Claiming the Throne, Part 5/5: Heavy Lies the Crown
The journey is done. Wizard’s character arc is complete. All her life goals have been accomplished, and at long last it’s time to retire the character. I’m sure she will make an excellent queen. It is therefore with a heavy heart that I announce that Wizard will no longer be appearing in any further… Wait… What’s that you say? She should continue the adventure?
Hmmm… Well, I suppose we could plop Aristocrat on the Ivy Throne instead. Maybe we can use the whole gender-bending plot to imply that Aristocrat really is the heir. Sort of like a Prince and the Pauper setup. It seems a bit far-fetched, but OK. If you want the character to stick around, I’m sure we can make it work. And hey, does this mean that Wizard is an elven princess now? I bet she’s got to go on diplomatic missions to the court of Elf Princess. That could get uncomfortable for Lumberjack Explosion…. OK. We can work with this. Game on!
Sorry to give you all a scare, but I’m sure you can suss out my point. There may come a time when your favorite PC’s story seems to end. A major goal has been accomplished, all is right with the world, and your motivation for adventuring seems to disappear. It is in these darkest of moments when you must dig deep for new storylines. It may be difficult, but it’s never impossible. Characters can always stick around for another arc, and there’s no reason to feel like you’re obliged to retire.
In fact, I would venture to say that “I have no choice but to retire this character” is an offshoot of the dreaded “it’s what my character would do.” As gamers, we are creative people. This is a creative hobby. It’s always possible to come up with another adventure hook and another course of action. There shouldn’t be any shame in retirement, and sometimes it’s the right thing to do. But in Wizard’s case, as another dramatically crowned monarch once said, “It is not this day!”
So what do the rest of you guys think? Have you ever struggled to come up with a reason to keep a character around? How do you know when it’s time? Conversely, have you ever wished that you’d taken the opportunity to let your guy ride off into the sunset when you had the chance? Hit us with your finest tales of character retirement down in the comments!
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Hmmm. My only retirement stories were entirely based on “whoops I got too strong for this game” rather that story arcs.
I’ve already mentioned about my Beguilar who had to retire because they gained Divine Rank 0 at around 10th level and it was just breaking that 3.5 game.
The other case was a game of TFOS where we’d all been playing as “ourselves”. It was a large group of high schools friends, I believe it was an 8 player game where we rotated who was GM each game. But TFOS was not designed to be played with the same characters over a long period of time. In fact it has a mechanic that is explicitly designed to make you terrible at things once you get too powerful. We wound up with everyone at that point and just decided to call that game at that point and move on to other systems.
Which admittedly was no big deal since if there wasn’t some random system someone wanted to run, there were three of us who were frequently coming up with homebrew systems too.
And my other gaming experiences have involved exceedingly few times where a character or story arc managed to run the full course. And in those cases (I can really only think of two others besides the ones mentioned in this post already), the characters’ arcs and the overall story arcs were essentially the same thing. So there was no needing to retire anyone early.
(Those games being a Cyberpunk game and a full trilogy of campaigns in homebrew Star Wars system thematthew and I designed on a dare. Have I already told the story about that? Probably.)
One of the limitations of the Handbook’s format — lacking a GM type character I mean — is that there aren’t a lot of opportunities to do explicitly game design type comics. As such, there are few opportunities to talk shop about homebrew and system design as such. Therefore: Why the crap would you design a whole RPG system on a dare?
Why not man?
I’ve seen friends of mine make entire systems because they watched an episode or played a game and thought that “oh hey i should make a game system off of that”.
Sounds like hard work, yo. If I’m putting in that kind of effort, I want to throw it at a design competition or a publisher or Kickstarter. Then again, I do have a hard time separating my hobbies from my work.
Well the situation was that we had another friend who was really into Star Wars and was willing to run a game. We commented about how we didn’t like any of the existing systems (at the time). He made some flippant comment about how we should just make our own then. We responded to this by over the summer making said system.
To be fair, it’s not like we invented the mechanics whole-cloth. It was still a variation on the d20 system. Just with a lot of modification and customeclasses and such. While that’s still a lot of work, we did get three entire campaigns out of it, so I think it was more worth it than any of the three dozen or more other systems I’ve designed (or half designed and then stopped caring part way through, many of which never made it past me thinking up half the system in my head and being too lazy to actually write down at any point).
Braver designer than I. Most of my work has been on setting info and adventures. Designing a system always looks like more math than I wanted to touch.
Any tips for trying out systems design though? Pitfalls to avoid and resources to make use of?
Well, you say that but most of said things have been things I was doing before I knew what good design should even look like and many others are just “I need something to think about while I’m in the shower, I don’t really need to consider math stuff right now.”
So as far as the maths goes…. I’m of no help there really.
Resources…. sorry got nothing since again all of this has all just been for my own personal enjoyment and not intended to ever look like anything presentable.
Tips though…… Well I guess first is just figure out what you’re aiming for. Is it to fit a particular setting? Is it to do a particular mechanical thing? Or a particular concept? Or even to evoke a particular mood?
Once you’ve got that you can consider systems you like or that have features that you feel fit and borrow and adapt them.
