I felt this was the best place to put this, so yeah. Right now I am playing a Dwarven "Lazer/Ranged" Cleric, and this guy is really fun. The way Dwarves are set up in 4th edition, I immediately was very interested. Currently the game is only two players, but without the healing it would have been very easy for a TPK. I'm a little rusty on roleplaying, so any ideas or suggestions would benefit as well.
Ok, tell me what you got, etc. etc.
If there is no logical reason to do something, that is what I do!
Does this lead to certain issues, such as me fighting for three sessions wearing a strange dress I found? Sure. But I always leave the DM wondering how to respond.
Because, honestly, when you go into a dwarven stronghold and are asked what your business is, and you say "I'm trying to find a place to clean my dress, it has blood on it," how would you expect them to respond?
As long as I keep my quirks harmless and not to the detriment of the party, I think it's entertaining.
I want to interact with the DM's main plot as far as possible and will often call directly for DM advice on how to not wander off the core content. I love setting up and resolving story arcs and will typically take actions that give the DM opportunity for narrative pay-off later. I typically have a tone for my characters and get frustrated when sympathetic comic characters are subverted into buffoons or tragic martyrs are denied the opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
I'm much more suited to DMing than playing.
I find that i often come up with multiple different scenarios and paths for my fellow PC's, and usually think outside the box in terms of solutions to problems, so maybe that's it?
In saying that, if a game is being run and people are getting all psyched up and making characters i often will make a character based on the role that has least been filled; kinda like a gap filler in the PC's defenses i guess :P
I make people laugh a lot, well, sometimes at least, so maybe that's what it is - but i also feel bad about it sometimes because i can go too far, which is disruptive...
Ah well, ce la ve
- PEKKLE!
What do you add to the game?
I'm a Munchkin; at least one person at the table will have an optimized character, so we'll never be completely inept in combat.
I'm a tactician; I track initiative, track conditions, suggest possible moves, and try to keep every character doing something effectively in combat.
I like things organized; show up on time, print extra character sheets and particularly important rules, make sure we all know who's coming and what location we'll be playing in, remind everyone of last session's storyline.
I'm a rules lawyer; even if I can't quote the PHB from memory, I can at least point out the chapter that particular mechanic is in. Except when...
If there's a good mood going at the table, I'll try to keep it going; let the DM improvise his dramatically appropriate houserule. Give the group someone to laugh with (or laugh at), sustain the contagion. React appropriately to someone's off-topic or off-color comment, then remember what was going on when it's time to resume play.
What sort of characters do you enjoy playing,
Whatever role needs to be filled that no one else is playing.
and what do you do in order to benefit the overall dialogue of the campaign?
This is something I need to work on, though I tend to call for group decisions to be made if it doesn't appear after a few rounds of discussion that we're going anywhere. At other times, I need to shut up and let the good roleplayers roleplay. I do my best to smile and listen politely.
What do you add to the game?
I provide tactical advice because I have the best grasp on tactics in the party.
I act as a motivator for the party to keep pressing on.
I write things down so that we know what we are doing even after having a long time to play.
What sort of characters do you enjoy playing?
I usually enjoy playing antiheroes because I think they have the potential to be more realistic characters and with more opportunities to RP than the sometimes hypocritical LG characters killing whole tribes of humanoids just because they are there. Besides that it is quite amusing to suggest evil solutions to good characters and watch their reactions to what you just said. Of course I never do anything to seriously disrupt the other party members, it's immature and can lead to problems. Basically I help the party but in my own way.
What do you do in order to benefit the overall dialogue of the campaign?
Apart from trying to properly RP my character, I remind important facts and give hints to the other party members since I write down notes about the various events, places and NPCs of the game. I also try not to steer the inevitable out of game conversations too far away because since we don't always have enough time to play, we have to make the best of it.
.Experience - I've played/run all kinds & editions of games.
.The abilities to optimize, wargame, Roleplay, DM, seperate in & out of character knowledge, & spin decent stories (regardless of wich side of the screen I'm on)
.I'm just chock full of odd RL knowledge.
.Resources - books, minis, props, etc. Sometimes even the place to play.
.Skills in miniture painting & modeling 3-d terrain.
.An over-active imagination. When coupled with knowledge, resources, & those modeling skills.... One of the other players once commented that they'd hate to be the hamster in my head. I took that as a compliment.
What sort of characters do you enjoy playing?
.Honestly? Pretty much anything that's not female.
