What I Made/What The DM Saw/What I Played

[NewsHound]

I'm sure that many of us are into RPGs in the real world in addition to this site, so I figured this was as good a place as any to spread this little template. I don't know how much more explanation is necessary, but the idea is as follows.

Think of a funny or interesting story involving a time when the personality of one of your PCs became drastically different than what you had originally intended, then fill in the template above with pictures representing this. Feel free to replace "What The DM Saw" with "What Other People Saw." I'll start out with a couple I've already made.

The character I'm working on right now, Geist, is partially based off of another character I enjoyed running in the past. The big similarities were their stealth-based powers and the fact that they were both hooked on alcohol. However, all the GM really noticed was the alcohol thing, and it sort of overtook his expectations of the character. While I originally intended for him to have a serious side, and for the alcoholism to be his method of coping with personal demons, but the GM insisted that I was acting out of character whenever I started playing him seriously. Apparently he couldn't comprehend the fact that just because someone had alcohol problems doesn't mean they didn't have to be drunk all of the time. However, for several reasons, we just had to put up with this particular GM, so I made lemonade out of lemons, and changed up how I was playing him. I made him into a more Crazy Awesome type of character, whose major strength came from unpredictability, which still allowed me to make him badass while still allowing him to act how the GM expected.

This one was a problem with the same GM. Needless to say, after this incident, he was firmly cemented as "That Guy" in our group's mindset. This was a generic dungeon crawling campaign, and in light of what the other characters were playing, I decided to go with your typical Rogue. I was looking through the sourcebook to try and decide how to spend my last few points, and when looking through the different races, I saw a Cat-Folk race that really piqued my interest. It fit perfectly with what I was trying to build, and I thought it would be an interesting choice to roleplay. However, when we submitted character sheets, the GM instantly dismissed mine, saying "I don't want furry crap in my campaign." I tried to explain to him that there was nothing "furry" about it, and that it was just a style choice, but he still insisted that it was furry garbage and he didn't want anything to do with it, despite the fact that each of the other players were adamantly on my side. After this, we agreed to let him know that we would no longer request his company at our gaming sessions, and one of our other players agreed to take up the role of GM. The others agreed to afford me a few extra points, as whenever the old GM did something jerkass-ish, I usually seemed to take the brunt of the blow. So I really pimped out my character and he became kind of a standout of the campaign.

So, anyone got any stories of their own?

[Ari]

Well, I've only played PnP RPG's a few times, but each time it seemed I played something entirely unlike what I'd started out with,

For example, ,

The game was Exalted, and I was a Solar, a re-incarnation of one of the demi-gods who handled most of the delegation of duties to other demi-gods, but with few magical abilities or much anything in the way of fighting prowess. What I could do, however, was talk to people, something my comrades-in-arms( a Lunar Exalted, and thus an incomparable bruiser, but lent to sudden rages, and another, bloodthirstier Solar with unbreakable bronze skin) weren't interested in doing, meaning I often had to go running between my suspicious and violent friends and the victim(s) of the day to prevent rampant homicide. It got the point where I was the only one in the entire party who thought that attacking the Mask of Winter(an evil entity Sauron himself would think a worthy adversary)was a bad plan, and thus was the only party member that ended up un-captured, and brokered a peace-treaty between the captors of my comrades(a gang of Lunar Exalted who didn't like my party stealing their kill) and the group of other Exalted I'd gotten in the good graces of.

What I'd written up, however, was a lawyer, a man who had learned how to use his powers thanks to careful research of notes left by another Exalted who'd held his office before him. However, the GM was constantly urging me too fight, as he had decided that due to my character's being a bookworm, he must obviously be a wizard of some kind! so, after some pillaging of ancient ruins holding vast treasures, forging alliances with NPC groups and after my fellow party-members ran off to fight the Mask of Winters, I grudgingly agreed to spend some points to buy up a combat spell or two. Never used them, though.

[N/A]

This is a rare example where the GM (and the rest of the party) liked the character and I was the one who hated him.

Moto Kantaro was a PC I ran in AngryDurf's epic L5R campaign. I didn't know it was going to be a long-running epic at the time. I assumed it would fizzle out a few sessions in like the vast majority of RPG campaigns I'd played in up to that point had. So I took a metric f**kton of flaws and made a crude, loud, obnoxious brute of a combat monster, and then actively tried to get him killed.

But the rest of the group were endlessly amused with his over-the-top bravado and utter lack of social graces, and impressed with his boundless courage and willingness to sacrifice anyone and anything in the name of Duty. And AngryDurf, knowing exactly what I tried to do, decided that the best punishment would be to not let Kantaro die, to force me to keep playing him no matter how much I hated him. When it became clear that the game wasn't ending anytime soon, I decided that the only way I could stay sane was to force Kantaro to undergo some much-needed Character Development.

Over the course of the campaign, Kantaro went from being an arrogant upstart who was all talk, to becoming the greatest and most celebrated hero in the history of the Emerald Empire, literally saving the world. Along the way, he learned humility, compassion, and wisdom, and even found true love. By the time he finally became the hero he had always thought himself destined to be, he didn't buy into his own press anymore. Overall, it was the best RPG experience I've ever had.