Like one of my more recent ideas was just a hack of Blades in the Dark in a more standard medieval fantasy setting where the goal was about building up a town and having extremely loosely defined “classes”.
You also want to consider how you want the whole combat/non-combat set-up to work. Do you want combat features and non-combat features to be completely separate things? If so, seriously stick to that and don’t make them dependent on each other because that’s how you make an aggravating mess where people want to be a Magic Chef but can’t because they have to waste levels/points/whatever on getting “Hat Stabber” combat features to get the non-combat bagel making stuff they actually want.
Do you want to blend them as seamlessly together as possible? If so, try to ensure this works out in a way where combat or non-combat doesn’t overshadow the other. Or even better if you design the system in such a way that mechanically there’s no functional difference between the two. (Blades in the Dark is a good example of this.)
Do you want to make the decision D&D and similar systems have chosen where they didn’t bother picking either of those two previous options and just kind of failed to grasp people care about non-combat stuff as much as they care about combat? (The answer to that question is no btw. Don’t do that. It’s really aggravating to tell players a small selection of things they can do out of combat and give them no real permission to do things that aren’t covered when “things not covered” winds up being most things people might want to do that aren’t killing things.)
My other big tip is to try and make your system as simple as possible. If you see mechanics in your system that could be reduced in complexity without losing anything actually fun, do so. Not only is it a lot easier to get new people to read your new game the less they have to read to understand how the game works, this will typically result in a system that’s less easily broken by power-gaming. And if it does get broken by power-gaming, you’re way more likely to see where the issues are during play-testing in a simpler system than a complex one.
And I guess while this kind of goes counter to what I just said… try to add in a few unique mechanics that serve the purpose of the game. This will make the game more memorable and will probably wind up helping you focus better on what you game is “about” since you’re going to wind up wanting to tie that mechanic into something.
Or maybe it’ll just be some weird side note thing that rarely comes up but people go “interesting…..” when it does and exists just to establish something about the setting. (For example a mechanic where during a certain time of day that’s “lucky” when people make rolls they roll a die that all it does is it either improves or penalizes their regular roll so that roll results are at that point of the day succeeding or failing by a wider margin than normal.)
Personally my favorite thing to be doing lately when designing simple systems just meant for one game is to make them as absolutely simple as possible with the main mechanic being to roll a d100 when you need an element of random chance that the GM then just says how that goes based on the result and the capabilities of the character performing the action. And for whatever else is the core purpose of the game only a few short and specific mechanics for specific other things that are an important element to the game (or just something for a bit of flavor if you’ve really managed to get things extremely bare bones).
This of course really only works with GMs who have enough experience and perspective to know how to be doing that in a way that isn’t only looking at the number result, so it’s certainly not for everyone.
Have you got any “one page RPG” type stuff to share? I ask because your simple system stuff sounds like you’re in the ballpark of “lasers and feelings,” and that’s the kind of system I could see myself designing on a whim.
Lasers and Feelings is almost certainly a bit more polished than my standard “just throwing something simple together” fair from what I recall. (I read it once but that was a while ago.)
As far as anything presentable….. not really no. What little has actually shown up has just been detailed in the opening post for a thread of a game. I don’t even know how to make pdfs of stuff.
I was going to include a link to a game where I’d done at least a bit of rules work…. but apparently I didn’t save the bookmark for it after the game died. Whoops. >_<
So in lieu of that I’ll just share with you the mechanics for the current “just something to think about in the shower” project that was inspired by another group’s game I watched. (Lift on the Stabbyness youtube channel)
Spirit Cards
Premise of the game is a medieval fantasy type world where magic comes from spirits. There is a deck of cards with one card for each of these spirits. Getting your reading done shows you what spirits you’re essentially and currently aligned to. But anyone can call upon any of the spirits for Favors (which is the magic of the setting). An important note is that PCs (and presumably most NPCs) don’t actually know the proper names of any of the spirits as they’re just represented as pictures.
When you call for a Favor you say the name of the spirit (or more commonly your best guess), pick a verb that represents what kind of behavior the favor is in regards to what the spirit represents (there would be a short list of verbs like Manifest, Manipulate, Empower, Destroy, etc.) ,specify what you want to happen, roll a d100. If you get under a certain number, the Favor you ask for is granted provided you have enough Stamina left to pay it’s cost. Most Favors cost between 1-4 Stamina and as long as you have at least 1 Stamina, if the cost of that Favor would be more than 1 you’ll get an effect I think is fair based on what you’ve got left. No promise on Stamina costs always being consistent for the same request.
The number you want to get under is (usually) determined by a combination of factors.
-How close to the full and accurate name and title were you. (Xathor Prince of Fire gives a higher number for you to beat than Fire and Fire gives a better result than Flame).
-How closely what you’re asking for matches what that spirit represents. (Asking Fire to spread is a lot easier than asking it to stop spreading for example.)
-Other situational/environmental things like being in a place of power or weakness for that spirit or having their blessing or such.
PCs are townsfolk from a small town… let’s call it Market. Everyone from the town has food themed names and everyone on this continent has an animal trait or two. (Like bunny ears or cat ears and a tail or gills.)
Players describe who their PC is and suggest a mechanical effect they get from their animal racial trait.
