Didn’t quite work out that way in one campaign I played in. A couple of new PCs were being introduced, and all they had to do was to walk up to our group’s encampment in the woods and make peaceful contact. Instead, for some reason they decided to spend ages sneaking up our perimeter, loaded up for serious combat. Naturally we turned the autocannon on them.

I’d classify the replacement PC as having been brought in by Magellan: We met her unexpectedly, but found that we shared similar goals and needed something specific from each other. Pretty straightforward.

Presumably by arrangement with our GM, our new player, Daniel, took over a recurring NPC — not a Magellan at all. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out, as our characters disliked him as an NPC.

When a new PC dropped into the campaign, we just dropped him in (the first time quite literally, the PC was described as having been siting in a bar playing his mandolin when all of a sudden he was falling out of the sky into the middle of an encounter). Someone said something about “damn that wizard,” and after that, I announced a Magellan by introducing the new PC and saying “Damn that wizard gets around.”

By using a thinly veiled justification that was really absurd, it allowed us all to laugh at the absurdity and move on. Far better than spending an agonizing hour or two of “role play” that results in the new PC being run off, or worse, the new PC is about to run off and the GM breaks in with “You know, you’re supposed to have this guy join the party, now that you’ve screwed it up, you’d better fix it.” And logic and two hours of play go sailing out the window, oh, and the players never really forgive each other.

Frank

Arbitrary PC death is totally acceptable and expected in some flavors of games. And at least some of those flavors does not allow for arbitrary replacement.

In a simulationist type campaign, where campaign logic can be very important, it is important both that a PC dies when logic says he dies, and it is also important that logic not be defied in replacing the PC.

In a gamist type campaign, arbitrary PC death may be totally expected (for example in an old school D&D game). And depending on the campaign, arbitrary PC replacement may or may not be acceptable (having to sit out until the party gets back to town may be part of the “price” you pay).

Rather, I think a PC death should *never* happen unless it would make for an excellent part of the story. The player should explicitly agree that their character’s permanent removal from the ongoing game is on the line.

This is something that works in some games. Dogs in the Vinyard is one example. It should be noted that the player does NOT have explicit authority over their character’s permanent removal. The GM CAN introduce a conflict where the stakes are the PC’s life. In such a conflict, the player can’t give to avoid deadly fallout, because if he give’s he loses the stakes. But what DitV will assure is that the story where the PC dies will be good.

Frank

Well, there’s a huge problem to begin with. What GM is going to allow a PC to die in an *arbitrary* manner? If that’s acceptable, I don’t see why an arbitrary insertion of a new PC should pose any problem.

Rather, I think a PC death should *never* happen unless it would make for an excellent part of the story. The player should explicitly agree that their character’s permanent removal from the ongoing game is on the line.

Without that explicit acceptance from the player in a specific situation, that situation should *not* be allowed to remove the PC.

Give them enormous problems, okay. Drastically change their relationship with the world and/or the party, fine. Present opportunity to finesse/negotiate/struggle against insurmountable odds, excellent. But not arbitrary removal of the character from the ongoing game.

If people didn’t like my idea, I was perfectly willing to keep coming up with new ones until we found something that worked.

As far as my *players* are concerned, I expect them to pull “The Magellan” to the extent that they accept the fact that this *is* a PC and they *have* to manufacture a reason to allow this person in the party. That onus cannot rest fully on me or on the new player because the older players are the ones directly in control of the party.

I ask my players to manufacture reasons for their characters to do a lot of things. Recently we split the party because 8 PC’s was too unwieldy (everyone in my game is playing 2 characters). I didn’t get as much buy-in as I would have liked (only one player really sat down and manufactured a good reason for his characters to go along with the split), but we got it done.

This sort of thing is always necessary to handle OOC stuff that must be handled IC in order to make any sense, and your players should be aware of that fact and prepared to make the best of it.

There MUST be meta-game level acknowledgement that the game requires a party, and the PLAYERS must work to make that happen. They can do so by purposefully creating PCs who will have common purpose to join together, and/or they can do so by using metagaming techniques to form the party.

The second part of the issue is how do you drop the new PC into an ongoing campaign. No matter what type of campaign, players expect at least some logic. Here again, it can help if this is considered during character generation. The players and GM should also both be looking for opportunities. And if all else fails, pinch your nose, look the other way, and bring the PC in.

The GM (and players) should avoid making a player sit through more than an hour or so of game session before being able to bring a new PC in. If more delay is absolutely necessary, let the player know. If a player loses a PC during a session, it may make sense for them to go home early. If their PC just can’t be introduced until halfway through the session, let the player know so they can make a decision about showing up late, or being prepared with a book or something.

When all is said and done, the game is supposed to be fun, and no matter how “realistic” or “in character” you are, the game is NOT a perfect simulation, so don’t make someone miserable in a misguided attempt to preserve aesthetics.

Frank

It’s especially ideal for fleshing out military companies and large orgs, since the players have knowledge of what the VPC can do (their character would too, so it’s not the bad sort of metagaming) and they can explain the VPC’s presence at leisure, but also because it adds character without adding time on the GM’s part to develop the character.

Tsuyoshi stated that his PCs harsh treatment of the new one was probably only tolerated because of a strong friendship between players.

I have seen this sort of thing go horribly bad with ooc arguments boiling over resulting in players leaving the table or worse, the group.

In my current game, this is happening now. I thought I had worked the new character into the campaign arc in a fairly logical manner, but after two sessions, the PC is still getting pretty harsh treatment. It’s not to the point where I’m losing any players from the group, but enough that I felt the need to call a “House meeting” so we could resolve the issues. It’ll be interesting to see how the next session goes.

I think the next time this occurs, I will take John’s approach and simply ask the group for assistance getting the PC in the party and the player back into the game.

The PCs had been sent by their community to try and make contact with the rumored last surviving legitimate member of government (since this is the UK I made it a member of the royal family – henceforth “the King”). They arrive at night fall at the next nearest settlement to where the King is rumored to be.

The locals are very stand-offish and are evidently lying about their numbers. The PC’s are escorted to a sealed off area of town where they are given quarter is an otherwise disused house. A nearby house is also occupied by another ‘guest’ of the locals and this is the new PC.

So the players try and integrate the new PC into their party in the usual way of going up to them and chatting. However the new PC is being very standoff-ish and utterly fails to do more than engaging in basic niceties.

The next morning the locals arrive en mass, pretty much confirming the PC’s deduction that they’re the missing army personnel that vanished after the collapse of civilization. they question the PC’s as to their loyalty and intentions towards the King, who they had instructions to kill if they turned out to be fake or unfriendly to their community). Once satisfied that they intend no harm they agree to escort them to meet with him… “Oh and take her [the new PC] with you; she’s been here a month and she’s a drain on our resources.”

It felt awkward and forced to me but the player had left me no choice, other than to leave her behind. Ironically when the player couldn’t make it afterwards the monarch sent her back to the army to assist them with her chemical expertise.

Quim

PS. Sorry for my bad English