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• 2: Conall. I played a loud and boisterous bard with bagpipes specifically because I intended on drinking a lot of whisky and not bothering putting on an accent other than my natural one during the one shot

• 3: Kairi. Paladin who was built to make everyone around her as invincible as she was.

• 5: Pech.I played a Pathfinder 2e one shot as a fairy barbarian that I specced into being able to carry a human-sized greatsword. He was more functional than I expected he to be

• 6: I swear the amount of kenku I play is not a furry thing I swear

• 8: Morgan. This one was Lancer rather than D&D, but look up the Death's Head frame from Lancer and you will immediately understand why I picked it when I wanted to be able to simply point at a thing and decide that I did not want it to be there any more

• 12: Absolutely the mischief-making rabbitfolk rogue who once opened a locked door by throwing a bag of spices over a rhino to annoy it and dodging aside when it charged him

• 15: Whistle. Whistle is a monk who grew up under a villain and had his world view shattered when an adventuring party took said villain down. He now travels with his new friends earnestly attempting to un-learn his awful ways. He is visually an emaciated scruffy kenku wearing rags

Also missing from the list is the horny bugger. It doesn't matter who or what it is, if it's near them, they'll try to seduce it

Where does the "ridiculous minmaxed character to game the mechanics" fit in? We had a miner/scribe once.

#5 is always fun. Especially when I accidentally become #1

Missing

• The didn't listen when the GM talked about Theme and mood and end up with a character who doesn't fit with the party/canpaign

• The traitor, you know the Scorpion/Tremere who will betray the party at every possible occasion and stab any PC showing their back

-The hero, who feel like their main character

• The anti hero, in general their player use all the possible flaws (and therefore built a strong character) A one eyed, alcoholic single parent with a deadly enemy, but they can shoot a coin at 1000m, so feels like they'll have again to do the job rather than staying home.

And many more

Can you guess what is the basic flaw for me in AD&D, which eventually led me to walk away from it? How the game builds up expectations for the player.

The average person just flips open a player's book, a monster manual or some other tome on the game lore and instantly the person thinks their character will be, from the start, like the model characters they're reading upon, which they never will or even can be, as the game does not permit it, in my understanding and experience.

As a player, it was extremely frustrating to handle DMs that expected a newbie mage/ranger/fighter/whatever to take risks as if they were seasoned veterans and had high capabilities from the start. That is nonsense.

No class in AD&D is (or was; I speak from years of distance) capable of great feats from the get go, as the way the characters are built forces a level 0/1 into basically discarding any capabilities a trained individual into a specific profession would already have. It would be better to just say the characters are slightly above average commoners.

As a DM, I was quick to get fed up with players that wanted to pull stunts that would be barely feaseable to high level characters/professionals, regardless me going through the basics as I did above.

People are idiots but the game was set up by morons and others just tried to build on top of it to improve it, with mixed results at best.

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I think there's also a pair:

• Takes the setting and theme very seriously. Reads the lore. Knows the details. Can tell you why the Lancea Sanctum and Invictus are traditionally allies
• Absolutely does not take the setting and theme seriously. Wants to play Barney the Dinosaur in your game of Vampire, and Punisher in your game about running a bakery.

I'm old and tired and generally am super tired of "wacky" ideas like the second one there. I feel like I've come full circle. As a youth, I thought like "let's play vampires and struggle with humanity!" was cool . Then there was a bit where i wanted to flip it- "let's play vampires but like go to theme parks and don't do anything sad or deep!". Now I'm back around to wanting to just play the theme as intended.

This is especially true if it comes up after session 0. Like, if you want to do a D&D game about running a BBQ shop, fine. Let's do it. Let's kill, cook, and sell some weird monster parts. But please don't derail the whole game on session 3 when you insist on going back to town to cook the monster meat when it was clearly a random encounter and everyone else wants to continue the dungeon dive pitched in session 0.

One of my favorites that I ever played was a character I where I rolled my stats first and ended up getting a -3 modifier even with mulligan rolls. Every other stat was anywhere from decent to fuckin ballin'. I sat and thought about it for a minute: what stat would be fun, interesting, and challenging to have as a -3? STR would suck, INT and CHA would be anything from really annoying to insufferable or ablist to play (every VERY low int character ever in D&D podcasts is extremely cringe to listen to), so that leaves WIS and DEX. I chose DEX and said that it was because my human fighter was a war veteran with an Above Knee Amputation from the war. From there, I arrived at him using pole arms because they help him to steady himself on his peg leg outside of combat, and that he's deeply uncomfortable with magic, since magic cost him his leg and many comrades in war.

It led to one of my all time favorite moments in an RP where he and the paladin were dining in a Giant's great hall, having a disagreement about how to proceed, when the Paladin cast a spell on him (I can't remember which, I want to say it was silence or Zone of Truth, but it can't be because it specifically targeted him). My character stared him down, slugged down the rest of the drink, then flipped the table and commenced to trying to murder the paladin. It was a pretty nuts PvP fight, since we both ended up successfully avoiding the party members who were trying to restrain us, landed a few solid blows on each other, and it only ended when the Giants had had enough of our shit.

8. Whatever lets me create the biggest explosions

I've done a few of these, but I once did a #5/#10 combo. I made a character years ago whose only purpose was to blow people's heads off with a .44 Magnum. He had virtually no other relevant skills. It was a GURPS/Car Wars mash-up, the former for roleplay and the latter for vehicular combat since we were in the Car Wars universe. I wasn't much use for anything until the shooting started.

RIP Jerry "Magnum" Carrost: you were a terrible character, but you were fun.

I always do “every non-combat skill, useless in combat”, which is absolutely infuriating with beginner DMs because all they prepared is combat encounters and I have nothing to do 😭

Look, if I wanted to fight, I’d go play a video game. I’m here for the part video games cannot give me, and that’s talking to a real person and coming up with rube-goldberg solutions to solve problems without shedding blood 😆

Awful little creature reporting for duty

I can't play with my friend because we play the same guy.

Both rogue. Both street tough types rather than the shadowy assassin type. Both used to end up taking a couple of levels of either Bard or fighter and ended up with a swashbuckler. No strength, all dex and cha.

We did play together a few times and would swap out which one of us got to play that guy. The other always played a very angry wizard. Just grumpy as shit. Good at a lot of things, but preferred to either fireball or magic missile his way out of situations. Talking to NPCs? I think I've got potions brewing. Must be off!

Before we played together we played the same MUD separately. Yep, same character. We ran into each other from time to time.

In high school we played at the same place but a couple of years apart. I started going when he left for the Navy. The guy who DM'ed there said my character reminded me of that guy a lot.

I want to play BG3 with him remotely and both play swashbucklers.

Number 1: my barbarian idea was just "funny Russian man with pet bear", who dual weilds a hammer and sickle. I chose totem barbarian with a bear totem, and little did I realize that would make me practically invincible

Missing:

• god-like magical being, masquerading as Just Some Dude (closely related: The Super-Powered Self-Insert)
• Most boring, generic build available in the system, played ironically ("His name is Hugh M. N. Fi-Thor")

Haha, yeah, the fact that I played almost exclusively women and my few masculine characters still often had more feminine features and mannerisms was totally just to challenge myself. Never a subconscious exploration of my deepest desires.

Says the now VERY out and proud about it transwoman.

Also missing: pure random-roll character who makes no sense and contributes nothing other than needing to be rescued a lot.

6 sessions in and no one has identified/mentioned the person my character is based on, probably because I'm not good enough at doing a Rodney Dangerfield voice

"Okay, tell us about your character."

"Hm? Oh... human fighter."

"That's it?"

"Mm-hm."