PCs have a base of 7 Hit Points and 7 Stamina. Then each has 7 points to distribute between those two stats, with a maximum value for either of 13.
Each PC gets some minor boon. A minorly magical item (pick a spirit for the magic of it), armor, their own half complete deck of spirit cards, extra HP, or some other options I’ve yet to think up.
The deck of spirit cards is represented by pictures and numbers for the GM to refer to them as so they don’t influence how the players refer to them.
There could be anywhere from around 30 to 50 or really whatever as long as it’s not too small.
The players then each pick two cards from all the cards in the deck to be their “Core Pair”. These are the spirits that represent the essence of that character and cannot be changed (unless there’s some extreme circumstance dictated by the GM I suppose). When calling for Favors from these two spirits that PC always has no lower than a 70% for what they need to roll under to get the favor granted.
Then the GM deals out four random face down cards to a player. The player picks one card each to be North, East, West, and South.
The North card spirit operates the same as their Core Pair.
The East card spirit can be called upon for a Favor at no Stamina cost 1/day.
The West card spirit can be called upon for a Favor with a 100% success rate 1/day.
The South card spirit is the one spirit they cannot (with one exception) call for Favors from.
These cards are important because a new card reading can be done to redraw these four cards. (There would be some cost associated with card readings so that people aren’t constantly redrawing cards until they get the exact set-up they want.)
Repeat this process until it’s been done for each PC. Don’t do it for all of them at once unless you’re intentionally trying to make sure no PCs get the same spirit cards as any other or something.
Each PC always has a “Super Spell”. This is a Favor that automatically succeeds and has a greater effect than normal and probably costs more stamina than usual (maybe 3-6 or even greater depending on what is asked for). You determine the Super Spell by picking a random one of that PC’s cards (the Core Pair and all four flexible ones) and a random verb. After a PC uses a Super Spell they can no longer call on that spirit for favors until the next day and they immediately determine another Super Spell. If the Super Spell is their South card, there is a 50% chance for unintended consequences.
For all actions that aren’t calling upon Favors, roll a d100. Low is good, high is bad. The result is determined by the GM based on how good the roll was and what makes sense based on the abilities of the character and the current circumstances.
As a note, Favors do not care about anything other than pass/fail. This is because their strength is coming from an external power and a PC’s effort has nothing to do with the end result.
Health and Stamina are regained in various ways. A full nights sleep will determine a certain amount (or a roll perhaps). Shorter rests might regain Stamina. Eating (when actually hungry) might regain Health or Stamina. Other things like medical treatment and healing Favors would increase Health. And pretty much whatever else the GM feels makes sense.
What do you use for your spirit cards? I’m imagining the deck from Mysterium getting a lot of play.
Well in the LP I got the idea from someone made a custom deck of cards. (By which I mean digital pictures of cards.) So I was imagining something like that. But I suppose you could use some actual kind of deck of cards if you could find ones that made sense.
Well, there’s always a deity-type character as a stand-in for the GM. Failing that, mysterious lights or voices. You could probably get some mileage out of that.
I actually used that second one exactly once. It felt off:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-12
In a cruel twist of fate or thirty, I have actually never managed to complete the story of a character who was written with a specific, concrete goal. Games usually end or the GM decides the game needed to go in a different direction and basically ignored my plot. The closest I have come is making a GM say “That’s the best way I’ve ever had a player refuse to play a section.”
We were playing Legend of Wulin, a Wuxia martial arts game vaguely descended from Weapon of the Gods. I was playing Blood Raven, who had witnessed her father and younger brother be killed by a young rogue martial artist who went on to found his own faction/clan based on spitting in the eye of tradition. Based in the wuxia tales as it is, daughters were rarely taught the family martial arts. So my character has only learned scraps of her father’s kung fu, and mainly uses the style of the group of mercenaries she joined after their murder. She is motivated wholly by her quest for vengeance, and is generally characterised by emotional flatness and dispassionate but brutal techniques in a fight unless the individual was involved with her father’s death. In that case, she flies into a psychotic frenzy that causes her crimson chi to flow like blood off of her killing hands. As one of the other character’s quests (a buddhist), we had come to the temple of the Buddha of forgiveness. Rather than enter the Temple, Raven sat down on the ground before the gates. When the others tried to convince her to enter, she refused. “I cannot forgive, and I will not taint this place with my desire for revenge. I have too much respect for it to do so.”
If Raven had ever completed her arc and defeated Filthy Devil or whatever his name was (it’s been a minute), she would have probably retired. Doing so would have required her to piece together and improve her father’s techniques though, which the GM had started to hint would require spiritual purity. It was shaping up to be a strange arc.
On a sidenote, after Aristocrat’s “Save me big sister” eyes in the last strip, it is actually really amusing just to see her back to standing there, annoyed at Wizard’s irresponsible nature.
pats
One day man, one day we will reach the end and be able to retire our chars.
Oof. This mess is why people wind up taking the GM hot seat themselves: The desire to actually see something through to the end.
Still, it’s interesting that your GM was already planning a whole “the next arc” piece for you. With the revenge arc done, you’ve now got to go and find the sever secret techniques of the Daddy Issues Kata.
