Difficult character personalities

Seeing as I am not the only person in the world I hope that more people have run into a similair problem like me.
Roleplaying a character with traits you yourself find difficult to properly roleplay.

This thread is for stories about those times you, or someone else has played a character who are very much personality wise, different from themselves.
And either succeeded or failed doing so.

The reason I bring this up is because I wished to try a personality different from what I usually do.
Namely I wanted to try a more arrogant person. In this case, a mage with a royal background seeking to claim their title back after having been given a large sack of money and told to get out by their family.
Writing the events in their backstory is fine but actually roleplaying is were I dont succeed and I hope someone here could be of help.

>I am not the only person in the world

I've got an example of a character I've wanted to try for the longest time, but haven't for a few reasons.

I've wanted to make a fighter who's backstory is they they've spent most of their youth and early adulthood as an "enforcer" for a criminal element, maybe local Thieves Guild, it would depend on DM input.

My difficulty with this is that it could easily pass into That Guy territory, with the edgelord kneebreaker, and that's the last thing I want. What I really want is to play a character who's not EVIL, but who's grown up in an environment where they've become used to using intimidation to survive and succeed in life. Not a character who kills people at the slightest provocation, but a character who'll use the exact amount of pressure to control a situation as it demands.

I feel like this could be an interesting character to balance in a party, but I'm worried I would instead slip into the role of the Dickass Thief.

Answer a few questions and I might be able to help out.

>What kind of character do you normally play?
>Why do you want to play this specific kind of character?
>Do you have more to their personality than "arrogant"? This is probably the most important to avoid coming off as a shitty 1-dimensional trope

What did I mean by this?

Well you're certainly not implying that OP has been in a coma for 13 years and that we are all figments of his dreaming mind.

That would be craaaazy.

Wake up, OP. You need to wake up.

The way to keep this from being "That Guy" is to have a party with an understood hierarchy. If you're like the typical beer n pretzels group, it probably won't work as well because there is no real leader to the party. Even the "face" isn't really the in-universe representative of the party, they're just the one that everyone makes roll the charisma checks.

Ideally, a thuggish character would be a pragmatic option to enhance the positive aspects of the rest of the party. The party leader (or rest of the group) has their respect, and has proven that their method gets results, so the thuggish character doesn't take their own initiative to break legs for its own sake. You'd roleplay his forceful nature by having him grow impatient when diplomacy fails, reminding the party members that "We could always just TAKE the dwarven artifact. It's to save their lives anyway, so who cares if they're pissed about it?", or having a temper when it comes to personal slights and insults.

Play up the fact that he grew up following other people's lead, and you should be able to be as unsavory and brutish as you want without being That Guy.

A pasifist fighter who whines after a big battle or something is personally the hardest personality to get use to that I've experienced

This is good advice, thank you kind user.

Do you mean a fighter to be a combatant, or the literal class Fighter. Because if it's the latter, I'm not entirely sure why you built the character as a Fighter and not something else.

>What kind of character do you normaly play?
Generally characters who are more helpfull and practical, people from humble upbringings who dont look down upon others and such.
I am generally shitty in describing them very well.
>why do you want to play this specific kind of character?
I found the backstory idea interesting and then thought I should try and play something different for a change from what I usually do.
>Do you have more to their personality than just "arrogant"?
She take genuine pride in what she does, and is considered a bit "obsessive" by others. Another trait such as curious can also be applied to her.

Another reason as to why I wish to do this is to advance from my more 2d characters from the past.

Cant wake up

For this kind of character, I think the operative trait shouldn't be "arrogant". Most people don't consider themselves to be arrogant anyway, they just appear that way to others. If she's someone who is obsessed with her trade and wants to further her skills in it, than have that be the way her arrogance reflects itself.

To keep it in D&D terms (it works for any system, these are just examples), have her casually correct people for the most minor things related to magic. If someone says something about "Bigby's Floating Hand", have her remind them matter-of-factly that they are, in fact, mixing up two separate spells "Tenser's Floating Disc" and "Bigby's Hand".

Additionally, whenever the party encounters something that she is (or considers herself to be) an expert on, have her immediately offer her opinion, or even take point in the situation. She doesn't do this to show off, necessarily, but because she genuinely believes that her abilities are best suited to the tasks.

If you want an analogue, think of Hermione Granger from the beginning of the Harry Potter series. She gets a reputation throughout the whole school for being arrogant and snobby, but she just takes her studies very seriously. And when she's correcting Harry and Ron, she does genuinely have their best interests at heart, even if she may be subconsciously insulting their intelligence by spelling things out for them.

I'm absolutely unable to roleplay in real time a character that is different than me.

If it's PBF or text based game, then sure, no problem, I can be just about anyone. But if I have to do it in person, in real time, in front of other people, then I'm stuck with oversensitive know-nothing-know-it-alls and smartasses

I didn't build it, a person I was playing with did.

Apparently everyone tells me that from the one time I was DM, I had incredibly good range of characters.

That being said whenever I play I only can ever be a unabashed hero type. I tried playing an evil character once, and while I never broke character, I felt bad afterwards.

I know it's kind of off topic, but I do feel like playing the heroic leader character over and over again might be annoying my group members.

What do, Veeky Forums?

I have literally never been able to play a evil character. Even an asshole character I have issue with. And believe me I've tried just to spice things up. But every single time it ends with my marauding barbarian warlord becoming a celebrated member of the community, and cleaving apart the ribbon to the opening ceremony of the "Svaldir Bloodmuder school for illiterate orphans"

Try PBFs
It helps.

Also, rather than "being evil" set yourself some "evil" goal. And then don't look back while getting to said goal, consequences and morality be damned.

That's a good way of looking at it. I'll definitely keep that in mind. My problem is I'm so goddamn selfless it's a major character flaw no matter what I play

>Bloodmurder goddammit just infiltrate the local hierarchy and assasinate the lord it's what we came here to do
>but he poured me wine...

>>but he poured me wine...
Wrong perspective.
>He didn't give me the entire bottle.

Another trick you can try is basing character on some vice. Like this user pointed out . Greed is super-easy to roleplay. Not just greed for cash, but greed in sense of always demanding more.