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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 2417530" data-attributes="member: 25619">Old Characters never die . . .That's what I do too.I take my cue on this from Greyhawk traditions.  Mainstream D&D spells like Tenser's Floating Disk or Bigby's Hand and Mordenkainen's whatever were created by real player characters in Gary Gygax's original campaign, the Greyhawk campaign played in Lake Geneva, WI from the mid-1970s onwards.In the Days of High Adventure (AKA, the early 1980s, the First Edition/AD&D era, the Hair Band era, the Pre-SUV Age), TSR published a booklet called "Rogues Gallery" that gave the stats on a lot of former PC's from Greyhawk, with the specific goal of using them as NPC's.  I did so enthuiastically with a few, like Robilar, and I got ideas from others (like Lizard Man and Centaur PC's are OK).So, my on-going adventures treat old retired PC's as NPC's.  Not every PC gets used, and none of them get played "against character" or in a demeaning way.  They are meant to be retired heroes, paragons for the new heroes to look up to who provide an example, a way to humanize the game, and (as in Austin Powers) a "Basil Exposition" character to explain the world to the PC's in a friendly, trustworthy, but in-character way.I worry less about old players being mad about that (after all, it's flattery), but I do worry a little about the new heroes feeling overshadowed.  I try to avoid that by making sure the new heroes are the heroes.  The old heroes may do things in the background, train new heroes, provide intel/reasons to go on adventures, and even raise dead on occassion, but they won't adventure with the new heroes, and they won't show up to save them . . . though once one of the old heroes flew to the rescue arriving AFTER the PC's had won a titantic battle by their own hands.I have, on one occassion, allowed the transfer of a retired character from another campaign into mine.  They were both Greyhawk campaigns, with a similar level of magic, etc.  That NPC has been played by his old player on occassion, but is normally a colorful bit of background -- one of the guys in a cloak in the inn at the Keep on the Borderlands, who just happens to have WAY more backstory than the average Joe NPC.If a player wanted to use a PC from my campaign in another campaign, I'd be fairly psyched about it, but I'd want to work out how he moved, assuming a more complex explanation than, "Yeah, he walked from Bissel to Greyhawk City" was needed.</blockquote>

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