I haven’t retired any characters myself. Lini died, two were only for one shots, and Irlana is still going.
Although it looks like Irlana will be retiring soon. Apparently the campaign will be ending soon. I don’t really mind that too much, actually. I’ve been playing Irlana since level 3 and now she’s level 17. And even if she died and I brought in someone else, they’d be level 17 as well, which means that they’d be pretty much be finished growing. But the GM wants to have the next campaign be 5E, which I’ve never played. They showed me the character sheets and it looks odd to me. I think I might be looking for a new group when the campaign ends. But at least it will mean one of my other characters will have time to shine. I’m leaning towards Kei the Warpriest Kitsune or Leonard Snart the Gun Chemist/Phantom Thief Rogue/Trench Fighter/Musketeer Cavalier. (I’ve got Leonard carefully planned out to level 12.)
5e is a solid little system. Sticking with your current group would be a step down in terms of depth, but a big step up in terms of elegance.
It seems like you’re into character building aspect of the hobby though, and it’s tough to beat Pathfinder 1e in that regard. Pros and cons and all that. I will say that, even if it wears off quickly between multiple campaigns, the first time you dip into a new system you get a lot of the same rush of putting together options and figuring out new combinations. For my money, it’s worth dipping out of my comfort zone to have a new puzzle to solve every once in a while.
I will consider it. And yeah, I love building characters even if I can’t use them. I’m actually working on the Hulk right now. 8 levels of Alchemist, 2 levels of Barbarian, and 10 levels of Master Chymist. Just got to pick out the feats and then his equipment.
After that, I may try making the Flash again. Only instead of just trying to boost his base speed, I’m going to try to make it so he can do a bunch of stuff while moving. Like the feats Circling Mongoose, Improved Spring Attack, and Spring-Heeled Sprint.
5E is a fairly streamlined system. Frankly, you don’t make a lot of choices about your character’s growth and power aside from spell selection and class/subclass. It’s very easy to make a character and level them up, but it doesn’t have much in the way of flexibility or ways to creatively customize a character. I prefer to have more opportunities to make meaningful choices, so it’s not my favorite system – alas, it’s really all my friends are interested in. I’m hoping the eventual conversion of Spheres of Power helps give more choices.
Now, the real question – is that a prosthetic ear, on Aristocrat? Or simply an ear cap thingy? If the former, Was she always missing an ear and I’ve just missed it once again, or was this a result of the grimdark torture she suffered? Furthermore, what does this make rogue, as lover to the Queen? Is rogue ALSO a queen now? so many questions.
Rogue clearly wears the (leather armor) pants in the relationship. And the crown. And all the jewelry. And sleeps in the treasury with Goldie.
She wears the pants because she stole them. As is tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ZeTAfYoY4&t=1m26s
The letter from Wicked Uncle in part 3/5 of this series had an ear attached, so presumably it’s the grimdark torture.
On the Thief question, since Wizard ran away during the coronation ceremony she has no particular title (unless she happens to have one from some other source I am unaware off).
Had Wizard been crowned Thief would still not automatically receive any titles since they are dating rather than married, through she would of-course still benefit from the increased status from being the beloved of a monarch rather than merely a princess-in-exile.
Had they been married princess-consort could be a fitting title to signify the (legal if not actual) status difference between the two.
The official title is Royal Bae.
Wizard is Queen whether she’s crowned or not, though I suppose turning invisible to bunk off your own coronation is probably at least a de facto abdication.
One generally has a title before one is crowned if one is in the line of succession. Wizard’s backstory included that he was Heir to the Ivy Throne, so he/she logically had a title.
And I actually like the concept of Thief turning out to also be some form of infernal or abyssal significance, and Wizard is now tying his people to “Dark Powers”…. stifles evil GM laugh I mean. It’s funny, right?
Wait a minute… Doesn’t Succubus have some backstory tiff with Thief? Yeah, it says so right in the character bio:
I think we may have just stumbled on her motivation.
Edit: Or, upon further consideration, I may just rewrite Succubus’s backstory and motivations a bit. 😛
It is indeed a grimdark ear torture prosthetic.
Why would that diplomatic mission be awkward for the meek and mild-mannered Lumberjack Explosion? Surely you aren’t implying he has ties to the notorious vigilante Horsepower?
Nice to see Aristocrat get everything she wanted though. Though I’m not sure what to make of her prosthetic ear.
What? No, of course not. It’s just that Lumberjack Explosion hates courtly drama. Everyone knows that. <_<
Seems like the audience, as well as lil’ sis’s replacement ear, all turned to gold in shock. The horror!
I think Queen Aristocrat’s ear functions as an emergency weapon, with a folding blade. Beware, dwarves who would use knife-ear as an insult in her vicinity!
BRB. Making my next elven monk with custom racial martial arts moves.
In elven culture, those gold living statues are considered to be the highest form of art:
https://www.scarlettentertainment.com/page/golden-living-statues
Of course they’d have some at a coronation!
If that is their highest form of art, then there are only ill tidings and depravity in store for the culture future of Elvenkind.
Elf Idiocracy? There’s a one-shot concept!
“But our wine… It’s got the tannins plants crave!”
A chance to retire your character is a chance to bring in that new character you’ve been sitting on that you’re really interested in trying without the sting of death.
