D&D General Characters With Unfinished Business

[Dragonhelm]

In another thread, I questioned whether or not to leave my friend's Spelljammer game. I decided to do the smart thing and leave. While I don't regret that decision, I am a bit sad because I loved my character and he will not see the story to fruition.

The story revolved around assembling the Rod of Seven Parts and defeating Vecna. This is a homebrew story that has nothing to do with Vecna: Eve of Ruin.

So my beloved character has seen five pieces gathered, with two to go. And now I won't see the end.

It occurs to me that this situation is common enough. So I'm wondering, how do you all handle having a character with an unfinished story?

 

[sevenbastard]

Most of us will die with unfinished buisness.

Its just how the world works.

But i have a few charachter over the last 40+ years that stick with me. I dont do anything special just remience every now and then.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Become the forever DM and never have to deal with the problem to begin with.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Become the forever DM and never have to deal with the problem to begin with

 

[Artamo]

To me, it’s no different from giving PCs a coda in even a completed campaign, which is a recommendation I’ve seen a lot. Write for yourself a short little story of what happened and how the story ended.

 

[payn]

I live for the moment. If a character ends without an ending, that's fine by me, off to the next adventure.

There have been a few concepts I haven't been able to bring to life, and those ill try again when the opportunity presents itself.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back in 2e, when I moved away from my gaming group, I ended the campaign with the party closing their bar up and going out to search for the one PC's missing father. Sometimes it's okay to end the story on a mystery. Something that hints at having one more adventure to tell, even if you never get to it.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm with @payn, I'm very much a "live in the moment" guy. I'm also not someone who is particularly interested in how stories end; I find the beginning and the middle much more interesting.

It's why I'm not bothered that authors like Rothfuss and Martin will never finish their book series, as an example.

 

[Marc17]

If you have the contact info for the DM, send them email and see if you can get a write up of what happened after you left, or what happened to your character. Sometimes, usually for post end of campaign, we'd just sit down DM and player and work out the character's ending. I still have a college DM who I contact occasionally that still has one of my characters (an elf noble) running around in his game world after 30 RL years..

Otherwise, just writing up your own ending works well enough for some people.

 

[Koloth]

Most of my characters have not ended the story. They are standing by in case the game resumes. Most of the time the game is paused for group reasons. GM needs a break. Group suffers enough attrition that continuing isn't worth the effort. Covid. Recently culled about 4" of paper that were mostly copies of past characters. Kept one of each and pitched the rest. Most are kept on computer anyway so printing a paper copy might be possible on the odd chance that particular game resumes. Or a GM says "Bring an existing character." Possible your character, having been separated from its first party might find a second party to resume adventuring on a different quest. Not all games have to start with beginning characters.