Let’s see… You recognize that you have been a less than great person in the past, but are wanting to become better. There is probably a specific person who has inspired you on this path. However, internally you feel pulled a lot of different ways and like you are not always consciously in control of yourself.

I appreciate the effort, but I was being sarcastic, I don't need my DnD habits psychoanalyzed lol > I'd imagine they'd say that a common theme with your character's is valid misgrievances with authority, especially perceived as incompetent and evil I mean, it's DnD. Fighting evil authority/authoritarian figures, be it liches, tyrants, evil dragons or whatever, is a very common trope. Same with external factors disrupting a character's peace - it's, like, half the origin stories of any fantasy character out there. People can absolutely imbue parts of themselves in their characters and their backstory (I've read tons of stories of closeted trans people playing characters with a different gender from theirs, for example), but it's not an exact science. In my case, I just like playing buff dudes and ~~bullying the nerds~~ bonking the squishy casters. Case on point: my first two characters were neutral and chaotic evil, respectively, yet I'm literally unable to kill a fly in real life. My third character was lawful good and the fourth one is a pacifist. I just like roleplaying as different characters with differing motivations and testing out new classes in the process. Do they reflect my interests? Of course they do. Do they reflect me specifically? Hardly so, unless you squint really hard to find similarities - but I suspect people sometimes try too hard to find patterns where there isn't one.

That's kind of funny in a terrible way when you consider that a lot of security research is pentesting. Therapist: "Also you're fat" Patient: [incoherent sobbing] Therapist: "Ok so you're insecure about that too, try to work on that..."

I think as a teenager I played a lot of Bards because being likeable and everyone doing what you say is kind of nice when you're an awkward disempowered kid, but nowadays I mix it up. Mostly just because playing the same character repeatedly would get kind of boring for me, and I want to explore different territory, even if it's on the level of "original the hedgehog donut steal"

Seems like a lot of people base their D&D on themselves. I don’t really understand that. I always try to make characters totally different from myself to try to put my head in a different space. To me it’s a key part of escapism to try on someone else’s shoes for a bit.

You can do this - many of us do. However when you get to writing a solid backstory, or attempt to act as that character, it's all going to be "you" flavored on some level. Kind of like interpreting a Rorschach print.

Yes, exactly! The moment my therapist laid out the path forward to mindfulness, it felt like I was handed a "debug mode" for my own brain. Life has been transformative ever since.

People often want, and try, to do that, but then fall back into who they really are. It's *very* common in video game RPGs that track moral choices. For example Mass Effect, where a lot of people try to make a Renegade character and take the evil choices. But then end up choosing many of the nicer options as they keep playing.

I guess I’m one of those weird people who can naturally slip into the role of an evil character in a game and do things in the game I’d never do in real life. I think it may be similar to being an actor who plays villains in movies. It doesn’t work as well if you just try to think “I’m the bad guy, time to kill babies!” You have to think about your character’s backstory and give them really believable motivations for doing the bad things they do. Walter White is a great example of a well-written villain. He’s motivated by regret over his missed opportunities, resentment towards friends who took advantage (Gray Matter), a sense of superiority and entitlement over his own abilities, and disappointment with a dead-end career. Many people can relate to these motivations. The true key to any villain is that they don’t consider themselves a villain; they believe their actions are wholly justified. To roleplay an effective villain doesn’t mean you agree with your character’s justifications, but it helps a lot if you understand where they are coming from.

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