Game Wish 72: Characterus Interruptus

Game WISH is back. WISH 72: Character Interruptus asks:

Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone?

Most of the longer-running RPG campaigns have folded before reaching any kind of conclusion; sadly it seems par for the course, especially for online (PBEM or PBMB) games. I'm not really an immersive player, so I tend not to play characters with deep, dark secrets or unresolved psychological issues. Instead when a game folds I'm disappointed in not finding out how the story was supposed to end. For instance, the Castle Falkenstein game running on the late lamented RPGAMES forum we never solved the mystery of what the Prussian baron in Zwickau was up to, and missed out on the masqued ball, in which my character, Arthur Trevithick, was to attend dressed as a bear. (Does this mean I'm a closet furry? Oh No!) Similarly, we never reached the final showdown with the lich archmage in the epic Spelljammer Vikings in Space game when the campaign suffered Death by Opera (it's a long story). But I can't say either character was unfulfilled; both had a long enough run, especially Mudgard the Norse Paladin, since Vikings ran for several years.

Of games that ended too soon, I've already mentioned Karl Tolhurst of Ümläüt several times before, as well as the fact that I resurrected him for another, quite different game. Two other characters I'd really liked to have played for longer were my two characters in different In Nomine games, Jack the Cherub of Jean, and Ed Cragentinny the Ofanite of Jean. Sadly both games folded before I could really develop either of them. Jack was about to cause trouble in New York by summoning his superior. There were plenty of other games that never really got started, such as Traveller Sword-Worlder Þorkell. One real disappointment was Lucanus, one of my early online PCs. I joined an established Runequest game in which I'd been lurking for some time, only for the game to fold almost immediately when two other players dropped out.

I could also mention a few player characters in games I GMed where their players faded away. From my Kalyr games, I had a lot of plans for Lan, the escaped human gladiator sold into slavery after having an affair with daughter of a powerful kandar noble. This including a reunion scene with the now pregnant young noble, herself exiled due to her disgrace. Similarly I had quite a bit planned for Karela the noble assassin, and Kolath the somewhat mentally unstable legionnaire. I find dealing with dangling plot threads when players drop out to be a major headache for an online GM, one reason some ex-PCs such as Iodeth and Kylar continue in the game as NPCs.