I'm going to apologize to the forum readership in advance, because I can already tell that this post will come out more as a flame than I actually intend.

>So in other words, play a cookie cutter character that
>everyone will like. That promotes RP how? I do not care if
>other characters like mine or not. I DO care about being IC as
>much as humanly possible and striving to develop a character
>not have a fixed RP that drones on, and on, and on. Thanks for
>the idea, but no thanks.

The fundamental difference of opinion that we have here is that you think people didn't like your characters because they were original / non-cookie-cutter, and I think people didn't like your characters because you have a tendency to act like a tempermental and socially retarded asshole when you don't get your way.

If you were around earlier in the year to interact for Onirakoth, he is a great counter-example of the point in my mind, or alternately a good example of what you say you'd want to play (but don't actually play.) He was this great just evil, evil, selfish Tribunal healer. And you know? While the character was great he was a pretty ####ty Tribunal. He sparked tons of conflict. People, both in his cabal and out, hated his guts.

I'll lay out some of the differences between the two of you, and maybe that forms a roadmap from how to get to where you are to where you want to be.

1) Onirakoth tended to excel first and make waves second. You could try to be snippy about it and claim he didn't roleplay until he got himself ensconced, but that's not how it actually was. More, you wouldn't notice as much how his RP differed from the 'ideal' from his cabal until he was ensconced. It wasn't obvious to most how evil and self-serving he was until after he was the cabal's leader, even though characters who had dealt with him from even very low levels could have told you he was always like that. He made waves as a leader and could get away with it because by that point he truly was the cabal's leader both formally and informally, and the cabal depended on him strongly enough that it wouldn't be willing to toss him aside for a few small things. You can get away with a lot as a cabal leader; you can't get away with a lot as a squire who can't PK and who depends on other people for even the most basic things.

2) Onirakoth was all roleplay unique to the character. If you interacted with any of the guy's previous characters you would never guess that that kind of a self-serving complete bastard character was in him. They were all good/neutral characters, most pretty foofy and reasonably nice.

Contrast this with, for example, three elf warriors that I almost couldn't tell apart if you covered up the names, because they were all demanding, thought they knew everythihg, did not in fact know close to everything, and tended to die a lot.

(Your paladin is, as I've said elsewhere, a much better effort in this respect.)

3) Although Onirakoth could be a terribly frustrating character to deal with, mostly because he was working to get what he wanted and couldn't care less about what you wanted, and generally had some kind of power over you, he wasn't annoying, per se. Yes, you can make a character who is excessively demanding, whiny, talks trash he can't back up, etc., but generally these are not fun characters to play with. It's like being the dude in a D&D game who demands one on one time with the DM for over half the session. Yeah, you can do that if the DM lets you get away with it, but how much fun is that for the other players? Probably not. No one wants to play with that guy. Don't be that guy. It's like being on a field trip in the second grade and the teacher makes you be street-crossing hand-holding buddy with the dude who is always wetting his pants.

To put it another way, a good villain or flawed character is fun to play with, is fun to hate and rage at and try to overcome. A petulant, whiny, or unreasonably conceited character is generally not.