Lets all try to be a little more original

[Aine]

Yeah.... But is Mab really evil? More like unrepentantly cruel! 

More like spiteful for the fun of it than cruel, really.  I mean, who hasn't seem some little kid sitting outside an anthill smushing ants?  Is that "evil"?  If I were Mab, I'd probably consider humans pretty much the same way...

(Insert long debate about soulessness, free will, and morality with no real conclusion *here*)

[Mickey Finn]

"Goosed by evil"

*CACKLE* Love.

[TheMouse]

One problem with trying to avoid all those stereotypes is that they are examples of people with flaws. Part of the genre is that people are flawed. It's what makes people like Michael stand out so much: They manage to be good in a world of moral gray areas.

I'm really not shocked that people are making flawed characters. "Bad guy, but not," is an obvious example in a word where demons and vampires stalk the night. Lawbreakers are also obvious, because the Laws are some of the closest things we get to spelled out objective morality. Lone wolves are people with personal problems (and thus flawed) or people with a secret (and thus interesting, at least in theory).

So while I do agree that people should not restrict themselves to those categories, originality for the sake of originality is not necessarily meritorious.

Now that I've argued against your idea, I'm going to post a character that hasn't broken any Laws, isn't a good badguy, and isn't a loner.

The character (whose name I haven't thought up yet) is an untrained wizard. When he was younger, he basically ran away to join the circus. He ended up being taken in by some changelings performers, who did their best to teach him how to use his powers and to keep him safe. Obviously, their views on magic have influenced his. Now he lives in (wherever the game ends up being set) living as a street performer. His conflict is trying to figure balance his history and perspective when entering into the world on his own, especially his entry into wizardly society (which the changelings kept him hidden from, thinking they were doing him a favour).

So, not a loner, not a Lawbreaker, and not sort of evil. Just kind of confused.

[srl51676]

As to "I'm evil but not really" side of things: I think the other posters have got it right. There are very few examples of unalloyed goodness in the Dresdenverse. So that's not an escapable paradigm.  We can't all be Michael -- nor should we.  If Michael Carpenters were frequent, they wouldn't stand out as such an important, vital part of the mortal struggle against the supernatural.

I'm not say we should all be Michael, far from it this is a noir world and there should be lots of gray area PC's I was just commenting on the almost total lack of any strongly good characters on this board. where are the repentant lawbreakers like Molly, the Father Forthhill's, the good wardens like Ramirez, or the wizards who do good while respecting the importance of the laws instead of finding ways to get away with breaking them.

Your example sounds like a good fit very noir but still a team player.

"Drizzt and Angel are two VERY different characters."
Again I am not talking about backstory here what I am talking about is the psycology of the player the reason we are attracted to the dark hero with the tortured past who has all the powers of an evil being with out that pesky evil alignment. To me they seem like a dodge if they were rarely played they would be interesting, even refreshing, but they make up an absurd percentage of RPG PC's.

"One problem with trying to avoid all those stereotypes is that they are examples of people with flaws."
 I know this. they are examples of people 3 or 4 specific flaws. What I am saying is that I wish people would pick different flaws. I also think it speaks to our psychology as a group that you are only the 3rd person to post on this thread an example of what I was looking for and the rest are defending the need to play Thomas and Kincaid.

That said I love your idea way to go!
I love

[Shecky]

It's easy to lump a broad spectrum of characters under big labels, mainly because human perception is geared towards seeing patterns and resemblances. But that is utterly irrelevant if we remember that each character, no matter what they have in common with lots of other characters, is a unique individual.

[Aine]

Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for yourselves! You're ALL individuals!

[srl51676]

Oh well I tried.

Welcome to Hot Topic were you can be different just like us. 

[Deadmanwalking]

Oh well I tried.

Welcome to Hot Topic were you can be different just like us. 

Chill, man. There are plenty of characters who fit none of your stereotypes, your tone was just completely wrong for getting people to talk about them. Heck, look at the Dresden Files Asia recruitment thread, there are half a dozen characters in it, and none of them are really in either of your categories. Or look at the Weird Character Ideas thread, or re-read the Dresden Files themselves (which include the Alphas, Michael, Toot-toot, Murphy, Mouse, and probably a dozen more who don't fall under your stereotypes).

[Aine]

Oh well I tried.

Welcome to Hot Topic were you can be different just like us. 

Awww, cheer up Brian.  You know what they say...

