I have played TTRPG for years now, I think my first ever session was DnD5e about 10 years ago. I have always played Fighter. I have always loved to play Fighter. The thing that initially resonated with me about the table top roleplaying game’s premise was that I could get the experience of being the least appreciated caste of person in history, the footslogging chaff-man, and have a dynamic experience where I could be the hero and end up respected and wealthy for my labors. It was somewhat shocking to me even back then that the people I played with- at the time my brothers and some family friends- had this idea that they wanted to play an elf or a mage or whatever. Plainly speaking I had never seen a movie or read a book besides Harry Potter at that point in my life where I felt like I really related to a magic using character. I loved King Arthur and Robin Hood, Beowulf and Bone and Batman and Aragorn and even Eragon. I know Aragorn is not really just a guy and Eragon isnt really either by the end, I thought Merlin was cool I just didn’t really think that was the person you were supposed to get behind in Arthurian stories. So I played Fighter. I quickly found out that Fighter in DnD5e has- to be brief- alot going on. I was really uninterested in all that, I reread a Warhammer Bretonnia book twice because there was a part in the beginning where the main character (a grail knight in the making) had some conversation with a line sergeant of the Empire who was a formidable Pikeman, I always wished He had a book. I wanted to be William Marshall or Henry V or Brunner because they made shit happen with swords and boots and grit. I didn’t at the time really grok that Cowboys and Knights are the same thing archetypally but I was certainly in the right headspace to receive that information later on.
I found second wind in TTRPG and in Fighter when I played ADnD, wherein Fighter is the brutal, often short, sometimes cruelly unlucky existence you might imagine a random guy with 5 hit points and a weeks worth of molding bread might have in a world with 10 layer dungeons full of kobolds and orcs. I played (and still play) with an excellent group who believed in playing the game as RAW (rules as written) as possible, so I died often. To my recollection I played Fighter 23 times in the couple of years we played ADnD.
And there came ACKS1, another game I loved. I played Fighter, and played Fighter, and played Fighter, and it was during this time the group I played in started to really develop a philosophy about the playing of the game. When you have the blood of literally countless henchmen, hirelings, player characters, and randoms on your hands you gain a spectating perspective from which you can deliver soliloquy on the topic of the game. I played enough Fighter finally in ACKS1 that by the time we made the move to ACKS2 I had the most functionally successful character out of any playing person. His literal moniker in the game was “Fighter Goodson” because I was so deep in the hole on thinking to myself that I was embracing ultra-rationalist nominative determinist historically informed roleplay and gameplay that I thought naming him “Good Son” was the best way to ensure the character would not die in a trap room that turned at 20 miles an hour and caused him to fall over and die. That happened to me in ADnD for real. Fighter Goodson was to me a ruthless tour de force in things I thought this type of game should communicate as the operating thesis of pseudo-medieval fantasy life. I had loyal henchmen that I paid extra and often that wore custom clothes I had made for them. I worked as hard as possible as fast as possible to get a domain, politicked and maneuvered and lead the party on quests and was granted a barony at level 4. Goodson needed an heir if he was a lord, and a wife at that- so knowing there was savage tribesmen the hill range over I brought gifts of warhorses and gold and wine and bought the chiefs daughter and married her in the imperial style. I do not think I will ever really trump Fighter Goodsons life in my own heart of hearts, though I have had wonderful and interesting characters since him. Fighter Goodson was proof to me that if you love the game, if you love Fighter- the game will love you back.
I have not played Fighter in some time as of the time of writing. Playing ACKS2 which I immensely enjoy I have had recent spates of success with characters who were Elves and Mages and other detestable sorts but I credit all their success to the Karma and grit I built running headlong into walls of Orcs in the bloody crucible of ADnD, I credit all their success to the humble Fighter, without whom it would mean nothing to play a special snowflake Elf with a laser sword and bad attitude.