Had he died in the books first (i.e. had GRRM got that far in writing the bloody things) and stayed dead, nobody would have batted an eyelid when he died in the show. Same as Ned Stark - everyone knew going in that he dies because that's what the book says, so it doesn't come as a big shock when he dies in the show.
That said, I wonder if bringig Snow back to life was, more than anything else, to bail the writers out of a corner they'd written themselves into.
Allegedly, they were operating on what notes GRRM was willing to provide them--and Jon Snow's resurrection is literally something that will have to come up in
the next book because, as of the published books, he has just been killed. It would be extremely odd for some kind of resurrection to be completely ruled out, when GRRM (by the shows' creators own admission) only permitted them to do what they were doing because they correctly ascertained Jon's true parentage--that Eddard Stark was never his father, but rather his
uncle, and that he is actually the son of Eddard's sister, Lyanna, and Rhaegar Targaryen, aka "L+R=J"--making him the true heir to the Iron Throne, and making his romance with Danaerys actually 100% in keeping with the incestuous marriage patterns of the Targaryen dynasty, with Jon being Dany's uncle.
Given all of that--given how important it is to the story that he survive, how much of an outright
disappointing waste it would be for him to remain dead, as he has in fact already died as I'm given to understand--it is exceedingly unlikely that he remains dead. Indeed, even the method of his resurrection, up to some wiggle-room about exactly how his soul gets put back in his body, seems already locked in. He mentions the name of his "wolf" as he dies, "Ghost." He is, almost surely, "warging".
(The vast majority of this is stuff I only know due to the fact that the negative response to the TV show was EVERYWHERE in its final season and I literally couldn't avoid it. I became conversant so I could end the conversations more quickly.)
For me it's close to 100% comparable.
Again: How?
Vladimir Guerrero Jr is currently a very good and quite recognizable baseball player on the Toronto Blue Jays. Should he leave the team next season*, however, I'd keep following the Jays as a team, not him as a player.
Yes, because YOU are not participating as any of those team members.
Do you think
Mr. Guerrero Jr. is going to follow the Blue Jays avidly when he switches to a new team?
Because that's what the player is actually doing. They're
actually one of the players on the team. I would expect them to pay attention to...y'know...the team they're actually ON. And if a player, say, were badly injured and had to retire, do you think they're going to be as avid a follower of that team?
You are, as I said, making this circular. You have inserted the distance, the specific election to focus on team before any possible consideration of person. For TTRPG players,
that cannot happen. You literally don't know anything at all about the team until it happens in-character. Prior to that moment, the one and only thing you know is...your character. You don't even know the world as well as you know your character.
For this analogy to work, you would have to be following a single specific player from high school, through college, and on to them finally joining a professional team, and then,
only then, deciding "actually, all I
really care about is the Blue Jays."
Is that not a pretty substantial leap, to have invested so much time and effort and care into
one singular player, over the course of their extensive pre-professional career....only to then instantaneously switch all of that investment to the first team they happened to join?
And in the end the characters are largely interchangeable within the roles they fill: you've got the fighters who might be Hyperia and Sir Grailen this adventure who then retire or cycle out to be replaced by Melkolf and Perseus next adventure; meanwhile the healer might be Raven this time cycled out for Claire next time; the sneak is Melwen now but she's leaving so Elwyn+ will take her place, and so on - all with the same four players. All those cycled-out characters remain available to come back in later. The party and its story/ies, meanwhile, carry on, even while its internal dynamics change significantly from one adventure to the next.
Again: only if you
presume that the characters are interchangable nothings. Only if you
enforce pawn stance as the only possible way to play.
You are the one forcing this to be true, it's not in any way a requirement, nor is it better for all people that it be so. Demonstrably not, considering the number of people who clearly do not play that way and do not
want to play that way.
Not the same. Movie series like Indiana Jones focus on one key character while everyone around that character comes and goes from one scene or movie to the next. Party-play RPGs do not (or IMO should not) focus on one key character, therefore the "everyone comes and goes" piece now really can mean everyone.
But the only possible thing you can focus on IS a key character, namely
yours, until after a substantial amount of time has passed, at which point your character has integrated into the group. The one and only attachment you have to the world IS your character, you know that character better than you know the color of the world's sky, for goodness' sake! Unless and until you integrate into the group, the character is
all you have.
Your "should not" is for you and you alone. It's not a universal truth. It never should be.
Also, character turnover is useful in that it keeps things interesting and fresh. Playing the same character - or playing with the same character(s) - year after year can get very boring; no matter how entertaining the character is, sooner or later it's time for a refresh.
Most people don't
play "year after year"--because campaigns
don't last that long. You are, as is so often the case, projecting your extremely unusual situation--having had a single cohesive group for multiple decades--onto absolutely everyone and then drawing false conclusions as a result.
