Character quirks you keep on falling back to

Literally all my character (NPC's or PC's) have a set of morals that they won't break at any cost. My players seem to think that the big bad dragon is going to burn down that whole city in order to spite them, but he's not going to resort to such underhanded tactics. And so on and so forth with every character.

Do you have a bro at the table that you can trust to put the spotlight on you in a reasonable manner?
Having one or more other players directly encourage you in character might help a lot to gain more confidence.

I want to fuck the Neutral Fairy!

You shouldn't. She has AIDS.

one of the guys in the last group I quit had all his characters be Japanese girls between the ages of 12-16, because that was his dream girl.

Yes he DID get arrested for child pornography, why do you ask?

GM is a real bro, but players mostly care of themselves only. We talked about it, we working on it, but this is my personal quirk and it keep translating into game characters.

She hits a lot of marks in regards to things I like in a woman. Pixie cut, wide hips, chill attitude, stoner, fey entity who's motivations are strange and fickle.

That's what condoms are for.

Rich (or trying to be), smug sociopathic young businesswoman. It's just too much fun to play.

Okay, what the actual fuck. Tell us more of this creep elemental in human flesh.

Hey! I love killing that bitches!
>Brofist.jpg

I inevitably fall back on "tough and heroic fighty-mans, possibly with a dark past" when it comes to making a character.
The most ridiculous example of this was when I realised I'd somehow ended up with a Hutt warlord, Jedi Knight and hero of the Republic when he'd started as just a hired gun out to prove himself.

It was amusing to justify his more altruistic acts at first (sharing your stimpacks with fallen allies means you can use them as ablative armour later with less complaints, slaves make shit soldiers for obvious reasons, etc). I should probably try and play a more out-and-out evil character one day.

>motivations are strange and fickl

Isn’t it true about all women?

nope, sometimes it's mostly fickle, sometimes it's more of fuckle

I use to always be the secondary face for my group that tries to smooth over and placate arguments that don't need muderhoboing.

I struggle not falling back into the face like role and try to diffuse situations even if my character would act much differently or even try to escalate the situation.

Nothing says out of character as the orc barbarian that can barely speaks common starts to tell the brigand that insulted his tribe about forgetting the quarrel and going to the local tavern for a drink or the like.

>elf who the dm decided forgot he's an angel
>android who thinks she's an undead human
>changeling who thinks they're a human

any armchair psychologists wanna chime in about why i keep making characters who don't realize they're something else? (the first one was completely beyond my decision and the dm did it without consulting me, but i figured i'd include it anyways)

Are they all with the same group?
If so, I'd say you're subconsciously picking up that the DM has suppressed identity issues and reciprocating the issue, either in order to encourage them to come to terms with them and break out of their shell or because you want to watch them squirm

Well, that or it's your fetish

different groups, different dms
...but shit, honestly i think it's a manifestation of all the identity issues /i've/ been struggling with over the years, y'know? and maybe it's a coping mechanism, creating more grandiose but also more controllable versions of that and having them play out positively, to reassure myself that i'm probably a decent person no matter how much trouble i'm having with myself

well, that or i'm a faggot

thanks, user

Perhaps you're insecure about showing people the "real you" and always putting on a mask so to speak. so much so that even when you're intentionally pretending to be someone else you're not comfortable unless they're also acting like something they're not.

Write (play) what you know.

They stop baby's not aids bro google for life

Any good stories/behaviors to share? Was wanting to play a high society party member and was convinced out of it, since anything that wasn't Broson McBroderson would be too bitchy to not be robbed/left behind. (I was hoping could get some endearing hard combats to show she actually cared about them, just had a strong greed vice)

It just seems like every other major 'sin' gets a character, yet greed is seen as so horrendous, even in systems where the money is less of an exp counter than others.

making characters stupid. I don't know, maybe it's because i'm not really bright, but all of my characters are not smart and "exaggerated".

Also in my stories there must be sad love story with bad ending. And I don't care what PCs will do - lovers must die in despair or I can't call it a good game.

>can't spell babies
>giving shit sex ed advice
Latex condoms are 98+% effective in preventing the spread of HIV, maybe try Googling it yourself.

I default to playing an passive-aggressive jerkoff. Especially when combined with a subdued, snarky sort of white upper-class racism/classism/sexism.

Not sure what that says about me. Probably nothing good, but it's just a lot of fun to play the guy who thinks everyone is shit compared to himself.

