Not that long ago I started playing games without reading a guide. That way I don't know the most efficient way to play a game. I play them all just how I like. And I enjoy them the more for it.
So, yeah, I go more with my own internal logic instead of min-maxing or what ever.

I currently play Terraria without a guide (apart from that guy in-game) and I'm having a blast! :-D

Thanks for the answers and encouragement Fever! I think I'll stick with "quick replying" if I ever want a couple of quotes one after the other - hadn't thought of that.

Depends!

If it's a single player game with one character. I like to create a character(or choose one) that resembles me and put myself in the world. This is hard with many games, as they don't give you so many options, but at the same time lots let me do this, I enjoy them the most.

If it's a single player multi-party game like Might and Magic or Wizardry, then I make them in a party I have for every game(same name and similar professions). So one party has many adventures! Again not always possible, but many games let me do this.

When I do play, I play to have fun. Which means running through games wearing a dress and no armour, using level 1 stuff at level 50 just cause I like it.

So in the end, I never try to min and max my stats or skills. Sometimes a character I make may even end up rather useless part way through the game, but I never start over, I continue on playing the game and story.

You, sir, are a hero. I wish I could unlearn so many things where designers puts cool stuff in the game but never offer situations where those assets get used, or if they are only used for areas with nothing to find or do. A common pitfall with cRPG design is that money is often useless (because the stores suck, the loot is too good, money is made too easy too quickly etc) which also means that all those barter skills do not actually help change the way you play the game or how your character is percieved by people in the game.

Challange accepted. What? Oh, I just challanged myself to start over all my current cRPGs and bribe my way past as much gameplay as possible!

Game player

I'm definitely a power player. The fun has always seemed to me to be about mastering the math behind the systems. This was the most fun to do on games like FO2, Arcanum, fixed-world games where you could play sections over and over with different approaches until you worked out the "best" approach. I have started Arcanum more than any other game, mostly because the character creation system was so rich and had such a huge impact on the game.

PS - http://www.pocketplane.net/volothamp/chap10.htm

I could be called a Role Player. Though my characters tend to do the things I would actually do (except for stealing people's stuff, picking locks, and occasionally back-stabbing. I would not deviate from that to quickly level up. If I had to deviate to keep the game moving, then I probably would. I've been meaning to try an evil party in some of my favorite games, but it's just not in my nature so I would have a rough time staying in character.

I like to figure out the game mechanics and use that to build the most effective character that I can of whatever 'class' I decide to play. I figure I'm playing a hero-type so I damned well am going to have the stats/build/abilities to reflect that. This being said, I also play the character as a certain personality and try to do things in game consistent with that. But I will start to deviate from it if I realize that yes, you can play the evil back stabbing type but it will consistently get you lesser rewards (whether that be worse monetary or item rewards or worse XP awards). If it becomes apparent that the game was designed with a certain bias towards only a specific playstyle (like many games are with the paladin goody-two-shoes type), I'll play that way even if it means acting out of character. In PnP games my focus is totally on roleplay. In CRPGs, not so much, for reasons outlined above.

I like to role play. Most of the time I pick the good choices over bad ones. I guess I never got over Ultima IV and I still keep trying to be virtuous.

Role playing is make believe, is pretending, is acting. As such, it requires an audience.

My computer is a god awful audience, I don't see why I should try to roleplay for it. Especially when my input is so extremely limited and every character quirk and scene that I could 'play out' has been previously thought through, evaluated, integrated, animated, subtitled and voiced by hundreds of strangers, complete with all reactions to those character quirks.

I don't flesh out a character in a computer role playing game.
The developer does that for me, each and every time.

The best CRPGs out there have an air of the choice, a 'build your own adventure' vibe. "Role playing" games they never are and never can be. Game designers are well aware of that though and try to seldom let a mastery of the game mechanics - your goal in practically every video game - stand in opposition to added plot choices (the obvious limits of which are clear to them as well).

The idea of the "power gamer" is one that only applies to pen and paper roleplaying. Here, concentrating on the mastery of the game mechanics may infringe on your 'acting' performance; and there may also be a certain fear of stigma from the RPG group if system rules are not understood to a degree that allows exploitation.

None of this has anything to do with computer RPGs, which naturally progress on rail roads far more than the P&P RPG. If the game mechanics can be exploited in a CRPG, it's likely because the game developer allows you to do that. Heck, registering Dragon Age or Dragon Age 2 with BioWare gives you DLC items which clearly optimize your character far above what you could normally achieve. They make that part of mastering the game mechanic, of 'power gaming' so to speak, and nothing could infringe on the "roleplaying" parts of those games any less.

I Role Play in every game whether it's career mode in Gran Turismo or the obvious games like Fallout. I mean, I role play to the point were I'm actually talking to myself... err I mean the game.

Example being, when I first played TES: Morrowind I created my character, Olav Grey-Mane, and he's a nord, blond hair, blue eyes, main skill is one handed, uses shield, does a tad bit of archery, no magic. wears heavy armor... In my role playing in the game he happened to get the curse of eternal life and so now he's in Skryim, a bit older obviously, but same style and personality and stuff...

I hate Power playing, it defeats the purpose of hte game I believe.

Ha! So true.

One of my fondest roleplaying memories is from high school (gah! 25 years ago!). I was a druid-type in a four member party exploring a heavily trapped dungeon. One of my compatriots had grown increasingly annoyed with my dog-companion, and at the threshold of a new room kicked the dog into the room with no warning or discussion. The room was indeed trapped, and my druid had to wait until we returned to the outside world again to recruit a new companion animal.

Cheers!

Another hero! Almost any game can be roleplayed, even if it only means selecting a real world loadout in an online shooter (as opposed to picking 'the best' everything and sticking red dot sights on them) or selecting a car (or tank, in the case of World of Tanks) and tweaking it with properly named components and none of the made up 'end-game' ones.

I wish all gamers were thinking like you. Online gaming with others, even PVP stuff would be so much a pleasure :)
Instead of people calling names at each other and dirty fighting to win in ranks, we would have so much more fun ^
Still, I think it's best to find people with this type of mindset and role-play with them. I am doing this with my friend and even in arena shooters we are doing weird stuff, having a laugh and forgetting about the whole tension of "you have to beat others, have to win" crap.
That is not to say that I don't like a challange. Sometimes I give myself goals I would like to achieve in games I know and understand at least a little. But fun should come first!

Roleplayer here. I like especially hiking simu^H^H^H^H, open world games. In Morrowind, after joining House Telvanni I would go all crazy mage. Inventing senseless enchanted items, "spell research". I would gather ingredients for my potion in style. Perma-leviating over the countryside, picking flowers with telekinesis, arrogantly ignoring threats running down below.

In all TES games I can spend hours decorating my home. I sit down to read a book. I do only quests that my character would actually do. So if I'm (as usually) a good guy, I don't just steal and murder. Strangely enough I prefer stealth characters - may I'm the Sammy Fisher of Tamriel.
Also since a few years I have a preference for female characters. I think this comes from all the third-person games (if I'm to stare at the backside of someone for 40-200 hours, I should at least be a nice backside ;-)), and I just stuck with it. Interestingly I found the female Shepard's voice acting in Mass Effect a lot better than the male counterpart (played both versions).