What kind of personality does your character adopt?

For example, on your first character, do you:

Play as yourself? (making choices based on your own feelings)
Play as some kind of test character? (Get into the game and do some random testing of game mechanics)
etc.

I usually play as myself for the first playthrough, though playing for the first time tends to lead to some un-optimized choices and such. So the "myself" character tends to be..less than desirable.

Whats yours?

I made Raksha as someone with whom I want to play Skyrim. We share a lot, like our core values, so I understand her choices completely and many times her feelings are my feelings. But not always, I made her dumber and more courageous than me, just to make her more fit to be an adventurer in world like Skyrim. Gender and race is also obvious difference, it makes her more interesting and I like cats.

That's my first and only character so far, 380 hours, no MQ, no TG and no DB.

I'm curious, in what way your choices are unoptimized? I don't have feelings like that with Raksha.

My first character in Skyrim unintentionally came off as a JoAT. She was kind of a test character in the start, later I bit off more than I could chew and ended up with a too powerful and uninspired character. When I truly started roleplaying, she was still somewhat a dull character. So, I made another character, and many more after... I learned a lesson, I guess.

My first character was a pure test character to learn game mechanics and how things works. My second is where I start planning the character.

My first Skyrim character was based on one of my manga characters. My first Oblivion character was based on a Skyrim character that was loosely based on me.

First Char was totally me. I've only just begun Rping properly and I love it though I sometimes have to stop myself from doing what I would do and do what my character would do!

I pretty much play as myself while learning the world and seeing what skills would best fit me to survive in it. Usually i start off with a warrior character in mind and then let things shape themselves with my real life personality as a guide of do's and donts.

I play mostly as how I see a hero type would react in the game, starting off as an archer, also based on what I would wouldn't do in that situation.

I never play self-insert characters. Too weird.

My first character was named Solomon, a Nord and was just a test character.

Almost always it's a stealth character, don't know why.
After It usually comes pure mage, then pure warrior, and after all this different non-generic combos.

Whenever I start a New TES, I usually start with an argonia, because they are my favorite. Play through the main quest maybe, and some other relevant quests to the skill set i pick. I usually develop just the random skills i end up playing with and liking.

I make the RP fit into the story of whatever i know of the game before playing too much of it.
Appropriate name and backstory for the setting. But i usually only play until i get the feel of it or my character gets pretty powerful. Then i just start making random chars/archetypes and play through the rest of the game and let those get more powerful and higher level.

Noble Nord Warrior who has dealings with the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood to one day use them for Great War 2.

...Well, he was a Shipyard manager in Anvil, until a misunderstanding with a Thalmor Ambassadors daughter got him in the slammer.
He escaped in a disastrous prison break that got a lot of people, guards and prisoners, killed. Very regretful of it, and was more than willing to accept the chopping block for having that much blood on his hands...And then Alduin happened.

But it's alright, he comes from a long line of heroes...The Nerevarine...The Champion of Cyrodil...All distant family. It's said that his family was destined for greatness. But then the Champion of Cyrodil disappeared and...well...300 years later, they had yet to produce another hero. So maybe this was fated. The Nine---Sorry, EIGHT...were smiling on him.

So he dove headfirst into this "wandering hero" business, mantling the stories he was told of his great great grandfather, the Nerevarine, passionate about restoring his family's prestige as champions of truth, justice, and the Tamrielic way.

Hm, my first characters tend to lean towards some warrior/scout combo. And that's what all characters become if I play the way I feel most comfortable with. I'm not the mage type, which is funny, because I'm an intellectual IRL and well, I could swing a warhammer, but not very effectively. Still, someone's playstyle probably reflects that person on a level.

My first Character in Skyrim was an argonian. So was my first in Morrowind and Oblivion, but I swear that this is totally random. It's also awkward because I never actually had a argonian character for longer than 4 hours in any ES game. But the first one is always a argonian. I guess it's kind of a test run. After this first argonian character it greatly differs.
In skyrim I made a heavy armor wearing Nord and I kind of spent points in both 1 and 2 Handed. Had a lot of fun till I ended up overwriting the only gamesave I had after I made and played with a couple of other Chars. It happened so fast :'(

My first character is usually the one that I connect with the most purely because he is essentially in the same situation as you gamewise, i.e as you play through you are oblivious to the outcomes of situations and so the actions of my first character are often very similar to mine. I don't usually try to rp them until quite a way in, I try to let the character develop on its own

My first character was a Dunmer klepto who stole everything that wasn't nailed down. He kept getting caught pickpocketing, was thrown in (and broke out of) jail in all the holds and racked up a huge bounty. Did about 70% of the Thieves' Guild quests and the main quest just far enough to get Fus Ro Dah, didn't start any of the other faction quests with that character.

Focused on stealth, one-handed and archery. Put all my level up points into Stamina and by the time I got Eagle Eye and Steady Hands, I had a huge pool of Stamina to wipe out crowds of advancing enemies in bullet time.

By the time I reached level 39-40, the combat started to become a bit too easy on Master difficulty setting, so I retired that character and started a new one. (This was before the Creation Kit was released, so there was no ASIS or Deadly Combat yet.)