What do you do with your old characters and character sheets?

[Velaryon]

I'm generally something of a nostalgic person, so I like to occasionally look back at characters I've played over the years. I even still have the sheet from my very first D&D character that I played nearly 22 years ago (a very poorly-made half-elf fighter who needed both a powerful artifact and being turned into a weretiger in order to be even slightly relevant in combat by like level 6). I have folders full of old characters and NPCs from a variety of games I've played in and run over my gaming career, and every once in a while I wonder whether this is normal behavior for a TTRPG player or if I'm weird for keeping these old characters.

But I'm also curious what you do with old characters beyond the sheets themselves. Do you use former PCs of yours as NPCs in future games? Do you remake the character and use them in a different campaign? Have you played friends, relatives, descendants, or alternate universe versions of those characters in later games?

[tomandtish]

If I played a character for more than 4 sessions I keep them. I have a ring binder with old characters in it, including my first: a dwarf. Yes, just dwarf. This was back in 1977 and your race WAS your class, damnit!

[False God]

Depends on how much I liked the character and how long I played them. I usually keep them for a while after a game ends, they go into a folder and I usually keep that folder around until I lose where I put it and find it 10 years later, or not.

I've moved several times and had some major life changes since my first character, so while I still remember them, and there are artifacts of them in the form of art I did ages ago, I no longer have the sheets themselves.

[Quertus]

Old characters? Why, I tend to keep running them whenever possible, of course! :smallbiggrin: Sometimes as PCs; other times, as NPCs.

Old character sheets? Well, I "archive" them / "put them somewhere safe" - which usually translates into losing them, and maybe finding them years later (or not after a move). :smallfrown: Occasionally, I even create an electronic version of the sheet.

(My 1st character (the first one I ran, at any rate) was a Cleric (did I mention Animate Dead was my favorite spell?) who "achieved immortality" by being trapped inside a mirror (a Mirror of Life Trapping?). I doubt any records remain.)

[Kurald Galain]

every once in a while I wonder whether this is normal behavior for a TTRPG player or if I'm weird for keeping these old characters.
All of my characters since I started have used an electronic sheet (early on, textfiles; later on, word documents). I still have all of these on my computer. For some characters I still have a decent amount of printed material (with hand-written notes) but not for most of them.


Do you use former PCs of yours as NPCs in future games?
On occasion, yes.


Do you remake the character and use them in a different campaign?
No, because that would clash with their existing story (hypothetically, if it would not clash then I may remake them, but this hasn't happened).

[Leon]

Put them in a folder and put it away, later on find it while do other things and have some memories of it when found again.
Some characters do get recycled into newer games sometimes but not often exactly the same particuly because of Edition/System change.
Character backgrounds frequently get reused and scavenged from as i find it hard to write backgrounds often so having some i can cherry pick is a blessing.

[Mastikator]

They usually end up in a folder or in a stack of papers that lie around my apartment for years and decades. I still have DM notes from 2011 and beyond.

Then once in a blue moon I find them and feel nostalgic.

[Easy e]

Ritualistic burning of them.

I typically do not keep them around and dispose of them.

Electronic ones last a bit longer, but tend to get purged as well eventually.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm generally something of a nostalgic person, so I like to occasionally look back at characters I've played over the years. I even still have the sheet from my very first D&D character that I played nearly 22 years ago (a very poorly-made half-elf fighter who needed both a powerful artifact and being turned into a weretiger in order to be even slightly relevant in combat by like level 6). I have folders full of old characters and NPCs from a variety of games I've played in and run over my gaming career, and every once in a while I wonder whether this is normal behavior for a TTRPG player or if I'm weird for keeping these old characters.

But I'm also curious what you do with old characters beyond the sheets themselves. Do you use former PCs of yours as NPCs in future games? Do you remake the character and use them in a different campaign? Have you played friends, relatives, descendants, or alternate universe versions of those characters in later games?
I usually save a PDF - although I failed to do that for my 20 level bard before the DM close the campaign - and before digital age I kept a bunch on 3x5 cards or in a notebook. There are quite a few pages in that notebook.

[CallMeBagel]

I have a filing cabinet with all my TTRPG stuff. My characters, DM note, I have digital copies of teh newer stuff, but I keep all the hard copies. Especially the DM stuff in case I want to re-use some of it.

[Batcathat]

Old character sheets? Well, I "archive" them / "put them somewhere safe" - which usually translates into losing them, and maybe finding them years later (or not after a move). :smallfrown: Occasionally, I even create an electronic version of the sheet.

Pretty much this for me too. I don't have the heart to throw them away nor the brains to properly preserve them. :smalltongue:

That said, this thread made me go look and I found the sheets of both the first character I remember playing (not sure if it was my first character ever, I started as a GM and my memory of exactly when I started as a player is a bit blurry) as well as an NPC from one of the first games I ran (and probably the only one who might qualify as a GMPC, though not for very long). Both are from... 1996 or 1997, I think.

[Pauly]

Compost. Delete. Burn.

Even if I wanted to be sentimental, what I’m sentimental about are the stories not the accounting. I’ll keep my campaign journals for much longer, but character sheets hold no special significance for me.

[Jay R]

My old PCs become NPCs in new games I run.

My first PCs were from 1975, in original white-box D&D. The character sheets were 3x5 index cards, and I still have them.

[Faily]

I have binders for old characters. Not all made it in there (died session 1 or so), but almost everyone.

And some have made it into digital format, in either a text-document on my computer or an online sheet, such as my sheets in my signature hosted on Myth-Weavers.

[Malphegor]

Lol I should keep them but I end up not doing do. Usually they end up in a folder, get mangled or mixed up over time and eventually tossed out after a moment of ‘hey I remember making this I never did play Tordek the Anthropomorphic Elephant King, so that’s where the sheet went before I gave up looking for it and made Lao Tsu the knockoff badly built in one evening Sun Wukong inspkred Hadozee’

The original sheet for Malphegor the tiefling wizard is long gone but I have his miniature, missing arms and broken staff in my box of minis somewhere.

I think the only physical sheets I have at the moment hanging around my d&d folders is
Anita Von Dire, the Dr Doom wannabe but really a disney princess in practice character I made for a ravenloft game, who builds robot animals to sing and be friends with
Borghilde the slightly demented necromancer based on Snow White and a character from the Volsung Saga
Tanta Ka’ruel the Epic Illithid who I got as far as rolling his ability scores and doodling Octodad and nothing else before the ‘all horror creatures’ game that was planned fizzled out and never happened.

Got way more Mythweavers semi built and fully built sheets, online sheets seem to be easier to keep organised as the websites do it for me. I need to organise it into character archetype themed folders eventually before it becomes a mess but ugh

[Spore]

Compost. Delete. Burn.

Even if I wanted to be sentimental, what I’m sentimental about are the stories not the accounting. I’ll keep my campaign journals for much longer, but character sheets hold no special significance for me.

BURN IT! (https://youtu.be/TVp7yLfnmrE?t=191) tenchar.