NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 8957661" data-attributes="member: 16586">For what it's worth I personally do not experience much of a sense of loss when I lose a character I am playing. Losing something they care about (a loved one, a relationship, their sense of their own virtue) will tend to impact me a lot more emotionally because I get to experience it through the character. Once I know I am no longer playing a character I simply move onto the next one. I mean I will eventually reminisce about their journey at some later point, but in the moment the impact of the loss will not really hit in the same way it would if I were watching a TV show.What does happen is needing to find a new frame of reference / new creative connections to the game. It's kind of like hitting the reset button. It's kind of exciting actually. I have to create a character worth finding out about that asks questions about the setting we don't know, that provokes us to find out more about the other characters. Then we all need to do the creative work necessary to pull this new character in, establish new relationships between the player characters, integrate them into the lives of established NPCs, etc.  We have to see if the new alchemy works.After finishing the 4 month "first season" of our L5R game I have a bit of an interesting set of decisions to make with the other players when we start back up. Bayushi Haruka's dramatic needs were answered when he chose family over clan by slaying his former daimyo and childhood friend, Bayushi Midori. There's just not much left there so I have to consider playing a different character when we get back to it. But that leaves a lot of questions open. Haruka's mother, Bayushi Akiara, is romantically entangled with his much older best friend Mirumoto Kusunoki (one of the other PCs). Haruka and Mirumoto Ryu (the other PC) also have a strong rivalry as duelists and both have strong connections to the Kakita family. A new character would bring in new connections, a new alchemy. Continuing to play Haruka would require new questions to answer. New dramatic needs to resolve.Part of the reason I tend to view things the way that I do is that any character that is played will be dramatically changed over the course of our games and we do 4-6 month "seasons" alternating between games run by different GMs. We just finished up our first season of L5R. Next a different GM is taking over for a 3-4 month Seventh Sea game. Then I'll be doing a short run of Stonetop or Dishonored. Then back for the second season of our Exalted game.</blockquote>

Verification