I am not certain if this is the forum- but it seems right...
I recently lost a character that I enjoyed playing to bad luck and felt that I would celebrete what life he did have in a fictional world. This got me thinking of my subjected query; Do others honor the characters that they grow to enjoy in some way? If so; how? For me, I just keep my PC in a folder.
I keep all my old characters in binders. Also whenever I play computer games I sometimes try to recreate my most favourite ones.
My top 3 or so favourite characters become forum personaes and usernames for various websites and other things like "Morain" has.
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Ours tend to get memorialized or incorporated into our homebrew setting somehow. Become part of legend, get towns named after them, etc.
We named our Kingmaker nation Kyshahn, after the heroes Kyte and Ishahn who died in book 1.
Our drow paladin took "Divine Source" the moment she hit 3rd-tier mythic post-Rise of the Runelords.
A *different* player is now playing a "Paladin of Sainte Rae'Sheleth" in our Jade Regent campaign.
(Yes, we got two spit takes out of the 5 people at the table when, after 8 hours of playing, he finally mentioned his "goddess").
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Two dozen years ago, for our notoriously-deadly Runequest games, we kept a "Dead Pile". Every player had to write a "cause of death" the moment their PC died. It led to some very bitter comments.
Then, on nights we didn't have a quorum (at least 5), we would sit around drinking, going through the pile, and reminiscing about their glorious deaths...
...all 211 of them!
Each person in our game group has one iconic character made back in the glory days of 3.5 edition. We still have our character sheets from the last pathfinder game in which we played 20th level versions of those characters.
Our drow paladin took "Divine Source" the moment she hit 3rd-tier mythic post-Rise of the Runelords.
A *different* player is now playing a "Paladin of Sainte Rae'Sheleth" in our Jade Regent campaign.
(Yes, we got two spit takes out of the 5 people at the table when, after 8 hours of playing, he finally mentioned his "goddess").
Several of my group's former characters, and a few memorable NPCs, became deities when we switched to using our homebrew setting.
Several of my group's former characters, and a few memorable NPCs, became deities when we switched to using our homebrew setting.Our drow paladin took "Divine Source" the moment she hit 3rd-tier mythic post-Rise of the Runelords.
A *different* player is now playing a "Paladin of Sainte Rae'Sheleth" in our Jade Regent campaign.
(Yes, we got two spit takes out of the 5 people at the table when, after 8 hours of playing, he finally mentioned his "goddess").
Players/GM (and developers) often do that when/if changing editions.
IRL, I named my computer after someone else's character from the last campaign.
I keep each of the character's figurines that I played on display at home.
We also keep the ledgends alive by mentioning prior campaign's characters as our current characters. There are just stories that everyone hears bits and peices about on Golarion.
The tales of their epic deaths/fails/idiot moments live on in our group memory. Notice I didn't say wins there. There's a reason. We did kill Luke Skywalker though.
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I enjoyed my second character so much, I have since made both of his parents as characters. As much of my gaming is done with the same GM, the parent characters will often ask, out of concern for their son's well-being, if the Society has any news of their son. This allows for the GM to relate to other players the more amusing and outlandish adventures he had.
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My favorite 1st ed AD&D character from my high school days was named "Haladir..."
Several of my group's former characters, and a few memorable NPCs, became deities when we switched to using our homebrew setting.Our drow paladin took "Divine Source" the moment she hit 3rd-tier mythic post-Rise of the Runelords.
A *different* player is now playing a "Paladin of Sainte Rae'Sheleth" in our Jade Regent campaign.
(Yes, we got two spit takes out of the 5 people at the table when, after 8 hours of playing, he finally mentioned his "goddess").
Players/GM (and developers) often do that when/if changing editions.
One of my Mythic Kingmaker's characters just picked up Divine Source as well. Thankfully if we decide to add her to the pantheon, there's a space she should fit well that isn't currently filled by anyone. Gotta work it out with my co-worldbuilder though, which is something that can wait until after Kingmaker is over.
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Repurpose them.
The highest level character I had in Living Greyhawk was a dwarf rogue built back when the Isles of Woe had just risen in the Nyr Dyv. Some folks in the area wanted to run the adventure, but they didn't have a rogue to deal with traps, so I built him and leveled him up. I built him to be a rejection of every major rogue and dwarf trope out there - he was lightly armored, clean-shaven, didn't drink, and was Lawful Good. And he loathed the drow for stuff in his personal history. So, when the time came to build a character for Second Darkness, he immediately leapt to the front of the line.
My Runelords game is comprised of a bunch of friends that recently finished the Kingmaker path relatively recently. So, when that group found a book about the Eldest and the jabberwock, I had one of their old characters teleport in to buy the book off of their new characters. The player briefly portrayed her Erastilian priestess again, just for this purpose.
Mmm i usually run premades but touched up and heavily tweeked. But everyone once in awhile i will because my players ask me to run something off the cuff. I dunno why because thats the only time we have ever had any deaths of the player characters.
