Rumble and Rant.

First of all, I had a lovely Christmas. :) I'm in a good mood, all things considered, although a bit bummed about the closing of Brass and Steel. I'll miss the place. And, after reading the metaplot, rather bummed that things never really started to heat up. It was a cool idea. Ah, well.

However, inspired by a rather snarky (but true) rant on fanfic, is one of my pet peeves on RPGs.

People playing the same damn character all the time. This was a real problem in my gaming group back in high-school and college with one or two people. No matter what the genre, they'd essentially play the /same/ character, with a couple of cosmetic changes. Not character templates, but the /same/ /character/, with just the names (and sometimes species) in the background changed.

I hate this. I hate it with the big hatey hate. When I'm GMing, a lot of my fun comes from seeing how the PCs react to the events in the world around them. I like to see the conflicts, the moments of cooperation, the revelations and all of that. When the party remains basically the same, I already know how they're going to react to anything I throw at them. /They/ already know how they're going to react to any given situation. There's no growth, no surprise. It bores me, and I lose the desire to make up cool, interesting NPCs for the PCs to interact with.

I can understand being attached to a character, or just not wanting to go through the fuss of creating a new one, but I just wish that more people would sit down, and try to play something they've never played before. If they usually play heroic characters, try a villain. Play the leader type? Try a loyal servant, or someone with stage fright. It can be much fun, and even if it doesn't enchant them, they might gain some sort of new spin to put on their next archetypical character.

But, eh. I'm weird.