I tend to play a different sort of character every game, but for whatever reason I eschew characters that are too 'surreal'. I tend not to play wizards, or aliens, or psionics, or elves, or whatever the setting entails. I played an alchemist once, but in a very low fantasy world, making him more of a chemist, really.

Sometimes my characters return in different forms/games if I don't feel they ever got a good resolution. I had a recurring character that appeared in a game of Unknown Armies, then in a Dresden Files campaign, before finally getting horribly maimed in a Call of Cuthulhu one-shot. At which point he was retired.



On a different topic: I've begun expanding the small zombie game that I wrote into something a bit bigger, with a DCC style funnel. My playtesters and I opened our mini-campaign today. 9 characters went in, only 4 emerged at the end as survivors. All in all a successful day at the office.

 

All hail Manuel Rodriguez the (slightly legal) immigrant and Pierre Decroix the camp gay, black, flight attendant. May they live forever.

It was a fun session. One of the other player's characters died in under five minutes.

 

I play soldier type characters every so often, but they're usually just a break from the routine. My last few serious campaign characters have been (in reverse order) a business tycoon from a high tech imperialist empire (Stars Without Number), a hermit mage who grew up in the Tucson Exclusion Zone (Shadowrun 4e) and the spare heir of a minor Dornish house with a talent for talking (ASoI&F).

 

Usually I'll play either a social character or a scholar/intellectual type. The latter is sometimes best done by means of a magical character, other times just going down the well educated, very intelligent route.

I find that sort of character gives more opportunity for roleplaying, rather than roll playing.

 

My last character was for a "STALKER Fukushima" game and was inspired by Gendo Ikari, but that game barely lasted a session. Before that was the Firefly one from here. And before that was the Paladin and the Sorcerer from the two Pathfinder games I played for a couple sessions each. None of those characters are very similar, so I'm not sure if I have a preference besides "making a character that fits the game."

Since no one else in my group seems to want to even attempt it, I'm pretty much Forever GM.

 

It entirely depends on the setting. I try to have a concept and adjust class/alignment/skills or whatever based on that. I played a 13 years old warrior prodigy devoted to the Seven (ASoI&F), a shadow mage who's not afraid to get his hands dirty if it means making sure his friends stay alive (D&D), a vile man who could charm anyone with just a few smiles while putting poison in their drinks (PriaX), a fighter who was spec into pugilism and grappling (MMA style) for D&D; those were my last RPG character. Had a lot of fun with all of them!

 

Two things:

First, for the question on characters:

I'm a GM for most of the time, yet whenever there is an exception, I usually get to play in some campaign that lasts for at least half a year. Choosing characters is somewhat difficult, since I've used to adjusting NPC on how they actually play, and it is often that I give life to the character I created only after trying to play it for a couple of sessions.

My choices vary, and while I have preferences for werewolves, archers, shapeshifters and malkavians*, I don't need to choose either of these to have fun. My characters also tend to either fall close to paranoid-sociopathic** or lawful-pacifist ends of the spectrum. Obviously not both at the same time.

*One of my wishes is to someday play a proper not-comic-relief malkavian, but so far the best I did were only half-decent attempts at it, with me getting slightly carried away. I'm yet to see a proper performance of a malkavian player, myself included. Malkavian NPC's are easier, since pulling off a scene or two is easier than achieving consistency.
**Here I'm not speaking about a "kill them all" mentality, but rather "doing things for the cause x excuses stepping on moral norms.

Second, unrelated to the above:

Could anyone recommend a good (reliable and cheap) rpg book shop from EU, so that I wouldn't have to pay customs fee? I want to get myself a personal copy of Ars Magica 5th edition.

I've looked over some of the shops mentioned here:
http://rpggeek.com/thread/668906/list-online-rpg-shops-europe

Yet I'm still looking for a personal experience feedback or recommendation.
So far, many of the sites are small, with outdated-looking websites, and only show shipping when you proceed to check-in.

So far the more promising site I found is a german is Spheremaster Games shop, but the site is still somewhat outdated, and there are two types of shipping - economy and premium, that differ by 2 euro and have no explanation as to the what the difference between the two is.

 

Hey folks! I am scouting a bit; I'm planning on starting a new DnD campaign (5E) next year (mid-january probably) based on the exploration of a new land. The time would probably (still need to be confirmed) on sundays 1PM (GMT-5). The game would be open to 6 players max and attendance will be flexible. There will be no plot hook per day, you will determine what you want to do; perhaps you'd like to go north and explore that broken tower you saw last time while on your way to the dragon's lair or perhaps you don't want to venture too much east because the creatures there are too dangerous and you'd prefer to start exploring west). The players are in charge of the expedition.

Who would be interested in playing? Depending on the number of players, I might increase the maximum number so don't hesitate to tell me if youmd like to join. I might even open a second schedule time if there are enough players and if you are available for both time, players will be able to join whichever expedition they'd like depending on their own schedule or the expedition's goal.

 

Kind of interested, but I haven't really looked into 5E yet. That, and I really want to do something with the Pathfinder character I made and started a campaign which fell apart after a player just seemingly intentionally borked it(causing both himself and another player to die, despite the GM being very clear what would happen if he followed through on his actions) then buggered off.

Then again, the GM claims to have something in mind for me, but I'm not super keen on the solo-adventure he is suggesting. in the mean time.

 

Bas, you know I'm down for this game.

Fen— If I can sell you on the game: 5E is awesome. There's just enough Pathfinder/3.5/d20 to appeal to people invested in that system while making the rules simple enough to just pick up and run with. Honestly the best D&D-like system so far IMO. Not to mention that having played with Bas for over a year, I can tell you he'll make an excellent DM.

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence NMB

 

January-February is a bit far, but I'm interested. Free-form always seem interesting, but so rarely do people actually run them. I've been part of one session of 5e, which took place at a local hobby shop. There were too many people, and one of the people there I knew from various classes to be supremely annoying. That may have colored my experience with the system.

I very recently started a PF Kingmaker game in person, and the players just exploring has been pretty fun. One character died to some frog-people. Immediately after this, everyone went into a dungeon (underneath a tree) without any supplies and with one character a level down. They got kicked out by a giant centipede. The next session they spent an hour discussing how to break into a bandit castle, before deciding to go explore some more instead.

 

I know the start date is a bit far but I'm currently playing in 2 campaigns (one as PC and one as DM) so I can't really add another one on top of that at the moment. Plus I'd like some time to really get the setting right and to playtest some home rules with IRL friends so that I can make this smooth sailing asap.

I'm putting your name down as potential player

 

You know me. No matter how full my schedule, I can always find more time.

/in

 

After having dealt with a bunch of real life issues that have kept me away from PnP games for almost a year, I'm finally in a position to where I can get back into things. Already PM'd Basilisk, but I just wanted to post and say that if this does turn into a thing, having played various PbP games with everybody but Fen who has responded so far, this is a pretty awesome group so far. Really hope we can make this work!

 

Fair warning, I have 7 players lined up already (5 from DLP and 2 others). If there are more people interested, do speak up as I might open up a 2nd time slot for you. No guarantee though.

 

I am unsure of the underlying meaning of this post.

 

Well... he's the batman, of course.