It would also have been an opportunity for you to tag out the smelly Elf, and replace them with a more sensible/iconic Gnome for all your Wizardry needs.
Also; nice touch with the prosthetic ear. I guess that’s a “No” on Regenerate or stitching it back on and casting any healing spell.
Player Characters don’t die, they retired just shortly before they would have died, to serve as spare characters with a rich background in another campaign.
GM: you encounter [visually describes Vargouille]
Me: (checks background) [lists dangers and waknesses]
GM: and how would your character know that without knowledge roll?
Me: [cites encounter in AP of character background]
GM: fine
Old player characters never die, they simply fade to the back of the trapper keeper.
Pretty much this, “Oh i completed all my story arcs?”
“Time to use a new char!”
In all of the years that I have played games I’ve only retired two chars, one was a psyker of mine called Solomis that survived through two Dark heresy campaigns.
Although technically that isn’t true she got offed in the second session when i was playing my new char.
And the second well he also got offed by the GM when my char when he completed the campaign and got killed by bandits off screen.
winces at gm thoughts
If your lucky, your char lives long enough to see retirement and they should scoop that chance as soon as they can get it.
Same thing if your a player, that chance is like winning the lottery or getting all the dragonballs in dragonball (The orginal one where goku was a kid). If you see it your gonna take it!!!
‘w’) If you retire a char you seal their story as this is what happened to them and they actually had a ending that didn’t end in them brutally dying.
It’s always a temptation to keep going though.
“I really loved this character. But this ending is so perfect. But next level I get that really cool feat I’ve had my eye on. Maybe I can escort the party the borders of my new kingdom….”
Cheers! I continue to be shocked whenever this comic manages a bit of continuity.
You say that now, but you’re already starting longer story arcs. That’s one of the first symptoms of Cerebus Syndrome. Soon, you’ll be planning out 40-strip sagas that reveal they’re only act one and we have to sit through a 30-strip “short intermission” before we go back to learning whether Team Bounty Hunter lives or dies.
I hear it’s easy to treat if you catch it early, though.
I hear the best treatment is laziness and easy, recycled gags. I think I’ll be fine. 😛
Have not actually had a character “retire” yet, as the campaigns are not finished…
But if I had to choose, I’d say the “Rides off into the sunset” ending is best for me.
It leaves the character open for a return. Maybe a new, higher level campaign. Maybe a passing NPC cameo.
RPGs like this are more akin to comics. There’s ALWAYS a way back in. Always. I mean even death can’t stop heros in these games. Look at this achievement feat…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/achievement-feats/graverisen-achievement
It literally says you died twice and that wasn’t enough to kill you, so don’t do it the next time either!
I uh… I actually have a PC that took that.
LMAO!
They sound… unfortunate?
So as I read it, you only get to use it once right?
Also…
Would be kind of funny to have a character who has a tattoo every time they die showing how it happened.
Between that and the arisen feat…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/story-feats/arisen-story
…I think we’ve got the beginning of a terrible character theme.
Once when you get it and then once again for each time you die and get brought back.
I like the visual image you have put in my head.
the Barbarian in my group needs that sooo much!
Just ran (as of last night) a really dark D&D session. Our party’s warlock, who Strahd has been really interested in, wandered away from the party and got paralyzed and isolated.
This was very much NOT GOOD, since she’s been taunting Strahd and lured one of his best agents to their death by betraying an agreement she made with Strahd, and the vampire lord… exacted his revenge. The players and I all agreed it was good and well done, but man it was bleak to play. We really enjoyed it, but… I think we’ll all need a break after this. Time to go rescue kittens from a tree and such.
Would love to talk about it more, but I’d rather do it privately. PM me through the Order of the Stick Forum if you want! Same username, NRSASD
Even nature conspired to make it awesome. There was a real life thunderstorm outside that began just as we started.
I got lucky with Curse of Strahd like that once or twice. It’s always better when the horror games are suitably dismal.
On point, I enjoy retiring my characters at the end of the campaign. They can always come back and it really caps off how far everyone has come by the end. That, and it’s a great spot for touching farewell scenes, reminiscing over all the characters who’ve been lost along the way.
Nothing better than watching your old character show up at Helm’s Deep at first light on the fifth day, as it were. 🙂
…And the adventure goes on.
…And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And the adventure goes on. …And all campaign and no retirement makes Fighter a duller boy
We don’t let our pc get away easy of a life of adventure, even when the campaign ends. More than once we have got them make a cameo in other campaigns, as npc or as body. Is rare for us to not use any resource we can get and former adventurers are one.
Out of curiosity, are they sacrosanct when they make cameos, or can they still be killed and have their happy endings ruined?
With the completely optional approval of the player, his former pc can be treated as our DM wants. Revenge is best served cold in many cases. But still the player who owns that pc and the DM can agree on some lines, sometimes, the other times, well, bloody, nasty and even grimdark surprise. Now i think about it, we are more forgiving of our former pc and npc on V:TM than in D&D or Pathfinder. But yes, they can have their happy ending ruined. More than once a former pc have got his happy ending in the hands of the new pc 🙂
You’ve got to have a lot of trust between players to pull that mess off. Have you ever had any kind of backlash over somebody’s pet character getting offed after retirement?
