Your favorite player character?

I'm always curious as to why people choose one thing or another, and when it comes to Role Playing Games, you don't get more basic than the Player Character. These seem to be the most general archetypes, so which are your favorite and why?

Provided Background

Since video games have a limited amount of space for information, they can't include every possible choice the player would want for their backstory. Thus, devs often provide backstories to help inform the player of the world and give them something to work with. The price is that sometimes players can feel "forced" into roles they would never have chosen, with people they don't necessarily care about. Some players can work around this, some can't. I actually liked the Origins and the Hawke family, but I can see why others don't.

Blank Slate


Most people consider this the perfect RPG character start, as they can easily headcannon whatever past and motives they wish. However, since the game cannot adequately reference you main's history, it can cause a disconnect that you aren't really apart of the world. Indeed, I've seen games where the main companions could have saved the world on their own, had their characters not been "weakened" enough to need the PC.

Self Insert


Most people's main characters are reflections of themselves and what they would do in certain situations. This is not a criticism, as the whole point of roleplaying games are wish fulfillment. The issue comes when they *ONLY* play themselves, that even considering other viewpoints is wrong. It isn't just whether they are "good" or "evil", it's any deviation; gender and sexuality, race, politics and religion, idealism vs cynicism, logic vs emotion, etc. The idea that their character must be an insert, and not like a story they write, baffles them. A long with the lack of creativity, I wonder why such players would spend 60 dollars on a game that they only intend to use a quarter of the content.

There is also the fact that many players who Self Insert also Meta-Game; i.e. they intentionally spoil themselves with wikis and walthroughs in order get their desired outcome, rather than playing the game organically. I won't lie, I've done this a few times in the past, but only when I had trouble otherwise. It's your money, you can play however you want to. But if you're not going to actually play the game, why buy it at all? Why not just watch Let's Plays and write fanfiction?

Role Playing

My personally preferred playstyle, to explore the game world as some one who isn't me; good, evil, funny, weird, unremarkably ordinary and everything in between. For me, RPGs aren't just personal wish fulfillment, but a way to explore creative avenues and writing archetypes. That said, I will admit that Role Players sometimes look down on players who "just play to have fun". Or that we can take the story too seriously. In the end, it is just a game