Insert or Explore?

Whilst browsing that /pol/-tier cancer thread that's going on right now I thought of a question:

In tabletop RPGs do you play to self-insert or do exploratory play with your characters? In other words...

Do you tend to play a character as either a self-insert of yourself or a power fantasy (possibly also yourself) and use your character as an avatar to explore the imaginary world?

or

Do you tend to create characters different to yourself to try and explore what it would be like to be someone different to yourself?

Personally I am more the latter, using RPGs to try and get into the headspace of people and groups unlike myself to try and understand more what it is like to be them.
E.g. i've played women, trans, genderless AIs, myriads of human, inhuman, and alien races, facists, rebels, etc.

What do you do Veeky Forums?

>Whilst browsing that /pol/-tier cancer thread that's going on right now

the one that was supposed to be a That Guy thread but turned into a "no homos at my table REE" thread.

Anyway.
Which of the two categories i've posited do you fit into my friend?

>Personally I am more the latter, using RPGs to try and get into the headspace of people and groups unlike myself to try and understand more what it is like to be them.

You sound like the kind of guy who likes to pretend he understands other people's issues, but it's mostly just you allowing yourself to exaggerate your own personal mythology and to cement it further in your own head.

>E.g. i've played women, trans, genderless AIs, myriads of human, inhuman, and alien races, facists, rebels, etc.

Well, that confirms it.

Great threat, we women wholeheartedly approve

i would like to affirm that I want to understand but i honestly don't. In all fairness no tabletop stuff actually helps me understand it because it's all made up and I don't actually experience it.

I play to create a character and watch them go. If, by the time I finish the first session, the character doesnt have a voice of their own chattering at the back of my head, telling me what 'they' would do, I didnt flesh out the character enough.

It's funny how you're so upset about The Left that you're posting this image in every /pol/shit thread on Veeky Forums.

I just wanted a THAT GUY thread. Why is everything mired in shitty left/right politics now?

Because Veeky Forums doesn't approve of anything not mired in politics or that's actually fun.

I do both. Fuck you op, though

when crazy internet leftists decided to arbitrarily create moral high ground and the crazy internet rightists responded by doubling down.
And then the internet stopped being a haven for the weirdos who couldn't socialize in real life.

Mix of both.
>what if I was [odd or new concept]

I usually default to the former, but am more than willing to use the latter; especially in setting I want to play in, but not live in.

Goddamnit.
The only politics I care about is BE FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE and DO SCIENCE.

Neither fucking party is fiscally conservative or supports science.

I don't care about gooks or towelheads or whatever, that shit is inconsequential compared to producing a new, perfect race of people who are free from all genetic disease.

I create a character because I want to explore a concept. Used to be the former, but there is only so many times you can play the same character before it gets tiring it.
>E.g. i've played women, trans, genderless AIs, myriads of human, inhuman, and alien races, facists, rebels, etc.
Oh hey we're bringing gender politics into the forefront again. How about you don't?

No I was ranting about trannys and hermaphrodites. Big difference. Especially in a vaguely medieval themed fantasy game.

>/pol/ wuz good boys, dey dindu nuffin
Come on now, trying to blame everything on those damn SJWs is so two years ago.

every campaign I join as a player with a character loosely based kn a dew aspecra of me dies horribly.
Every campaign I join as a player with a character unlike me in all ways goes on forever, until I can no longer effectively play the character.
Its awful.

What sort of faggotry is this? You pick up 3d6, roll them in order as Crom intended, and then figure out why the weediest git into the village became a professional mercenary.
Chargen as divination is where it's at.

Exploratory play, no contest. Self-inserting comes off as really lame to me, and while I'm sure everyone, including me, does it at least somewhat whenever they're RPing, I try my best to do a new character different than myself in some way, and see where I can go getting into a mindset that's not exactly my own.

I gotta stretch those creative muscles, man.

Because she was chased away for being a transwoman?

>Someone played a fake character with attributes you get triggered by.
>GENDER POLITICS REE

Man, this is sad.

Rule number 69: OP is always a faggot

/pol/ is a counter-movement, though.
They were created as a response, even if that response is often worse than the thing they are against.
Veeky Forums is known for being counter-culture. In order for there to be a counter-culture, there must be a culture established first.

If I'm playing video games, I self insert pretty hard, at least in character appearance and moral choices. Other then that I slowly advance taking advantage of stealth and the environment to take down enemies quietly.

If I'm playing tabletop, I always end up making either a hot-blooded, or lighthearted but mad melee characters, I enjoy playing the big damn hero in pen and paper too much. I haven't really branched out from there. I've made greasers with hearts of gold, a mounted bowman on a giant boar, basically Don-Quixote riding a griffon, and lots of stealth/skill types I though would be cool but I ended up hating. Mostly stemming from how I approach video games.

I love the romantic idea of thieves, rouges, and the like, but every time I try to play one, either the system (Pathfinder) gives me the middle finger or, if the system isn't the issue, I just can't work my love of being the big damn hero into it.

Maybe I should try swashbuckler types...

But are you gay for dicks?

Are you?

lol this faggot

/pol/ has been doing this "counter movement" for hundreds of years.