Exploration and Expression of Character

One thing I love about D&D and certain other games is how they allow the players to explore their own psyches. Before the game even gets started, players are enabled to create (or at least select) their own characters. These characters serve both as tools for the players to use to interact with the adventuring world and as reflections of the players themselves.

I've spoken before about how D&D characters can serve as reflections, and in my case, role models for their players. I like to play as paladins, fighters, and clerics, characters who fight evil in the defense of the good, because they reflect my desire to be good and do good. I explore and express my desire for virtue through them.

However, I also design my characters to be good in combat. I try to optimize my characters' average damage per round, and I get excited when they unlock powerful new abilities. These traits allow my characters to excel in the many fights that break out in most D&D games.

As a role-playing game, D&D has two main components: the role-playing component and the game component. My favorite part is the role-playing component, where I get into character and confront difficult moral predicaments, hoping, with the aid of the DM and the other players, to weave together an epic and memorable story.

However, I also enjoy the game component, in which players have their characters attempt to do something, and then they, the players, roll dice to see what happens next. This is the part of the part of the game that is actually a game, and I enjoy trying to win it, especially with help from my teammates. I find it fun to play strong characters who are good at fighting monsters.

I'm not sure what all that says about me, but I know it says something different than if I usually played bards or rogues. The play experience is different for the different characters, as the different classes tend to play different roles in the party. For whatever reason, I gravitate towards characters who can handle themselves in a fight rather than those who try to solve their problems with sneakiness or cleverness.

Maybe that means I'd rather be strong than sneaky, or maybe it means I think I'm stronger than I am clever. I know I could make a character who can, starting at a rather low level, can effectively disguise himself as just about anyone he has ever met, but I don't think I'll ever play that character because I'm not clever enough to fully take advantage of that sort of ability.

Meanwhile, it's much simpler and easier to play a more basic, combat-focused character. I have noticed that I tend to prefer most of my challenges to be simple and/or easy. Maybe I play fighters and characters like them because combat is simple, tactical challenge that relies more on the luck of the dice than on clever improvisation.

D&D is endlessly interesting to me in how it allows me to express and explore my personal character through what sorts of characters I create and how they and I interact with the game. I'm learning a lot about myself, including (I hope) how I can become better as both a player and a person. D&D helps me do something I enjoy: building good, strong characters, including my own.