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How long should characters last?
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@Livia I suppose in a way long-lasting characters act as the best canaries-in-the-mine. If there are fundamental issues with the way the game is set up, its policies, the XP distribution curve, how powers are doled out… those are the ones who’re the most likely to be impacted by them.
On the other hand of course… if there are no long-lasting characters and none of these issues stand out, is it possible the actual ‘problem’ was having dinos in the first place?
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My answer to the original question is 12 months. I make exceptions for characters who are shelved to return a long time later, post-character-development. That’s always great.
Unfortunately in some games, progression is far too slow and it demotivates people from keeping things fresh. After all, who wants to kill their character off knowing that their replacement will be effectively castrated for 12-18 months before they can achieve basic things? It’s mind-numbing how hard you have to fight against the system in some games to avoid turning into a dino.
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Mine use to be 1 year when I started Mu*ING. But back then I could EASILY get 7+ scenes a week. (No, they weren’t all quality okay.) So a ton of development could happen.
The older I get, the longer I keep an alt. I would love if they would all have organic endings, but honestly, right now is that moment when I go, “Wait, am I adding value? Is my enjoyment more than my stress? Do I feel like a burden?”
If the answer is no, no, yes: it is time to let go.
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It used to be very important to me to have a planned/anticipated end for my PCs. It helped focus my RP, honestly, because I am very weird and am the person who LOVES spoilering myself (not others) and reads the end of the book first or now looks up the wiki/plotline/review, ect. It actually helps me really enjoy the rest of the story.
So usually my characters are driven. They always used to have a within the scope of the game but extremely difficult goal to achieve after which they would go out in a blaze of glory or slip off to happily ever after. My favorite plan for this was actually on a battlestar game where i even got clearance from the people that approved me that my PC would not survive more than a year (it was actually quite realistic for that to be the case given the position she held). It was awesome. I knew, they knew, nobody else did. It actually gave me a lot of OOC patience with some people that were kind of dicks which desescalated quite a few things. Unfortunately that game kind of crashed and burned for everyone I played with before that could be brought to bear, but I dunno, shit happens. Even my Fading Suns characters both had arcs where frankly, they were going to meet their end in really interesting ways.
I can’t put my finger on when that shifted exactly–maybe the first time I saw someone absolutely go apeshit somewhere bc someone else had decided to take out their own character and that person now blamed them for ruining everything and how they owed it to them to continue. Or game runners OWED it to people to give their games to other people because players had a right to keep their PC going with all their stuff for perpetuity. I don’t think this is a common thing exactly but it was so surprising and jarring the strength and just…seething hatred towards people who got in the way of that on the part of a few people, that it kind of shocked me. And then I noticed people really getting annoyed at other people killing off their PCs. Or calling folks who wanted that to happen in a storyline attention whores. So I didn’t feel quite as certain that I should have an expiration date in mind for my PCs because honestly, I really hate when people are mad at me.
I get that people don’t want to play grief (which to me is totally fine, I’ve skimmed over that too). And really for the most part, any individual pc is frankly so unimportant to the game as a whole that even an awesome death that leads to a lot of RP for a little while or memories or whatever really honestly in the longer term like a really really low speedbump for everyone else. So I wish there was less resentment towards people who want their PCs to go out in glory, if that’s what they want. I think maybe it’s tough to ask that as an ST (though elsewhere I’ve run a lot of blaze of glory scenes for people it’s one of my absolutely high impact favorite scenes to run!) if someone doesn’t like that. But if that’s not the case, I wish people were more okay with less control about how other PCs fit in to their play/timelines to allow for voluntary or planned character loss to be okay.
I can’t put a time on it–so for me it’s very much a gut feeling thing.
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Until you get bored of playing them.
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@shit-piss-love said in How long should characters last?:
I love this topic so much, because I have learned over the years that I seem to be on one extreme of the spectrum for how one enjoys PC play.
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I strongly suspect that I love this pattern because I’ve been the Forever GM since the 90s. Playing a character, for me, is less about the story I am experiencing and more about being the hand behind experiences that others enjoy. I also really like being a Conflict-driver because there is truly no one a character is closer to than the people they are at odds with. It’s a kind of intimacy that, done in a positive and collaborative fashion, is unique to the medium.
Forgive the follow-on to thread necromancy, but I love this response. I’m at least a decade removed from a MU* career, but share similar instincts and hadn’t fully internalized the “Forever-GM” aspect as a possible root cause.
This is one of the reasons I prefer games that have generous character roll-over policies that are tied to players vs. characters.
-r
