Recycling characters
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I don't think I've ever reused a character wholesale on a MU*, but I have done what I refer to as "repaints" a few times where the general feel of a character gets reused. For instance, I had a standoffish sweary biotic on a Mass Effect game years ago who I enjoyed playing. More recently, I made a standoffish sweary character on an urban fantasy game. The characters are not the same; they have different names, different backgrounds, different PBs, and differences in motivation. However, their dialogue style and physical mannerisms are very similar, which let me slip smoothly into writing poses for the urban fantasy character.
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I've never recycled a character. Names? Sometimes. But I don't even recall re-using the same PB.
That being said, it isn't because I think I am 'cooler' or 'better' than people who recycle characters. Hell, I envy them. It's mainly because I don't keep copies of any character info, logs, or any information about them anywhere.
Plus I really do love the act of creating characters. I restart single player RPGs constantly to make new characters. Putting all the pieces together is my favorite part.
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@Admiral I always keep at least my character descriptions around. I recycle the shit out of those.
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@Arkandel Fuck me, I wish I did. I do hate writing descriptions.
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Personally, I have no problem with reusing concepts/characters, nor do I have issues with people who do that. As @Pondscum pointed out, sometimes you still have stories you'd to continue and a game is closing or somehow doesn't work out. I'm planning on trying to do that with an old TR alt of mine, my changeling Whisper, once Miami opens, although she won't be 100% like she was on since I don't have a @decomp for her.
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I do recycle names, inspirations and PBs, but only separately. If I make Sam the one-eyed archer on one game, elsewhere I may play Sam the sorceress or Mildred the one-eyed archer, but not both.
I generally don't mind it if other people do it! However, if it's a character I'm very close to on one game, having it pop up almost entirely the same on another where I'm playing something else might feel kind of strange? I'd worry I'd start getting them mixed up, at least.
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I used to see it as a lack in creativity. Nowadays, I'm seeing it more as a time saver or a return to a classic.
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In general, I don't do it. But I have one or two characters I truly, deeply love playing because they seem to work so well and generate tons of RP. I don't mind recycling them and nobody has ever complained, if they even noticed.
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I recycle elements. The PB of this game mixed with the concept of that game. I recently tried a reimagining or remix of a character but it's just a reused PB now. He came out different.
Also, there are only so many occupations I feel comfortable portraying, for example. So yeah, I play an EMT again or whatever. I did all the dang research before it's easy to pick up and best of all: I HAVE FUN WITH IT. -
As I mentioned in another thread, I will sometimes try to port characters from entirely different settings, just to see if they will work.
But yeah, I'll take the name and general build, sometimes. I don't port over actions and the like. Mostly because games almost always have your typical starting point. If my character on game 1 reached some elder status, but game 2 still puts you back to normal chargen starting point... there's no need (mostly) to pull that story over, since... it affects nothing. Now... if there's some contrived story reason explaining why you no longer know how to perform brain surgery even though that was your endgame specialty... then sure. Maybe.
I'll recycle some of my more obscure PBs, but that's because I'm usually too lazy to write a new @desc.
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One thing I definitely do is transfer builds once I've done my 'research' on mechanics for a certain type of character.
So for example I have a combaty GMC Werewolf file somewhere with useful merits, Facets, etc to purchase... which won't lead even to identical +sheets (since that leaves a lot of wiggle room for extras) but makes sure I don't miss anything major out as I make a new character good at punching people.
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I actually lost an RL friend of three years over recycled characters. She's the one who got me into MU*ing in the first place and is directly responsible for introducing me to the guy I wound up marrying.
I met this girl in college and she invited me to join in my first TT rpg. Vampire the Masquerade. It was a group made up of, admittedly, the fringe-element in my dorm, but I was like... what the hell! I fell in love with it, it was so much fun. We eventually went from Vampire, to Aberrant, to CyberPunk to D&D. They'd been trying to get me to try mushing for at least 2.5 years before I finally decided in the wake of a terrible break up to give it a try.
I was fucking hooked. Flash forward about four to six months and I was invited to be Wiz-staff on a game in development. I was highly flattered and in retrospect this was such a phenomenally BAD idea... but it was what it was. The #1 rule of the game was that there were absolutely no transfer characters allowed. Now, I'd been playing games with this girl for over 3 years, and she had, at most... 3 different characters. She would create variants to play on other games. The Gwydion Sidhe would turn into a Tremere Ghoul. The name desc and backstory was always the same. Anyway, she wanted to play this character on the game I was staffing on, and I told her the Goddess didn't like transfers but I'd ask. The word came back no, so I told my friend. Who then proceeded to Flip. The. Fuck. Out. She went off. She told me I was a terrible friend, couldn't believe what a manipulative shit I was, how juvenile and petty I was. She said she never wanted to speak to me again. And... she more or less hasn't. She completely cut me off from herself, deliberately sabotaged my relationship with another friend by flat out lying.
