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Player Types

   
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Player Types
Actor 7 28.00%
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Instigator 2 8.00%
Power Gamer 0 0%
Slayer 0 0%
Storyteller 6 24.00%
Thinker 6 24.00%
Watcher 3 12.00%


I think an addendum for the snowflake thing should be that they never ever play human ever. I'm honestly kinda tired of one player in my group and his refusal to play a human simply because he thinks that they're boring.

I see humans (myself included) as the reason reality sucks. We are bigots; why not play something naturally inclined to be above (aasimar) or something with reasonable justification (half-orc or tiefling)?

Man, I was about to respond, but Rena hit this sucker right on the head for me. Well put.

Also to be fair doesn't matter which race you choose, players tend to play them just as fancy humans.

yxanthymir, given that the players themselves are human, in what way would you like them to play that would indicate that the character is non-human?

(As has been mentioned before, I like playing non-humans, so any way to improve that performance would be greatly appreciated.)

This may sound goofy, but I don't think it's all that hard to play non-humans without letting them just act like fancy humans in PbP. It's really hard around a table, but online, it's very doable. Now, admittedly, it gets easier the farther away from "human" you get, meaning that it's easier to play a lizardfolk or a sentient tree as something different entirely than it is to play an elf or dwarf.

I usually try to focus on one or two realistic traits of wildly unrealistic characters to ground them and make them believable. Lizardfolk, for example, draw out their "s" sounds like thisssssss. Catfolk lick themselves almost constantly and go nuts for a good drink of milk. Kobolds don't grumble; they growl. Undines have an almost orgasmic reaction to taking a nice, warm bath. You get the idea.

The point is, if you think of these PCs as "fancy humans", you'll only ever play them as fancy humans. It's only when you try to really step outside yourself - including your own desires, wants, needs and prejudices - that you can make this sort of thing really sing with believability.

Traveled a bit off topic now, have we. Still, humans as the boring choice is a conversation I find interesting, because I think humans get a bad rap for some reason. Race is just one aspect of your character, and depending on the system and the setting it could be a very minor aspect or a much larger one. Humans serve as the baseline, a good center that lets your character be grounded in a more realistic place before branching off into whatever fantasy constructs you have. Playing a character with a completely alien culture and heritage can be a lot of fun, but so can playing an average character reacting to the strange and alien.

To put it another way, you can make an interesting human paladin, but changing the race to elf doesn't instantly make the character twice as interesting. It makes a different character who could be more interesting, but also could be more boring. It depends on the setting, how good the player is at writing the backstory to mesh with what already exists and use the hooks their race of choice gives them. And while the stranger races can have the appeal of oddities and expanding your horizons, humans have the appeal of being something we all know quite well and know the nuances of.

Basically what I'm saying is, you can make an interesting and fun character using almost anything. And looking down on people because they choose to only play a race or never play a race makes you kind of an unpleasant person.

Edit: Just a note: I'm not pointing anyone out specifically for doing that, I'm just making a general statement. Food for thought, you know. It's what we humans do.

Except Penchant. I think he's a dorf in disguise. O_o




 

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