Your characters and the sliding scale of continuity.

[Zhorn]

So a recent thought I had (we're talking about a trope here, so it's not very original) was in regards to making a character for a game and then finding out the game didn't take that character in a direction you wanted.

I've heard people refer to this as wasting a good character on a bad game, in the context of that character has now been 'used' and doesn't make its way into any future games unless it is within the same in-game-universe AND they managed to survive for their story to continue.

I've recently decided to move away from that mindset. I have a small number of characters I'm very fond of and would like to see them played out again.
Not exactly the same as their previous incarnation, they'll still get rerolled into the new game they are being inserted into, and aspects about them will be tweaked to fit the narrative of that game's universe, but at their core they will still be a version of their previous incarnation.

The best example of this I can think of for reference is Link, Zelda and Ganon from the Legend of Zelda series. Each one of the trio functions as a complete character in fitting into each game instalment, but at their core they have a basic framework copy/pasted across the franchise. Things change, but their underlying form is the same.

So that's what I want to hear about from other posters. How they feel about re-using past characters in different campaigns, and where on the Sliding Scale of Continuity they place them.

For my Human Fighter, Reginald, he's always a soldier's son type figure from a long family legacy of military types, and his personal journey is trying to find his our identity separated from family tradition, while also making peace with a natural inclination towards martial skills. Continuity Level 0 as each game just has an alternate universe Reginald, but otherwise can be their own person.

My Tabaxi Monk, Smokey, is an allegory for the Monkey King in Journey to The West, just as a cat instead. He's my vehicle for trashy shonen tropes mixed with applications of The Hero's Journey. Seeks out the secrets to triple immortality, fights big monsters, very poor impulse control, never malicious. Samurai Jack levels of Continuity Level 2 as Smokey is mostly the same Sun Soul Monk from game to game.

[MoiMagnus]

I had a character I loved in a campaign that was cancelled. And I'm reasonably convinced we're not playing again in that universe anytime soon (this was an modern urban fantasy universe).

So at some point, I reused it as a NPC allied in a (high-magic renaissance) D&D campaign where the DM asked us to describe our closest advisor/lieutenant/... Sure, there was some shift in personality, a big shift in background, and their would be some shift in its abilities if I had to describe them in the D&D system rather than in his native system. There was absolutely zero continuity between the two instances of this character. At most, this is the same soul born in two parallel universes.

I still consider I've made a fair use of this character concept, enough so that I don't feel he has been "wasted" by the early end of its first campaign.

[farothel]

I won't play characters at the same moment in different campaigns (although I'm doing something close to it right now), I do move characters from campaigns that died or finished to other campaigns. Mostly I will make some changes to backgrounds and sometimes a few skills or an ability, but the character will still be recognisable. I won't do it with characters who have finished a long campaign, but in PbP when a campaign dies early, I have no problems in moving the character somewhere else if possible. That also saves lazy me the time to make up a fully new character.

[SpyOne]

My personal experience with this involves characters or campaigns that died young. Those characters got reused a lot, mostly because the character hadn't had a chance to grow beyond an archetype.

My brother has a handful of beloved PCs from inactive campaigns, and he isn't particularly reluctant to create an alternate universe version of them. And that's how he approaches it: the basic personality is the same, the name is the same to help remember that, but this Paladin isn't the same as that Paladin and has never been to that city before, or whatever.

[Darth Credence]

About the only way I would reuse a character is if they died early in a different campaign, and even then I don't think it would end up being "reusing" the character. Here's a hypothetical example. Say I had started to play Bob the Bard, a charming rogue who lives by his wits and talks his way out of problems as much as possible, and at level 2 he couldn't talk his way out of being crushed in a landslide. I may play a bard again, and he may again be a charming rogue, and he might even be named Bob. But I wouldn't just keep the stat rolls, and I would be unlikely to get the same skills all around.
I think this may come down to how I approach the game. There are optimized builds out there, and I absolutely understand why people play them. If I'm playing an MMO, I would play an optimized build, because it's about the only way that you can play the game at the higher levels. But when I play a pen and paper RPG, I'm much more about making a character that I can connect with and playing them as I see them. So the original Bob the Bard, or BtB1, may have been from a large city, was the son of a famous bard who ran the school for bards, and had been learning this stuff all his life. That person would have skills that reflect that. Meanwhile, BtB2 is in a different campaign world, without the colleges, so he is a shepherd who plays the lute and sings while he watches the flock. One day, a travelling music troupe comes through town, and he convinces the leader to take him on. Each will have different starting skills, although they may converge more later.
Would that fall under reusing the character? If it did, it would be a 0 on the scale of continuity.

[KillianHawkeye]

I probably wouldn't ever re-use a character that I've played before. I feel like that would blur my memory of the character, and I have plenty of ideas for original characters that I haven't gotten to use yet.

