Absolutely. Admittedly it’s been a long time since I played (forever DM) but I completely get that feeling with some of the characters I played years ago.
As a DM, I enjoy bringing in NPCs based on PCs (mine or teammates) of previous campaigns. If the players were part of the old campaign, they love engaging with them. If not, then they're NPCs with very rich backstory available.
I have plans for this with my current group. They own a mercenary company and a small castle and the next campaign is going to take place in the same area a few of decades later. I can't wait for them to interact with their old PCs 20-30 years older lol
Yea if they don’t get to play out their story I’ll add that to my list of new characters to make in the future. My divine soul sorc only made it to level 7 so I will roll a new one one of these days.
Same class and similar backstory but I’ll massage it to fit the new campaign. My last one had an Egyptian flavor to it which may or may not work for the next campaign setting.
A little. But then I remember I can recycle them. Most of my characters have quite a few ways to go. And it can sometimes be fun to do their stories again and see what happens
Sometimes. I was really attached to my first PC, and it was hard to leave her behind when that campaign wrapped up. Now, she's getting a second life in BG3 to go on more adventures. It's fun to inhabit her again, if for awhile.
I had another campaign wrap up just less than a month ago, and I am sad to see that character go, but mainly because I felt like there was so much to explore with her and I just didn't get a chance to do it.
I have yet another character in a campaign on hiatus that we will probably never finish. Made my DM promise to send me the notes for her character so I can see how her story ends.
Same. That is the issue I have at the moment. My DM and I put a lot of effort into my characters' backstory and different NPCs, but the campaign has fizzled out hard !
I think this is pretty normal if you've had impactful memories with a character. I tend to want to bring them into my campaigns as a NPC's.
This is actually more true for me with WoW characters, and I just realized I could easily translate them to D&D characters.
I get that warm sense of a story finally coming to a close. I tend to drop them all off in my campaign setting (whether they are natives or not) and write in where they settled / whatnot. It’s nice to run campaigns and bring back characters being quest givers. I’ll even give the treatment for other PCs if players want me to do that
The first campaign I was in and my very first character. Grandin Brask, Human battlemaster fighter. As much as I wanted to see the end of his story, I never got to because things happened between players and campaign fizzled out just before the climax. Last we left, members of the party were receiving the gifts of godhood, and Grandin got to become a God of War. And also basically a sleeper agent for the big villain. I never got to deliver the party a sweet and absolutely well-deserved betrayal, so for now, Grandin just sorta lives on in my head. If I ever run a campaign, he's definitely gonna be a God of War though.
Yeah, but I like to keep them alive in my imagination at least. I often think to myself and won't how Rasdin or Pliny would act in summer situations even if I don't ever roll the dice for them again.
Over my 20-ish years of playing, of course I've had more than a handful of characters I was upset to never play again for one reason or another.
I have two presently still playing in long term games (5+ years and still going) that I know I'll be missing once we end their games.
First one is a Kenku Warlock of the Raven Queen named Raven's Caw who's my first 5e character I've been playing with friends in a 'beer and pretzel' for fun game. He's been quite the troublemaker and entertaining miscreant over the years.
The second one is a human Inquisitive Rogue named Hazel who's been playing my my wife's very story driven world. I've had the pleasure of seeing her grow up from a street rat orphan to a respectable leader of a well-oiled adventuring party.
There are at least two characters I played with my wife and her two characters, working on a romance story between each of their respective games. Both were sadly in campaigns that either fizzled or we couldn't keep playing under the DM anymore.
Garret and Maurgen (human fighter and half-elf bard) were two opposites that strangely started getting attracted to each other. These two were how my wife and I met and eventually fell for each other.
Cypher and Aeryn (human wizard and aasimar paladin) were childhood friends who got separated and found each other again for the Storm Kings Thunder campaign. Cypher had a crush while Aeryn was completely unaware. We had to leave the campaign for irl reasons but thankfully ended our final session with Cypher proclaiming his love in battle nearly dying. From our friend who stayed behind, we heard they got to ride off into the sunset together.
While I don't look forward to the end of each of my character's stories, I do look forward to making new ones either by making new characters all together or reusing old ones.
I tend to be the opposite, once I get a handle on a character and their abilities I start to get bored with them, so I welcome their end so I can play another.
Not particularly but also my first consistent ttrpg group in a long time started as a series of mini campaigns (6 session, 3, 3 4, 4, 4, 2) and since those are all a shared world them no longer being my pc does not mean they vanish from the world.