Playing really oblivious, cheerful "dumb" characters can be tons of fun. I'm genuinely jealous Bautista gets to do it professionally.

I often try different kinds of characters but I always fall back on the discreet guy with a heart of gold towards his team.
except when the team is being stupid

>Also in my stories there must be sad love story with bad ending. And I don't care what PCs will do - lovers must die in despair or I can't call it a good game.

You are the worst

I always end up acting like a support-based bro whose into self-sacrifice. I just fucking love that archetype, sue me.

Leading, I've kind of given up on kicking it.

It really grinds my gears when a group is indecisive, submissive, and just lets events wash over them. I swear to god back when I really tried not to be a leader type basic shit would end up taking hours because everyone was too polite (beta) to actually press any points.

The breakdown would go something like this:

> GM drops a prompt which obviously calls for a decision
> People mumbletalk over each other in a general consensus that there is a problem
> someone mumbles forth a completely retarded idea always phrased as "maybe I could..."
> Everyone mumbles in turn they don't know, or aren't sure because they are too non-confrontational to disagree
> repeat ad nauseam and add like a bucket of silence without eye contact while the GM looks on in pain and I cringe harder trying not to metagame or break character

I can't help it, to me nothing is more fun then to make a plan, ask for input, then delegate the parts to the most competent characters, yell break, and watch it go into effect.

I usually compliment this play style by playing a support character/generalist who can pick up the slack or tip the scales when and where things get sticky to keep the plan moving smoothly.

I think making a long table of emotional responses to something baffling could be useful to break out of the habit.

mfw

As a GM
>Quoting the phrase "made of sterner stuff"
>Always devil's advocate for any NPC, regardless of their actual relevance
>Have to make a deliberate, opaque effort to include demihumans in flavour

As a player
>Snark machine
>Voice of reason
>Complete coward
>Assertive personality (causing Main Character Syndrome)
Works well enough for wimpy Wizards, but I can never fight the feeling that I'm just reusing it for ease of use. I have to make pretty concentrated concepts to ensure I don't retread old ground or steal the spotlight unintentionally.

Father/son relationships, or the general idea of parenthood.

I can't think of a single character that hasn't had a connection to this. The most recent being:
>Undead, stupid as hell but with a good grasp on morals and a knack for torturing people to get his nerves down. Party helped him discover he has a son from before he died, so he just tries to better himself to be a good father
>Witch that lost her infant during childbirth and discovered she was sterile, helps every pregnant women or children she finds as a result to make up for it

No idea what this says about me, but I always get much more attached to my characters when they have parents / kids around.

This shit is why old D&D games said to have a 'Party Leader/caller'

Someone to just say 'we do X' and the other players go along because really, they don't have opinions on whether you go left or right, they just want to pretend they do because they think it's mandatory for 'roleplaying' to have every character chime in on every single decision

Thank you for being the leader and moving the game forward user

High int low wis
>Play intelligent character
>Play it fairly well because I'm actually fairly intelligent
>Come up with good plans and act as a good party face
>Still act like a dumbass from time to time

Most recent example
>character could reincarnate for free the next three times he died.
>We were fighting a Rok on a bridge
>I assumed was like 60 feet up
>Decide to try and jump on the Rok and fuck up the roll
>Fall 300 feet (should have confirmed the height of the fall)
>Die on impact
>Reincarnate as a half orc

Also I tend to make my characters distant from their family. Sometimes I give them a detailed family but even then I tend to not actively try to do anything with it.

Pretty much always a middle-aged guy, average rank and file/low level officer veteran or something similar. Stoic, quiet type who becomes a bit of a smartass when directly confronted, but never backs down from a good test of strength.

I do this all the time because I've pretty much come to terms with being too afraid of sounding autistic to try flexing the creative muscles a bit. Recently I've been trying to write more random stuff(currently working on my own setting) and pushing myself to actually show it to my friends for reactions and criticism. It's actually been helping a bit.

Now I just need to be something other than the meathead with the big whacking stick to do this in actual roleplaying

>Playing with a group of quiet or indescisive players
>Suddenly take over as party face to actually get anything done
>Be the only PC that campaign the GM remembers a year later
I've hated playing the face for over half a decade now. Woulde've probably dropped the hobby if I didn't finally find a good group.

