As a (female 20-ish) RPer who hasn't actually completed a game yet, I think I can speak for a few of those of us who choose to play cliched characters in the Shire. I also brought a sword wielding woman with a tragic past to the Green Dragon.
The X Phial said:
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it's because people are afraid to explore characters not like themselves. A good many RPers are young and female, they want to play young strong women because that's what they want to be, not because it's interesting or important to the story.
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In my case this was partially true, I did want to play a character with a mindset basically similar to my own. It's a lot easier to learn to think in character if you start with being someone who thinks like you. But the tragic shieldmaidens come not so much from wanting to create perfect characters, but simply because there's precious few other ways to get a young woman to the Green Dragon (or any other part of ME other than her home town) in the first place.
And even though there are shieldmaidens abounding in the Shire games, you rarely see the same Downer play one twice in a row. I'm currently playing in four Shire games, and while two of my characters are female, neither of them is your typical Eowyn-style heroine and niether of them are elves. One is an evil woman (hopefully to develop into someone Durelin would enjoy reading about [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]) and the other is a housewife and mother of three.
Actually, my evil woman is in Meoshi's game, which I think is going well, at least from the evil side.
And the whole point of this shpiel was to point out that I think the shieldmaiden phase is, as Galadriel pointed out, part of learning to RP. Maybe you'd see less of it in Rohan? I'd look there if you're wanting to escape newbie-syndrome.
Sophia
(note to concerned parties, when I first began this reply, the last post was Day Vampyres. So many others were replying at the same time that some things got said repeatedly.)
[ April 28, 2003: Message edited by: Sophia the Thunder Mistress ]