How do you construct your protagonist?

Both. First playthrough, and many replays, are more self-insert and then there are a few that are more creating a different character and acting as them.

I try and read as much lore as possible about the setting to be able to immerse myself in the character. Like an actor portraying a role in a play, I try and put myself in there shoes, try and add as much of my own personality and opinions as the game permits and then play the role.

Depends on how formed a character they are the first time I play. Hawke, I role play them as what I perceive to be them, informed by the first couple of decisions (think grieving their sibling being hard wired, and what to do with Wesley) but with my morals and preferences the first time around. I'm not immersed enough to romance someone I don't actually like the first time through, for example, so they are still controlled by my preference.

After knowing the story, I then go with a fully informed seed for following playthroughs.

Dragon Age Origins has allowed a pseudo self insert, a horn dog cousland, a cold elven mage with PTSD, and a dwarf that was as dumb as rocks.

Dragon Age 2 has allowed a pseudo self insert AND a frightening psychopath who argues with everyone. The range is so impressive

Dragon Age Inquisition pretty much only allows normal person parameters of ethics, so it's hard to play anyone outside of "trying to do good" or "kind of a selfish ass" but you can't be any of the cool things I've gotten to try in Origins or 2

Andromeda, I actually went in thinking I could roleplay a person actively grieving their dead parent and was so disappointed that I couldn't even do that, I had to make an entirely new character after I'd had time to grieve the lack of roleplay opportunity. So I made a Ryder that was only a little disappointed her dad was dead, and went from there Ryder is a young kinda brash inexperienced fool, easily tricked and disrespected by their team, good luck trying anything else. Good thing the story is...mostly good.

There ya go, more than you asked for.

I never treat my first playthrough as my canon one mostly because I miss things. In DA2, I never got Fenris the first time.

After I playthrough it, I devise my canon playthrough.

DA:O had a City Elf interrupted at her wedding, where she killed her abductor, she willingly joined the Wardens. She saw no kinship with the Dalish, but instead ended the werewolf course because it was the right thing to do. She saved the mages because she had faith in her own abilities to kill the demons, writing off Cullen as maddened due to torture. She sided with Bhelen because she thought it would be better for all of Orzammar given how reliant they are on the surface. She sided with Branka first because she believed Caridin mad, but then when she saw how Branka was far gone, she convinced her to commit suicide. She used blood magic on Isolde to have Morrigan kill the demon (I know you can get the lyrium from the Circle, but that felt like a cop-out). Alistair wed Anora to rule while the Warden personally executed Loghain.

DA2 had a Blood Mage/Spirit Healer Hawke who approached every situation with humor. He had a great relationship with Carver, who got over his years of surliness. He had rivalries with Fenris (whom he considered bigoted) Anders (whom he never trusted), and Sebastian (who needed to assert himself for his throne) and friendships with Aveline (whom he always respected for saving him), Isabela (who was his partner in friendship), Merrill (whom he loved and natural curiosity about history drove him to help her) and Varric (his great little dwarf). Eventually, he sided with Meredith: He didn't trust her at all, but he knew Orsino was a problem.

DA:I had a dwarven warrior who was deeply faithful in both the Chant and the Stone. He romanced Cassandra, helped everyone with their problems, completed lots of quests, rifts, and the like, especially when booze was involved. He sided with Gaspard (while he wanted to help Briala, a relationship built on blackmail never lasts, and Celene was absolutely incompetent), he allied with the templars but brought in free mages who accepted responsibility came with power. He killed Abelas because he didn't trust the elves, and Stroud was left in the Fade. He went down to the Titan, became First-Thaw, and decided Solas was too far gone to save.

I usually come to my canon after a playthrough or two to decide what story I like and what sort of character would be most fun to play in it.

My first playthrough is basically me, personality wise, and I make my choice of gender-race fairly arbitrarily.

Eventually I come up with an idea for a character personality that would be fun to play and use that for my canon. That personality is still partly me at a base level, I have a hard time committing to a character completely unlike myself.

Always love this question when asked.

And no I don't play it as representing myself because I am an overweight computer game nerd and not some ancient hero of legend.