Yeah I'd say I'm another one that's guilty of that also. Especially to one of my players. I have to actively try to not make my npcs be dicks to him. He's just so asinine and does shit like ask the barkeep for 5 pounds of cooked potatoes. Of course the barkeep would be pissed

Family is hard, because you don't want to draw events away from the people who are actually in the party, you don't want to have to flesh out more characters, and even then it's up in the air whether you play them or the DM does

I tend to play questionably evil support based casters quite often. I don't if it's because that's some thing I secretly like, because my group doesn't know how to play casters, or because playing Pathfinder not that way bores me. It's not like I don't try to play other things, but those campaigns tend to die before they can take off. Unfortunately my stable group only plays Pathfinder unless I'm the one GMing.

I also noticed that I seem to be drawn toward the badguy factions of wargames I play. I got Ressers in Malifaux, Combined Army in Infinity, Legion of Everblight and Cryx in Warmahordes, and recently I got some older Space Marines for cheap that I was considering doing Nurgle style. It's not even something I noticed until fairly recently.

I find it hard to roleplay a character that isn't lower end of good or upper end of neutral as a player character. Probably boring, since your average joe fits within this sort of territory.

When I GM, I'm very light on NPCs (I prefer the setting/environment to take presence), but my villains are usually completely unsympathetic with purely selfish and hedonistic motives. I usually work in a personality that's completely detestable and/or charismatic, but that's about it, Mostly stems from vast majority of 'sympathetic' villains falling into the 'too sympathetic to hate but not sympathetic enough to actually sympathize with', and I really don't want any of my villains to fall into that territory,

I default to surly straight man.

It seems to go over well enough when I say things like "And how exactly did you think that ADOPTING the chimera would improve our situation?", but really I'm just a bad roleplayer who has no natural ability to be fun so I just try to be a sounding board for the fun.

As a DM:
>Unrequited love (between NPCs)
>Sibling relationships
>Loss (because people keep leaving the game so I need excuses to get rid of them).
>Honor among thieves

Get rid of their characters, I mean. When you get a three-year campaign rolling, six months seems like goldfish attention span, but people just get tired.
I have a tendency to run my mouth on unnecessary details, so that doesn't help.

>started a rogue trader game as navigator
>hit critically wounded stage
>found out how hard it is to kill player characters in rogue trader
>instantly become 20 times more reckless
I don't mean to, but the sudden knowledge that only a 9 or 10, or an 8 if they hit my head, will kill me on a d10 makes me care less.

A lot of my characters turn chuuni as as fuck when I can't think up a proper character trait. If not that, they have a tendency to be really gullible/trusting of the party when they first meet.

>Nigger dicks everywhere.
Nope.

Sarcasm. They become really sarcastic. Been trying to avoid it, but its just my go-to quirk.

I almost exclusively make support characters. They differ in flavor and characteristics, but they are ALWAYS support characters. Both mechanically and story wise.

I am just a sucker for being the person behind the hero, helping them to glory.

I love playing dumb characters. The type of person that can get away with Rickyisms, and make plans and observations that are "so dumb they just might work"

In practice it's a lot less "lolrandumb" than it sounds. The trick is always to be using the context you're in for fueling your retarded logic. Play it by improve rules.

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>Every time I am playing an NPC and the players do something that completely surprises me, the NPC defaults to "slightly bitchy cynicism"
Are you my GM? My GM does this.

Are you playing in a really gay shadowrun campaign?

No, but after reading the thread, it seems a lot of GMs do this. My GM is pretty gay though. He might actually be running a Shadowrun game on the side, but I doubt it.

I just can't play real bastards, no matter how much I try. Worst I can be is amoral/ignorant of others' suffering.

>implying you can even catch AIDS from heterosexual sex

Honestly I simply find that having a family is a huge reason not to be an adventurer. Family involves obligations and things you care about, dying while having family leaves gaps in your story
>Mother is sick should I go home to take care of her or keep being a murderhobo?
>Father expects me to marry a noblewoman and settle down so I can take my titles when he dies but I'm too busy killing goblins.
>Brother is training to be a warrior too bad I can't teach him to be a warrior without being incredibly irresponsible or abandoning adventuring

The only real case I can think of for being close to your family is if you have like one sibling left who you take care of so he or she stays in camp doing camp chores while you do fighting. Then you can interact with them regularly, they can play a role in the story, interaction isn't forced, and your character can be responsible.

My characters can't stop asking questions. Why can't my characters stop asking questions?