One or two times, maybe three or four. As long as the story told is interesting i don’t have any particular problem, unless that interferes on my own plans for future campaigns.
Once a former pc cleric got a heroic death defending lots of people from danger and evil saving their lives and finally reuniting with his love one in the after life. Apparently that was a horrible and complete off character death for that pc. RPG-player not matter what you do they will complain 🙂
Just realized I need to ask Laurel, “How horrible should the fate of your retired Black Tapestry oracle be?” That mess is going to be relevant in another couple of levels.
What about living skull with eyes but without skin or flesh used like paperweight? Fitting and flavorful and since i don’t make divine character free for use by anyone. As long as the end is interesting it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, that is the best strategy to deal with retired characters 🙂
Oh totally. And Laurel is generally down for terrible stuff happening to her characters. I think I mentioned it back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
But it’s a balance between surprising the player (which has value) and staying true to their vision of the character (which also has value).
I have read Chorus of the Neverborn i know how she is 🙂
Have you considered that while a character is a pc that char is the purview of the player and when he retires it and it becomes an npc it falls in the hands of the DM? In that case the best to save your pet pc is to use him by un-retiring him 🙂
I have so much more fun with my characters after they retire. Also the characters of players I’ve DM’d for. They retire, they end up in my “history and background” bits and bobs that create settings for the next game. I have so many notebooks of these things… once a character retires, after all, it stops being a group-effort story and becomes solely the DM’s bailiwick. So I am entirely free to speculate on how it actually went, when my roommate’s ranger went home with her druid wife to change the terrain around the Sacred Forest near her childhood home to make it more impassable, and create a treehouse inn at the only remaining trade route entrance….. (Permanent Solid Fog, Earth-Elemental-assisted steep cliffs and ravines springing into being, and the Fey tribe’s shenanigans to elect a “Chief Ambassador” to the human wandering tribe of traders in the region, plus -oh joy! the local village’s reactions to all this).
As an example.
I’ve whole folders that are filled with nothing but scurrilous limericks, political cartoons, and ballads of the doings of characters that have retired. Along with other whole folders that are full of such similar background-bard offerings that contain quest hooks (by far the majority), possibly-relevant world event gossip and foreshadowing, random humor, and other such nonsense.
I admit the “I heard it in a tavern” is an overused trope, but it is a solid tradition in my games, and all my players seem to be entertained by it, as the first stop in any new place is the tavern, and the first thing is always “order a drink and sit and listen”. (which means they roll a dice and I pull out the randomly-selected-from-the-correct-campaign/timeline-folder offering). It’s always fun to see their face when they recognize an old character’s exploits in the “current gossip” of a town.
It’s why I like DMing… it turns DnD from solely a group/social activity to an activity that can be done solo (all the fun of building the world and advancing events in time and then speculating about how news of it would spread, and the reactions would occur), PLUS the benefit of an infusion of creativity and luck represented by the actual game sessions with other people.
So the times when you have your group, you’re set, and you play.
And the times when you don’t have your group, or something has come up, and you still want to play? You can.
RPGs are awesome.
(I pretty much only run sandbox campaigns, as you can maybe tell, so my players retire characters whenever they want to, or when their personal character arc has completed to their satisfaction. Although some of my players just keep going with characters until they die, so some sessions are more taxing on my creativity than others, in terms of balancing the challenges of a very-diverse-character-level group (it often turns into escort-quests for the higher-level characters, trying to keep their lower-level companions alive and advancing until things even out a little). I’ve one player who has slowly been creating a cemetery in my world, and every grave in there is one of their characters. The shenanigans they have gone through to justify why every one of their characters ought to be buried there, and why nobody else should, is beginning to create some very interesting rumors, and has attracted the attention of a couple of guilds. There are several dangling quests in that region, now.)
The other challenge is integrating new players, because there’s a lot of weird stuff. Like the availability of quest-hooks of really high-level quests, right from the get-go. If you really WANT to pursue the matter of the broken world-gate at the foot of the Demon-Prince’s Mountain as a level one character, I’m not going to stop you- but you’ll probably not survive the basilisk door guard. And the mysterious old key you found in the ruins that has the magical aura of an Artifact? Yes, it goes somewhere. Yes, you could find it. Yes, that’s a quest. But you might want to be able to cast more than level 2 spells before you pursue it, if you want that character to make it to retirement. Perhaps just sell it to the pawn-broker with the were-wolf mother-in-law instead, for now, and come back to it later.
Oof… I could see myself getting in trouble with this.
“What do you mean my guy died!?”
Have you ever run into that kind of reaction?
Nah, but then we play with Alternate Worlds a LOT.
So if a character’s end isn’t how the player wanted?
Well, that’s just how things went in THIS iteration of the ‘verse. They can imagine any end they want, and it’ll be canon somewhere in the alternate timelines. If they REALLY want, they can try and convince the group to go world-hopping and try and FIND that timeline.