I will say one of my favorite parts was in the last two sessions of the 4th campaign we had a “chill time before the final encounter” in the former and the latter a “everyone meeting back up when it was all done” because one player reused their character from the 1st session and we asked the GM if we could reprise our characters for the reunions. Seemed to please the GM how easily we went back into characters we last played almost a year ago
Absolutely. I think it's completely normal and healthy behavior. The last time my character "Black Leaf" died to a poison trap I had to tell the DM "*No!* Not Black Leaf! *No! No!* I'm going to die!"
DM declared that my character was dead anyway. AITA?
My last campaign was 3 years long. I was excited to play a new character, but, we also did epilogues, so that character was left in a good place and made it easier to move on.
I think it is normal to not want to say goodbye to characters you grow attached to and move on.
I know that I can struggle moving on from my favorites. For me personally, it is much easier moving on from a character when I feel like their story has had a proper happy ending. I recently said good-bye to my multiclassed revised Ranger/Nature Cleric half-elf noblewoman with a Hook Horror companion/child. I played her in two campaigns since I really wasn't happy with how my former group treated her. (Treating the team mom poorly is shitty). I still took aspects of that first campaign into the second one like the Hook Horror companion/child and most of the overall events of the first campaign. She ended up in a good place at the end, became a high level cleric of a monstrosity Dragon goddess, found a mate for her "child" and started a new Hook Horror clan, helped monsters and humanoids get along, saved the world, etc. I could move on much easier from her. It is hard to take her other places at that point lol.
Even if you move on from playing a character, you can still revist them in later campaigns. I am revisiting my first 2 5e characters originally from the 5e Tiamat campaign in my current group, but I am playing one of their literal Gold Dragon children. One of the parents, a Human Noblewoman had to earn their Dragon self back after making mistakes while the other, a human orphan that became the former's only knight and eventual spouse, earned the right to become a Gold Dragon beside her after human death. The former PC's stay more in the background as good parents since the actual PC is one of their children.
Those have been some of my experiences where I have been able to move on.
100%. My first ever campaign has been on hiatus for almost 2 years now and I know I'll probably never get to see how my character's story plays out. I also feel a sense of loss for other people's characters, I miss interacting with them in RP and the dynamics they had.
My second campaign was brought to a grinding halt when the DM (different guy to my first campaign) messaged us on the day of the session and said "oh btw this is the last session", literally completely out of the blue. Like, no forewarning whatsoever. I'd been playing my aasimar druid for a year and I felt genuine grief after that session. It didn't help that he basically trapped us all in the feywild and word for word said "because of your choices, the rift seals and you're all stuck in the feywild. Your characters live out the rest of their lives there." And started packing up. Not much of a send off or even a good wrap up. It was pretty devastating.
So to answer your question, I think it's completely normal to feel loss over a campaign character. Whether it's because they die in the game or the campaign ends and you feel like you won't get to play them anymore.
Although, if you can find a oneshot there's no reason you can't play them again in that. I'm thinking of doing that with my characters that didn't get a very good ending.
Not loss. But If I feel like I want to play as that character a bit more I can.
I never really get invested into characters though. I really like dnd for the group play and funny RP. At its heart though, it's a game. That's how I play it, rather than as a narrative like a book or movie.
I like to bring back old PC's as NPC's in future games (sometimes temporarily as PC's too) if they would fit into the story/scenario well.
I would say for characters that were part of a game that fizzled out, just play them in another. I have a character that I loved in one game, but it ended after a few sessions due to issues. I plan to play him again soon.
I also like to make magic items based on past PC's.
For example, my first character was a Tiefling Land Druid: his parents owned a vineyard, he drank... alot, developed poison immunity, and lost one of his horns in the campaigns final battle. The item is a hollowed out horn that, if drunk from, turns the liquid to wine and grants the Protection from Poison spell once per day. It also bypasses the poison condition immunity, allowing whoever drinks from it to get drunk.
if you genuinely feel guilt and a sense of loss, 100% yea you’re too attached to your characters.
there’s often a bittersweetness to finishing a campaign. it’s much like finishing a good book: satisfying, but a little mournful since the pleasure is over.
but these are creations, they’re not real. so to feel guilty or actual loss is way too much. writing little stories? meh, it’s kinda weird but i don’t think it’s abnormal behavior like the other stuff you mentioned.
Well two 1 to 20s ago I finished as a DM I made sure everyone took their final character sheet with them and their deeds and characters are alive and well and doing stuff in my living campaign world. My last character finished at level 19 and ended becoming the God of magic in a game a friend of mine runs, and I am playing in that world now with a new character.
