This is an OOC post.
Hello,
You may have seen a couple of posts from me here before, but I thought it might be a good idea to introduce myself more properly all the same.
I've been playing since February, and this is my first MMORPG. I've played pen & paper RPGs a lot when I was younger though (yep, I'm a Hardened Geek).
The RP part of the game interests me more and more, now that I have the gameplay basics down. Most of all I love to make stuff up, here in the game, as well as in other contexts (write short stories etc).
I recently wrote an article, The Ghost of Willy Snelton, which was a lot of fun to make.
I also tried to arrange a Science Conference on Rubi-Ka a while back, but it has proved to be a little too ambitious a project, and it's cancelled due a lack of presentations.
I have a slightly gimped level 41 trader (Kronocide) on Rimor, and a level 44 fixer (Tenfour), that's doing much better, on Atlantean.
I level slower and slower these days, as I'm preoccupied with other things, such as taking pictures for articles.
Anyway, I hope to be able to sneak into the RP community, and make that a signifficant part of my gaming experience, I really think I need that to keep my interest in the game.
And now for my RP question:
Have you ever talked about or considered archetypes or "personality templates"? I know it may sound horribly boring, but I'm just curious about what you think of it. In my experience, role playing is more about immitating fiction than immitating reality, and in fiction, clear, easily recognizable personality types definitely have their place.
I'm thinking that choice of profession would imply something about the personality of the character, which isn't completely unrealistic in my mind.
For example, I imagine that a fixer is kind of a lone rider type, self-sufficient, not too concerned about the law but usually honorable (unless he's a "bad fixer," that is).
With no facial expressions, and a limited set of social gestures, I believe something like this could be helpful for defining characters.
I would love to hear more about what kind of personalities other profession tend to have, and whether this is something you take into account at all.
(I seem to remember something similar to this in the manual, in fact, but I have misplaced mine, so I can't check.)
