I really mean Player, not their character.
One of my Tuesday Night Group lost a quick, but valiant battle with aggressive stomach cancer. He was only 51, and he had three (thankfully grown) kids, and a wife, who'd been with him, I think, something like 30 years. We'd been gaming together since early 2008, so 17 years of weekly (on average) get-togethers.
I'm really going to miss him.
But I'm not here for sympathy, and in spite of the thread title, I'm not really looking for advice. I'm sure I'll muddle along.
No, instead, I'd like to hear YOUR stories, if you don't mind me dragging you through some potential pain, to find some joy.
My buddy James loved stories, and he didn't let his very bleak diagnosis get him down. I hope I'm half as brave when it's my time.
Anyone want to share? I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's lost a table-mate.)
I had a friend named Bryan. He was autistic and not in great shape and went too early. When we met him, it took our group some time to really figure out how best to play with him. He had a couple of quirks we figured out. While he was laser-focused on loot, he wasn't greedy. It could
seem greedy but it was just a clear thing in the game he could grab onto and so he always asked about loot. Once we figured that out, we had no problem with it. He also had a habit of asking if someone was mad at him even though nothing had happened. It was just a quirk. He'd look at someone and say "are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?" and it really threw people off. When I brought new people into the group, I'd send them an email telling him that this was just a quirk of his and that the right answer was "nope, you're doing fine" and he'd go right back into the game. If we
did have a problem, we'd tell him and he would change and things were good.
He was a real sport, too. Some of our favorite stories were about his characters, like the time, at 1st level, he was playing an aarakokra in a Ghost of Saltmarsh game. He flew to the roof of the mansion in the first adventure, immediately got attacked by a bunch of stirges, dropped to zero, fell to the ground taking a failed death save -- all before the rest of the group had even opened the
gate to the mansion. He had a couple of other characters die, not through any fault of his own really. And he was always a great sport about it, both lamenting his character and laughing about the absurdity of it.
One day he stopped showing up. We tried to reach him but got no reply. I called the cops and they said that he had indeed been found by his family in his apartment. I got in touch with them and went to his funeral. He was well loved by his family and other friends. They were grateful he enjoyed our game -- he had been kicked out of a few others apparently. They mentioned how much the game mattered to him and we were happy to have shared those times with him.
I learned a lot from Bryan and shared a lot of great memories with him and our group. It's been about three years now I think but we still talk about him.