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Anyone want to share and discuss your favorite RPG characters that you've played? Why was this your favorite Character, and what inspired you to create it?

I will start.

I started lifting and weight training to help combat depression and to get myself out of a terribly unhealthy lifestyle. After two months of pretty intensive training, I was feeling light years better health wise. My lifting bro invited me to play in his campaign and I wanted to sort of poke fun and have a good laugh as the group was very informal. So I created a power lifting Minotaur (Barbarian 2 Druid 4) named Got'Rekt who travels to lands seeking to spread the gift of the swole in penitence for the arrogance of his tribe. The inspiration came from all the joking my friend did with me at the gym that really helped to pull me out of a bad place at the time, and the character has (still playing!) a great number of sessions under his belt.

Unfortunately I can’t narrow it down to one - I can however to three:

1. David Hartman, dangerously efficient and corrupt troubleshooter and executive of the PetroChem Corporation in Cyberpunk - with his terminator like bodyguard, highly dubious associates and constantly demanding drug addicted girlfriend he shot, stabbed, backstabbed, double dealt and enjoyed his mad brutal life. It was my teenage fantasy brought to life but I still recall him with amusement and delight, remembering when we would and could game for multiple days a week and into the early hours without a problem.

2. Tavar, a Vulcan with a temper who inhabited an alt universe where the Dominion had won - over the next few years of real time, he and two trusted friends took the Alpha Quadrant back in a truly epic campaign.

3. Sabina Hafner - a young noblewoman in the Warhammer universe who sought to make her way in the world as a warrior but found a dark and dangerous road of blood, violence and corruption. Eventually she would be transformed into a vampire but continue (for the most part) to fight against Chaos and for the Empire. Even after the game finished I remember her fondly and have written one novel with a second in progress about her unlife after the game.

fun idea for a thread

We're getting ready to run a ST: Adventures game. I'll be the DM for this one, so no character for me unfortunately!

Another favorite of mine Fantasy wise was my Grung Ranger. I played that character across a dozen campaigns over three editions of the game! I probably hit lvl 20 with him at least twice.

The jist of the character was that he left his people because he never really fit in. As he traveled the world and other planes, he kept running into situations and groups that took him on fantastical adventures. He is a quirkly little character, prone to fits of childishness and tormented by visions of things to come.

Gather round children, and hear the tale of the NAZ 1,000, the finest German WWII cybernetics experiment that the Soviets stole, renamed the Computer Operated Soviet Armored Combatant (or Cossack) and spent decades perfecting before it went rogue. Now, this was Streetfighter STG, so it wasn't as ridiculous as it sounds.Well, it was, but it wasn't out of place.

I have three......

1. A physical adept in Shadowrun who was basically a Batman: The Animated Series knock-off of Joker and Harley Quinn in one character. Cliche as hell, but damn fun to play.

2. A halfling thief that talked big and swashbuckling but was a terrified little hobbit. Loved to talk smack and then run and hide behind the big bricks.

3. A guy who was convinced he was a bad-donkey exorcist Catholic Priest but had a bad womanizing habit. It was so fun to be super self-righteous while trying to hide his dark secret. Best of all, he was never even ordained, just somewhat crazy.

Calen'osta en Saorise

A wild elf druid who was raised outside of wild elf society by the druid circles. Hated civilization to such an extent that he didn't even like the wild elves.

The character was nigh impossible to give loot to. He didn't want money, had no use for shops, refused the worked items of other races including potions. Also he was illiterate only knowing how to recognize and read the hidden language of Ogham (druidic).

The character had a series of really lucky rolls at the most opportune times. Like rolling triple 20s when facing a lesser beholder. Turned into a bear and ripped out its middle eye with a single bite attack. When investigating a room with the party the ranger handed him a book to look through. He held it by one cover and let the pages fall open. One page was trapped, he got zapped, in anger he threw the book at the guy who gave it to him... rolled 20, knocked him unconscious. Went about his day. In a dungeon got separated from the group when he ended up in a trap room. Went berserk like a caged animal lashing out at all the walls to no avail. There was a riddle on the wall to solve the trap. Alas, illiterate, he died in there.

I had a LOT of fun playing that character.

I've played the mysterious Professor Tanhauser, yes that's how it's spelled in the americanized version, in various Mforce games from he games which gets ran yearly at local conventions.

