re-joining the party after a death

Skarg · 08-03-2018, 05:48 PM

Above all, I tend to like my campaign games to be self-consistent, and dynamic. I want what happens during play to determine the situation in play, and I want play to be able to go in unpredictable directions.

Part of this has me want players to need to earn positive outcomes such as wealth, good fame, and character improvement, and I want there to be major negative outcomes for them to avoid, and one of the worst of those is dying.

I want the PCs to be able to be die, and for that to have the full natural consequences. The character dies and probably stays dead. Maybe possibly sometimes on gets revived... and loses 5 attributes. I do not want the fact a PC died to result in some meta restoration of the party, except in ways that are entirely natural in the game world. I do not want the player to get to start at the experience level of the dead character.

What we used to do, is start all new characters as beginning characters, and/or let players whose PCs died start playing an NPC who is already an ally of the party and is already nearby. We tended to have many NPCs along with our parties, so this was a natural resource to use. We would also sometimes do that when one of the PCs was merely so injured they needed to rest, but healthy PCs wanted to continue adventuring. If the player then wanted to start a new character, they could introduce them when it made sense for a new person to meet the party. The party was under no responsibility to welcome or trust them, however, but usually that was not an issue.

I don't remember doing it in TFT back in the day, but what I might now do is have play continue (with the player taking one of the already-present NPCs, or not) and then when the party next has occasion to add more members or followers, let them play that out somewhat generically, and when they do add someone, let the PC-less player detail a character to fill that role. The point level could then be appropriate to the person joining the party, and might then logically be more than 32 points.

The "lowest PC minus one point" guideline seems fairly reasonable for that, but I don't want players to feel entitled to start a replacement character at a certain point level.

I think it's generally a lot of fun to start new people at 32 points anyway, though. A loyal well-played 32-point character doesn't need to be entirely overshadowed even by 40-point allies.

08-03-2018, 05:48 PM	#5
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: re-joining the party after a death Above all, I tend to like my campaign games to be self-consistent, and dynamic. I want what happens during play to determine the situation in play, and I want play to be able to go in unpredictable directions. Part of this has me want players to need to earn positive outcomes such as wealth, good fame, and character improvement, and I want there to be major negative outcomes for them to avoid, and one of the worst of those is dying. I want the PCs to be able to be die, and for that to have the full natural consequences. The character dies and probably stays dead. Maybe possibly sometimes on gets revived... and loses 5 attributes. I do not want the fact a PC died to result in some meta restoration of the party, except in ways that are entirely natural in the game world. I do not want the player to get to start at the experience level of the dead character. What we used to do, is start all new characters as beginning characters, and/or let players whose PCs died start playing an NPC who is already an ally of the party and is already nearby. We tended to have many NPCs along with our parties, so this was a natural resource to use. We would also sometimes do that when one of the PCs was merely so injured they needed to rest, but healthy PCs wanted to continue adventuring. If the player then wanted to start a new character, they could introduce them when it made sense for a new person to meet the party. The party was under no responsibility to welcome or trust them, however, but usually that was not an issue. I don't remember doing it in TFT back in the day, but what I might now do is have play continue (with the player taking one of the already-present NPCs, or not) and then when the party next has occasion to add more members or followers, let them play that out somewhat generically, and when they do add someone, let the PC-less player detail a character to fill that role. The point level could then be appropriate to the person joining the party, and might then logically be more than 32 points. The "lowest PC minus one point" guideline seems fairly reasonable for that, but I don't want players to feel entitled to start a replacement character at a certain point level. I think it's generally a lot of fun to start new people at 32 points anyway, though. A loyal well-played 32-point character doesn't need to be entirely overshadowed even by 40-point allies.