In high school and undergrad I was a hard core tabletop role playing gamer and I am extremely impressed at how well DA:O captured the feeling of those kinds of games. While the game was never able to give me the "kick Alistair" option that I so dearly wanted, I was impressed with how different most of the dialogue options felt. Of course, unless I figure out a way to look at the underlying logic of the entire dialogue system, I'll never know how much is an illusion and how much is really multi-branched writing but--wow--I'm impressed!

I want to do a hate run where my warden is a machiavellian asshole because I am hoping that gives me a deeply different view of the characters. I might need to metagame a wee bit to pick out the best possible origin story for that play through, but once the origin is selected, metagaming ends.

And I want to do a hardened Alistair romance run.

I also want to play a deeply skeptical, jaded Elf. Not sure if s/he will be a city elf or a dalish.

All that said, I sort of suspect that my first warden will forever color my understanding of the game? Or maybe she won't but I just love her so much as a character that I am not *yet* ready to imagine another warden being as much fun. >_<