Really, I was just demonstrating my character type.  The short, somewhat plump motherly Amazon who isn't all that good with a bow and arrow, but unbelievably tenacious, gets that "lift the car off a toddler" strength when required, and keeps fighting the good fight while wishing everyone could just get along.  And quotes Monty Python films when she has nothing germane to add to the conversation.

*whistles annoyingly catchy tune*

[Ihadris]

I beleive the group composition thread also had a few very original suggestions in there. I would provide some myself as I tend to play the sorts of characters you were wanting to hear about but Im resisting the urge to really flesh out any of my character ideas until I get my hands on the books; anything I have at the moment is merely just a concept and a trouble aspect at most.

[Lanodantheon]

Chill, man. There are plenty of characters who fit none of your stereotypes, your tone was just completely wrong for getting people to talk about them. Heck, look at the Dresden Files Asia recruitment thread, there are half a dozen characters in it, and none of them are really in either of your categories. Or look at the Weird Character Ideas thread, or re-read the Dresden Files themselves (which include the Alphas, Michael, Toot-toot, Murphy, Mouse, and probably a dozen more who don't fall under your stereotypes).

I agree. Chill out.

Your original intent was to get more original characters than the 3 you mentioned because you spotted a trend.
However, it is a trend in anticipation for a game this isn't even out yet...

No one has had a chance to play Harry Dresden in his own RPG yet. No one's been able to play any of those character types yet, no one's had a chance to try them on so to speak.

Also, ragging on what other people are playing is just bad form because not everyone has been exposed to every single character type. Some gamers have played for 20 years and have seen everything from Albino Drow half-breeds to eccentric Wizards to demi-gods of cthulu horrors and some of us have gamed for less than 1 and haven't seen any of those things.

I haven't been able to try out Drizzt or even a regular Drow yet. You are saying that I can't shouldn't try on a suit+tie that looks comfortable because a number of people are wearing that same suit+tie but it still looks comfortable.

I have a right to play a Drizzt clone if I want to as long as my group is cool with it.

Though, my take on Drow will be a Family based on Florentine nobles who (like the Sidhe in Dresden) are bound to speak the truth. But they're still the same Drow...And inspired by Assassin's Creed II....

The reason why so many character types on the forum seem ripped off from the books are because people want to play the characters they know fit in the setting first. The other reason being that people feel like trying those characters out. 

My current choice for a character is a Hotshot Wizard who's a Hotshot because as a teenager he participated in a Group Ascension Ritual in an effort to become a full Wizard now as opposed to 20 years from now. It bit him in the ass, made some of his oldest friends go POOF and now he has to live with it. Technically he is Maverick in the middle of Top Gun after the....accident. I don't want to play him  because he's Maverick-as-a-Wizard, I want to play him because he might be fun being a guy with a lot of power he's not sure he can control. And I plan to give him a State Alchemist's Silver Pocket Watch, a Drumstick and/or Hockeystick as foci because I can only do it in context in the Dresdenverse(after my brother smacks me).

Plus, dude at the end of the day, TDFRPG is a FATE game with collaborative character creation. Most of the characters posted including my own have been made in vacuum without other characters in mind. My Hotshot, my Vigilante Sorceror and even Chauncy's B@*($ are going to shift based on what other characters I'm playing with. Plus, if the GM says "No" to one of my ideas during creation I'm going to ask why and if he/she doesn't give me a good reason I'm going to call BS. I as will also call BS if someone makes a character so they can break the Laws of Magic willy nilly because that's dumb steam-venting.

Conclusion: If you don't want it in your game, catch it during creation, not on a forum for a game that isn't even out yet.....

[srl51676]

Wow looks like I hit a nerve here I want to quote my own original post so you can all read it again. My intention was never to try to create a prohibition for the whole game or even the forums what I posted was a challenge to our collective creativity.

I have been looking at the character ideas that are being posed and seeing a trend. It is a trend that flows from one game to the next and its getting a bit old I wan to see if we can break the cycle and come up with something that breaks the stereotype of gamers. I understand the attraction of these types but isn't it getting a bit old.

Post character ideas that do not fall into the following categories
1) "I'm evil but not really" examples include Kincaid, Thomas Raith, Angel, Spike, and drizzt do'urden.

2) "Law Breaker" any character that is a dodge on the 7 laws.

3) "Lone Wolf with something to prove" examples any character played by Tom Cruise, Dirty Harry, and I hate to say it Harry Dresden

Also post any other archetypes you feel are over done.