But yeah lets see here I usually do a character concept from the beginning of what I want to role with. Usually the male characters I can create are based, however loosely that may be, on another character from another franchise or medium, usually TV shows...the occasional movie, like my Inquisitor was named Benjamin and he was based on Obi-Wan Kenobi. While my female characters do tend to be complete original OCs even if their names are sometimes borrowed from other franchised, like my Fem Hawke was named 'Aeryn' like the Farscape character but whereas Aeryn Sun was an entirely serious peace keeper bad ass my Hawke ended up being more like...Jack O'Neill. And Kara Trevelyan was my female Inquisitor who shares an interesting and unintentional simularity(ies) to Kara Thrace from BSG...but the two similiarities were just that, unintentional.

The other thing about stuff I tend to do is usually I am very bad with following through on my plans. I had haped to create 3 Hawkes, one for each class so I could experience all the endings to, only ended up creating two of them, and four Inquisitors, one for each voice choice but only ended up creating two.

So keeping this in mind, changing game habits, and well a few things about where I hope they go with DA 4 right now I got plans for two protags.

Oliver- Male 'bow rogue' based off of Oliver Queen from Arrow. I am quite confident I will create him no matter what but I do wonder about backgrounds and hope that A. either he is somehow a non magical member of a Tevinter Royal Family...for some reason it just didn't stick. Or B. otherwise an assassin or spy background (given Oliver Queen's experiences with the League of Assassins and what's her face from Arrow) and given there is potential for both backgrounds I am confident.

Andromeda- A Female Mage. I have been thinking of, again options permitting, making her a member of the Magisterium but the idea just occured to me not yesterday that it might be fun rolling with her as an Elf...just not sure there is enough appostraphes to make it work.

I roleplay. Real life me is a boring person doing the daily wage grind like everyone else. And I can play into whatever role I choose quite well. I like customizing, and I (mostly) like the illusion of choice as presented in Dragon Age. With that and my personal headcanons, I am able to create a great myriad of protagonists within my head with great level of detail

But that all ends as soon as the game is over. I know when the credits role, my character--regardless of his/her imagined attributes--is truly Bioware's character first and foremost, and they create our protagonist for a very specific narrative purpose that may not align with what players created in their heads.

If Bioware decides that my Inquisitor, who I personally thought would cap the amount of influence her Inquisition had to keep the nobles at ease since most major conflicts were resolved, instead expanded her forces into an even greater power--there isn't much I can do about it. Because who knows? Something may have happened in the last 2 years that made "my" Inquisitor drastically change. In some cases even to the point I hardly recognized them.

First playthrough is usually lighter on the roleplay, because I want to maximize companion retention + the amount of lore I can get. So they end up being sort of a peaceful, relentlessly curious doormat.

Later playthroughs I usually have some alternate outcomes I really want to see, so I use those as tent pegs to build the character around. Since the first character is so diplomatic, that usually means subsequent characters are... messy.

I don’t force them to hit all the alternate choices though (just the main ones I used to build their character around), so they’re a lot more consistently RP’d and have clearer personalities. But they, uh, definitely have some DEEP character flaws.

Like most people here, I almost never self insert. My approach is to treat my characters less like video games, and more like a writing collaborations with the game's creators. My PCS usually end up being a synthesis of broad archetypes I like to explore, and how Bioware's provided histories and the game'a events would affect them.

My main RP archetypes include, but are not limited to:

1. "Ideal Hero".

2.Easy going trickster who takes very little seriously.

3. Ruthlessly ambitious, yet pragmatic sort who wants to secure their own dynasty.

4. Grim antisocial who's had a horrible life, and wants the world to pay.

5. Average Joe in way over their head.

Sometimes I'll even mix and match types for added layers. After I pick which starting personality I'm going to explore, I think on how the Origin shaped them; their skills and connections, beliefs and desires, fears and prejudices, and so on.

Now just because they start a certain way, doesn't mean they end there. In Origins alone I had:

-a naive and spoiled male Cousland who grew up

- a bitter and vengeful female Tabris who let go of most (but not all) of her hatreds and became a true hero

-an idealistic female Aeducan who was completely shattered by the Deep Roads (especially the brood mother), and fanatically resolved to do anything to stop the Blight

-an elven mage who always insisted on only doing the "right" thing, even when it cost him valuable resources and Companions

-a weary Dalish determined to be a shining example of The People, yet screwed over most shemlen whenever he could.

This is ultimately why I feel DA *needs* Evil choices again; not to play psychopaths (I find such characters boring), but to explore our PC's complexities, potential hypocrisy, and growths. For our heroes to fall, and maybe find redemption.

Well since I am short and stalky and play as a qunari most of the time and am a very likable person in the game I would say it's more wish fufillment.

Dragon age 2 had it's problems but I must have beat that game over thirty times and that is not an exageration.