It wasn’t because of that, but we did have this one session with multiples of the same character in play at once. See, we have one player whose work takes him all over; he joins us about twice a year, and almost ALWAYS ends up remaking his character each time: discrepancies explained away because that character is plagued by a curse that renders him particularly vulnerable to accidental World-Hopping, and the curse spreads to each world he ends up in, so a bunch of his alternates are wandering around and any difference just means you’re encountering a different alternate. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Turns out, he couldn’t find his character sheets ever because he’d been giving them to one of the other players to store, and this other player kept forgetting until putting away the new version and finding all the old ones…. So finally they remembered to BRING these sheets on a day our peripatetic player was coming.
We thought this was hilarious, and passed out the versions to everyone, and it became an entire party of different versions of that one character for a good 3/4 of that session.
Alternate worlds being canon tends to negate any difficulties when it comes to characters like that.
Well, that and we tend to skip forward in time a minimum of a couple of decades between every campaign, and mostly people aren’t playing long-lived or immortal races. So SOME sort of death is expected. After all, they’ve become important historical figures most of the time, and generally when you learn in school about Historical Figures the biography includes how they died!
A few I’ve used as dangling quest-hooks one way or another, though, so a few of them, fates are uncertain until eventually somebody takes up that quest and resolves it one way or another. That hasn’t happened yet; we’ll see how that ends up going. I guess if no one bites for long enough, I’ll just have an NPC take care of it and roll some dice to see how it goes, set some other quest up in its stead.
I remember hearing about a one-shot once upon a time. I think it was the Happy Jacks guys, but the game was called “Ford” or “Harrison” or some such. Character choices were Indiana Jones, Han Solo, President James Marshall, Dr. Richard Kimble, and Rick Deckard. I always thought it sounded like a blast.
The closest I’ve had to a retirement is more like a sabbatical. My sorcerer got killed twice in twenty four hours and we only had one 300 gp diamond in the party, so she had three days in Arborea while her body was taken to a temple. During that time, she decided that ‘went to the big city and was never heard from again’ was not how she wanted to be remembered by the druid that raised her, so when two other party members announced that they would be leaving she decided to go home for at least long enough to drop off a Sending Stone. That area of the world is kind of occupied at the moment, so the odds of her deciding to leave again are slim for now.
As a though exercise, if you had to come up with a plausible reason for her to leave again, what would it be?
Some combination of wanderlust – she’s seen Paree now, she ain’t staying down on no farm; boredom, because Mama Silaqui won’t let her use big fire magic in their forested enclave; wanting to get back out there and do more casting magic at people’s problems until they go away; and just wanting to see her friends for more than 25 words a day.
I imagine eventually she’ll decide to leave, then cadge a lift back to the city next time the druid’s boyfriend teleports in for a visit. Hopefully that’ll be after it’s been cleared of illithids, but who knows?
I’m having that problem with my cleric right now. At the end of the campaign’s first chapter, he was given a mission by his God to build the greatest temple of his people, and is technically a Living Saint of his god, which would be great if the group didn’t need him because he’s the only healer, out-of-character. My Cleric is also extremely honor-bound, and cant possibly turn away his mission.
So my only out so far is to have the existing church turn against him and declare he’s a heretic for consorting with demons (basically anyone who lives aboveground, he’s a moleman and the mole church believes the sun and sky is the equivalent of satan), and banish him from the kingdom. But now I’m worried that that has too much story-stealing potential, and if I ever succeed in defeating the church and restoring my honor the character has to retire to spend the rest of his life building an underground cathedral.
Time to become a missionary and found an above ground version of your religion by visiting all the lands and setting an example through living the life of a saint righting wrongs. Thus someday inspiring the creation of the greatest temple to the god ever by the mole race that hear tales and eventually become inspired by the travelers great journy in an epiloge to come to the surface and build anew and better. After all your character was never directly ordered how to make it happen right?
Your mission is to raise up a temple? Perfect! You’ve got to get a lyre of building…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/h-l/lyre-of-building/
…retrieve a shard of The First Stone to serve as a cornerstone, and then consult with the spirit of Jarl Dwemersight in the underworld about the proper alignment of sacred runes on the building site. Everyone knows that knowledge has been lost for millenia!
If you’re worried about turning the campaign into a long quest though, why not set yourself up as a “harrowing of hell” type? You’ve got to go and fetch the lost molemen who wander the above world, in a noble but endless quest to save their lost souls.
Katalmach, my favorite 5e half-orc, pretty much retired once he got married to another player’s character. We really liked their story and interactions together and figured it was time for them to get away from the drama and bustle of adventure and retire. He became a chef like he’s always wanted to be. Had two children, opened a restaurant, even led his own village of mixed races. Sure there was the occasional brawl with bandits, but it was a peaceful life.
Even after his wife, the PC of another player, decided that she wanted to go back to adventuring and learn more about her past, I was hard pressed to put Katalmach back into action. Sure he’s thought about starting his own pirate crew again, even formed something of a bandit gang/posse for the village, but he was satisfied with his life. It wasn’t until his wife never returned that he left to find her, but by then his children were also old enough to become adventurers themselves and they too wanted to find their mother, and had their own stories to write.