That said I tend to play alot of bards & alot of fighter types (lumping fighters, paladins, rangers, barbarians & such all together). I also have a penchant for playing humans alot, though it really has nothing to do with the rules.
And I'm almost always some shade of good - though I can do evil really well.
What I don't like is people trying to force/argue me into playing "whatever roles missing". I'll never do this to you, don't do it to me.
Granted, I can play any class. And sometimes I do have a character in mind that happens to fill that empty slot. If so, fine. But if I don't....
You know what? YOU obviously didn't want to fill it for whatever reason & played what you wanted instead. So what makes you think I should have to act differently? I am not the guy that will "take one for the team" & play something I really don't want to. If that means we're short a class? Well then, I guess we'll have to figure out how to work around that.
Anyways;
.In our 3.5 game I'm playing a gestalted fighter/warmage elf(paragon).
I started out as just a warmage/paragon - but some in game events forced me to add fighter to the mix.
.In our 4e game I run both a 1/2 elf bard & a dwarven barbarian. I love playing the bard but he's alot more RP focussed than the campaigns turning out to be. So I made the dwarf & waited patiently for a logical point to have the bard bow out (for awhile). Enter one dwarven barbarian who's main drive is to die fighting the largest monster he can find (yes, I'm a GW fan)....
What do you do in order to benefit the overall dialogue of the campaign?
I stay in character.
I also bring beer.
That and damage. I'm currently playing a Dwarf Ranger (member of the "Tunnel Scouts") he is with the party and the melee striker. I have him optimized for damage output and mobility.
I play many diffrent characters and I develop a personality for each of them. I put some of myself into them but not all of myself into them. I generally enjoy any type of character but I have always hated playing in a non-magic or low magic world.
I always try to stay in character throughout the game. I hope to encourage other players to get more involved instead of "My guy does this...", and then roll dice.
I stay engaged with the story line. As a long-time DM, I know how kobolds, etc work and think, but I keep myself in the perspective of my PC. Borg the Bold has never seen a kobold, let alone fought one. "Come here, squishy little lizard critter! JEEEZUS!!!
" ("Jeeezus" was a homebrew minor diety of misfortune in an early game to account for everyone screaming it out when things went wrong.)I usually played fighters, loaded pistols just waiting to go off. "Give me an enemy and let me go!" Not very big on finessing things!
Being the most veteran player in my group, I bring the balance, in many ways. Each time a campaign shifts uncomfortabley in one direction, I step up and bring things back on track. I also bring a lot of out-of-the-box thinking to the table -- I'm a huge fan of borderline absurd solutions to problems.
So I'm there to enhance the fun of the group while maintaining the balance. Other players using crazy third-party content with complicated rules? No problem, I have tons of fun just sticking to the core. A true neutral party? Don't sweat it DM, I'm Chaotic Evil, and I play it CORRECTLY, so have fun with THAT.
That being said, I'll often get the DM out of tight jams. (The other DMs are still new to DMing). I've firebombed an orphanage just because a couple players spent too much time making small talk about daycare policies with the NPCs. (Orphaned children are worth as much XP as goblins, right?)
And I usually also help players out of jams. I'm extremely handy with puzzles and such. And I've broken countless characters out of prisons, etc.
Tooting my own horn was theraputic. Thank you.
I'm a sabatouer. I'm best when it comes to dirty buisness. Poisening people's drink, taking hostages, lying right to people's faces.
So naturaly I lean toward rogues, or casters with spells that fit my motives..
To be honest, I actually am ok with the lawful good dope who thinks I'm nothing but a depraved nihilist. When it's a girl, I get this feeling of alpha male quality that I can tempt them, and if it's a male, I can simply show them time and time again how their way doesn't work. When people really care about justice, they just stop caring about everything else...
What really urks me is those damn neutral and chaotic good hippies. The ones who deplore violence, or want to understand the psychology of their foes. Uptight and flawed morality I can handle, cowardice and relativism I cannot. If they weren't useful to me I'd kill them in their sleep with a poisoned dagger.
Another unique thing about me is in combat. I tend to not fight. Atleast not directly. Direct combat is not my thing. I'll actually just walk away from a fight usually. Or hide in a safe spot and let my comrades handle the brunt of it and pickoff whatever's left. Direct confrontation puts me at a disadvantage, and the lives of my asscosiates means little to me anyway, so they might as well serve as my cannon fodder.
