What do your Heroes do when they Retire?

[Dark Jezter]

Watch daytime TV and yell at kids who step on their lawn.

 

[painandgreed]

The one character I've had "retire" settled down to his keep and lands and let his son continue adventuring. He came out of retirement every now and then for more important stuff like invading armies from other countries and liches impersonating the good king.

Editted to add:
Nope, I've had one other adventurer retire after long campaign. I played him on in a private session with the DM after the campaign was over. He was a 17th level thief (several levels from end-of-campaign AD&D encounter where we killed Iuz) and switched to magic-user, invested his money in shipping, got married and had kids. Investments did alright but he had to brew potions to make ends meet. Eventually the DM had me roll my life span which led to an emergency and I had to go back to another old PC, the party magic-user, for help on my deathbed. Tired with married life I drank a couple of potions of longevity, grabbed my adventuring equipment and prepared to fake my death. We polymorphed a sheep into my character and tried to kill it. It made really good rolls and when even pushing it from the top of the wizard tower didn't do it in the magic-user just Power Word Killed it. After I took off, another PC who wasn't in on the secret reincarnated it and brought the sheep back as an elf. It was sort of a dumb elf and the wizard just shrugged and told the reincarnating PC "sometimes these things fail".

 

[isoChron]

My knight wanted to start horse breeding (good war horses) and already had some horses (tournament winnings) and a piece of land. But shortly before the whole group retired he got killed. Now his widow runs the farm...

 

[Ranger REG]

I dunno, man. My first ranger left me high and dry. He said something about taking a long cruise on one of them luxury liners. I know he was forced into retirement when he can no longer kill giants like he used to (he's a 1e character).

 

[The Shaman]

My only character to survive to retirement was a 1e ranger and his followers who settled in a forest, keeping it as a sort of wildlife preserve. They cleared out all of the undead and humanoids, established a druid's grove, and kept a close watch on the monster populations, preserving enough to maintain an ecological balance. The character didn't have any sort of stronghold or other permanent residence, preferring to sleep under the stars or taking shelter in a cave or the hollow of a big tree during inclement weather.

There were two other characters that I would've liked to carry forward that far, but both campaigns folded before we reached that point.

 

[Turjan]

We polymorphed a sheep into my character and tried to kill it. It made really good rolls and when even pushing it from the top of the wizard tower didn't do it in the magic-user just Power Word Killed it. After I took off, another PC who wasn't in on the secret reincarnated it and brought the sheep back as an elf. It was sort of a dumb elf and the wizard just shrugged and told the reincarnating PC "sometimes these things fail".

That's just hilarious ! How did the sheep/elf communicate?

 

[Aust Diamondew]

They usually either die before retirement or don't retire (till they die).
Characters who have retired have gone to leave productive lives as monarchs, college presidents, people with ridiculous amounts of wealth or simply disappearing never to be heard from again and in the case of a very old and experienced orc barbarian becoming a librarian.

 

[shilsen]

That's just hilarious ! How did the sheep/elf communicate?

Baaaaa - dly?

 

[tetsujin28]

Retire? They die with swords in their hands.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Rule kingdoms.

I don't think I've seen a single character retire who hasn't ruled some sort of kingdom or empire.