Anyway, when I take over for DMing from Xtian in a couple weeks, my character will be taking a break to find himself. He was dead for a bit there, then got better (long story), but ever since has been somewhat uncaring about real world issues and has only been concerned with having a good time, drinking himself silly, and flirting with every woman he sees. But he has come to realise that with a war on, the heavens in conflict, death and demons walking around unchallenged on the earth, that he has to become the hero he was before he died.

Now, in real life, my RPing has slipped, and I fell into the cheap and easy of taking his previous traits of carousing and making them the only thing there is to him (he is part satyr after all). Now I have thought about it and have brought my RPing back to snuff, but I like the idea of him having to take a retreat to find himself after his death experience. And, conveniently, I am the next DM. So he would have to sit anyway.

I am the GM in the current adventure. The party got some plot hooks from a fevered servant of the goddess of fate. While the party went to follow the hooks, my character (a worshiper of the goddess) volunteered to stay behind to care for the sick priest and forward any new prophecies or insights. On-demand deus ex machina, wutwut!

When I took on the game, the PC’s decided to leave the city to its fate and sailed out of town. After a single session at sea with my PC they fought a rival pirate and captured his ship and encountered bad weather, I put the party to the question of where and what to do next (I offered them many hooks via the boat captain). The party decided to head to back to the mainland to explore rumors of a hobgoblin army amassing nearby.

When they got onto shore, my own PC settled his account with the party, took his share of the loot and with some funds aquired through nefarious means in the prior city, purchased the newly captured pirate vessel. The PC I had been playing had an ulterior motive for being in the city to begin with, and this allowed me to play out this plot line sans the party but allow my former PC to advance in level. There was never any concern that the PC would return as a PC, but this gave me flexibility to explain any levels he might have gained if they encounter him as an NPC later on.

As mentioned, switching or adjusting characters is an additional benefit of writing them into trouble. After starting a new campaign with 4E, the first levels have brought out how a certain class or race plays out and some changes have been done… My warlock character coming out of his coma as a swordmage was the most radical change – this worked surprisingly well plot-wise, as well as planting a lot of new adventure seeds.

I had to write myself out of the campaign once, but permanently, as we were changing DMs for good. My character faded and returned to her knightly order in a far away town. I then had some email updates about the bad guys sending assassins to kill the party and my old character was the first one they found. So, she died a messy ignoble death in order to up the tension for the rest of the party.

TMan

Our campaign was a very plane hopping thing, beginning on a desert world, fleeing on a spell jamming ship, landing in Faerun, and eventually getting sucked into Ravenloft. Often we’d move to the next world after only one or two GMs had run in the current setting. (And no, there wasn’t much of an overall plot, though each story arc was usually strong and coherent.)

The benefit of doing this is that, as in the case of the second Warlock, if the player wants to change characters, he can kill off his old one off-screen, and the new guy can waltz right in.

Only problem? Due to the fact that there are nine of us at most, we tend to butcher most encounters. The first GM tried increasing the number of monsters, with no effect, leading to 100 zombies getting slaughtered by a party of six, sans Fighter but including two fire-specialised Wizards. The second tended to soup-up encounters (since we were three levels higher than the minimum, this wasn’t too hard). The third uses some terrifically lucky dice (in the last session, he rolled SIX CRITS on me. Oh, and a 19.), but otherwise does nothing (we’re the perfect level at last, having two or three more encounters left, and levelling up after the next one).

In a typical (read “D&D”) fantasy game, you can have a servant of the PC’s god show up (or simply pluck him from the party) because the god needs the PC for a separate mission. This removes the PC from the party and gives her an excuse to get XP (and maybe a magic item upgrade) while she’s gone.

When the PC returns (presumably when another GM rotates in), then she has a story to tell. Or does she? Maybe the PC can’t remember everything that happened to her, which leads to new plot threads…

Well played.