Professor Tanhauser is at archetypal super scientist, maybe a bit mad but determined to defend humanity from various cryptid menaces. There was an original, and years later other ones turned up, all known as professor Tanhauser.

In 4th edition DnD I played a Plague-Soul Genasi. That was a fun character. We RP'd him as basically a manifestation of Pestilence that was slowly gaining power and learning about the world. This basically lead to him being a neutral character with a large vindictive streak.

I did a text RP on a website called storium where did a superhero game, I played a girl whose body produced gases and with training (the whole point of the rp) would learn how to change which elements composed the gases. That one was based on the Runaways comics and we had a blast. Probably the closest I've ever gotten to online friends.

My most recent instant classic was Derek Jett, Human Paladin, and leader of the donkey-cave Clan. It was for a meme game one shot but no one has stopped referencing it for like a month.

I've only played three or so but the one I enjoyed most was Siri. After my first character died in an Out of the Abyss campaign I joined, I had to make a new one on the fly. I made a Teifling who had been in the Underdark so long she'd gone mad and is convinced everyone else is a figment of her imagination. Que all kinds of wackiness, like trying to convince some NPCs I only needed to pay one fee to enter the city since no one else in the party was real (crit Persuasian role lmao) and using minor illusion to create a box to hide in and sneak around the enemy village solid snake style.

Quite a few! In an Anima campaign, I RP'd as a scheming ambitious senior mercenary who was based off Loki from The MCU, he was a blast to RP and I outwitted my GM's plans on so many occasions to count, including assassinating his Mary Sue GMPC who was a crappy version of Griffith from Berserk, which allowed his supposedly most elite army in the world to be utterly routed by a badly trained and badly armed militia.

Another was a super-hot narcissistic elf sorceress in Shadowrun, she made many encounters a breeze because of Entertainment, she was like nothing I've RP'd since. When she called my cousin's Troll hacker (who was both a literal and metaphorical troll) he hacked her phone and spread all her thousands of selfies across the net. lol.

Many characters as a GM one being a PCs older brother in a long, long running Dark Heresy campaign who was an incredible dandy, boy that was fun to RP

My favourite was Berthold, the mincing scribe from some two-bit town in Stirland (2nd edition WFRP). Running away from a tedious apprenticeship, he ended up in Middenheim with a slightly unhinged elven wizard, a dwarf who took the Slayer's oath not long after we all met up due to an unfortunate altercation with a municipal librarian and a noble's by-blow with a chip on his shoulder and the common sense of a stunned squig.

Somehow, Berthold survived horrors man was not meant to behold, hordes of 'orrible ratmen in the sewers, getting pursued byt the Middenheim Watch and eventually interrupting a Khornate summoning ritual in the Temple of Sigmar by charging right into the middle of the sircle and flailing wildly about him with a short sword. He got a severe kicking from the dozen cultists who took umbrage at this and all set about him at once, but it did the job, the daemon was prevented from manifesting and we were rewarded by a grateful city (and told never, ever to speak of any of this on pain of pain).

He was last seen on the road to Altdorf, having narrowly survived a haunted house and some surprisingly competent bandits.

Why the "mincing" scribe? Well, he ended up with s trength and toughness of 26% and a "distinctive gait". It was unanimously decided amongst the group that being that scrawny the distinctive gait could be nothing other than a mince (https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CAFA_enGB845GB845&q=Dictionary#dobs=mince definition 2)

I played a character in a Legend of the Five Rings campaign who started out a young dueling prodigy with lots of fame and promise who slowly descended into madness, eventually secretly swearing fealty to the Dark Lord Daigotsu. The transition was fun to play with a little murder here, and a white lie there.

Eventually, the entire party made it their goal to keep this character on a leash and mitigate whatever damage he did because social status made it hard to just call him out on his wrongdoings. Rokugani culture is weird.

I also played a scribe in a Dark Heresy campaign that was mute. That was a challenging character to play as he was not combat oriented and could not talk.

With my Rogue Trader campaign, I brought a PC I played in my cousin's Deathwatch campaign as an NPC: Inquisitor Azakir Halgriv of the Ordo Xenos, who I was typing the backstory of for reference in the RT campaign. Who worked with the Deathwatch Killteam.