In this post I was asking for more not less. I was trying to break a pattern in increase the variety of inspiration that we have available to us. What annoyed me is that the majority of the response was to defend the pattern instead of taking up the challenge. Since There have been a few good examples. My next post will be one or two examples of my own. 

[Deadmanwalking]

Wow looks like I hit a nerve here I want to quote my own original post so you can all read it again. My intention was never to try to create a prohibition for the whole game or even the forums what I posted was a challenge to our collective creativity.
In this post I was asking for more not less. I was trying to break a pattern in increase the variety of inspiration that we have available to us. What annoyed me is that the majority of the response was to defend the pattern instead of taking up the challenge. Since There have been a few good examples. My next post will be one or two examples of my own. 

I, at least, get that, but whatever your intent, your post came off as an attack on all characters like the ones presented. Which just isn't fair, and is likely to offend anyone who's ever seriously played such a character. You need to work on your phrasing.

[Douglas]

I think there's problem with the way your criteria are framed; particularly the last one.  Most of the heroes from the books are loners in one way or another; Harry is self-evident.  Murphy is a member of the police force, but she still goes off on her own or with Harry to deal with issues that the police can't or won't deal with, and her reputation at work suffers for it.  Thomas was alienated from his society by his morality, Butters was alienated from his peers by his integrity, the Knights of the Cross are loners by their calling.  The Werewolves and father Forthill are the only real "team players" on the list, in the case of the werewolves by common origin, and in Forthill's case by his role as support mechanism.  And unless you coordinate an all wizard or all cop party, your characters will by necessity be individuals who seek aid from beyond their groups in order to pursue their own missions and agendas.  Part of that comes with the genre, the lone detective pounding the pavement, not sure who to trust.  Of the characters I've been working on none of them seem like Tom Cruise or Dirty Harry to me, but all of them could be described as "loners" in one way or another.

Brief blurbs (not full backgrounds by a longshot, but I don't want to do that much typing right now) for three characters, trouble aspects for two.

Strand, who in earlier drafts was a mortal but is now a lycanthrope, has a conscience.  He runs with a gang of fellow lycanthrope criminals, but he still cares about people outside the gang; so when he's not being muscle for drug dealers he tries to undo some of the harm that he sees happening around him.  He's tolerated as long as he still fights for the rest of the pack, but if he's going to hunt down a child-snatching troll he'll need friends and allies from elsewhere, enter the other PCs.

Trouble aspect: Heart of a man, soul of a wolf

Tucker believes in an Earth mother, in certain interpretations of old gods, and that he has a duty to protect against supernatural threats.  That's fine when he's the one who deals with something summoned that should not have been, but when it's a sorcerer among his own community who decided that charm spells were the coolest thing in D&D and starts hurting people then stopping the threat has a higher price.  Practitioners start thinking of him as a one man spanish inquisition, to use a label that has been applied to Harry, but with no Warden in sight someone has to step up.  If he wants help or friends, he'll have to look elsewhere.

Trouble Aspect: No love for the watchdog

Damian is damaged goods; a warlock decided to reshape him into what the warlock thought was a better version of himself, and broke a lot of stuff in his head trying.  After someone dear to him killed herself from the stress of being controlled Damian managed to break free and decapitated said warlock with a fire axe.  He a wreck now, and trying to figure out what happened to him as the only way he has to combat the fear that rules his life now.  Oh yes, and he thinks the fire axe is talking to him.

Still working on his aspects

[Cajun Guy]

Sniff. Sniff.. I smell the reek of troll in the air. 

My .02...

RPG's are games for fun. If the player is having fun then that is what counts. I created the character I wanted to play and could care less if some one else thinks it is silly or derivative. Archtypes exist for a reason because they are fun, popular and generally touch some primal cord in us all. All media is derivative in one form or another. There are only a few archtypes for stories and they have existed since man first started telling tales. Read some Joseph Cambell to get the idea (George Lucas really was into his work).

Basically if the player is having fun that is all that matters. If I want to Play Larry Desden the cocky, cynical , lone wolf mage who cares as long as I have fun doing it? I know I have seen games that I thought were completely lame, but I held my tounge because the players were having fun and ultimately that is what it is all about. Who am I or anyone else to judge what brings pleasure to another as long as no one gets damaged in the process.

So, instead of being the critic on the sideline try making your own character and have fun. It is a little harder than standing in the peanut gallery throwing stones but the rewards are much greater.

Cajun Guy