Conceding the character is an option; and in the OP's case might even lead to his retired character becoming a foe to the party - he knows what they're like, and what they're capable of doing if not stopped!
I specifically asked that this not happen. A) I don’t want to cause more trouble and B) I don’t want to fight my old character.
We talked out that my character would return to his community with the information he has gathered (which was a significant religious discovery already) and work on strengthening his community and building up a force to go forth and save the Goddesses that have been trapped. Unless they seek out my character (which frankly, I doubt any of them who are left would have bothered to remember where my home was) he isn’t going to run into the party again.
but again you decide how much of a hypocrite your character is. You also get to decide if you are going to think "Hey maybe I was wrong to lay into my squire, things can be WAY more complicated than black and white" You don't even need to retcon then, just have the character grow.
But I can never decide that they are not a hypocrite? I can decide for them to be a little hypocrite or a big hypocrite, but they must absolutely be a hypocrite. That isn’t a whole lot of choice?
And yeah, things are more complicated than Black and White, I totally get that. I never raised a fuss when they stole a journal off of another NPC, despite the fact she was going to bury it with its owner as part of his last wishes. However, I did raise objections to slavery, torture, and murder. I don’t want my character to growth to be, “Ok, I can accept that you were in a bad mood and so murdering that woman was totally justified” which is exactly an argument that was posed when my character left the party. The murderer was upset, the woman attacked him when we broke into her home with no warning, and so he killed her. And then killed her again when I tried to bring her back to life, and I was the one who was in the wrong. I was the one being unreasonable and needed to change my actions to make it work with the party. I needed to accept and rationalize the murder of a scared woman because she didn’t get out of our way fast enough.
As you should...this game is played by humans who make believe... if you really can't imagine a scenario where your character works with the others you have to make believe a new character...
I'm a writer too (You should check out my YouTube channel sometime I talk all about stories and story telling) I agree that a character has internal logic...but writing a story is VERY different than a game. You are not the only writer, but one of many here.
And I am making a new character, but I guess this is what bugs me more than anything.
I never changed my stances, and I tried so many times to work with them, but they kept going further and further down the path. For no reason at all, they decided to start going with more and more evil and quick answers to problems that didn’t exist.
The party changed around me, and never once did they acknowledge my character’s point of view. The closest I got to a concession is that of disgust at me being unreasonable.
I know, I didn’t change and that’s the problem, but they knew exactly what kind of character I had and had no problem with him at session 1, by session 15 I was butting heads, and now he’s leaving the party because both him and me can no longer stand it.
I should have changed, I should have become a hypocrite, I should make a new character, I should, I should, I should
But where was their responsibility in all this?
If you have a cleric in the party, shouldn’t you not desecrate a shrine to their god?
If you have a good character in the party, shouldn’t maybe hold off on the random murder?
Heck, I know for a fact out of character, that one of the other characters was explicitly trying to murder my character because we got into a fight over destroying something. Long story short after fighting and this guy throwing me into some mutagenic ooze that might have killed me, I cured him of lycanthropy against his will. We have another person who is a werewolf in the party, so it’s not like he couldn’t have gotten it again if he wanted it, unlike my character being permanently altered, and his character is so against people telling him what to do that he told me if he ever diagreed with me again I’d have to just step back and let him do what he wanted with no objections, or he would kill me. When I refused and cured him, he started hatching murder plots against my character like giving me a fake potion of Water Breathing when we were down in an underwater temple.
But I needed to be the one to give and change my character and not make any objections.
Like I said, this is mostly just a rant and venting space for me. I don’t want to leave the game, I like the guys, and I’ve made a character who could not care less what they do, so they are free to screw up as many situations as they like now, but it still is aggravating. (The woman they killed in the session where my cleric left, she was the only living person in the house, and the only one with the information we needed. We’d have hit a brick wall if I hadn’t brought her back to life so we could talk to her, and they killed her again afterwards just because essentially)