I was wondering how people feel about reusing character concepts. Do you make up a completely fresh individual for each game you play in, or do you tend to have a half-dozen or so "people" running around in your head that you bring forth depending on the game dynamics? They may have different names (like say a French Knight named Jean in one game revamped into Kenji the Samurai for your friend's oriental game), and they may have completely different builds, but in essence they are the same person, at least in your head.
I ask because of the amount of unfinished games out there. We create this person. We give her abilities, feats, skills, we create a look for her, give her family friends, goals, dreams, fears, we find out what will stop her in her tracks, we find out what will make her break down, we find out her favorite food, wine, sometimes even the composition of the grit under her fingernails...
Yet we rarely get the chance to play through an entire story for this person we've created. We spend all this time and effort, and while the creation is enjoyable, it's like your favorite TV show gets cancelled without a proper wrap up for the cast.
I've often recycled concepts from one game to the next, usually for the very reason stated above. Right now, I have two different versions of "Nepherti Be'it Shairut" running. One of them is a Gunslinger in a WWI-era North African setting, the other is a Rogue who uses a Kopesh in a Pharonic Egypt/Roman invasion setting. And that is the only major difference between the two runs of Nepherti Be'it Shairut.
She was noble by birth, being the only daughter and youngest child of a an old-money half elf and a new-money human (at least 3 confirmed/named older brothers during gameplay). At age 11, her home was burned and her family killed by the local leadership, having been accused of treason. During the raid, her father saves her by putting her on the back of a horse and sending her off into the desert before going back into the fray himself. She ends up stranded in a small oasis. The next passersby find her and take her to the city, where she grows up a member of a street gang. The game can start at any point after this in her life. She knows nothing about the reasons for the treason, or why her father went back rather than coming with her. Everyone was already dead.
I enjoy playing this way. It allows me to go down different paths with my characters. Basically, what if scenarios and alternate "realities." Am I alone here?
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I tend to look at a character's experience as the complete story. Sometimes it ends unsatisfactorily, but I move on. Maybe it depends on your group and the success rate with running completed campaigns.
Your approach seems interesting, I don't think anyone I've played with has expressed such a view.
I have so many PC concepts that I usually create a new one for each game I play in. I have re-used the same concept a few times-- once was for a character I really liked but met an untimely demise ate Level 3 due to bad dice rolls. Another was for a very different character I re-used for a different game (with different players and GM) when the first campaign fizzled after four sessions.
I do have one stock character that I have attempted to recreate in completely different settings and genres: The character Cynthia Mulroy was originally a swashbuckler-type fighter when I first created her in the early '90s for 2nd-edition AD&D. (I built her under the Swashbuckler Kit rules from the Compleat Fighter's Guide). She was intended to be a short-lived character-- impulsive, flamboyant, and prone to cinematic moves (like swinging from chandeliers) even though there weren't any game mechanics for them. I played her to 15th level, when the campaign ended. Upon retirement from adventuring, she opened a tavern with her husband (a fellow PC).
I re-used her core personality and re-built versions of her several times. Actually, this has become a meta-game of sorts for me: how far can I stretch the concept while remaining true to her personality? So far, versions of Cynthia have included: a swashbuckling pirate in a GURPS 17th-century "Pirates of the Spanish Main" campaign; a Han Solo-type space smuggler in a West End Games Star Wars Role-Playing Game campaign; and an agent of UNTIL in a Champions low-power supers game (her power: luck manipulation).
She's almost like my Eternal Champion.
The characters that I reuse constantly are my recurring NPCs: a smooth-talking Slaad named Nurn who either turns out to be an assisting enemy or potential ally, a swarthy fellow named Lighthawk whose occupation varies from campaign to campaign but almost always either aids or obstructs the party at a vital point, and an enigmatic information merchant known as The Informant.
As far as player-side goes, I'm with Haladir in that I always have a new idea for a PC on hand and have never really felt the desire to reuse a concept in a new game. Almost all of my PCs are created specifically for the game they're run in, and I try to work with the DM to integrate them and/or their backstory into the session plot, making converting them over to another game somewhat difficult and encouraging the idea of working in someone new from scratch built specifically for this new game.
Builds and feat styles change and get updated but for the classes and builds I like and enjoy playing somewhat stay the same. I dont consider those recycled though, just combat mechanics. I do have a handful of character personalities and such that get reused though.
Raam the ex slave who uses a really big sword and mystical powers to whoop serious @$$.(first made as a psychic warrior at 2nd level and made it all the way thru a campaign into epic levels with 1 other character being the only other full time survivor out of an 8 player party)
His son Caidan, who left the psionic training fortress to join a monestary. 2 years later the very isolated monestary is attacked by slavers and the son also ends up a slave. After getting freed he ends up a drunk for awhile, then gets cleaned up and forges the chains and manacles of his slavery into a weapon and items to enable him to fight tyranny and oppression with the party.
Haldyr the typical elf archery ranger
and my favorite salvatore character, Jarlaxle. Most recent reincarnation as a bard to play the ultimate support character for an upcoming kingmaker game.
Asta
PSY
I have a couple that I reuse. There's one character I've been trying to get a satisfactory story with but games keep turning sour or ending prematurely.
My favourite character is one I developed over many iterations, starting from an Unknown Armies game and eventually ending up in Pathfinder (and even tentatively in a Marvel game once).
I have too many cool character concepts in my head that I'd ever have time to play them all, let alone reusing them.
That said, if you "waste" a cool character concept that you really want to explore, on a campaign that ends after a session or too, I could see reusing that concept. Not sure I would, but I'd at least be worried about it.
I pick my characters very carefully to avoid ending up in this situation (not always successfully).