It's scary how well I did as an Inquisitor Azakir's achievements are and are not limited to: earning the respect of the Space Marines in the Kill Team, including a Space Wolf's.
Killing a Tyranid Warrior in close combat.
Coming face-to-face with a Lictor and managing to survive to tell the tale (which was actually damn terrifying)
Killing a HIve Tyrant by ramming out the door of a Thunder Hawk with a Chimera making fall hundreds of metres to the ground, I managed to get out but we lost the Chimera, but it was worth it, really.
Through his scheming and planning being responsible for the destruction of, not just an Ork Stronghold, not just that the Chaos Space Marines allied with them, but also the Tau Strikeforce which had infiltrated the stronghold and lastly the prototype stealth Tau ship which had allowed the Tau to infiltrate.

I had great fun RPing the character and it was a shame when my cousin finished that campaign :(

Thread necromancy, but oh well, Azakir is now an NPC in the Rogue Trader campaign I'm GMing and despite the fact that he's an Ascension level character the PCs like him and look to him for advice and help a lot. Here's a drawing I did of him, it's the first time I've used a sharpie.



But most in the last session the PCs ran into Dakkdreff an ork warboss which I had a hell of a lot of fun RPing (despite the fact doing the ork voice killed my damn oesophagus lol) And as I was typing down the encounter I made him an atheist materialist who even doesn't believe in Gork and Mork and calls his fellow orks 'irrational' for worshipping gods. After the fight he swore the allegiance of him and his boyz to the PCs if they spared him so he could become 'da biggest baddest ork dis side o' da secta!' and they did thank goodness, I like him so much I would've been sad if they killed him lol. Now I've got to figure out how I'll get him and his Boyz in the campaign again later as they don't have void travel capability yet and the PCs have no way to get in communication with them to ask for help (Do they have Ork Weird Boyz Astropaths? lol)

My favorite RPG character I have played in a very long time was the goblin Barbarian I played in a pretty short lived 5th ed D&D campaign I was part of of.

It was an absolute joke character I made while trying to think of the real character I was going to play, but the DM loved the idea so much that they worked in the goblin Barbarian into the scenario that caused the party to form.

Much fun was had as that character, and it was actually hard to roleplay a character that was INT 6. The greatest session was when we were trapped in a dungeon that formed the passages based on our thoughts. And well, a dumb goblin that got separated from the main party forming a dungeon based on their thoughts was so much fun.

I guess my most recent Orc Wizard Dracthar Deathspeaker! The whole point of the campaign is that the Character is randomly generated and he was a terrible wizard, only had 8 Intelligence, but he had 17 Wisdom.

So basically he was dumb but he knew he was dumb and, therefore, curious about stuff he did not understand. Which led to some fun RPing.

Probably the time I got to play an actual amoral jerk, but it wasn't a party breaking issue because we all agreed to play lying, conniving, maladjusted crew mates

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire:

P1-G1 - Affectionatley known as "Piggy" by the crew of our ship, the Necessary Evil. Piggy was a RA-7 Protocol droid with heavy modifications from a variety of battle and security droid parts and a poorly formatted system. He was built by a rebel cell to act as spy and informant and pose as a loyalist to the Empire. The fatal flaw was that the technicians who reprogrammed and modified him failed to effectively destroy the protocols from when he was an Imperial RA-7 and bits of the other droids impacted his mental performance. This lead to conflicts in programming and an interesting persona;
Piggy was mean, self-centered, had no love for others, and was prone to wanting to steal anything he could potentially turn into a weapon or sell for a huge influx of cash.

