I was a wargammer first before I became a rpger. My transition to D&D came through the advent of Chainmail. The transition from wargames, which had its leaders, but focused on command of units, to Chainmail, which focused on the heroes, was a pretty big shift at the time. However, even under Chainmail, the emphasis on the heroes still felt more like a wargame than a rpg. Heroes were optimized in the same way units were, and the heroes did not have much more personality than did the traditional wargame units. When we picked up D&D shortly afterwards, I recall that the heroes had much more personality as we had to interact with each other in the game. The role play was built in, even if it wasn't explicitly stated in the book. The structure of the rules just lent itself to that type of play. My friends who were NOT wargammers first did play a little more like min-maxers seeking a way to "win" but some of the DMs back then also tended to focus on destroying the characters also, so I suppose it was a trade off. 1st Edition character choices included playing an elf, a race as a character class, and was not used to maximized any character class choice until Advanced D&D a few years later. I remember all the racial limitations on class in 1st edition/AD&D, yet that still did not stop anyone from playing a class that would reach a limit. Although, I do recall that most our thieves were non-human because it was the only class that non-human races were not limited in. I do not think we "roleplayed" why our thieves were predominately non-human though. When the Greyhawk Campaign setting came out, there were plenty of Human racial stocks to select, and I do not recall any of them conferring any benefit other than local language. Our human characters were generally of the local racial stock, and if they were not, we simply accounted for them being a "traveler from afar." It may be easy to assume that the mechanic of the game focused on the optimization over the role play, but the horrible attack ability, sickly hit points, non-existence armor class, and limit spell use of the wizard did not stop anyone from playing a wizard. Although, our multi-classing back then was more a matter surviving a dungeon crawl and not wanting to manage many characters (or divide the loot up more than absolutely necessary). I doubt out multi-classing back then was very optimal either, and the role-play was not a consideration (other than survive-ability and limiting loot division). Back then, our role play decisions were based our our imagination, or what our imagination could justify. But there was role play and it did explain character choices. We did borrow from fantasy novels of the time (one friend always played an Elric of Melnibone clone in every game). Since then, there has been many publications to flesh out character concepts to fuel the imagination. My newer playgroup considers consistency of the race class role play more than we did back in 1ed. I never asked "would an elf do this?" but I get those questions from my younger players. Drizzt has replaced Elric, and some optimization still happens, but the roleplay or creation of a hero concept has not changed that much in my view. There is just that much more material to fuel the imagination and character creation concept for the game. [just a little jog down memory lane - but you did ask for personal experiences]