I might make an exception for a character played just once or twice, but I would still change their name and personality and at least some part of their character abilities.

One thing that I have done was imply a familial connection between characters who used similar themes, even when they don't exist in the same universe. My psychic characters usually have the last name 'Lockheart' (after my first two 3e Psions who were cousins) even when they're not D&D characters.

[Nifft]

I would definitely repeat a good concept in a different campaign.

It wouldn't be the same character, but it might be informed by a previous character.

Especially when I think it was a good concept, but it didn't work well in play -- making it again would help test that hypothesis, and tell me if the previous failure was about the environment, or about the concept not being as good as I'd thought.

[Man on Fire]

Cleric in my current party literally had moved the same familiar from all his dnd characters, from his pathfinder wizard to numenera to his current Cleric in Forgotten Realms.

[Zhorn]

I would still change their name and personality and at least some part of their character abilities.

I would say the moment you change their name and personality, it's no longer the same character., even if the race and class were left the same.

[Ignimortis]

I've reused one of my SR characters twice - in halves. Allyson Kyren №1 had a very similar build and the same general role (street samurai) to Allyson Kyren №2, but there were a lot of core differences, personality- and backstory-wise, and Ally №1's backstory and personality instead went to a decker called Cori. Sadly, neither really got played enough to play out satisfactorily (I'd say that Allyson №2 was about 30% into her character arc by the time the game got cancelled, just as it was getting really good), and I figure I might never play them again, unless I blatantly remake them for another setting or another SR game.

[Chijinda]

I've reused two of my characters. One a Dragonborn Paladin of Thor that was in a campaign that only lasted four sessions. He was a huge break from my usual archetype of character (I usually play reclusive introverts who hate being in the limelight, this guy was the largest ham I could manage and did not know the definition of "indoor voice"), who I've recently recycled for a Tyranny of Dragons campaign.

The other was a Human Druid freedom fighter who was in a campaign that crashed and burned after only three sessions, and whom I would still very much love to use in another campaign someday, as I had a ton of fun playing him, and he's probably become one of my favorite characters I've used (despite still falling into that "reclusive introvert" stereotype). Sadly his second campaign also died, due to player/GM issues.... again. Hopefully the third time I'll actually get to complete his story arc, if I ever get a chance to use him again. Campaign he's in always seems to die, just as he's starting to come out of his shell.

[Quertus]

I absolutely take characters from one game, and play them in another.

No single GM is able to be good at delivering every kind of content. To fill out my "bingo card" of "things I care about", I *have to* play the same character under multiple GMs. And it is important to me that all that learning and growth be the same character, part of the same continuity.

But… I'm not sure how to apply that to the "sliding scale of continuity". Some GMs, you miss a single session, and you're lost; others, you could play session 3 & session 15, and be fine. So… I think that this is more a measure of the campaign than the character?

I will, however, reuse charcter names / concepts, and create completely alternate reality versions with 0 continuity - such as using the name "Quertus" for this account, or as my Wizard in Dark Souls. Not really something I do in RPGs, though: why would I waste time playing an alternate reality Khan? Why would that ever be preferable to continuing the tale of the *real* Khan?

EDIT: oh, right: stories.

Spoiler: stories

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Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has saved over 100 worlds from "end of the world" scenarios. He had explored countless worlds from numerous realities. These days, my very Epic Wizard prefers to explore other worlds from the comfort of his bed, via Lucid Dreaming.

About 99.9% of Vinnie's gaming career was spent in the paradise known as Ravenloft. They had *food* and *water* and *forests* - so much better than Not!Athas that Vinnie called home. Unable to phase him, I finally had Ravenloft kick him out as the only way to make him depressed. Queue as spin-off, where I played his daughter, searching for her father, and for artifacts to bring him back home to happy, happy Ravenloft.

Armus… well, he broke a Staff of the Magi & traveled to several different worlds just in his *backstory*, so joining a rotating GM game where he was yanked about to various worlds was pretty par for the course.

[The Fury]

There have been a few characters that I would like to revisit in future campaigns. That said, it's very rare that I get the chance to play in the same setting multiple times. Even when I've been in groups where there was a consistent DM that ran multiple campaigns in the same setting, it was always in a different time period, different region of the campaign world, or the player party being explicitly part of a different faction.

Functionally, when a campaign ends my character dies. Especially true given how I run my characters now-- I try to make the setting inform their backstory and personality as possible. This makes trying to slot an old character into a new setting just more trouble than it's worth. I could try making characters that are written loosely enough that they can fit into pretty much everything, but that's just not as interesting for me.

[KillianHawkeye]

I would say the moment you change their name and personality, it's no longer the same character., even if the race and class were left the same.

Kind of my point, tbh.