1. The Turncoat from Apocalypse World. Until now all sneaky bastard archetypes I've seen focused on the sneaky part. This one was the first focused on the bastard. And I love it. ( Link )
2. The Shaman from Shadowrun 2nd edition. From all elements that compose the delicious SR cpunk-fantasy soup, amerindianism is the most tasty for me. Nothing is more emblematic for the setting to me than an ork Amerindian in full fetish garb walking in a neon lighted street wet from the gentle acid rain falling through the Seattle night while some Lone Star patrol passes by. Oh man, how I miss my 2nd edition days.
What's yours ?
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The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
Summoners, necromancers, really any kind of minion master.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
Ditto minion masters, but also casters, the more bastardly/fiendish the better. But I've found that what I really like is having access to broad swaths of special abilities that I can pick from to create a custom answer to whatever problem is in front of me. In D&D, this means artificers/magic item creators, in M&M it means using the Summon Minion power with the Broad Type extra so I can crack the book while people are debating what to do and come up five minutes later with a demon or whatever with exactly the power needed. Shapeshifting and object mimicry and such are also liked for similar reasons.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
For D&D gaming? If I can find a god who sounds pretty brutal and awesome and who the DM says will smile upon or even let me get away with the kind of insanity I tend to favor, then I prefer to play a Cleric. There are more powerful options, there are more flexible options, but for me there's just something cool as hell about being able to say "Maybe my character is bugfuck nuts, but hey, he found an authority figure to back him up on it! Instant legitimacy!"
But yeah. I like the well-roundedness and straightforward strength of the cleric. There's something better for most things, but the Cleric does a lot of things well and can either support the team or go Beast Mode, depending on what circumstances require.
Thanks to Quest for Glory and Dresden Files, I have a soft spot for paladins. I like the idea of someone being fairly intelligent and STILL doing things the White Hat Way
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
I tend to roll basketweavers, either because I found some sort of funny synergy between character options that does something "interesting" rather than "good", or I make an expy of whatever character I have on the mind at the time. I should know better from my time lurking the Den, but it keeps happening.
I am not a Prak tier contrarian but in my book pragmatism isn't a dirty word and I enjoy playing crap like socially responsible necromancers. See, ethical positions that aren't particularly well thought out tend to annoy me, which is why I have no problems rolling my eyes when D&D insists that casting deathwatch is inherently evil for some reason.
I also like things that play around with the implications present in the game system and the metaplot in equal measure. For example, Shadowrun is a post-modern game, dammit, and that's why I like the kind of mages that Silva hates. The only thing cyberpunk about "traditional" Native American magic in 2070 is the notion that it's probably being performed by white dudes who are making up bullshit as they go because traditional cultural identities were wiped out with VITAS and the rise of the megacorps.* I'd much rather play around with hodge-podge create-a-tradition characters who embrace the notion that Sixth World magic is seriously weird and encompasses practices that don't exist yet.
*Also, because there's less Native Americans total than there are people in my state. And no, I don't live in a very big state.
I really like Warrior-type characters in games, those who by being awesome, non-casters, capable of doing big things and mattering. Like Action heroes, also would want their abilities to escalate as things go on, so can get big climatic moments where hero is taking down waves of dudes in impractical conditions. Course, in a game where other archetypes are doing big-supernatural effects, I want them to be level appropriate as well, and kicking it with their peers (if not doing better, because F*** spellcasters).
By that extension, in [Tome] D&D, the Soldier class is my favorite. [Tome] Crusader follows that, and then the Soulborn.
Also, I like the idea of playing exotic character types, things can be considered under-dog, minority, or 'neutral' choice among all things. Sorta like Nezumi of Rokugan, Prinnies of Disgaea, Elcor of Mass Effect, Moogles of FF, and even Wookies/Ewoks of Star Wars (despite the former is damn popular). In some regard people might use the derogatory "super special snowflake", but I don't really see the ill in wanting a character that's unique.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries
"the thing about being Mister Cavern [DM], you don't blame players for how they play. That's like blaming the weather. Weather just is. You adapt to it. -Ancient History
Generally the strongman.
Part because i enjoy it and part because it's usually needed sooner or later and none of my buddies like to play that kind of character.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Whipstitch wrote:*Also, because there's less Native Americans total than there are people in my state. And no, I don't live in a very big state.
Couldn't resist, sorry.
Summoners and wizards, generally. The more fiendish, the better. The Malconvoker is basically my favorite class, so much so that I spent a stupidly inordinate amount of time on writing a guide for it.
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Diplomancers, because I usually do a lot of the talking in my groups. Bonus points for abilities that support or enhance calling the shots tactically, because that role falls a lot on my shoulders, too.
Thematically I like mages, or more specifically elementalists, with occasionally strolling into ranger or warrior territory.
Not too fond of gishes, though.
I'll often play a Face when not playing face-to-face. In person I'll fiddle with the first or second largest subsystem, assuming it isn't the sort that excludes other players.
Last edited by Nebuchadnezzar on Thu Jul 16, 2015 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Whatever I play, I try to make the character creepy. Like, his backstory has an element of incest or something else equally skeevy, or he has a relationship with an ineffable god who tells him what to do, or he literally eats babies when offered, or he has a massive cock and no sense of propriety. I don't go into any serious level of detail about any of these things, I'm no monster, I just like pushing the envelope enough to make the others think, "Wait, did he just say that?"
Depends on my mood and genre. If the game is modern/future time, I'm either running some flavour of PI or conman/fraudster/thief, but if its fantasy I typically want someone with a huge fuck-off sword and a cheerfully amoral attitude. (In DnD speak, this means I either run a cleric or a wizard.)
Then, once you have absorbed the lesson, that your so-called "friends" are nothing but meat sacks flopping around in the fashion of an outgassing corpse, pile all of your dice and pencils and graph-paper in the corner and SET THEM ON FIRE. Weep meaningless tears.
Necromancer. I don't really like being beholden to others in my power fantasy, so arcane necromancer - the guy who spends his time reading obscure books and learning to call forth dark powers a la HP Lovecraft. Highly intelligent and tends to provide fire support behind a wall of undead.
OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
-Sarpadian Empires, vol. I
My favorite role has to be support. Buffs, debuffs, battlefield control, all the good stuff. I can play the 'carry' easily enough, but I find supporting more fulfilling and nuanced than repeatedly whacking things with a big sword.
Funny. I thought people would say specific classes from games, like "Spellsword" or "Defiler" or "Technomancer" but people is saying more general roles. Nothing wrong with that though.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
Well, it's not as clear cut really.
In Shadowrun, you can be the tough guy either due to being an adept or being a street samurai for egg sample.
In Battletech/Mechwarrior, the Tough-Guy could be either an elemental phenotype power armor user or the Assault-Mech-Pilot.
And then there's in fantasy all the different kinds of tough guys, knights, barbarians, etc.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
It makes sense when you consider that the Den is homebrew friendly and that people understand that many official classes fail super hard at the things they're supposed to be good at. It's not unusual for me to play a martial artist in games but I sure as hell wouldn't play a 3.5 monk.
Mmm. I play in a lot of different systems. D&D, Earthdawn, Shadowrun, Edge of the Empire, M&M, Dark Heresy, homebrew systems. Naming a particular class is simultaneously too specific (to that particular game's system and theme) and too general (classes often encompass many different playstyles).
( Link )
