[Shostak]

One of my TFT campaigns is rising to a climax after some character shake-up, with the PCs trying to help engineer a less destructive ousting of imperial occupiers from an important city on a major trade route by a native army than would be likely if the armies simply fought. Two players left the group, one joined briefly and then also quit, leaving a core of three players with characters at about mid-level. Then one of the remaining players decided to retire his character who had been acting as the moral compass for the group. His new character is interesting--a low IQ soldier who is under a curse which makes him come back to life after being killed, but with either lower IQ or a psychological handicap. He's provided a bit of humor, but has so far not had the chance to show his worth as a mercenary.

This is a campaign started with the release of the TFT Legacy Edition, and with most of the original players being grognards familiar with TFT from the 1970s. Although the world the campaign is set in differs from the official Cidri setting, the players keep wanting/expecting things from Cidri--like magic items for sale, and ready access to the Wizards' and other guilds, and I think the players would feel a little disappointed to have them wholly gone, despite my campaign precis downplaying them. So, I've relented a little now and then which has made the players happier, but me less so. I also relented right at the beginning when one player was extremely interested in playing two characters, one the servant of the other, which I allowed. The problem was that the two characters wound up (from my perspective) always being played as though they had a telepathic link and completely understood each other, and the servant character was a nonhuman who could fly, which gave the PCs an easy way to overcome too many obstacles. As luck would have it, he got smacked down to death's door twice, which forced the group to not rely upon him for several sessions. This forced the player to concentrate on playing the master character, who then blossomed into his own.

Frankly, I'm amazed the campaign has lasted as long as it has, since we did not have the benefit of a Session Zero, and the players came up with characters with motivations and core activities that did not suggest any shared purpose. But the story has evolved and the characters grew wonderfully--I was disappointed to see the aforementioned moral compass character retire. With the various plot lines out there for the remaining group to choose from and with the remaining original characters grown to become advanced but not super-powerful, there is a lot of opportunity for the campaign to continue.

My advice would be to have an FAQ document that grows from its origins at the campaign's Session Zero, and to keep that in an easily accessible place (a Google Drive folder or Discord channel). Session Zero should be mandatory AFTER the players have selected from a small set of possible campaign prospectuses, each of which is built around "You are X in Y and are engaged in Z." And only one character per player, period.