Well last game i ran off the cuff was with 3 of my players and they were sent out to help a town. Theres was a troll supposedly involved but the main baddie was a creature i pulled out the beastiary of an undead woman who splits from the torso but is seemed alived during the day. Missing children blah blah blah they find teh troll and to my amazing surprised instead tried to talk with it instead of just murdering it in its sleep. As a added bonus they got a nice stack of treasure and directions straight to the bbeg. Well they didnt realize it was because they got there during teh day but at night the kind old woman turned into a monster who was killing and trapping the lost kids souls. Major battle ensues which i thought would be very onsided (players) but like every game ran off the cuff the dice gods were in favor of the bbegs.It was almost dead but so was the party when it had grappled and started draining the alchemist. The sorcerer was gonna unleash a supped up fireball but couldnt without killing the party member. The party member said to do it and he killed and destroyed both of them.
As a token to the party member who was leaning towards evil, she became a ghost and protector for the children souls who were still trapped. Rumors started cropping up of a surprisely well kept farm hidden in the wilderness where childrens laughter could be found but people trespassing would suddenly go missing if they spent the night.
She ended up thinking that was a fine end for her character. So i guess to answer the question, it all depends on who and how the character died imho.
As a token to the party member who was leaning towards evil, she became a ghost and protector for the children souls who were still trapped. Rumors started cropping up of a surprisely well kept farm hidden in the wilderness where childrens laughter could be found but people trespassing would suddenly go missing if they spent the night.She ended up thinking that was a fine end for her character. So i guess to answer the question, it all depends on who and how the character died imho.
This, this is beautiful.
Frankly, I just try to keep all my character sheets. On the other hand, there have been so many games in so many systems I really can't keep them all.
I love throwing in cameos of characters from previous campaigns.
We keep their first and last character sheets, so long as they have not been sacrificed to the god of spilled beverages and foodstuffs, and we try to find a Reaper miniature to paint for every PC. I've been toying with the idea of making a shadowbox for my first character, once he is officially retired (haven't played him in years, but my wife is planning an epic, weekend long event to wrap up all the loose ends in that campaign).
Ours tend to get memorialized or incorporated into our homebrew setting somehow. Become part of legend, get towns named after them, etc.
I tend to do the same, and let them make a cameo in some rare occasions.
I recycle names more than I re-use characters. One time I recycled the name of a wizard I played into a god's name in a later game which I ran. I didn't have any intent to say that it was the same character. But the DM from that game I played him in later joined the game I was running. Mocked me endlessly for deifying my character. The joke was on him. I was also using the name of one of my wife's characters from years ago. Naming gods is hard.
Once in a while I'll reuse characters. One of my wife's characters from a 2nd ed campaign was the patron NPC of the party in the campaign I started after I moved to a new location with all new players.
Another player's character died in that same game, and I had her become a demigod to the gang of monsters that saw her die. I had them show up and help the party out in a fight, and they all these legends of the life of the character, loosely based on things they saw her do, or figured she probably ought to be able to do.
I had a paladin named Caliban in 1/2e. That was the name/class of my first WoW character years later. Except Caliban was taken so I had to be Calliban.
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All my current and past characters are emblazoned (by profession advertisements & by faction flag colors) on my spiffy dice tower.
Notes and journals of other game systems are kept in binders.
However, the central spirit of my very first character (Muskrat) tends to emerge through the years. I remake him from time to time.
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I have binders of my retired PCs, and copies of notes / journals I kept for each campaign. Someday I want to put them all up on a website.
We also have a tendency in our group to memorialize past PCs by having PCs or NPCs in our current names use the same names. Sometimes former PCs will turn up as NPCs in a new campaign.
And I've named characters in console games after my PCs. My husband does that, too.
Our most memorable PC, a Hexblade named Nat Pagle (named after the legendary fisherman in World of Warcraft), has gone on to appear in numerous homebrew campaigns run by myself and others of our group. He's even been elevated to demigod status, after spreading a rumor that he was the 'God of Salamanders'. At the time he was referring to the little amphibians, but eventually the rumors reached the Plane of Fire, and the Salamander race, having no god of their own, took to worshipping him. His original player seems pleased with this outcome.
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We usually have surviving PC's become leaders of various communities among our homebrew world.
Most recently, the game I was running the group rolled terribly and was killed at the last battle as they killed the final enemy. Since there was no one there to raise them, the diety of trickery, whom they had helped but screwed over in the process decided to intervene, and bacially made the group into a set of sentient items/weapons with the personality of each PC in it, and spread them around the world. So now and again a rumor will come about involving one of the items and a supposed location for a story hook.
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We usually have surviving PC's become leaders of various communities among our homebrew world.
Most recently, the game I was running the group rolled terribly and was killed at the last battle as they killed the final enemy. Since there was no one there to raise them, the diety of trickery, whom they had helped but screwed over in the process decided to intervene, and bacially made the group into a set of sentient items/weapons with the personality of each PC in it, and spread them around the world. So now and again a rumor will come about involving one of the items and a supposed location for a story hook.
Nice!
I use their names for NPCs or deities, as well as characters in video games.