Well, D&D wasn't where all the best roleplay happened at, but I did have some characters that I was quite proud of.
Just as an example, we played a 'Drow' campaign that was set in a heavily modified version of Faerun. For the first half of the game we were underground in the primarily matriarchal Drow empire below the Silver Marches. We took some care to not only flip the politics of the Drow, but also their gender roles as well. This led to some very fun interactions that provided some deep insight into gender roles in modern industrial society.
My character was Hecat, the beautified son of a noble Cleric of Lolth. He was groomed from birth to be the perfect sacrifice to their dark god. He was very proud of his fate, but circumstances conspired to eject him from that life and into a life of adventure. He had Helsinki Syndrome pretty bad at first, but eventually went through stages of denial, regret, anger and eventual acceptance that perhaps it was quite a bad thing to be sacrificed to an evil deity. This acceptance did not prevent him from feeling as though his life was without meaning, however.
He found a purpose in the second half of the campaign, where the party leaves the underworld and proves themselves to be good people to the city of Silverymoon. The characters all became heavily involved in the happenings of the new country, and eventually settled down as a feature of the place. Following campaigns set in Faerun would often have a side-trip to Silverymoon where the characters would be introduced to the characters from a previous campaign. It was all very fun.
In D20 Modern I guess I haven't had characters as fun as in D&D, but I was GM for a game that was pretty much the best one I've ever seen, to date. The game was set in New York, 2015. Fox Thompson is an insightful and caring beat cop with an artistic streak who's moving up in the force. Michelle Kasher was an author and journalist for several music magazines. Michelle was having trouble with her boyfriend. They had, by all accounts, the perfect relationship up until the new year. More recently, he had been acting off, and she was worried there might be someone else. Fox was occasionally tackling odd calls in to the PD concerning a drug called (and I swear I didn't steal this from Dungeons and Discourse) Alethia. Fox and Michelle eventually meet and realize the vividness of each other. Compared to Fox, Michelle can see, others are dim and muted. They interpret these observations as a kind of love at first sight thing, though neither one goes so far as to mention it to the other. The news catches wind of a startling discovery: the speed of light is fluctuating! Dr. Archer (whom I based off of Richard Dawkins) is a physicist from Oxford that came to the USA to use a specialized piece of equipment that was available at NYU. Upon running tests for an extended period of time, he finds that the fluctuations in his data are not going away, and are not likely to go away. He makes a public call for help.
The campaign really picks up when Fox goes to a routine investigation (having been promoted to investigator earlier) and has a startling insight. The site he is investigating seems fairly normal, but the people are . . . wrong. He realizes that it's not himself that is odd or unusual, but the people of New York that are acting funny. They give canned responses, react the same as another unrelated person in comparable circumstances, even going so far as to mimic body language. Disturbed, Fox tells Michelle. They both begin to suspect that something very scary is going on in the world.
Shortly afterward, my favorite D20 Modern character is introduced: Jude. Jude is a tortured high school kid that finds everyone around him impossible to communicate with. He is alone. His social role as far as he can tell is to be stepped on, and as desperation mounts, he slowly hatches a plan for revenge.
The day Jude launches his revenge, Fox Thompson gets a call about a shooting at a local high school. He walks in on a hellish scene of violence, clearly premeditated as the intercom system is blaring some kind of heavy metal. Fox eventually confronts Jude and realizes they are very much alike. Jude breaks down and explains he feels alone and desperate, but Fox, horrified, does his job and Jude is sent away.
Eventually things in New York get very bad. Alethia has a monstrous effect on the 'normal' people of the city, turning them into more or less rabid animals in a desperate search for more. Dr Archer meets the two player characters Fox and Michelle and they discuss what could possibly be going on. Archer settles on the conclusion that the world they live in is a simulation. The hypothesis explains the slowly degrading behavior of the populace easily, and also the bizarre readings he got with his equipment at the university.
The story goes on from there, but I'm not sure I should be posting the outline in this thread! I suppose I could write up the whole thing on my blog, if anyone wants to read it.
Actually, I think I may have to do that anyway, as I plan on doing this story for next year's NaNoWriMo. I could gauge reactions to the story to see if anybody takes interest.
Oh, as far as jobs go... I just work in a plastics factory. Middling pay for unskilled manual labor.
One of the things I loved about studying liberal arts is that you actually got to know your professors. They would discuss their personal experiences in a topic ("Here's what I did during the feminist movement.."), you might get slide shows from their vacation in the country of study, or even invited to their house for a group dinner.
Going into engineering was rather jarring for me in that regard. The vast majority of professors would come to class, lecture on the topic, and that would be it. They might share what their specific field of study was, but they rarely shared any personal details. It actually made it harder for me to learn, because it was like "Who is this person who is talking to me?"
(I think a large part of this for me personally was because I am motivated by a desire to please, and so if I liked my professors, then I wouldn't want to inconvenience them by handing things in late, or bore them by giving them another sub-par paper to read. But that's another discussion...)
I've noticed that Less Wrong is similar in some ways. We may know about each other's views on particular topics, and general fields of study, but we know very little about each other as people, unless a personal topic happens to be related to a particular rationalist study. Even the intro thread set up here focuses mainly on non-personal information.
For example, a Generic Intro post right now would be something like: "I'm X years old. From place Y. The fields I study/want to study are Z. Here's what college/HS was/is like for me. I have akrasia." Pretty boring, right? INSTEAD, the things I would be interested in knowing about my fellow LWers include: "On my time off I enjoy underwater basketweaving and climbing Mt Kilamanjaro. I have 6 young daughters and a dog named Grrr. I love pesto. etc"
From a rational perspective, an argument could be made that it's easier to have constructive arguments that remain civil when you humanize the people you are speaking with.
I was wondering how other LWers feel on the subject. Do you like that our discussions are un-hampered by personal data? Do you like the idea of providing personal intros? Do you not want to provide personalish information for safety reasons, or because you don't think it's anyone business?
If you think you might need help writing a personal intro, I wrote [a general guide](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8nq/more_personal_introductions/5d4e) on the topic in the comments below.
Note: I predict there will be two types of response to this post. People discussing how they feel about this (Meta-Comments), and people giving personal introductions (Intros). To make navigating the responses easier, I am trying an experiment where I set up a meta-comment thread and a personal introduction thread.
PLEASE PLACE COMMENTS ABOUT THIS IDEA IN META-COMMENT THREAD, AND COMMENTS INTRODUCING YOURSELF IN INTRO THREAD.
Edited to make it more clear to focus on personality, hobbies, likes/dislikes, and NOT on what you study, or school.
ETA- Added link to "How to Write Personal Intro" comment