First off, I want to spend three hours rolling virtual dice. Then I will spend an inordinate amount of time clicking through my custom portraits, which take up a 1 TB external hard drive.
Anyhoo, I also expect to grow up on a small farm on the borderlands (how a high-intelligence half-orc assassin with a semi-Japanese name, an interest in rare poisons and proficiency in throwing stars grew up on a small farm isn't important right now). While I'm killing some rats in a nearby cellar, evil humanoids rampage through the village.
I escape, having found a +1 dagger and levelled up twice. I go on to have a number of hair-raising adventures and earn the trust of a Scottish dwarf with mead dependency issues, a haughty but foxy MILF druid and a scarred barbarian with a name containing no vowels.
This is all sorts of awesome to me.