Roleplaying and possible fallout...

I recently had a conversation with a fellow roleplayer about a character I was planning.

He was against the idea of me being a sneaky, greedy and overall untrustworthy goblin because of his experience with interpersonal fallout between the players. We´re not talking about the characters in-game but the actual players.
I still maintain that anyone who has problems with how a certain alter-ego acts, is a bad roleplayer. 

As I see it, it is but a "game", though some people dislike the term because of the lack of win/lose factor, which I in part can agree with. Nevertheless, this is a matter of semantics.

The real question is whether it constitutes "bad roleplaying" to get personally upset because of how a fictional character acts. Any character should be playable, to a certain extent of course. Some things are seriously off limits, if you haven´t really discussed it in the group and everyone has ok'd it. As long as you play the character to its foundation and makings, an untrustworthy bastard shouldn´t be a problem. Because really, how else are you supposed to play a goblin?

In my humble opinion, as long as you do not cross certain really off limits, everything is alright. If there are personal problems within the group, they should be addressed pre- or post game. This should be true no matter what the problem is, as long as it is not really serious.

This person, who was against my untrustworthy goblin idea, also said that these are not stage characters in a play. I seriously disagree with this. What is a theater play? It is a fictional, though sometimes based in reality, rendering of a drama acted out by people. The difference between an actual theater play and roleplaying is so thin you can see through it. You have the actors, *check*. You have a story, *check*. The characters respond to certain events *check*. The main difference is that in a theater play you have the script memorized, the events are pre-made and the actors have very little to no control of how the characters will react to the given situations they find themselves in. There´s also the random chance in roleplaying, since most are dice based. The only thing we can do is to be kind to our dice and to pray to the Dice Gods.

In my opinion, roleplaying games offer and demands much more of the people involved, because the players don´t know what the game master has in store for them. They can only act based on what they are told is happening. The game master is also blowing in the proverbial wind because of both the random chance of dice and also, all the planning in the world cannot say how and why and where the players will act. 

For example I hosted a game a while ago, I had planned for my party to get into a town and be met by a shady little human child and be led to an ever shadier part of town for a meeting. This did not occur since my party decided to totally ignore him and only demand directions to another part of town which I hadn´t even concidered. This is why improvisation is so important for any game master. It is impossible to describe the sudden panic you feel the first few times it happens. Don´t get me wrong, it is a very fun part of being a game master. The unknowable future for the party. You get a, at least I do, feeling for every person's alter ego. After a while, the alter ego's delevelop something akin to a soul. 

In conclusion, everyone is entitled to their opinions. Please give me yours on this matter, it will help me greatly!

On being a game master, I think Robert Burns said it best, even though he wasn´t talking about roleplaying.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"