Justce prevails.
.....Evil justice.
The irony is I'm ussualy not the one who betrays my team-mates. Someone betrays me. They get tired of my misanthropy and beat the crap out of me. And then they do their stupid "I grin at him and grab his throat". Oh, so it's ok when you're a douchebag but not when I do it?
They're all just lucky I don't like to fight those who can actually fightback. I only target clearly weaker foes. Or else I'd destroy them. Ignorant oaves! I'd like to gut them all and sell their organs..
I actively play my character's personality and speak in character even in a tense combat. I'm good at playing tactically but I'm not afraid to make sub-par choices if my character gets swept up in the moment. Although I try to be consistant, my character's personality isn't static and changes with the events of the campaign and through interactions. I do this to role-play as much as I do to get others in the swing too.
I've been playing D&D for over 20 years and have played every edition. This alone does not make a good gamer, but I feel I have vast history and experience to draw from when role-playing. I value the tradition of D&D.
I'm a team player. I'll fill the role that someone doesn't want and stick out my kneck in a fight. Even if the characters aren't getting along, I help the players get along.
What sort of characters do you enjoy playing?
I'd be lying if I said anything other than melee. My favorite character was a very potent casting-heavy cleric but even he went toe-to-toe in fights by choice rather than neccessity. My current wizard gets in the thick of it too. I've played lots of fighters, barbarians, rangers, rogues, knights, and monks. My 4th ed character I played for 9 levels was a warlord.
What do you do in order to benefit the overall dialogue of the campaign?
I would never let the DM get to the point where he would want to railroad us. I know its alot of work for him, so even though we get off track sometimes, we know when to follow the carrot.
I try to develop my character's strengths and weaknesses beyond the numbers. Creativity is synergistic, so you have to do your part for the DM to do his.
For example, in an All Flesh Must Be Eaten campaign, I played a UFC fighter who took one too many blows to the head (explaining the fact that I spent the minimum nuber of points on mental stats and pimped out my physical stats. Incidentally, I love point buy RPGs :D). Suffice to say shenanigans ensued including;
-Me actually finding a use for the skill "Dancing (DDR)"
-Me inadvertently allying with the zombies because as far as I can tell, they're just unhealthy looking people.
-Me becoming a zombie (after maximum damage from a shotgun barely killed me and only because of the damage from getting infected in the first place incidentally) and my intelligence going up because of it.
Or in a 3.5 D&D game I was a graverobbing half vampire hengeyokai with a *****in cape and sunglasses who fought with a shovel and had a magic flying umbrella. Also, we got 50 lb bags of holding from the campaign's resident deus ex machina, and I immediately got a 49 lb. rock to put in it, said rock later being dropped on one of the minibosses from the ceiling.
Or in a forum RP I'm in where I play an undead gunslinger with a cat on his shoulder who spends his free time sitting in the back and whittling.
Or a forum RP I was in before which led to numerous memorable quotes (including my charrie arguing semantics while lying on the floor while hemmorhaging internal organs), my favorite being the other PC's reaction to something I said; "My life is in the hands of a man who can only think about tabbies. Great"
As a player I contribute balance and sense, to what would otherwise be a constant TPK environment. When the rest of the party gets into trouble, I might not be the star of the show, but I'm the guy who gets the work done, and makes sure everyone's still alive. Selfless but sensible, the Monk cannot quite comprehend the Ranger's fascination with random illogic and crazy 'imma gettin mahself killed' actions.
As a player I try to bring fairness and justice, but so too do I try to bring a realistic developement of character. 'Imma gettin' mahself killed- but the rest of the party will selflessly save me' hilarious it might be, but the character's learned that even with all his experience, there's still people who will push him to his limits. Does he save the ranger, time and again? or does he let a stunt too far result in the ultimate karmic retribution?
Find out next week on Kerrus smacks down a giant plant monster to save the Paladin (and the Ranger, incidentally)
I am also fantastic at the support role, meaning I had no problem in older editions playing the guy who hardly ever attacked because he was busy buffing allies. takes a particular kind of mindset to relax and enjoy killing by proxy... I mean sure it was the rogue who slew the dragon, but it was you that made it possible. I was always comfortable stepping back and letting others take the spotlight.
But I can't say I'm a perfect player, I tend to get frustraited when I can't figure out the thread of the plot... I don't mean that I can't figure out the mystery, or who stole the cookie from the cookiejar. I mean we've been wandering around for three sessions without any clear goal in mind... which led me to utter something that's become an ongoing joke at my gametable "I roll a search check... do I find the plot?" It'd be perception now but that's not the point.