Katalmach’s tale was done, and it was time for his children to take the spotlight. After his wife was saved he of course went back to her and took care of her. His kids left home to continue their own lives too. Sometimes I think about making a new character with similar stats and abilities, but I can’t help but feel a certain lethargy when I do so because I always think he’s just Katalmach. The old orc who, after so many years, finally earned the peaceful life and family he’s always wanted. I didn’t want to take that away from him.
I think that right there is the litmus test for “when to retire.” You’ve got narrative closure, and so it’s time to move on.
In Shadowrun, we call that “the ten million nuyen problem”. Ten million nuyen buys you a permanent Luxury lifestyle, where you have all the material comforts you could possibly ask for, in an excellent location with great security. At that point, if you’re still shadowrunning, you have to admit that you’re not doing it for the money anymore.
Shadowrunning for the love of the game? Why the crap not? There’s plenty of tradition for gentleman thief types who go about thieving for kicks.
Can’t the sister just be queen then? She seems to actually want the role.
To quote a great man:
I don’t really have retirement stories of my own. I make my characters people who’ll stick around to the end, and then retire then. And I’ll make them people with the sort of goals that make an end-of-campaign retirement appropriate, darn it!
Or maybe the campaign just ends with “And she continued adventuring to [do stuff]”.
I get frustrated when people retire their characters in the midst of things. Like: I just have to play off losing all my allies and suddenly being with you bunch of new people? Or worse: I’m DM, and I created a campaign specifically tailored to everyone’s character concepts, and then two sessions later everyone has decided they want to play different PCs in the same campaign? Like, how am expected to work under these conditions?!
DMs who deal (well) with wishy-washy players: I dunno how you manage it. Kudos.
Retiring in the midst of things is more or less what today’s blog was all about. One of the most important qualities of a PC, in my mind, is to create someone that wants to adventure. If you don’t have that, you’re going to have motivation problems start to finish, never mind the completion of a personal arc.
One of the more interesting fantasy novels I’ve ever come across was written around that very concept: the farmer who never wanted to adventure, being stuck in the role of warrior hero, and being pushed to go off and adventure anyhow….
I really admired how the author let the character stick to that “This is not what I want to do with my life” mindset, throughout the whole thing, and go back, at the end, to what the poor guy had his heart set on. So often that initial refusal is just portrayed as a kind of country-cousin, “you don’t know what you’re turning down” phase which they “grow out of” after exposure to the lure of adventure. It was nice to see that cliche avoided, for once. And it was done well, too! The guy lost credit for his deeds in history, but he didn’t care about that, war god or no war god.
I need to go find that thing again.
Hm.
I think it was a library book. From back several moves ago.
This might take some doing.
Hit me back with that title if you can think of it. I (finally) switched over to Libby from Audible, so I’m in the mood to try something a little more off the beaten path now that I won’t be paying for it.
Makoa, my half-orc dual-weilding fighter from the days when the APG was new, retired back to his village after rescuing his childhood friend/crush who was a song dragon.
Kraaj, my half-orc pick and shield inquisitor, was going to “retire” back to the swamplands up north to raise his wyrmling black dragon and continue his general road-wardening, but the campaign ended before it could be finished due to player death.
Most of my other characters generally are of the mindset of “I’ll retire when I’m dead”.
Sorry to hear that. Reading about character retirement and player “retirement” in the same sentence gave me some crazy whiplash though.
My favorite character actually started the campaign after having accomplished all his life goals. Having finished a Punisher-esque revenge quest, he found himself with a resume that read “stabs people, comma, lots”, some serious psychological issues, and the question “Now what?” on his lips. A significant part of what made him so fun to play is that he had no long term motivations beyond personal amusement and a vague desire to find something to do with his life.
One campaign I was in in college pulled this off quite handily. My character was the bastard son of a high-ranking noble, and for most of the game his goal had been to claim his Lordship. Finally, a few sessions before the end of the campaign, I get officially recognized as the heir to House Mactire, by direct royal decree. At which point the Princess basically says, “So, now that you are officially recognized as one of my nobles, I’m going to need you to go deal with this bad guy for me.” And I of course salute and say “Yes, Your Highness.”
My group has never had trouble retiring characters when the time is ripe. If they have completed their personal character arcs (assuming they have any) and don’t have any further connection to the plot, they find something new to do, and we find a new companion and keep the NPC in the back of our mind.
Of course, we also have somewhat frequent character death, occasional cases of characters retiring because the player is sick of them, and our friendly neighborhood idiot Galaxy-Brain. He’s retired characters for having plot developments he doesn’t like, such as being invited to the Zhentarim or remembering that his oath sorta precludes him from the sidequest we’re already halfway through.
Once in a campaign, after my character died and was resurrected, a dream sequence of sorts (and a three hour one-on-one with a DM) lead to my character pretty much completing their character development. I kept playing the character for a few session to see what the character was like post-arc, but over those sessions, the character remained fairly static, without any further development to achieve. It was still fun to role-play the “perfected self”, though. (Not that the character was perfect of course, they were just a much better person than they were to start with).
Of course, it just so happened that the perfect time to retire my character came not one session after my build properly came online. It was somewhat annoying that I didn’t get the chance to play the combat side of a warrior-mage, but I’m still glad of all the role-play opportunities.
How did you wind up justifying the retirement? Just go to a celestial mountain and contemplate your navel?