As a gm
>If I ever have to improvise, it will always be on the darker and edgier side of the spectrum (Planned things are usually quite lighthearted)
>Ratio of women:men usually has more women in it

As a player
>If Character is Male and not outright cheery all the time, he usually goes full Deadpan on people at times

This kills me too, I played a d&d campaign last year where I wanted to be the sorta dumb (more like uneducated bruiser) of the party of sorts. I could make friends with other goons in a tavern or intimidate people, but my character was just supposed to be the party's guide to a strange city.

Instead I ended up single handedly trying to convinc the world to help cure the plague that my party members from the church and the wizard circles were supposed to be figuring out, because otherwise my home town was gonna die out.

>My characters are always cheeky in some form, or in some cases, cheeky cunts

Every time. It's either that or they're extremely virtuous. Though in both cases they're usually pragmatic, even if they have some form of faith.

All of my characters either act as the voice of reason, or try to do so but fail.

Been Forever GM for so long now that all my PCs could be described in broad generalizations.

I have found two very distinct tendencies for when I'm creating characters.
One is a theme of betrayal and loyalty.
Either the stalwart and good lieutenant who knows his ruler is evil but is too loyal to ever directly disobey an order.
Or the antihero seeking vengeance for a betrayal.
Heroes remaining loyal to each other or a cause without compromise, beyond all reason.
Or a villain that is willing to commit the worst kind of betrayal for their own ends.

The odd thing is that I have no idea where this fascination comes from, certainly not my own life.

The other thing is small, but something else I adore when I see it and find myself incorporating it in my characters: Competency.
Just an average person, really, really good at the one thing they do.
"I shovel well." or "Best temp in Chiswick, hundred words per minute." or even "We can sew."
Just the tradesman working his trade extremely well.

Combine high loyalty and high competency and you get this magnificent bastard who sneaks into my campaigns every so often.

I've gotten some mileage out of that in a CofD mixed game too. Combine smoking habits with alcoholism and you have a nice flask full of flammable liquid and always a lighter on you.

The saddest part is my character is a mage and has no real need of improvised weapons but they cling to these habits out of nostalgia for pure mortality

Are you certain she's not HIV neutral?

...

...

In both playing, and DMing, I fall back to religious stuff. This character? a cleric. this faction? a church. This villain? a god. write what you know, I guess.

I used to create characters that were a bit whimsical and eccentric (lolrandumb). Overtime I have grown to be more calm and practical, mainly focusing on moving forward rather than take part in pointless arguments or going into odd tangents. There are times where I act a bit hysterical, but mostly I'm more levelheaded with my characters compared to when I first started.

Cockney accent.

I need to give one of my players a spray-bottle filled with water.

Mannerism help with this. Rubbing your chin, for example, when a player does something surprising-- rub your chin thoughtfully, as though the NPC were doing it and "thinking"...the physical action can mildly change your mindset.
>get up and pace
>lean against a chair
>pretend you're suprised and point at the player in delight
it throws off your mental mechanism to react the same way every time. Old Actor's trick...

I always have to make a black sheep who slowly grows attached the party. It's not always something I do at character creation, but I have a habit of deciding my character doesn't like one of the characters for [X] reason, then gets over it.
I'm always worried I might come off as That Guy in the early stages, but nobody has complained. I think I just do it out of contrarianism.

I always need to play the resourceful straight man/anchor.
As much as I might want to play more flippant characters, rarely does anyone else party elect to play a good party backbone, and if they do they do very poorly at it.
I've done plenty of variations on it; party mom, grumpy granddad, self-important schemer who sees party as his pawns, even an airheaded character who has a much more attentive guardian spirit that is the sole reason they act with a modicum of reason and responsibility. But if I don't bring chalk and 100 ft of rope, or camping gear, or focus on cooking, or interact with NPCs diplomatically, or write down names of things and places, or suggest we get clothes for the ball other than our bloody adventuring suits, nobody else does.

I'm kinda disgusted with myself on how my characters are essentially all the same. The males are stoic badasses - even when I try to play one that's more outgoing, I naturally tend to let the rest of the party talk instead of trying to talk over them, so it falls flat. My female characters are just generally tsundere.

I've had some variations, but whenever I feel unsure or have to think fast, I tend to default to those two - with a heavy heaping of 'lawful moral center' on top, since I've had to play party dad a lot in the past. It's hard to get some variety when your games all end up the same.

I keep making overconfident characters who think they're the shit but get kicked the shit out of all the time.
I've been branching out recently though

My character is far more socially proficient than I am. Naturally, this results in roleplaying difficulties.