Some fun:
+ While the rest of the Evil crew was strong arming a lead at bar and tussling with security forces, Piggy robbed the shop blind so he could replace one of his arms with a flame thrower and actively hid all the money he had left.
+ Built the Wookiee PC a club, a really nasty club, but felt he was too stupid to handle anything better than a reinforced pieces of wood and that making him a blaster or modifying his bowcaster was a waste of effort.
+ Turned around and made our Human PC (An Indiana Jones knockoff) an expertly crafted shield to use with his whip. Why? Because he was better than the wookiee.
+ Sold out any one with Rebel sympathies and pushed for only taking Imperial contracts, and became a spy for the Imperial Security Bureau.
+ Tortured/Intimidated gangers for information by spinning a knife in his hand and stating "He was not programmed for human compassion"
+ Tricked a Droid Rights striker into thinking he was joining their cause by shooting Indiana Jones in the knee with a blaster, this was to get behind the Droid Separatists and nail them with the flame thrower.
+ Forced one of the ganger captives to 'weekend at bernies' the other one out of their ship hold so he could hose it down before the Pilot PC got back from a side quest.
+ Passed a ton of skill checks to steal a Air-Car taxi, chase after a transport our wookiee was going all hulk on that lost it's pilot and started careening into city streets, and get close enough the rest of the party could grab him before it hit the ground
+ Convinced the Wookiee that a memorial for those lost on Alderaan was a 'Wall of Fame' for eating the biggest sandwich at the restaurant, which lead to the Wookiee and Jones starting a fight with refugees. Just because he thought it was funny
+ Wookiee gets tracked down by a contracted bounty hunter as a warning to pay his debt; "Don't Worry Guys, I got this!" as he tried to fight the Hunter. Piggy stood with the rest of the crew watching him get pummeled so bad he needed to be hospitalized again, adding to his debt and had to live down the Wookie wondering why we didn't interfere (apparently 'Guys I got this!' was code to jump in)

I have two I played in our "Das schwarze Auge" campaigns. It's basically a low fantasy medieval setting and rather noblebright with few exceptions.

1. Leomar Boronian von Mersingen-Berg
To understand this character a bit better: He hails from a nation that is culturally a mix of (late) medieval central and western europe and overall "the good guys (TM)". But when we build our new characters I realized that due to his age and region of origin the knight I wanted to build had basically been at constant war for most of his youth, since two extremely big demonic invasions had happened (one when he was twelve, the second when he was 18). Both times his nation had lost a majority of their army and barely survived and had since then tried (more or less efficiently) to fight back. His home province was completely in ruins and contested by various warlords (the campaign focussed around trying to stabilize and restore it).
Therefore his theme was a knight that tried all he could to be "the good guy" and live up to the ideals he was taught in his childhood - even though he was quite traumatized from all the fighting and was not without fault himself. He was well aware that a war-thorn province was likely not the place for fairy tale knightly ideals, but afraid of what would become of him if he stopped holding on to them. On more than one occasion we were confronted with others who had dealed with the whole issue differently - fleeing, going mad, fatalistic or sarcastic - and it was always interesting. The great thing about playing him was that he was much deeper in character than my characters before him and even though he was not the best fighter he had quite an influence on the campaign as with time the people around him started to believe too, that there was hope.

2. Francesco Bonareth:
A kind of cleric from a slaver nation in the south that is sometimes depicted as antagonists and you could rightly say "the bad boys" of the non-deamonic-worshipping team. As his homecity was a real snake nest he was a cunning politician and really good at reading people, also filthy rich and with "friends in high places" including the pope of his own church. The interesting twist he had was that his church was heavily involved in all kinds of drugs, to some degree to control the masses but also because they quite literally use them to be close to their god and perform miracles. While they do possess a variety of miracles that help them to redruce it, the risk to get addicted remains for the clerics and a lot of them suffer from it. He on the other hand is immune to all drugs in a way that he can not get addicted but also needs stupid amounts to even barely scratch the plain of enlightenment and godly inspiration that is normal for his peers - much to his own frustration. Even though he is often doubted if he is any use as priest, he became quite useful for his "pope" as he is fiercely loyal, always clear in his mind and does barely have any principles he would not throw over bord, if his god or his worldy representative asks that of him.
During the course of the campaign he even discovered his own conciousness and by now is really a rather nice guy. Non the less we often have a good laugh because the adventurer group often does "the right thing, out of the completely false reasons".
- not enslaving the defeated enemy crew - because we had limited storage room on our ship and the silk the enemy had is worth more, does not stink or eat our food
- treating their slaves very good - because a happy slave does not kill his master in his sleep
- helping the beggars and poorest of the city - because hunger breeds revolt and when s*** happens, they want to be standing on the right side of history
etc.

