Replacing Deceased Players

[Rapier]

It's been a REAL rough year for me, and.....

There is this theory I've been playing with in the past couple months. About 6 months ago, one of my original players (of about 15 years) passed on. While his wife joined us shortly before and has stuck around and become QUITE the team member (where the hell she was all these years is anyone's guess).

There are a number of circumstances where "Tower" would just fit things just perfectly.

WHAT THE HELL DO I DO!?!

Do I replace him with a similar character (which strikes me as semi-sacriligeous), or

Do I replace him by playing Tower as I think Chad would have played him (semi-sacriligeous).

We are having a real problem in that a major piece of our group has suddenly left and after about 15 years of playing together and being each other's god-parents and EXes etc I just don't know where to go.

Thoughts? Help? Ideas?

I was half tempted to break him out last weekend and run with it...but the situation is SO complicated and all of my players are SO nicely leaving it "totally up to me" how I handle his character.

I was 99.9% ready to play him one game and have him make a super-heroic sacrifice and save the universe...but it was SO counter-genre.

I'm just stuck and I don't know what to do. We have a game on Sunday. I have bowling Friday night (and Saturday night) and the wake/funeral for my bestest uncle on Saturday and Bridge on Sunday. I'm just out of time and am absolutely NO closer to what I'm gonna do.

I need an emergency intervention.

HELP!!!!!!!!

[Phil]

To me there is only one solution. You don't carry on using his character, and you don't replace his character with a look-a-like. Your game should adapt to life without Tower, just as your group has had to adapt to life without the player.

If your group is ready you could perhaps run a one-off in honour of the player, where his character does indeed make that heroic sacrifice. But that should be intentional and agreed in advance with the group, as a sign of respect to your departed friend. But then that should be it. Let bygones be bygones.

[Supreme Serpent]

Sorry to hear of the loss of your friend. :(

It's never really easy for groups to move on mid-game after the loss of a long-term member, and undoubtedly even harder in these circumstances.


I was 99.9% ready to play him one game and have him make a super-heroic sacrifice and save the universe...but it was SO counter-genre.


So...he's a superhero right? In a superhero campaign? But you view this sort of thing is COUNTER-genre? :think: I don't think I understand...

Do you have any idea of how Chad would have liked to have seen Tower go out? Or a long-term goal Tower had that could be accomplished as a send-off, like defeating his nemesis completely, something like that? If so, it would be nice if you could "respect his wishes" in the matter of how his character's story wraps up.

I don't personally think it would be appropriate to continue to have his character be a prominent part of the campaign when Chad died while still playing the character. Unfortunately, this is another, but comparitively minor, loss you and your group will have to work around in the face of the much larger loss of your friend himself.

If it would be appropriate to the character, you could have him retire from the current group to form a new team somewhere else - another city, country, planet, whatever.

As for those situations where Tower would be perfect - sorry, but I think that's too bad. They may have to go on the shelf with all the other plots that couldn't be run for whatever reason. Alternatively, after you've written him out, run one of them, and let the characters feel some of the struggles you and your players are dealing with, missing an integral piece.

If he and his memory are too closely associated with that game, you might want to consider wrapping the campaign up. If you really can't see how to go on with the current game, find a good way to stop it and start up another one, a fresh game without all the associations.

Good luck.

[McCoy]

I can see Tower's Last Stand helping players and characters reach closure.

[Hugh Neilson]

I know we have accountants, actuariues and IT professionals on the bopards. Any grief counsellors or mental health professionals?

I think this situation treads on very uncertain ground, and I'm really not sure what approach would be best (I suspect it depends on the feelings of all involved). It would be nice to hear from someone with some expertise in this area.

In my opinion, the choice is between "Use Tower" and "Shelve the Plot". I don't see a rational in-between, like an homage character, being appropriate.

[kjamma4]

I really can't add more to what has already been said - all of it seemed excellent advice.

I can see how you might want to bring a new player into your game but you should never think of him/her replacing Chad. From what you've said, it appears that although Tower is an integral part of the team, Tower would not be Tower without Chad.

If it were me and the rest of the group would be okay with it, I would go the whole Tower makes a sacrifice for the group route.

Good luck.

[Blue]

That's a tough one. Never had a player in the group die.

I think you treat it just like life; Nobody's going to be playing you when you're gone. Everyone will just have to deal with it and the issues it raises.

I don't know how my other players would handle such a loss. But I think if I was GMing I might even have the hero pass on, peacefully. If the characters feel they need to have another Brick (EB, Egoist, what have ya), there might be an audition process of some kind. I'd even have them come across a few likely candidates in game; they might even latch onto one.

I recall creating a legacy villain once (to one form the Great Supervaillin Contest. And when the storyline resolved, the heroes wound up sort of adopting the character into the group and trying to work out her issues. She wound up filling the spot a hero vacated earlier in the campaign; and none of that was planned. It just worked out.

[bigdamnhero]

Ouch. Tough one indeed. I've never been in your situation, but I have lived through the death of a friend before. It's not easy, or at least I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone for whom it is easy.

If it were me -- which of course it isn't, YMMV -- I would think keeping Tower (or a surrogate) around would be like a constant reminder. Not a reminder of Chad (which would be a good thing) but a reminder of Chad's absense (which is a bad thing). Like a wound that can't heal because you keep picking at the scab. So I agree with those who suggest finding a way to write Tower out. Whether he rides off happily into the sunset, or goes out in a heroic blaze of glory depends on how you (all of you) want to remember both Tower and Chad.

