Roleplaying Tics?

Simple enough concept, do you fall into any specific behaviours that you can't help doing when role-playing?

I think the main one for me is that, regardless of the game being played, me and one of my friends always seem to end up trying to kill each other IC. Seriously, even when we make the effort to be friends.

My characters all have Irish accents. All of them. Even if I try to use a different accent, the Ulster lilt creeps its way in within a few sessions.

The characters are either homosexual, bisexual, or I haven't thought about the matter. Even if the subject never comes up and I never plan to use it the character is considered to be anything but straight.

edited 22nd Jun '12 10:33:23 AM by Aondeug

Unless I actively try to avoid it, any of my long-term characters will be or become at least two of:

• Intellectual
• Angsty
• Creepy
• Jackass

It may not be a full on tic yet, but I do have a habit of playing intelligent characters with a bad British accent.

The first time was intentional, with a noble swashbuckler. My replacement character, though, an evil Cleric of Tyranny, I couldn't stop voicing him with that same accent.

I'm wondering what the commonality is that made me keep the accent, so I know how to avoid it.

No matter how nice my character concept starts off as, they usually end up being rather snarky. Something in me always ends up going to the cynical when I roleplay.

I'm always playing the good guy in the group, and at least more than half my characters are Actual Pacifist; I never kill if possible. Which is probably why all my characters in modern/SF settings have tasers or shock-weapons instead of deadly lasers.

I also build most of my characters with a pattern of sorts. I have, like, a good two dozen of themes that I like in a character: an overweight huge guy, jumping really high, someone inept in a widespread domain, a lion-ish furry man, a weak guy using drugs to be better for a while, a drone pilot,... Not all those ideas are compatible, but most of the characters are a mix of two to five themes in general. The funny thing being that no-one ever caught me doing the same character twice, which must mean that this system works!

edited 23rd Jun '12 6:32:47 AM by Talden

I found that I turn out to be Only Sane Man and facepalm a lot.

Pretty much all of my characters have some sort of a contingency plan in place at the most inopportune time for their enemies.

This is especially bad since I DM...a lot.

Imagine a campaign where EVERY NPC tends towards Magnificent Bastard. Even the mooks.

Thankfully, my players have been able to adapt by simply assuming that every NPC is at least a triple-crossing bastard and is out to kill them.

I usually play charismatic characters. I just like trying to talk my way out of things, or at the very least tell the panicking villagers not to worry because 'We are the good guys'.

That one time I didn't felt really weird. Seriously, what do people without charisma do outside of combat? Read a newspaper?

Use their Manipulation score instead.

I'm almost always that character. You know the one.

My characters tend to be Deadpan Snarkers who operate outside the law. They also have an aversion to unneeded violence and senseless killing.

^^^^ Bicker with the party asshole. :P

Alternatively, sit back and watch.

I usually play rather reckless characters, and I always play the primary source of comic relief. Despite those two things, I am usually also the voice of reason (even when I play a supervillain whose gimmick is exploding cookies).

I tend to play the polite, focused straight man (not in terms of orientation) who runs around trying to smooth things over and avoid making more enemies than we need. Fortunately, I've learned to have him get distracted or let him get overruled when it would be more fun.

My characters are always insane. Insanity is something that I love in all my stories (That's why I'm a When They Cry fan), and roleplaying is essentially stories, so by the transitive rule of Huckabee...

My characters pretty much alternate between grim, gritty, and serious and totally batshit - the first character I ever played was a self-interested assassin, the second was the completely insane personification of heavy metal, the third is a robot whose arc will (hopefully) be about his slow realization that he may, in fact, be more than just a machine, and the fourth is essentially Miko Miyazaki crossed with Aquaman.

I consider myself to be at least mildly witty, and have a hard time biting my tongue, so most of my characters have some sort of way for me to express these comedic impulses- from being a particularly striking and self-aware straight man, to being an in-character deadpan snarker, to having dictional idiosyncrasies to inject just a touch of levity into a scene.

I think I am getting better at knowing when to stop with the tongue-in-cheek (someone unironically crying manly tears is a good indicator), but it is ever so hard.

Ahem:

edited 28th Jun '12 10:11:02 PM by KyleJacobs

I specifically added that line because I was worried that the above crack risked breaking the mood.

Context: a PC who was dear to a woobie-ish NPC just died, and we were breaking the news. OTOH: I'm pretty sure everyone laughed.

Hey, I definitely did.

People like you are why I can't get campaigns resembling anything serious.:P

Well, I'm just as guilty, of course, but when all the players got into roleplaying through things like The Gamers and Order Of The Stick, in addition to all the 'incredibly crazy awesome' tabletop stories on the internet, you start yearning for something that's a little more like roleplaying rather than a contest of who can do the craziest stuff.

Well, whenever I try to play a dwarf, he will invariably end up sounding like Red Green, except less Canadian and a hint more Southern with a hearty dash of my stepfather thrown in. All my characters also tend to adopt my own habit of assuming the Wonka meme pose right before snarkily commenting on the absurdity of the current situation.

edited 2nd Jul '12 5:24:26 PM by darnpenguin

Another one I noticed recently-
I am ALWAYS the party Butt-Monkey. Without fail.