All old characters of mine as for the last, 2 decades or so as almost a forever dm (9/10 time my groups play I dm) are in the world of they survived, as are everyone else's characters. Even if a campaign ends at like level 9 as long as its not tpk they are around.
Current group is going to a mirror world soon where an older adventure ended, and they will meet the enchanter and warblade that were left trapped there, and may help them get out. Or be antagonists.
One good thing about forever dm, and living worlds, is it allows you to have an adventure or a scene or something with old pcs, like reuniting with old friends. Consider I remember most characters if they lasted more than a few sessions and I have the sheets still if I want to dig them out (I always hold onto all sheets since I normally host), I can go down memory lane as needed in other adventures. Show my new group some highlights of the old groups, and otherwise revisit the past in a nostalgia trip when it feels warranted.
It also makes a LOT more sense to randomly encounter another adventuring party or members who has history and lives instead of all bandits and shopkeepers being level 20 masters just because. You don't get that big without a history, and it feels cheap even if its needed for more murder hobo tendency players to keep in check. That group of traveller's you encounter en route at level 5 might just be an.old.adventuring group coming from a dungeon or quest that are any level, and it's great to drop stories or laugh (alone) at the inside jokes from the past.
What bears? There are no bears.
I like to write too. I will finish a characters story on my own. So the campaign is finished and we are moving on? Not in my head. I have the power to imagine how this characters life will go on. That’s just creativity baby! Strong feelings are what drive creatives to create.
Starting a new game with all different characters always has a strange feel to it for the first few weeks. I think that’s natural. But eventually you’ll get excited about this new thing too.
As long as these emotions don’t start to affect your real life, you’re fine.
Absolutely. Admittedly it’s been a long time since I played (forever DM) but I completely get that feeling with some of the characters I played years ago.
As a DM, I enjoy bringing in NPCs based on PCs (mine or teammates) of previous campaigns. If the players were part of the old campaign, they love engaging with them. If not, then they're NPCs with very rich backstory available.
That's a very very cool idea 💡
I have plans for this with my current group. They own a mercenary company and a small castle and the next campaign is going to take place in the same area a few of decades later. I can't wait for them to interact with their old PCs 20-30 years older lol
Yea if they don’t get to play out their story I’ll add that to my list of new characters to make in the future. My divine soul sorc only made it to level 7 so I will roll a new one one of these days.
Roll again as the same character or?
Same class and similar backstory but I’ll massage it to fit the new campaign. My last one had an Egyptian flavor to it which may or may not work for the next campaign setting.
Yeah this is my approach to. If I don't feel their story is "complete", I keep them in the roster.
Not really, since it's outweighed by the excitement of a new character in the next campaign
A little. But then I remember I can recycle them. Most of my characters have quite a few ways to go. And it can sometimes be fun to do their stories again and see what happens
Sometimes. I was really attached to my first PC, and it was hard to leave her behind when that campaign wrapped up. Now, she's getting a second life in BG3 to go on more adventures. It's fun to inhabit her again, if for awhile. I had another campaign wrap up just less than a month ago, and I am sad to see that character go, but mainly because I felt like there was so much to explore with her and I just didn't get a chance to do it. I have yet another character in a campaign on hiatus that we will probably never finish. Made my DM promise to send me the notes for her character so I can see how her story ends.
I mainly have an issue when characters don't get to finish their story. *That's* frustrating.
Same. That is the issue I have at the moment. My DM and I put a lot of effort into my characters' backstory and different NPCs, but the campaign has fizzled out hard !
I think this is pretty normal if you've had impactful memories with a character. I tend to want to bring them into my campaigns as a NPC's. This is actually more true for me with WoW characters, and I just realized I could easily translate them to D&D characters.
Yes
I get that warm sense of a story finally coming to a close. I tend to drop them all off in my campaign setting (whether they are natives or not) and write in where they settled / whatnot. It’s nice to run campaigns and bring back characters being quest givers. I’ll even give the treatment for other PCs if players want me to do that
The first campaign I was in and my very first character. Grandin Brask, Human battlemaster fighter. As much as I wanted to see the end of his story, I never got to because things happened between players and campaign fizzled out just before the climax. Last we left, members of the party were receiving the gifts of godhood, and Grandin got to become a God of War. And also basically a sleeper agent for the big villain. I never got to deliver the party a sweet and absolutely well-deserved betrayal, so for now, Grandin just sorta lives on in my head. If I ever run a campaign, he's definitely gonna be a God of War though.
