Poll: How Often/When Do You Roleplay?

[the protaginist]

(for the sake of this thread, i will acknowledge that "Role-playing game" has several definitions. Let us, just for this thread, define role-playing as creating a character and instilling a personality in them.)


So i've just finished my first complete playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins and am starting a new character. My first playthrough i didn't plan on putting life into a character, but as the game went on i found myself creating a personality for him.

This time I'm going to create a backstory, loves and hates, and a fully-fleshed out personality for the next character before i start the game(part of the reason i love Dragon Age is that the Origins for your character give them motivation and backstory which i may add on too.)

So, my question being, when it comes to roleplaying, do you partake? Do you just set a mindset for this character, such as "Grizzled Survivor", or do you create a fully fleshed out character such as I like to? And if you do the latter, post a description of your character(s) as i love reading about these things.

EDIT: I've no idea why the poll isn't showing up, my apologies.

 

[siegtheheart]

Normally I make a (unrealistic) copy of myself, and follow my gut reactions through all the story decisions. Then on my 2nd play through I'll make ridiculous character concepts, such as in oblivion, my khajit (sp?) that fist fought, wore heavy armor, and refused to wear a shirt.

 

[thetrue13th]

I totally go all the way with roleplaying; i have like 20 seperate accounts for FO3 and Oblivion and they all have fully detailed motivations, backstory, etc. That's why i like the elder scrolls series so much; you have the freedom to just shove the main quest in the boot of your car and go do other stuff, and there's no pressure to return to it asap.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

Yes i do. For me it enhances my creative juices and thinking in the mind of my character just helps to better the experience.

 

[Nvv]

I generally like to Roleplay in MMO's where there are there are other characters involved.
Other games I roleplay might be some RPGs and some RTSs depending on how immersive they are. Though in the case of RTS it's not really RP, it's more like super-immersion. "Advance (insert faction of Total War game)!" But I digress...
OT: I use ridiculous amounts of time on creating my character if the character creation system is good enough. (I.e Dragon Age)

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

I always make a 'true' runthrough... I make the character similar to me in looks and put skill points in stuff I'd be interested in.

Then I play the whole campaign doing what I would do and making the choices I would make.

 

[MikailCaboose]

For some reason I find myself implanting characters from other games/movies/etc. in as a character in an RPG such as Morrowind. One time I created a silver-haired, female Imperial who focused on unarmored and knifes, while having a proficiency in mysticism as well (closest thing I could find for time-control). I even went as far as trying to find blue-colored French maid clothes.
Props to whoever can guess the character I was trying to emulate.

 

[AMMO Kid]

I role-play a lot in Oblivion and Fallout 3, and I even imagine that my different characters are all in the same world, not all in different accounts.

 

[Dabox1]

i play alot of RPG's, both game and otherwise, in fact me and my group just played "gammaworld" last night

 

[Sanguinius- The Angel]

I am RPing right now on Gaiaonline. Do I win?

In terms of games, I usually pick some sort of alignment, and follow that as closely as I can. Unless it would completely fuck me over.

 

[MissGinaKid]

I try to do that whenever I can. I don't like making carbon copys of myself though. I will have for example, A woman who act's like a child and makes her disision as such. infact i do have a whole back story for that charecter in WoW. Her name is Shuni, A dranai hunter. On her home plantet she fallowed around her father as he hunted all the strange cretures and kept most of them as pets to sell. They went on the Exodor for her 18th birthday and were split up before the crash. It toke her meny years but she finally woke up and now she uses her fathers teachings to help go find him.

 

[AmrasCalmacil]

Generally every day in some form or another, me and my friends roleplay sometimes over instant messaging programs,I'm in an active roleplay guild on a rather active roleplay server on WoW, I have plenty of games of that variety and I would honestly not buy them if the roleplaying capacity of them didn't interest me.

 

[the protaginist]

In an effort to get people to describe characters they've created, i'll go ahead and post my old character from Dragon Age:

An elf brought to the Circle for study at the young age of 6, Koran has always wondered about life outside the circle. As a Circle Mage, Koran was raised to believe that Blood mages were evil, but upon realizing the threat the darkspawn posed upon the world, took up blood magic in hopes of strengthening himself as a Warden. Koran was, due to his early upbringing in the Alienage, a bit "vitriolic" towards humans, only to overcome his hatred by meeting the human mage Jowan, with whom he became close friends. When Jowan left the circle, Koran coped with it by hiding behind his former hatred of humans.

I believe that's as much as i can say without spoilering, so, share your characters!

 

[Hiphophippo]

Every sunday night with a group of friends getting our dice rolling on.

Oh

Videogames? Rarely.

 

[LogicNProportion]

I always RP. ALWAYS.

It helps me enjoy the game, make characters for future games/etc, and since I'm a writer, it's kind of like an exercise.

 

[CloakedOne]

Every now and then. I love role playing table top and sometimes I push my video game characters a little farther in character development (not very often, though).

 

[the protaginist]

Every sunday night with a group of friends getting our dice rolling on.

Oh

Videogames? Rarely.

Oh no, Table-top games count as well(that was in option in the poll, which failed to work >.<) , I role-up characters on the DnD character builder sometimes when i'm bored(the latest being a James Bond-esque rogue). I didn't mention it in the post because I've never had much chance to play the game due to lack of knowing anyone who's interested in it.

 

[Chaos Incarnate]

I role play like crazy, all my characters in Oblivion, Fallout and Dragon Age had back stories and motivation's that i used to select skills and dialogue. Some of the characters I like so much I put them in my D&D campaign

 

[Icaray]

I love RPing in open ended games like Oblivion and Fallout. Here's the character I'm currently playing in Oblivion.

A feared Khajiit assassin of the Cathay-raht breed, Gul'Khan came to Tamriel seeking the Dark Brotherhood to further his skills. Unlike other assassins, he has a strong disliking of weapons, instead using his fists to dispose of his targets. He leaves a Dragon's Tongue flower on the corpse of each of his victims.

 

[gamer_parent]

depends on the game and the conventions surrounding the game.

Obviously, video games plae a much heavier constraint on what can and cannot be done, so when playing those, I generally try to keep the character minimalistic and see if the game provides me with enough material to run with it myself.

alpha centauri, for example, despite it being a turn based strat game, actually allows you to play out a lot of political intrigue. I actually ran a game with my friends where I would play an alpha centauri game normally, and at choice points we would stop the AC game, and run a one shot adventure. Based on what happens in this game, I will adjust my playstyle in the main AC game appropriately. sometimes, the players will have huge impact on the end game, sometimes not.

For tabletop game, it depends on the game itself again. Games like Burning Empires while gives you an amazing amount of freedom to create characters, the game is written up in a way that only characters that can really work are characters that feel like they belong to the setting. i.e. I can't run a super martial artist character who can solve all the worlds problems with her fists in Burning Empires. The system just doesn't support that kind of play.