People You've Been: Your Favorite PCs
Let's hear some fond memories of RPG PCs you've created over the years! Tell us your stories! 
Brianna Cousland (Dragon Age: Origins): So this was actually the first BioWare game I ever played, and I knew exactly the kind of character I wanted to RP: a female paladin-type, honorable and compassionate and armed to the teeth. And I had no idea Thedas would be so accommodating to that kind of character; not a single line of dialogue in the game that runs along the lines of "But... you're a woman!" And then she ends up being the freaking Warrior Queen of Ferelden by putting Alistair on the throne and marrying him. Awesome.
Toshiro Ichiki (Knights of the Old Republic 2, Restored Content Mod): Oh man, KOTOR 2. I hadn't been too impressed with the first one - you're either Space Mother Teresa or Space Stalin, and there's no subtlety to it at all. But KOTOR 2? From the moment I started the game, I knew I was going Dark Side, because instead of being an utter bastard the DS storyline plays out like "Kill Bill": Toshiro is on a mission of vengeance against five members of the Jedi Council, who punished him for doing the right thing and basically ruined his life. And unlike the first game, following through on that mission doesn't mean you have to be a total monster to everyone you meet. As an aside, can I just say how much I loved the influence mechanism? I ultimately dragged my entire party down into the Dark Side, but I never betrayed or killed them - because evil people can have friends too.
Diana Shepard (Mass Effect): The baddest of badasses. I based Diana on two of the toughest women in films I saw growing up: Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. I'm especially fond of the ME series because, with a bit of advance knowledge, I was able to play out a whole meta-narrative where, in the first game, Diana Shepard is a full Paragon, always does the right thing, the epitome of the honorable soldier. Then she dies, and comes back... wrong. A little more brutal. A little more willing to cross ethical lines. She goes full Renegade, cheats on Kaidan with an assassin, turns into a headbutting gun-swinging hurricane of destruction... and then the Collectors kidnap her crew. That's her "epiphany" moment, when she realizes what her ruthlessness has cost her, and she saves her people while blowing the Collector Base to hell. The Reputation overhaul in ME3 allowed me to play her character arc to its logical conclusion: neither fully Paragon nor Renegade, Diana's perspective is clearer now but she can still punch a quarian admiral in the gut if he does something stupid. (I also got closure with Thane's romance and got back with Kaidan afterwards, so the love story worked out too!) Admittedly, That Ending kind of soured me on the whole experience, but she survived - all my Shepards survive, since Destroy is the only option I can ever accept as even remotely acceptable - so I guess that counts for something.
Selene (Baldur's Gate, BGT Mod): Of course, I'd be remiss in not bringing up our beloved Baldur's Gate. Selene was my very first Bhaalspawn, an attempt on my part to answer a question that had been troubling me: can an all-female party make it to the endgame of a D&D adventure? I'd always felt that there was a certain gender imbalance in the Forgotten Realms, and I was genuinely curious to see whether that had trickled down into the way women were represented in this particular game series. For BG1, at least, this proved to be untrue: Jaheira, Shar-Teel, Imoen, Viconia and "Edwina" proved to be exceptionally competent companions, and they stomped Sarevok into muck with little effort. Unfortunately, BG2 didn't quite work out the same way - with its lack of female thieves or fighters, I ended up having to rely on Korgan and Yoshimo. As for romance, one line of dialogue with Anomen was enough for Selene to remove him from the party and hit him with a Disintegrate spell.
Brianna Cousland (Dragon Age: Origins): So this was actually the first BioWare game I ever played, and I knew exactly the kind of character I wanted to RP: a female paladin-type, honorable and compassionate and armed to the teeth. And I had no idea Thedas would be so accommodating to that kind of character; not a single line of dialogue in the game that runs along the lines of "But... you're a woman!" And then she ends up being the freaking Warrior Queen of Ferelden by putting Alistair on the throne and marrying him. Awesome.
Toshiro Ichiki (Knights of the Old Republic 2, Restored Content Mod): Oh man, KOTOR 2. I hadn't been too impressed with the first one - you're either Space Mother Teresa or Space Stalin, and there's no subtlety to it at all. But KOTOR 2? From the moment I started the game, I knew I was going Dark Side, because instead of being an utter bastard the DS storyline plays out like "Kill Bill": Toshiro is on a mission of vengeance against five members of the Jedi Council, who punished him for doing the right thing and basically ruined his life. And unlike the first game, following through on that mission doesn't mean you have to be a total monster to everyone you meet. As an aside, can I just say how much I loved the influence mechanism? I ultimately dragged my entire party down into the Dark Side, but I never betrayed or killed them - because evil people can have friends too.
Diana Shepard (Mass Effect): The baddest of badasses. I based Diana on two of the toughest women in films I saw growing up: Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. I'm especially fond of the ME series because, with a bit of advance knowledge, I was able to play out a whole meta-narrative where, in the first game, Diana Shepard is a full Paragon, always does the right thing, the epitome of the honorable soldier. Then she dies, and comes back... wrong. A little more brutal. A little more willing to cross ethical lines. She goes full Renegade, cheats on Kaidan with an assassin, turns into a headbutting gun-swinging hurricane of destruction... and then the Collectors kidnap her crew. That's her "epiphany" moment, when she realizes what her ruthlessness has cost her, and she saves her people while blowing the Collector Base to hell. The Reputation overhaul in ME3 allowed me to play her character arc to its logical conclusion: neither fully Paragon nor Renegade, Diana's perspective is clearer now but she can still punch a quarian admiral in the gut if he does something stupid. (I also got closure with Thane's romance and got back with Kaidan afterwards, so the love story worked out too!) Admittedly, That Ending kind of soured me on the whole experience, but she survived - all my Shepards survive, since Destroy is the only option I can ever accept as even remotely acceptable - so I guess that counts for something.