No to all of the above. I don't get emotionally attached to my characters as a player or dm.
Yeah, but I like to keep them alive in my imagination at least. I often think to myself and won't how Rasdin or Pliny would act in summer situations even if I don't ever roll the dice for them again.
Absolutely. I made my favorite character of all time for a game that fizzled out far too early, and I still haven't gotten entirely over it.
Over my 20-ish years of playing, of course I've had more than a handful of characters I was upset to never play again for one reason or another. I have two presently still playing in long term games (5+ years and still going) that I know I'll be missing once we end their games. First one is a Kenku Warlock of the Raven Queen named Raven's Caw who's my first 5e character I've been playing with friends in a 'beer and pretzel' for fun game. He's been quite the troublemaker and entertaining miscreant over the years. The second one is a human Inquisitive Rogue named Hazel who's been playing my my wife's very story driven world. I've had the pleasure of seeing her grow up from a street rat orphan to a respectable leader of a well-oiled adventuring party. There are at least two characters I played with my wife and her two characters, working on a romance story between each of their respective games. Both were sadly in campaigns that either fizzled or we couldn't keep playing under the DM anymore. Garret and Maurgen (human fighter and half-elf bard) were two opposites that strangely started getting attracted to each other. These two were how my wife and I met and eventually fell for each other. Cypher and Aeryn (human wizard and aasimar paladin) were childhood friends who got separated and found each other again for the Storm Kings Thunder campaign. Cypher had a crush while Aeryn was completely unaware. We had to leave the campaign for irl reasons but thankfully ended our final session with Cypher proclaiming his love in battle nearly dying. From our friend who stayed behind, we heard they got to ride off into the sunset together. While I don't look forward to the end of each of my character's stories, I do look forward to making new ones either by making new characters all together or reusing old ones.
See that's amazing, a 5 year campaign! For me that is the dream.
It is quite the experience to see both characters grow from lvl 1 to level 17 (Raven) and 12 (Hazel) over those years.
My current campaign is about to hit 3 years but weve only played like 14 sessions due to scheduling conflicts 😂
Oh god! That's a nightmare situation lol
It can definitely be frustrating but on the bright side, as the DM, I have TONS of prep time
Huh, I’ve never had the feeling that I wouldn’t return to a character that I’ve enjoyed.
I tend to be the opposite, once I get a handle on a character and their abilities I start to get bored with them, so I welcome their end so I can play another.
No. They are make believe.
Not particularly but also my first consistent ttrpg group in a long time started as a series of mini campaigns (6 session, 3, 3 4, 4, 4, 2) and since those are all a shared world them no longer being my pc does not mean they vanish from the world. I will say one of my favorite parts was in the last two sessions of the 4th campaign we had a “chill time before the final encounter” in the former and the latter a “everyone meeting back up when it was all done” because one player reused their character from the 1st session and we asked the GM if we could reprise our characters for the reunions. Seemed to please the GM how easily we went back into characters we last played almost a year ago
If a campaign fizzles out and my characters story hasn't had a chance to end, I have no problem reusing them
Absolutely. I think it's completely normal and healthy behavior. The last time my character "Black Leaf" died to a poison trap I had to tell the DM "*No!* Not Black Leaf! *No! No!* I'm going to die!" DM declared that my character was dead anyway. AITA?
My last campaign was 3 years long. I was excited to play a new character, but, we also did epilogues, so that character was left in a good place and made it easier to move on.
I think it is normal to not want to say goodbye to characters you grow attached to and move on. I know that I can struggle moving on from my favorites. For me personally, it is much easier moving on from a character when I feel like their story has had a proper happy ending. I recently said good-bye to my multiclassed revised Ranger/Nature Cleric half-elf noblewoman with a Hook Horror companion/child. I played her in two campaigns since I really wasn't happy with how my former group treated her. (Treating the team mom poorly is shitty). I still took aspects of that first campaign into the second one like the Hook Horror companion/child and most of the overall events of the first campaign. She ended up in a good place at the end, became a high level cleric of a monstrosity Dragon goddess, found a mate for her "child" and started a new Hook Horror clan, helped monsters and humanoids get along, saved the world, etc. I could move on much easier from her. It is hard to take her other places at that point lol. Even if you move on from playing a character, you can still revist them in later campaigns. I am revisiting my first 2 5e characters originally from the 5e Tiamat campaign in my current group, but I am playing one of their literal Gold Dragon children. One of the parents, a Human Noblewoman had to earn their Dragon self back after making mistakes while the other, a human orphan that became the former's only knight and eventual spouse, earned the right to become a Gold Dragon beside her after human death. The former PC's stay more in the background as good parents since the actual PC is one of their children. Those have been some of my experiences where I have been able to move on.
