just guessing here but….

things are simple when you play a barbarian of that sort - if you don’t like something you can just leap in and bash it! No complex moral dilemmas (depending on how cruel your DM is), no worrying about the 30 options you see and which is the best, just thump!

heroes too really - there’s good and bad, so you help the good and thump the bad.

There’s something really, really appealing about simplicity…. especially if you’re the sort of person who tends to see lots of options and their consequences when making their own decisions.

that’s my theory at least

(and even Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…. so as long as you stay away from climbing a ladder while carrying fish you’re all good )

(and Garfield works - he sees what he wants and goes for it )

There’s been some investigation of Myers-Briggs and roleplaying styles: http://yudhishthirasdice.blogspot.com/2005/12/myers-briggs-and-gaming.html

What to take home from that is that people often play characters of a different sort than they are, and further actually play in a different way from either. I’d add that people play and run games in different ways, too.

I tend to play characters who are socially competent, to some degree, which is quite different from my real life. There’s also some aspects that my characters share with me. The physical side and most other skills are mere colour anyway, they don’t matter that much.

I noticed my brother always plays some really bad, greedy bastards.
However, he is a bit greedy in real life too

What Freud might say is, that you use your characters to fulfill unfulfilled wishes in real life. Basically, you play a barbarian because in real life you want to bash things and people but you can’t. This explains what Tommi said as well, people will often use RPGs to do things they usually can’t and that’s why they are often opposites in certain areas.

Your brother is probably greedy because of some reason, and he does it while playing too because too much greediness in real life is not acceptable. The difference is that you and Tommi are limited in real life to do those things, while your brother can choose to be greedy, just not as much as he wants to. You can’t choose to kill random people, and it’s hard for Tommi to control his social behavior (because it depends on many things).

I don’t think that in this case a cigar is just a cigar. Choosing a character lets you choose someone to identify yourself with (an alter ego) inside a fantasy. Your choice isn’t limited or guided by anything, and you don’t have to suffer the consequences.

Wow. That sounds very scientific. I think everyone wants to fulfill some wishes in RPG, not only me and Tommi. And I think it’s 100% ok, cause that’s one of sources of fun that RPGs give.

It’s actually a pretty good thing, because it lets you fulfill wishes. Repressed wishes can cause mental problems. I’m not an expert on this, but having read a book or two on the subject this behavior makes perfect sense. Since in RPGs you are allowed (and encouraged) to fantasize, it is somewhat like dreams, which are often used to fulfill repressed wishes.

I wouldn’t say that is scientific, but probably true to a large extent. (Never say everyone.)

I prefer to call it practice. It sometimes helps in real life, when used properly.

Hmm, I suspect it’s actually measuring other things as well. If you’re tired on game night, or aren’t up to “dealing with more paperwork” then you might pick a simpler class– Barbarian, Fighter, etc. all work well.

The same thing can be true even among casters– the spontaneous casters are good for making choices between sessions (when picking spells learned), while daily spell memorizers require frequent in session thought– every morning/dawn/spell prep time. I know which one I have the patience to manage…

The actual choice of character is also influenced by other factors, such as past events relating to a certain race/class/whatever and the amount of work it needs to manage that character. However, the in-game rules don’t do very much to limit the resulting character, so you can choose pretty much any class and find some way to create the same character. Classes, in systems where they exist, make the job easier on us since they provide stereotypes from which we can derive our wanted character. But very often you encounter characters who are “not a regular barbarian” or “not a regular druid”, etc. The meaning of the different stereotypes is also different from player to player, and more specifically, from group to group. The associations we have with rules-specific choices don’t affect the behavior of the character very much in the end.

Tommi said: “It sometimes helps in real life, when used properly.”

Well, I have heard that some psychologists use RPG as a therapy in treating some fobias etc.
But I wouldn’t go that far, to say that every class choice fulfill some secret dreams or fears…

Class choice is part of the character choice. It’s not that every class is a specific thing, but rather that the different classes appeal to most players since together they encompass the different things you might want to do. There are the Paladin and the Rogue classes in D&D which are somewhat opposites. This is because naturally people want to play these characters. I’m not saying that a single class is meant to fulfill one thing, but rather that the classes together enable any choice of character the player does conform with the standards.

It should also be observed that the setting in most RPGs (at least in the past) is not the same as the modern world. It seems very obvious but it really shouldn’t be. Players want to do actions and be placed in positions that are not likely to happen in the real world. It is called fantasy because that’s what it is. Another evidence is that fantasy worlds in RPGs are idealized. In D&D you ignore the actual historical facts of life in the middle ages, and there are often many unexplained things (magic, gods, etc.).

Playing in a modern world setting is probably different from fantastic settings thus: when playing fantasy, players can do things they completely can’t in real life, while in modern settings, players can do things that they *can* do in real life but just don’t dare to (I think).

Michal: Like Sien said, it is not that every class signifies something about the real life.

Rather you can play a confident character in game and when preparing for some task in real life get into the mindset of that character and maybe pick up a bit of confidence yourself. For example, that is.

Wow. It’s getting serious. I think that more important is how you act in the game, not what class you choose. But, as I stated in the silly post, it is a really big topic.

I have to agree that it would largely depend on things that the person cannot do in real life. I’m not RPG expert so I’ll just give a Video Game example (Being that is my area of knowledge :P)

In all Open-ended games (Oblivion, Morrowind, GTA, etc) the first impulse that many people get (Developers have confirmed this) is to randomly kill people. There are large threads on forums in Morrowind websites where people show the imaginative ways in which they have killed the first person you typically meet in the game, most of them saying they killed him quite soon after starting the game.

Obviously games and RPG’s are both involved in letting a person do what he/she cannot normally do. I would say however that some people indeed do like playing as characters that are similar to themselves in real life instead of the opposite.

All depends on what kind of person you are and what you enjoy I guess

Well, I enjoy killing innocents sometimes… But usually I quick-save first, than kill, than load the game.