So then how do you adjust to life without Tower? Sadly, I think SS has a point: it might be time to consider sunsetting the campaign and trying something different. At least for a little while. Maybe you'll want to come back to it in a few months or years after the wounds have had a chance to heal a bit. But for now, a chance of venue might be in order.

That's the extent of my Psych 101-ing. Hope it helps. Feel free to ask if there's anything else we can do, even if it's just to listen.


bigdamnhero

[input.jack]

My advice would be to speak with his widow, and see what -she- thinks about the situation. Im sure that, between the two of you, you can come up with a respectful and consistent means of having Tower leave a lasting mark on the campaign; either as an NPC, or after having done something inspiring and heroic. (He could always do something inspiring and heroic that leads to him having to leave the campaign area, but not necessarily result in the death of the character, too. That may be too much).

Id strongly recommend talking to his wife about it.

[Badger]

Never had a friend die before. Lucky, I guess. Anyway, go the noble sacrifice route (I would advise having everyone's unanimous say-so before proceeding with that). Then no more with the character after that. It has to be closed. Keeping the character around would probably just keep the real life pain festering. A clone? Just plain wrong.

[Vondy]

Retire the character and don't replace him.
Come up with something new and let the group evolve in a natural, organic manner.

[austenandrews]

I agree, retire the character. I wouldn't kill him, personally - that would be one seriously tearful session, going places better left to the real world. Rather have him go away for an indeterminate amount of time - exploring an alternate dimension, becoming the champion of some faraway alien planet, etc. Something that leaves him active and happy, but not where the PCs might feel oblgated to retrieve him. Maybe someday, when the RL grief has settled, you can bring the character back; or maybe not. Put off that decision till you can think more clearly.

[Vondy]

Incidentally, we did have one of our players die many years ago. He was diabetic and didn't take proper care of himself. He was also fanatically reliable as a player and you always knew in advance if he wasn't coming. One day he simply didn't arrive and we knew his mother was out of town. It was just a deep gut feeling that something was wrong. Since we had a key to his house we went by. He had died in a diabetic coma in the bathtub. As can be imagined, it was a very bad day for the whole group (a few of whom had never been confronted with death in a personal way before). In the next session, his character left the group to go on a plane-hopping super-quest to save the "multiverse," which was both in-character and in-player. It was the best way to make the break without doing something crude (killing the character) or macabre (turning it into an ongoing fetish of sorts).

And yes, definately talk to his wife.

[Toadmaster]

Retire the character and don't replace him.
Come up with something new and let the group evolve in a natural, organic manner.

I agree with this, now I would never suggest looking at TV for real life solutions but for in game solutions I think that is perfectly fine.

When an actor leaves a show (either for personal reasons or the actual death of the actor), the typical response of the writers is to just replace the actor with another one and pretend nothing happend (the Darrin from Bewitched syndrome :) ), or to write in a (typically forced) exit for the character, either they move on or more often the character is just killed off (often off stage, they just say it happend).

Personally I think the way Barney Miller (and a few other shows) handled the situation by just dealing with it openly (the actor has died, here is a tribute to both the character and the actor, now we are moving on, sorry for any continuity issues) is the best, when Jack Soo from Barney Miller (the chinese detective) died, they didn't do anything in the show to explain it, they just had an episode dedicated to his memory with various clips of him and comments from the other actors, producers etc of their memories working with him, in the next episode there was a new detective added to the squad and the show went on without really explaining (in the story line) what happend to the character, he was just gone.

I would suggest just putting the character away, perhaps even have a gaming session just to deal with the loss of the player and the character would be appropriate, but I would just stop using the character, replacement with a look alike or just killing the character wouldn't be very satisfactory to me. Games suffer continuity problems all the time and you have a good reason for this one.

[WarriorKnight]

Back around '83 or '84 we had a player die of a brain hemmorage & he was one of the main characters in my FASA Star Trek game(Chief Science Officer).I just said he was promoted & given his own ship ; & he continued on exploring the final frontier.We just had another player have a brain hemmorage also but thank goodness he's hanging in there even though they still got him unconsious.(lots of damage;possible brain damage.)I'd say talk to the wife & see what she thinks,but I don't think I'd kill him off.

[Gadodel]

I had a similar experience.

I met Matt in the third grade. We played D&D all the time together. Our group consisted of the two of us, his younger brother and four other kids. We played D&D together until we started college. Of course, we were great friends and did many other things together; but it was D&D that started it all.

Matt played dozens of characters over the years on our homebrew world. Many of those characters were retired and became important NPCs on the world. While in college, we managed to play D&D every once in awhile; but nowhere near the amount we had in the past.

A year after graduation, Matt died in an car accident.

His brother and I, along with one of the orginal players managed to keep the homebrew world alive and well for a few more years. In time, we moved and scattered...life went on.

Back when Wizards of The Coast had their 'campaign setting' search a few years ago, Matt's brother entered our world into the contest. Of course, it didn't 'win', but it was a worthy tribute.

The homebrew world sits on our shelves. Every once in awhile, it gets dusted off and used for this or that group. That is what Matt would have wanted. Hell, its been nearly 15 years since Matt died and I can still remember how well he Game Mastered and wrote...