I’ve talked a bit about player fantasy before, and as I load up Dragon Age: Origins to play through it again in preparation for Inquisition, and as I keep playing Fallen London, I’ve been thinking about player fantasy again, and how important a concept it is.

I’m going to be indulgent and talk about my own player fantasy a bit here; if you’d rather not hear about it, scroll down a bit, there’s another article that’s mostly about other people below here. I won’t blame you, those other people are pretty great.

People tend to think of me in one of a couple of ways, usually based on whatever class I was playing when they met me. Almost always, the characterization I get is “rogue”. It amuses me, because by the numbers I’ve played a little bit more than twice as many wizards as I have rogues, and my rogue playstyle tends not to be the usual poisoning, backstabbing, dirty tricks type. I greatly prefer the intelligent, charismatic, mastermind sort of characters.

It’s why I like wizards as well. I really like to play characters that are worldly, intelligent, efficient, and skilled. I don’t tend to like brute force, and I like a precision lightning bolt over an indiscriminate fireball. I also tend to like a bit of nobility in my characters– not in an aristocratic sense, but in an honorable sense. It’s why I don’t like poisons, and why I prefer the duelist-swordsman kind of rogue over the cloak-and-dagger backstabbing rogue.

Whenever I’m looking at a character for a game, I like a blend of natural gifts (cleverness, magic, etc) and noble skills (swordsmanship, persuasiveness). It’s really hard to find these in a lot of games, so I tend to split the difference and go with either rogue or mage depending on the situation.

It’s one of the reason I like Jedi as a concept– not because they’re the powergamers of the Star Wars universe, but because there’s a mix of nobility, magic, and finesse, versus raw power.

I don’t tend to like warlock/necromancer sorts of classes, because they tend to lack the nobility I’m looking for.

Back to Dragon Age, it’s very difficult for me to pick a class that I like. The noble background appeals to me, but the play of the mage satisfies my desire for cleverness and efficiency. Mages tend to be pariahs in the setting, which bugs me.

We’ll see if I can find a way to enjoy the rogue in Dragon Age this time around. I suspect I’ll be coming back to mage relatively quickly.