Oh, and my characters are always charismatic. Not only is it a useful skill to have, but I'm generally the most comfortable doing the talking around the game table. Even when I've tried to make less-charismatic characters, they were always dropping one-liners and having the right things to say.

>Childish but smart, clever little shit who's just in it for the fun of it

I can't play mean characters at all, so I always end up just being lulzy and wanting to save the world

I find myself defaulting to generic White Knight type characters when I play fantasy games. Or hotshot pilot/gunbunnies in sci-fi games.

I've been making a move towards playing assholes now. I played a great magnificent bastard, as a vampire lawyer in a oWoD game. I like playing evilish guys who are loyal to the party but super schemy & after position & authority. They are never a combat character & usually want to help & support the party.

I know how you feel OP, and that is because we are slightly bitchy at heart. Everyone acts their truest when confused.

Yeah, that seems like the way to do it, it just seems like a glaring hole in the setting that it can't be done besides that. Maybe it really is just what the setting is focused on, cause World of Darkness has a whole mechanic in Changeling designed around trying to integrate into the life you had before the game started, so maybe it really is just hard to do it in a DnD setting (not that I've played Changeling to actually know from experience)

I can't stop snarking on every character.

Every supernatural creature is camp and haughty, my voice just goes there, I have no idea why.

>Neutral
>on illicit drugs
>Advocating rape
>Roiling fire behind it while it holds a lighter
Clearly the chaotic fairy

I either roleplay exaggerating one specific characteristic (like being very dumb) or become Generic PC #1 for the rest of the story, no point in between.

For my player characters, I notice I tend to have a lot of sort of foreign or alien characters. Either a traveler from a far off land, sometimes based off a real world equivalent, sometimes not (merchant from not-venice, gladiator from not-rome, samurai from not-japan, barbarian from not-scotland etc), or sometimes something more esoteric, like an actual alien, a fae of some sort, a clockwork robot that's gained sentience, a drider that's lived on the outskirts of society, stuff like that.

There are a few reasons for it I think. For one thing it gives me reason to have everything be new to the character, they're a newcomer to this world and aren't seasoned or knowledgeable, and get to experience everything as new just as I, the player do.

It also means I can really develop their backstory, the world and culture they come from, without stepping on the GM's toes and messing with their setting. Not for the sake of having this massive, super special backstory itself, most of it rarely actually comes up in the game, but just so I can get a better sense for who the character is as a person, what things have effected them in the past and made them who they are, how do they respond to things, give them anecdotes to bring up or things to relate things to, stuff like that. It just makes them seem much more 'real'. But I also don't like inserting my own stuff into the GM's setting, when they're normally going for some sort of tone and style, and I don't want to clash with that.

Aside from that, it also does just give the characters more material to work with in terms of habits, appearance, and other minor quirks for making them memorable and interesting.

Resorting to quips in place of personality when I can't think of things to say.

Here's some of my DM errors I slip on sometimes that I can think of right away:
>Many NPCs refer to people with sir/ma'am, even if they are of inproper social status or culture (i.e., a peasant or an exotic race)
>Enemies are often willing to talk with players before a fight, regardless of if it is a god and a goblin
>Unlearned NPCs using 3< syllable words (worse case involves barbarians describing their thoughts with 3 syllable words)
>Tying in something to something else way too important when I am doing improv
>Spamming sidequests when the party already has problems choosing what they want to do
>Evil NPCs are almost always Lawful Evil, and "Evil" takes the form of extreme self-centeredness rather than the desire to bring ruin to others

Some more thought-out quirks that I've noticed I do are:
>Women are frequently national leaders, usually with at least some domineering traits despite whatever personality/alignment/disposition I give them
>Love is nearly always pure; in NPC relationships, neither spouse abuses the other, and quite often the NPCs are faithful and loyal to each other
>Villain NPCs are redeemable and can become allies

tl;dr my world ends up being very "friendly" in a way nearly every time.

This. I have a habit of playing oafish, cheery, bombastic characters that don't really consider the consequences for their actions.

That being said, they do know when it's time to be serious.

Not so much a personality quirk so much as it's a quirk of my character building, but I noticed that very, very few of my characters are chaste. Every one of them at the very least has some sex experience.

Opposite for me. None of my characters have had any sort of romantic experience. And i mean none. From 90 yr old oracles to would-be-womanizer bards, they're all too pure.