It was actually pretty damn devastating.
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The only time this ever came up for me was when, back in the WoD dark ages, I remember a couple instances of games closing but wholesale folding into other extant games? I moved a vampire across during one of these, and in that case it didn't feel too odd since the prior game's history was just a drop in the bucket of a Vampire's long existence, anyway.
Otherwise it feels really lazy, boring, and often a red flag of players who are too invested for their or the game's good.
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I had a favorite character that was taken from me due to some really hinky, cheaty shenanigans and when I tried to remake him it just felt... wrong. It brought back too many bad memories.
So fuck you to the guy who 'fired a warning shot' into the unconscious person you didn't recognize while they were being carried by others.
I sincerely hope, even after all this time, that your life is as shitty as your actions in-game suggest.
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@Admiral said in Recycling characters:
So fuck you to the guy who 'fired a warning shot' into the unconscious person you didn't recognize while they were being carried by others.
Whaaaaat?
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@Derp It's a long, fucked up story. From HM. May Loki and Koi shit themselves daily.
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I have those characters I loved that just didn't work on the game I made them. Dragons especially from Pern. I loved my one green from PW I rewrote to fit me (and then got yelled at by the area staff for doing so because "we're not Fort Weyr"), and a blue from NorCon. Both of them got new homes with new PCs on HT. My Ha'ze and Kai from PW got ported over whole scale from PW to HT because I wasn't letting him go.
So I don't mind when people do it. As long as they fit the theme then I'm a whole pile of 'whatever'.
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I wholeheartedly oppose recycling of the same character between games that are not connected to each other.
By that I mean if MushA ran for a long time, closed, then opens as MUSH-A-PART2 where former players can continue their stories? I'm alright with that. To me it's no different than Firefly getting canceled and then the PCs are rebuilt for Serenity, the movie.
However, I tend to see a lot of weirdness and shenanigans in the wake of players who rebuild the same characters over and over again. Once someone tried to dupe me into remaking an IC romantic interest from 2 games ago. The players who do this tend to regurgitate story and attempt to get players to recreate the story elements that they want. There's also often little room for flexibility because the players who do this have something very specific in mind. In the end, there's very little surprise with recycled characters, and it's exhausting to me. Come on, be like the rest of the kids. Make something new. Have new experiences and put effort into it rather than replaying the same routine with the same character over and over again.
I make jokes about WoD players asking if they can bring "Their ________" (i.e. "My Tremere" or "My Get of Fenris") because it's a WARNING SIGN that you may also get slapped with an ubercharactercheese concept.
I have a RL friend that won't play Vampire: The Masquerade unless he gets to play His Gangrel, who is a 6th generation Gangrel with maxxed out stats, somewhere around 8 different maxxed out Disciplines (Wuuuut? A Gangrel with Fortitude, Auspex, Animalism, Potence, Celerity, Presence, Vicissitude, and Obfuscate? Ya don't say...).
So, in some cases recycled characters have less to do with a concept and more to do with recreating a character sheet of stuff some other staffer approved.
I just couldn't do it. For me? Fresh game equals fresh content.
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I've definitely recycled. If a char of mine is in two places with the same name and PB, it's the same character. (And I don't really reuse names or PBs otherwise.)
In one case I played the same character on two oWoD games because one was very verrrrrrry slow at the time and I missed the char and thought it'd be interesting to see how he was and wasn't different on game #2. In that case, he started each game in the same position in his life history, with the same starting stats, etc. It was kind of interesting, but I probably wouldn't try that experiment again.
The other times, I've had a character I really liked, but the story ended way too soon. Usually because the game died. In those cases, I've brought them in again somewhere it felt like they fit, usually keeping their previous history... or a version of it, anyway. All the important beats, tweaked to match the new world where necessary. Any missing time ('I played this char at 19 on a game set in 2012 in actual 2005, he'd be, what, 26 now on this 2019 game?'), I figure out what the char's been up to and what effects it probably had.
I've played 40-50 characters in the last couple decades and I've 'sequeled' 5, I think? 6 if you count a few sandbox scenes after one game imploded. One char took me over a decade to find a spot to actually play after a group app collapsed in the forming stages, so, yeah, I damn well did find somewhere else to give him a go when the first spot I found ended up swiftly dying.
So, clearly, I think there's merit to it. I think it's a little weird if someone always and only plays Bob the Whatever on every game in every genre, but if it makes them happy, okay, just make it fit. If someone was having fun playing Bob on CoolGame and CG dies and SpiffyGame over there is similar enough that Bob could've moved from CoolGame's Los Angeles setting to SpiffyGame's New York, have fun. Just... make it fit.
