27 Character Sheets
In a fit of girly-ness this evening, I watched 27 Dresses. I’m guessing that many of you either haven’t seen this movie or saw it under duress with your significant other. And I’m also guessing that you’re just waiting to see how I’m going to connect this to gaming. And here it is:
About half-way through the movie, Jane comes to realize that she must discard the baggage in her past (in the form of 27 dresses) in order to move on. And I got to thinking that as you move on to a new character, it becomes very important to dump the baggage of your old characters.
You have to let your old characters retire gracefully. If you let the memories of your previous character dictate your new character, you may attempt the Mark 2, a re-creation of the character concept, because you are sure you can do it better this time. Or, in the event things didn’t turn out the way you planned, you may create the antithesis, trying to create your new character as different as possible.
I’m not always good about letting past character retire, but I do try to keep my characters separate, at least in my own mind. For me, it helps to have a developed back story; it’s easier to keep everyone separate if they all had different stories.
What techniques do you use to move on from your old character(s)?
I’d tend to agree – a good backstory and a strong sense of the character really help to keep characters separated, even if they have superficial similarities.
Changing systems or DMs between campaigns helps too, as a character type that works in one may be completely out of place in the next. For some reason I’ve been in a lot of games that just petered out after a couple of sessions (our group was bad for follow-through) and it’s been very tempting to use again a character that didn’t have a fair shake – but usually they were so tied to the game they were created for that they just didn’t fit in another one.
That being said I have actually played the same character through 3 separate campaigns (same DM, same system, different groups) with skills/etc…. slightly tailored to each and it was pretty cool to be able to just keep developing the character. 🙂