If you replace every plank and nail in a ship...

[Merkuri]

A party of PCs is going through the World's Largest Dungeon. If each original member of the party dies and is replaced by a new character so that the party now contains none of its original members or equipment, is it still the same party?

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I guess it really depends on what the characters want. Sure, all the original members might be dead, but Billy the Wizard, who was the first extended member of the group, may have been good friends with Jim the Fighter, a founding member, and perhaps he convinces the group to maintain the original name, charter, etc.

 

[Agent Oracle]

depends on the speed at which they were replaced:

For example: TPK? = totally new party. (poor schmucks)

We lost part (x) here and part there? = time for the original party to fill in the following party. the group is the same, even if the last founder is dead.

 

[Lanefan]

TPK = new party, as someone else mentioned; assuming no knowledge of previous party until finding their rotting corpses...

If changeover happened a bit at a time, then same party.

Lanefan

 

[Crothian]

I think it depends on the goals of the party, as long as it is the same then it is the same party.

 

[BlackMoria]

Depends. What defines the party? Its members, its compostion or its purpose.

If it is members, the party is not the same as the original members are dead.

If it is composition, the party can or will not be the same party depending if the capabilities of the party is more or less the same as the original party.

If it is the same goal or purpose, the party is the same, despite the loss of the original members, as long as the goal or purpose hasn't changed.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Probably yes. Sociology has show that a social group is more than the individuals. There are norms, traditions, processes, methods, and so on that are accepted by the members and define how they relate to each other and to the outside world. If these survive, I would say that it is the same group.

An interesting example of this was an experiment done on a group of gorillas. A group of gorillas was in a cage and some food was placed (IIRC) at the top of some stairs, but if any gorilla tried to get the food, all the gorillas in the cage got zapped. They learned this very quickly and any gorilla that strayed too close to the zap location got dogpiled by the rest of the gorillas. The experimenters then replaced the gorillas in the group one by one. Of course the new gorilla would try to get the food and be summarily dogpiled by the rest. The interesting thing was that the behavior continued even once all of the gorillas that had experienced a zap were removed. The behavior had become a group norm even though none of them knew why.

This may be a more serious answer than you were looking for, but I think this is awfully interesting stuff.

 

[Allandaros]

It can well be. Anyone familiar with the Black Company novels? The mercenary company the books center around, the Black Company, is generations old. It's forgotten much of its past, because the Annals detailing where it came from ("We're the Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. What the hell's Khatovar?") have been lost.

Continuity can still exist even though the old members are all dead and rotting bones.

 

[Eridanis]

Same party! If I have my history right, the U.S. Army Rangers have been around since the Revolutionary War; are you going to tell a Ranger that he's not a "real" Ranger because the last original soldier died two hundred years ago? I dare you.

 

[Mark CMG]

A party of PCs is going through the World's Largest Dungeon. If each original member of the party dies and is replaced by a new character so that the party now contains none of its original members or equipment, is it still the same party?

I have an RHoD game going where one of the first characters died and took over an NPC that has been with the group from day one. That NPC-turned-PC is now the only original member of the group and the player of the NPC-turned-PC is the only original player, too. It feels like a different game than that which was started six months ago.