Short Circuit's Journal: RPG: On Character Death

On a related note to last week's topic, what have you done when a character dies?

Is it really normal for a new PC to show up just as an established one kicks the bucket? Do you hand over control of an NPC to the player? Do you keep NPCs available for such an occasion?

What about dealing with the loss of a character? If the PCs are just a bunch of mercenaries, there probably isn't much personal attachment between the characters. However, if a loved one was lost, well, there're some interesting possibilities for roleplaying.

As for outside the game, I imagine some players could become more than a little attached to their characters. Questions of mental health aside, how do you get them to accept something new?

Finally, what sort of memorable things have occured after a PC died? Did the party bard write a song about him? Were her personal effects claimed as holy artifacts by her church?

(And just for giggles...check out D&D obits here.)

Have your own questions and interesting things to mention? Email me and I may post them.
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Currently

[Grant_Watson]

I'm currently playing in a low-magic, monsters campaign. Death is common. Most of the time we just introduce a new character to the party.

My thri-kreen Shaman, while not "dead," was recently enslaved by a kraken -- that is, he's in an octopus' garden in the shade, as someone said. I now have a Bugbear Iaijutsu Master and his human cohort. The beauty is, the whole campaign has been one long trip west, and we're discovering the world as we see it with our own eyes; the GM can just fit whatever character

Character Changes

[guyblade]

I'm running a long term Mage (WhiteWolf) game at my college and am having a similar problem. A few people have decided that they want to have new characters, but because of the way I designed the plot, people who were not there at the beginning would not be as fully aware of why people are wandering the world trying to uncover the mystery. I'm not a big fan of plot incosistency, so now I've got 3 months to figure out how to make this work and not sound like some terrible throw together way of players changi

Re:Character Changes

[Zirnike]

It's a bit of a bludgeon, but you could make all the new characters take at least one point in Destiny.

That's assuming I remember WW games well enough... I think that's what it's called.

Re:Character Changes

[guyblade]

This is true, but I'm also as concerned about inconsistency in character and player knowledge. Some of my players are newbies and still have trouble differentiating between what they know and what their characters know...

Ancestors / Friends

[SeanDuggan]

One way to go about it is to allow for players to bring in similar characters who were second-cousins or close friends. It makes more sense for a run-of-the-mill fighter who came from an 18-kid farmer's family (Oh, that was Bill. Meet Will, my younger brother by a year) than the "mysteriously orphaned" type. However, if you're willing to overlook some lack of logic, you can get away with it fairly often. 1st Edition Oriental Adventures actually had rules for this which allowed for characters who were desce