I'm not much for melorama, my roleplaying with NPCs can be awkward, where I really shine in roleplaying is banter, in combat, or in downtime between players in character. Improving backstoy "I ever tell you about the time," or just planning in character, or ribbing each other in character... that I like, that I'm really comfortable with.
Unfortunately, the group I am currently with would rather sit around and talk (roleplay), rather than kill plastic monsters. It bores me sometimes, but at least it really makes me appreciate the battles that much more.
I am grateful that I am in a group where everyone has good hygiene and good manners and no bad habits, so I am not complaining too loudly...
I am a rules lawyer. Not to the point of making the game less fun, though. I know when to go with things and when to jump in with an extensive knowledge of the rules.
I know strategy. In the sense of both character optimization and board tactics. I am the most experienced of anyone in my group with strategics and the like. Battle plans and optimized characters are always going through my head.
But more than anything, I know when to reel it in. I know when my natural inclination towards tactics and rules is interfering with the game, and I can stop.
But sometimes... I just don't want to. ;)
What sort of characters do you enjoy playing?
I always put a piece of myself into my characters. They are me, in a way. Or, at least, what I'd like to be. I have a difficult time separating my OOC and IC emotions - when I get upset about a bad dice roll, my character gets upset. I figure that if my characters are like me, then I don't have the lapse in character when something in me flares up. I figure out some IC reason why my character is irked.
As far as class goes, I'll play anything. I lean towards melee striker, though. Generally I'll just fill in the holes, but make my character pretty striker-ish nonetheless.
In a 3.5 campaign I'm playing I play a half-elf fighter-cleric named Haywood. He has an adamantine steam-engineered forearm, an oversized mithril warpick with the dying words of a gnome terrorist forged onto the side, and a cast of NPC friends straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. They reside in a vast metropolis on an island - the only safe haven from hordes of undead that roam the continents under the orders of a lich and a god.
What do you do in order to benefit the overall dialogue of the campaign?
Mostly I just try not to screw up the storyline. I have been known to indulge myself in messing up my DM's plans every once in a while, though.
However, my most useful and favorite contribution to any campaign is to develop the story and my character. I write backstories for my characters and journals for each session. I'd say I find more joy in advancing the story and making things epic than I do in min/max-ing.
And that's saying something! :D
As a player, I'm a rules lawyer. My [player] group needs one, and I'm it. The DM needs to change a rule, find a rule, make a ruling, create a class, rule on a class, etc., I provide him with the appropriate info and cite the source. I'm mush like Icarus noted above for himself.
As a character I've played a 2e/3e Bard with an assassin flavor (Thanatos) who regularly negotiated with the BBEG Demon in an altered version of the FR Time of Troubles concept campaign (ToT2 per our DM). I never made deals that backstabbed the party, but milked for info and was never really a 'team-player' with the established party (I came late to the group). Two other players betrayed the party and I helped pretty much both sides survive. I was out for myself, but recognized that playing both ends against the middle was the best option, but also that neither side could confirm that I was working with the other so that I stayed ally to both was also important for long-term character background goals. That char was along for the ride in the campaign storyline, and was always more focused on his personal quest goals (unbeknownst to the other chars/players). He had a 6 page handwritten background, so that tells you a little about that.
I've played a 3e monk (Aramil) who was one of the two players that held a group of oppositely aligned chars together with my neutral, median voice. Was befriended by the "Golem/Shmegal" like character, who ended up being the other median voice. I was also lawful in that game (monk, duh), which was important to temper the chaotic tendencies of the group. In this game I was very much a team player and kept the party focused on their goals within the campaign (much like Kerrus noted for his monk char and player style above for this game). Aramil died when I was absent one session and the players blew up Neverwinter with a large pile of "soul-orbs" in one of their insane chaotic 'thinking outside the box' ideas, which explains why that char was so needed in that group. The rest of the group died one session later when they fractured the FR cosmos with more of those soul-orbs and created a riftworld with random planar connections to pretty much every kind of RP world one can think of... the DM got a kick out of wanting to bring forth kobolds with 9mm's.
