WISH 42 asks:
DO YOU EVER REUSE CHARACTERS FROM GAME TO GAME?
LintKing:With one notable exception, I like MAKING characters too much to reuse them. Even if I have a character I didn't get much chance to play, if I later have the option of picking up with them or making a new one, I'll almost invariably make a new one. At the same time, I do hold on to old characters, and keep most of them at least kind of `alive' in my head. That, of course, can get frustrating...there are many that I'd LIKE to play again someday. I just don't want to play them again MORE than I want to make someone new.
Happily, Meera has given me something of a backdoor for this...we reuse old characters as minor NPCs. We fit them into places that generally don't need stats, so it's name, personality, and...purpose. Someone want to know who's running the mage's guild in this city? Well, we can just make it Mortimer, and suddenly the whole guild takes shape. (A rather odd shape, in his case. If we want something a bit more regular, there are other options...) We have similar standards to fill roles of guard captains (Rhodanthe), royalty (Samantha), mercenaries (Aster), semi evil masterminds (Deliciae), cats (Isis), prophets (Trahern)...etc.
I've used former characters in new character's backgrounds in much the same way. One I just made has the ability to channel some of her own ancestors, and all of those I based off of previous characters. I can, in fact, think of one occasion where I reused someone ELSE's character that way.
There are a couple of characters that I probably would do again, if I found a good opportunity. Vormax, Stealer of Forms. Bless, the literally angelic daughter of Bleys. Chaska, perhaps the most psychic Amberite I've ever run. Anselma, albeit mostly because she'd really only work in a sequel to What Is Below, and I still want Meera to run a sequel to that.
Oh, yes, and if we ever do another AD&D game, I am DEFINITELY running Mesmerelda the Great, but she was only retired because we lost everything connected to that game in a car accident...*sigh*
Meera: I have reused a character design because I didn't get as much play as she had grown in my mind...and that was Damascus from Rey Herrera's Paradise Lost. She turned into Jelica for the Phoenix Exodus campaign. I also ended up using Damascus in B?te Noire but it turned out to be a much older version of the original, in a more canonical background.
The truth is, the campaigns shape the characters enough that even when we reuse them as NPCs (players in G&G will recognize some of the names the LintKing dropped above) they turn out different. It's more like clones than recycling, as we grow 'em from the same mold, but they get different experiences shaping them. Take your average Amber GM with a past history of a handful of games: how many different versions of Benedict do you run? I've run him from a man gone homicidally insane to a man who gave up war and instead ran a cross-Shadow circus... back to back. Same mold, same canon, different results.
Maybe I grew up to be a mad scientist after all, eh?