learned That I can do terrible things with the npcs I create as well as make lovable sidekicks and party mascots, the most memorable being Captain Scoopa the goblin.