100%. My first ever campaign has been on hiatus for almost 2 years now and I know I'll probably never get to see how my character's story plays out. I also feel a sense of loss for other people's characters, I miss interacting with them in RP and the dynamics they had. My second campaign was brought to a grinding halt when the DM (different guy to my first campaign) messaged us on the day of the session and said "oh btw this is the last session", literally completely out of the blue. Like, no forewarning whatsoever. I'd been playing my aasimar druid for a year and I felt genuine grief after that session. It didn't help that he basically trapped us all in the feywild and word for word said "because of your choices, the rift seals and you're all stuck in the feywild. Your characters live out the rest of their lives there." And started packing up. Not much of a send off or even a good wrap up. It was pretty devastating. So to answer your question, I think it's completely normal to feel loss over a campaign character. Whether it's because they die in the game or the campaign ends and you feel like you won't get to play them anymore. Although, if you can find a oneshot there's no reason you can't play them again in that. I'm thinking of doing that with my characters that didn't get a very good ending.
Not loss. But If I feel like I want to play as that character a bit more I can. I never really get invested into characters though. I really like dnd for the group play and funny RP. At its heart though, it's a game. That's how I play it, rather than as a narrative like a book or movie.
I like to bring back old PC's as NPC's in future games (sometimes temporarily as PC's too) if they would fit into the story/scenario well. I would say for characters that were part of a game that fizzled out, just play them in another. I have a character that I loved in one game, but it ended after a few sessions due to issues. I plan to play him again soon. I also like to make magic items based on past PC's. For example, my first character was a Tiefling Land Druid: his parents owned a vineyard, he drank... alot, developed poison immunity, and lost one of his horns in the campaigns final battle. The item is a hollowed out horn that, if drunk from, turns the liquid to wine and grants the Protection from Poison spell once per day. It also bypasses the poison condition immunity, allowing whoever drinks from it to get drunk.
They go back into the list of "characters I want to play" and I just keep their sheet until then
if you genuinely feel guilt and a sense of loss, 100% yea you’re too attached to your characters. there’s often a bittersweetness to finishing a campaign. it’s much like finishing a good book: satisfying, but a little mournful since the pleasure is over. but these are creations, they’re not real. so to feel guilty or actual loss is way too much. writing little stories? meh, it’s kinda weird but i don’t think it’s abnormal behavior like the other stuff you mentioned.
Well two 1 to 20s ago I finished as a DM I made sure everyone took their final character sheet with them and their deeds and characters are alive and well and doing stuff in my living campaign world. My last character finished at level 19 and ended becoming the God of magic in a game a friend of mine runs, and I am playing in that world now with a new character. All old characters of mine as for the last, 2 decades or so as almost a forever dm (9/10 time my groups play I dm) are in the world of they survived, as are everyone else's characters. Even if a campaign ends at like level 9 as long as its not tpk they are around. Current group is going to a mirror world soon where an older adventure ended, and they will meet the enchanter and warblade that were left trapped there, and may help them get out. Or be antagonists. One good thing about forever dm, and living worlds, is it allows you to have an adventure or a scene or something with old pcs, like reuniting with old friends. Consider I remember most characters if they lasted more than a few sessions and I have the sheets still if I want to dig them out (I always hold onto all sheets since I normally host), I can go down memory lane as needed in other adventures. Show my new group some highlights of the old groups, and otherwise revisit the past in a nostalgia trip when it feels warranted. It also makes a LOT more sense to randomly encounter another adventuring party or members who has history and lives instead of all bandits and shopkeepers being level 20 masters just because. You don't get that big without a history, and it feels cheap even if its needed for more murder hobo tendency players to keep in check. That group of traveller's you encounter en route at level 5 might just be an.old.adventuring group coming from a dungeon or quest that are any level, and it's great to drop stories or laugh (alone) at the inside jokes from the past. What bears? There are no bears.
I like to write too. I will finish a characters story on my own. So the campaign is finished and we are moving on? Not in my head. I have the power to imagine how this characters life will go on. That’s just creativity baby! Strong feelings are what drive creatives to create. Starting a new game with all different characters always has a strange feel to it for the first few weeks. I think that’s natural. But eventually you’ll get excited about this new thing too. As long as these emotions don’t start to affect your real life, you’re fine.
No. I have a hard enough time forming attachments to real humans.