In some ways, I've become a much lazier player as the years have passed. Playing Kirsten was hard and demanding work, and I don't know if I'd go to the same efforts again. Very satisfying work, however, and very effective.
Kirsten was my second character in the "grand campaign", and easily my favourite. The "core" group of characters were travelling across the continent to the other side, and the GM wanted to make the cultural differences stand out more than in our previous travels, where not much seemed different from one region to the next. I was changing characters as they were leaving familiar lands for the distant west, and in consultation with the GM decided to wait and introduce my character when they arrived. I picked out some pictures and came up with a character background and design. My character would be the only native to Stadthagen in the far west, and the GM wanted to make the cultural differences stand out. She enlisted my help in this endeavour.
Stadthageners were different to easterners and southerners (whether Skye, Vendeen, Etrennes or Valtajeran) in a number of ways. They were more distant and formal: they stood further apart when they talked, considered direct eye contact with acquaintances rude, always used "Meneer Jon" and "Frey Kirsten" when talking with acquaintances, didn't uncover their arms or legs in public, and lived by the Book and by God's commandments. Naturally, there was class variation within Stadthagen society, and the lower and upper classes were less rigorous when it came to matters of etiquette and intolerance. Kirsten, however, was a lower-class girl adopted by a middle-class family who wanted very much to be middle-class: she was, in other words, overcompensating.
What made Kirsten so challenging and rewarding to play was that conveying the cultural divide required constant acting, physical and mental. I spent the better part of a year sitting on the far side of the room from the other players, sitting angled away from them when I was sitting on the sofa, not looking them in the eye when we talked, backing away from them when we stood and talked face to face. Each session was exhausting work, but the results! The results were worth it. All that extra effort to convey the differences got to the other players in ways the regional culture documents never did. Other players told me that Kirsten would realise looking people in the eye when talking was normal "if I'd only think about it". When talking in character, they would slowly chase me about the room trying to get into their comfortable speaking distance while I slowly backed away to get them into Kirsten's comfortable speaking distance. After a while, they started assuming that Stadthageners that didn't act like Kirsten were "odd" and "not proper Stadthageners". I was in amateur acting heaven.
All good things come to an end, however. The campaign storyline was going to lead the group out of Stadthagen to the decadent south, and I didn't want to have to go through the same culture shock in character that the other players went through in person. I didn't think it was worth the effort and I wasn't sure I'd do it well. Also, Kirsten had no strong links to the "core" group: she was only slightly aware of the campaign storyline, and her romance with Slade had ended badly. The GM and I worked out a final scenario for her, and she wound up marrying a former vampire and living in luxury. We should all have it so good.
I've completed a 3rd edition D&D character design for Kirsten. As far the design goes, Kirsten could have been entirely an Expert, but I compromised and gave her two Rogue levels because she could fight a bit if she had to and Evasion is a handy extraordinary ability to have. By the way, I find it interesting that Kirsten, who cost more than Rafe did under the Icon system, has substantially fewer levels than Rafe. That really highlights the emphasis D&D places on combat ability and the emphasis Icon placed on skills competence.