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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 1638181" data-attributes="member: 5122">IMO, the responsibility for believable, relatively quick, and death-free integration of a new or replacement PC is split almost evenly among the DM, the current players, and the new players.The DM must provide the new player with enough guidance that he can create a character that can integrate with the group, and has the motivation to join them.  Additionally, the DM needs to manipulate the situation such that the new PC has a nearly immediate chance to prove his worth.The new player must be willing to be flexible in the type of PC played, and even in that PC's personality.  Loners don't work.  (Why the hell do some players absolutely insist on playing lone wolves, anyway?)  Psychos don't work.  In a group of elves, maybe a drow (or even a half-drow) doesn't work.The current players must be willing to find IC reasons to accept the new PC, although, as someone said, the process need not be painless.Perhaps the best example from literature of this (were it an RPG) is D'Artagnan's introduction to Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.  The DM has helped him create a character and a history that fits with the group.  The new player has created a PC who, though a hothead, desperately wishes to belong to the group the other PCs belong to.  The current players, rather than immediately run the young rake through, posture and sputter and delay ("until we can safely duel outside the city gates") and basically give good RP long enough for the DM to introduce the Cardinal's Guard, giving the new PC a chance to prove himself.It's a fine line to walk.  The situation in The Gamers, like most of the others, is funny because it bears such a close relationship to one way things might work out if the DM and players are lazy.</blockquote>

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