Landry Deshburn was a half-elf bard in an Ironfang Invasion campaign. (Pathfinder 1e)

He played a lute, wore a big stupid mask, and had an air of being a mysterious lyrical vagabond. He also had no ranks in survival, because the campaign brief broke the illusion by taking the reader aside to tell us that yes, your character should probably have ranks in survival and I... figured everybody else would have that covered. As a bard, Landry was our party know-it-all. He couldn't tie a knot but he could convince the surviving villagers camping out with us that they wanted to make a nice hammock for him, when it came to combat he could buff the party with his lovely singing voice and trip people with his whip (the idea being adjacent party members could hit them when they get back up, and eventually with some more feats, on the way down as well) or uses the party's rapidly growing stockpile of magic wands. He was also very mysterious, and would say so often. Wore gloves all day and night and wouldn't let the party goblin play with his mask, ever. So unfair.

So one night, the goblin decides to test her stealth rolls against the sleeping perception of a bard with 8 wisdom. Climbs up to the hammock, steals the mask, discovers Landry Deshburn is a skeleton.

The party doesn't take it well. Goblin tries to play xylophone on Landry's ribs with some magic wands and gets an arm turned pink. I think the other wand was ray of frost.

Landry tries to explain that sometimes you commission a local discount wizard to do a thing for you he might take longer than expected to do it, and sometimes when that happens a client might lose their temper and call the wizard an incompetent hack, and sometimes when that happens a wizard might take offence and try to curse the client with invisibility forever, and sometimes the wizard really is a hack and the client ends up being invisible down to the skeleton. Hence: Landry Deshburn, foppish dandy turned Gentleman Skeleton, on a quest to find the terrible wizard and reverse the curse.

He was actually very fun to play, both mechanically and as a character. But there's a couple of standout moments:

Once, he nearly started a boss fight with two Leprechauns by trying to swindle them out of their missing gold which we had already found. At that time, they ominously told him that his lying tongue would get him into trouble someday. Thirty minutes later we end up fighting a pair of satyrs who, using magic pipes, manage to brainwash the entire party - except for Landry.

So he's pinned to the floor by one of our actual fighters as the satyrs try to work their magic on him. Not keen to be frog-marched down to the dungeon with the rest of the party, Landry gets an idea: he casts pyrotechnics on a burning stove-top, filling the room with a blinding smoke. He then shouts "Look out! Those satyrs just drew knives and are going to stab us all while you can't see them!"

The party does a sense motive check against Landry's bluff, they fail. The uncharacteristic but definitely true and not made up hostile actions of these satyrs triggers the 'obviously harmful' escape clause on whatever charm or suggestion effect was in place, thus freeing the party with the power of lies.

That campaign stopped part-way through and I still want to play him again. The closest I got was Teleminder, a bratty, entitled, 700th in line to the throne of some minor elven house on a quest to find and kill the bony bard who slept with his sister.

For the 40k RPG's- Namely, Black Crusade- Typhon Exonull, Alpha Legion Chosen. Partially because in playing Black Crusade, I was pleasantly surprised at how it wasn't as restrictive as I thought it would be. It wasn't about the stats or anything, it was because we deliberately wanted this campaign to be funny... so we all had little quirks, and Typhon's quirk was that he always lied to NPC's. ALL THE TIME, about anything. He'd even greet them with the wrong time of day. Overall, it was just us playing on the tropes of legions and goofing off... so it was a good experience. Especially since our warband decided to settle disputes by flexing at one another. Some people I know have talked about rebooting this, but using the new game's system and the old FFG fluff.

Sci-Fi campaign (D20 Future): Agent Solomon. A cybernetically-enhanced occult investigator, a bit of a 'covert operative' type character that really played on the whole conspiracy theme. I loved having a character that could survive a fight, but was really good at investigation and interrogation.

Superhero RPG (Champions- Dark Champions): Geist- a pretty wild concept for a superhero campaign where... no one had 'super powers' on an outlandish level (although some very low tier powers were allowed). He was actually part of a CIA program that wiped his memory and completely erased his identity, and infiltrated the world of vigilantes and costumed heroes to keep an eye out for anyone who was acting against the interest of the American people. Actually turned out to be a lot of fun, even though the GM got tired of him literally hanging enemies and causing a public ruckus.

D&D: Von Mordren, a Monster Hunter (Ranger) in a semi-Curse of Strahd campaign. Really felt like this was a ton of fun to just play out, another investigative character.

Star Wars: Acolyte Kresht. Basically a rogue acolyte from a Sith Cult that was really frustrated with all the 'muh dark side' and 'muh lite side' garbage and just wanted to have fewer problems to deal with.