Selene (Baldur's Gate, BGT Mod): Of course, I'd be remiss in not bringing up our beloved Baldur's Gate.
Selene was my very first Bhaalspawn, an attempt on my part to answer a question that had been troubling me: can an all-female party make it to the endgame of a D&D adventure? I'd always felt that there was a certain gender imbalance in the Forgotten Realms, and I was genuinely curious to see whether that had trickled down into the way women were represented in this particular game series. For BG1, at least, this proved to be untrue: Jaheira, Shar-Teel, Imoen, Viconia and "Edwina" proved to be exceptionally competent companions, and they stomped Sarevok into muck with little effort. Unfortunately, BG2 didn't quite work out the same way - with its lack of female thieves or fighters, I ended up having to rely on Korgan and Yoshimo. As for romance, one line of dialogue with Anomen was enough for Selene to remove him from the party and hit him with a Disintegrate spell. 2
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He's not from any computer RPG, because I don't know a computer RPG that allows you to play a kobold, but rather one I played on tabletop. A drunken, arachnophobic, yet duty-bound ranger, chosen to find a traitorous clanmate because he was the best tracker they had (which isn't saying a lot, to be honest). The guy had murdered their chief and taken a religious artifact, so Chow was sent after, using the half-functional Hat of Disguise he was given to adopt the guise of a halfling so that people wouldn't be quite so racist at him. He made friends, learned about the larger world around him, started to write a book about his kind to bring some racial awareness to the larger world, and, as his finest moment, used powerful paralytic venom harvested from a homebrew monster to shoot at the thief and cause him to not only fall to the ground limp, but also be instantly consumed by the hellfires he was keeping in check with his willpower only.
Sadly, the game died shortly after. I still rather liked this guy.
Another one I really liked was a dwarven wizard named Wallace Smith, of whom I sadly have no portrait, specifically built to break all the drunken violent axe-wielding glaswegian heavily-armored elf-hating mouth-frothing berserkers all dwarves these days are. He was this tinkerer guy who eventually ended up replacing his whole body with metal, becoming this sort of a mecha-lich, and brought the Warforged (living fantasy robots) into his setting. In the far future, he lives in a metal pyramid full of mechanical constructs that he calls Mechopolis, and is constantly bugged by this one fairy because she thinks his metal stuff is an abomination against nature and therefore finds it funny to disturb him with all sorts of weirdness.
That game got to its very end, which was cool.
In Fallout 3 I had two characters that I played to the end. Laura Lamb, a goody two shoes who took after her dad, and didn't put much into combat skills. I found her the most fun to play though because she felt more real than my evil character, Amber Lupa.
He came back for Fallout 3, his profession of Doctor feeling especially right with the main plot, but his charisma didn't count for much. Only in New Vegas did his fourth incarnation shine through again.
Likewise, I've played the gruff but kindhearted Fighter/barbarian Drugar in pretty much every game where you can play a dwarf, starting with Baldur's Gate and ending with Dragon Age (Dragon Age 2 decided to be a racist bigot, rawr!). He's also a level 85 Dwarf Warrior in World of Warcraft, Champion of the Archons in Age of Wonders, Warrior and smith in Arcanum and leader of a company consisting only of Fighters and Barbarians (and one cleric of Tempus) in Icewind Dale 1/2.
Arcanum deserves a special mention though. I've played through it with Drugar first, but that was a simple playthrough in hindsight.
Second time I played a wicked, selfish elven mage (Allistra) and the third time a high class tinkerer (Also named Mortimer, I'm not original with names). Both games were hilarious because they were so different from eachother (the main plot even goes in a completely different path about 2/3 in). Allistra was teleporting all over the place and had summoned minions fighting for her (as well as the corpses of fallen enemies), while behind an invulnerability shield. Mortimer was spending days (if not weeks) in Tarant and other cities, running from shop to shop to find components for his gadgets or rare crafting plans, raiding garbage cans and random crates for maybe, possibly, some charcoal or a tin can. In the end, he too was a powerhouse, in mechanised armour with a staff that shot lightning and a tophat that deflected bullets.
Both games were hilarious and both characters could really play their personality well. Alas, no other games allow me to relive that particular feel, as far as I know.
Though a friend of mine has made some pretty ridiculous characters for tabletop sessions. When she and I first started in AD&D, she made this ranger named Todd. See, this friend of mine has an uncanny habit of rolling 20s...and every time she rolled one for Todd, my mother (our DM at the time) would go on a long explanation of Todd's sword cleaving through the heads of the monsters in an epic critical. Todd came to be known as "Head-Lopping Todd" ever since, and a lot of our new characters just haven't been able to live up to the legacy.