Recycling characters
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I don't think there's anything wrong with recycling characters so long as you own everything that comes with that. If people remember your recycled character and don't want anything more to do with them, you might find your RP limited. But that's on you. If you're cool with that, why not? You don't owe anything to anyone.
I have reused characters before if I feel like there is still story to tell with them. If that's where you get your enjoyment, do what makes you happy. I haven't played a MU* for quite some time and if I did come back, I'm probably going to recycle a character I'm familiar with to get back into things more easily.
You do you. Have fun and don't overthink it.
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All of my characters are exactly the same.
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@Seraphim73 said in Recycling characters:
Like many of the above, I've used the same or similar names, descriptions, and concepts across games, but they're always tweaked for the specific game. For instance, the Termiane Koronel on one Wheel of Time MU* might be a Seanchan spy posing as a mercenary, while the Termiane Koronel on another Wheel of Time MU* that hasn't had Seanchan involved might just be a mercenary, and then the idea of a mercenary flirt with a burned face might show up on another game with the name Terman or something like that, but the character is always tweaked for the setting.
(cough) I've never done anything like this ever, and no one here can prove otherwise! Especially not this guy. He's never interacted with me on other (WoT) MU*s. (/s in case it's not clear)
More seriously, not only have I done it, but I did it on purpose so I could better understand their mentality. Svoran in particular was... a lot of character psyche research. It's why I did it so much with him in particular.
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Pbbbbth. No.
With the exception of Space Station 13, where the perpetually angry doctor and surgeon extraordinaire Caroline Treeby pops up all across the universe and timeline on pretty much every server. But in an actual, persistent game? No. New world, new concept.
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I've done it, when I feel like there's more potential for a concept to be explored. It also gives me an idea of what works and what doesn't. There are still characters in my rogue's gallery that I feel bear further exploration, but I'm also pretty adamant about avoiding trying to force square pegs into round holes and putting them on games that would suit them.
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With what @Cupcake said I've thought of a caveat. I know I said I'm thoroughly against recycling, but I suppose that I meant that I'm against recycling explored characters.
If I had a fucking dime for every time I joined a mush, TT, or OTT and only got to play a character once before the game wiped, I'd be Richard Branson.
I don't see nothin wrong (with a lil' bump an griiind) with recycling a character you put hard work into only to play it for one or two sessions. Then again, I don't see that rightly as recycling, but more so as actually getting to play that character.
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So to give a slightly more expanded answer than my previous comment:
I do have some characters I'll reuse wholecloth between games. Sometimes in the sense that there's "still story to tell" and I feel like I missed on something I wanted to do. But sometimes (one in particular) because I really like playing the character, I feel like they can fit in a lot of places, and... well... I wanna.
I'll usually gloss over a lot of their backstory if I port them from one game to another; maybe keep some broad strokes the same, but nothing that would nail things down enough that it would clash with the new established setting. (I don't often do the whole 'fresh off the farm'/'Embraced last week'/whatever thing anyway, so most of my PCs have presumably had adventures in their backstory that don't really need to be defined unless it's somehow relevant to current RP.)
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I'm currently sort of remaking a character (same PB and same generic concept, backstory details change because I don't remember the first one exactly and it's not quite the same setting)
Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.
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@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:
Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.
I feel like there's a story here...
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@A-Meowley said in Recycling characters:
@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:
Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.
I feel like there's a story here...
Monster ate her legs.
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@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:
@A-Meowley said in Recycling characters:
@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:
Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.
I feel like there's a story here...
Monster ate her legs.
A pretty short story, as it turns out.
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#sorrynotsorry for the thread necro but I have a certain story I usually like to tell and certain story motifs that get me excited so a lot of my characters have been cut from the same vein, er cloth. Inwardly lovable, gruff, broken.
What started to happen during my terminal phase of playing MUs was that I started to lock down into certain tropes or PCs to play and became exceedingly lazy in successive chargens to pretty much create two kinds of PCs that were interchangeable in any setting. Each new game and each new iteration, I found myself reusing more and more bits and pieces of the prior character wholesale instead of inventing something novel or interesting. What was sort of a repeating trope morphed into just pure laziness and resignation that a game is never a permanent thing but a temporary expedient rushing towards the inevitable unsatisfactory end (when was the last time a MU* satisfactorily ended for you instead of fizzling out)?
Post-MU* Apollonius is more or less left with side characters/support characters that desperately hide from the spotlight. Comic relief, niche concepts, or fetch quest givers. Different names but practically interchangeable.
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@Commodore-Sergei said in Recycling characters:
It's not good. Start from scratch, please.
To be fair though sometimes new characters suffer from the same issue - there's just so much... stuff shoved into their backgrounds! Epic struggles they overcame, intriguing long cool fights they were in and it was all so focused on them so exclusively that in the end they will probably never get the chance to shine as brightly again on the grid.
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I know I have carried a concept over a few times, but I tend to generate backgrounds and descriptions uniquely. There was a period in the 90's when I tended towards a very similar description for characters, but I grew out of all that when I became fascinated by building powerfully flawed characters for each setting. Now I'm old and lazy and I want all my PBs to be either Abe Vagoda or Vic Tayback, regardless of character particulars.