That, the dissolution of most of the players in that group (DM, me, and one other newer player stayed - lost 3 regulars and 3 other alternates), and then the release of 4e was pretty much the end of that persistent FR world that DM had been using for over 10 years. We tried to resurrect it like 100 (in-game) yrs later (just before 4e came out, so the whole spellplague thing was kinda funny coincidental to us) with orcs pretty much ruling everything, but that game only lasted one session. This was just after the conclusion of the 2+yr-long game noted below.
In a Future D20 Apocalypse 'Angels v. Demons' game which ended up more space-oriented 'Lost Earth' style where the Angels v. Demons thing was all an alien hoax, I played a former Air Force officer engineer (Smart Hero/Field Scientist/something else - 'Charles Smith') who ended up developing a new system of space travel using inter-dimensional space (like hyperdrive but faster, more like scientific teleportation - called: Dimensional Phased Planar Particle Technology, or DP3 for short). I was the fix-it/build it guy for that game, which was only a 3 player game (plus DM, the 4th player dropped after only a few sessions cause he moved, and the 5th dropped after a couple dozen sessions because of a change in work sched - his char stayed in the game as a peripheral necromantic/vampiric medical doctor altered by our Fraal ally/BBEG double agent, who we sealed in his own ship with a zombie crew). My char sucked at fighting, and the gun guy and sword chick always had to protect me so I could make things work and get us out of the mess or accomplish the mission (at higher levels near the end-game I augmented myself with nanites and cyber-wear and genetic engineering to be MUCH better).
We rescued millions of humans who had been abducted from Earth in the 'originally-believed-to-be' Rapture from the Korath aliens who basically picked them up like going through a drive-thru. Yup, it was gonna be dinner time for them! That campaign was called Earth Inherited and we basically ended up rediscovering Earth in another solar system hundreds of years after we witnessed it destroyed (that is, the Earth was hundreds of years older, the rest of the universe was only a few months, maybe a year older). Turns out it was moved to where we found it by a future incarnation of my char using the same space travel system I/my char developed in-game (ported first to the future, then back to where we found it, thus why it was so much older). The craziest thing about that game was all the things that the DM planned that we, as players and as characters, kept playing right into and developing his storyline for him. For instance, he planned the 'move' of Earth, but not how. My char solved that for him with the space travel system. One of the other char's had some kind of genetic sampling done to find out about her past (this was the sword chick), and ended up providing the material to redevelop the human race on the Earth we found (she was the major plot char in this campaign - my usual DM always has one). The third char (gun guy) developed a religious cult around the concept of the sword chick char being a revenant prophesied savior, but then left his major-domo in charge of everything, including the development of a super-weapon to rid the galaxy of the Korath (who, btw, ended up being on our side of the larger good v. evil conflict - we just didn't know it in the beginning because they ate humans). So, yeah, the major-domo was corrupt and not a 'true believer.' The DM kept waiting for the gun guy to give the major-domo a chance to betray him and possibly kill him, but in a way that he could continue the religious cult 'scam' as its leader, then the player just up and left him in charge of everything and rejoined us in space. Hello, pie on a platter. There was a HUGE amount of those things that the DM had set up but hadn't figured out how to accomplish them that the players just kept giving him the methods to make it happen. Crazy fun stuff. Did I mention that Illithid were the 'protectors' of the human race that was indigenous to this galaxy? Yeah, they worshiped them, kinda like the Gith of old. That was our DM's way of getting back at all my 'big brain' ways of getting out of trouble - Brain Eaters, yay! That game lasted over 2 years of almost continual bi-monthly (2x per month) or more play. That was one of the most epic games I've ever been happy to have been a part of.
Most recently I've played a 4e Dwarven Battlerager Fighter who has been lots of fun (Arak Bloodbane). I needed a change from the brainiac char of the previous D20 game, so I picked this loud, obnoxious, boisterous, brain-dead fighter (Int8). Almost always drunk, he's all business when it comes to battle, and takes his 'defender' role seriously. In town he creates a great distraction buying much to drink in taverns and initiating a festive, party atmosphere while the other members of the group pick pockets and gather info from alcohol-loosened lips. Secretly, he's drowning his sorrows of exile in the drink, which unlike most others of his kind, he actually hates.
Finally, I'm DMing a group other than my regular playing group with a recurring DMPC Minotaur Fighter grizzled veteran out of retirement named Riggs Murtagh who likes to say, "I'm getting to old for this sh!t!" He comes around just to make sure the DM hasn't put the players in over their heads.
Those are the most notable chars. There've been others, but those were never played very long.