I'm much like you, Nepherti, I have often recycled or reused characters/character concepts, especially if I feel like I haven't got to play them enough.
For me it's all a matter of whether I feel "done" with them, basically. Some characters I play through a campaign and I feel like, yeah, okay, the story's been told, and that character gets retired. But others, sometimes the campaign itself is short lived, intentionally or unintentionally, and there's huge stuff that I didn't get to explore yet with the character. And sometimes I like the "alternate universe" idea, recreating a character concept in a different world or system and seeing how that idea applies to a vastly different setting.
That said, I certainly also create lots of new concepts and try them out as well--I really, really dig character creation and building on ideas all around, and both my tendency to recycle and start anew comes from the same instinct. In the PBPs I'm in, one character is pretty much all new, one is a dramatic rewrite of a character concept I came up with ages ago and never got to play, and one is an outright name/background/concept recycling (but the character build is completely different). In the tabletop game I'm in, one character was a concept I actually wrote up for a pregen for a game years ago and then never got used, and another is brand new.
A friend of mine once tried to pick an argument with me about recycling; his stance was that you should always take the opportunity to try something new. I feel like if I've put a lot of time into developing the character and I feel like there's more to explore, there's no harm in and a lot of fun to be had. I've got nothing against newness of course (obviously) and either way, I don't think it matters very much.
As long as you don't play the exact same character in EVERY campaign, that can get old. But that's usually actually I think an issue of lack of creativity, whereas re-using an underused/cut short concept is more about building on the creativity and "finishing" the process of telling a character's story (which may take a good long time).
Exactly, DQ, recycling characters can be overdone. I do it when it makes sense (such as with the two desert campaigns right now). And like cranewings said, I also tend to stick to a handful of generalized character types. Usually they are good aligned in some way (occasionally I'll play a neutral), and they inevitably will start some sort of revolution if the plot allows for it.
I suppose my preference for recycling a few particular characters is due to this:
I write long backstories. Really long. Usually with a fairly large number of plot hooks for the GM to tug on.
If none of that becomes relevant (due to a game being a disappointment or not going long enough), I feel like it was a wasted effort and want to retry the character in another campaign to get some value out of that work.
In the last game I had my favoured character in, the game ended with: "You all die offscreen due to events entirely outside of your control and largely unrelated to your current quest. You get no epilogue. You don't even get an afterlife."
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Personally I don't reuse character concepts over and over. I find that for me personally, I enjoy playing a wide variety of people...or elves, or halflings, or half-orc ninjas... ;)
There is one guy in my Saturday group who takes this concept to the extreme, and I find it personally annoying. If ALL you can play is a magic-wielding squishie named THE SAME EXACT THING from campaign to campaign, then I wonder if you're at game to role-play or ego-play. (Yes, I'm talking about our Saturday night "prince of Hook Mountain".)
That being said, I don't think there's anything wrong with rebooting a character generally. I have a few characters that were campaign starters or edition starters that I never really "got into" that I might recycle, but there's just something about starting out fresh that inspires/terrifies me. :)
Also, I try to find something about the campaign or the character interaction to use as a short-hand for development. Right now Friday night is playing through Jade Regent, and the "childhood crush" trait is paying off on that end...
There is one guy in my Saturday group who takes this concept to the extreme, and I find it personally annoying. If ALL you can play is a magic-wielding squishie named THE SAME EXACT THING from campaign to campaign, then I wonder if you're at game to role-play or ego-play. (Yes, I'm talking about our Saturday night "prince of Hook Mountain".)
Oh God do I know this feeling. I had one guy in my old group who was this to a T, minus everything but the name. Every game he was basically playing the same character - himself with super/magic powers. They even tended to look alike. And while the names would change from game to game, they were all drawn from the same small pool, so wait long enough and a repeat would roll in relatively soon. They were almost always a Sorcerer or Psion, and always took ranks in Craft: Alchemy. For the first few campaigns it was fun but after DMing for or playing alongside what was essentially the same guy for four or five games straight you got to the point of "Dude for the love of Pete just PLAY SOMETHING DIFFERENT for once would you?!"
We once got him to play a (3.5) Warlock, back when I was running Savage Tide, after his initial Psion character ate a flurry of sneak attacks from Lotus bandits. It broke him out of his rut - both mechanically and RP-wise - and to this day it's the best character we've seen him play, bar none. But for some reason he decided to demote the character to NPC between chapters and switched to a Summoner, who as expected had ranks in Alchemy and was basically just his normal Sorc character with a big pet.
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I have a stable of about half a dozen characters that I rebuild for different games. The personalities remain the same, but the character classes change to suit the options available.
The only time I would avoid this is if the second character is existing in the same world as the first. However, most games I play in are unconnected to each other. So I consider each new game a separate reality. The only exception I can think of is Kirth's Aviona campaigns. Falandar and Auris exist in the same world there, so I would have to bring Ardelaneu in if one of them died.
Funny how my three mains are CG, NG, and LG respectively.
Extremism in any form usually proves disastrous.
I can think of 4 characters that I regularly recycle (Nepherti Be'it Shairut (desert game), Aubrey Travers (seafaring game), River Stone (modern mage), and Teagan Hubbs (modern shapshifter), but the rest have been originals.
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I tend to overlook repetitious characters
My best friend always plays himself in the character's role; so his characters wind up being him as a fighter, him as a wizard, him as a...
And we've been gaming together for over 25 years...
So I too tend to overlook repetitious characters unless they are an exact replica of the last complete with same race, class, name, etc...
As to the OP's question...
Since I DM most of the time, I have several NPCs that will reappear from campaign to campaign...