Soo I have had some unexpected dropouts from my uncharted worlds online game. Does anyone have any recommendations for introducing and ‘eliminating’ characters? It’s kind of a strange idea, especially since the workplaces of various players tend to help define ships. I’m up for turning those PCs into NPCs, but I already have a large cast of characters, so they might end up becoming ‘another redshirt’ which is not at all desirable. I have several ideas in which i can introduce new characters, but it’s what to do with those characters whose players’ have retired from the game. Has anybody else had any kind of experience like this?
Soo I have had some unexpected dropouts from my uncharted worlds online game.
Soo I have had some unexpected dropouts from my uncharted worlds online game.
They’ve been arrested. A relative has died and they’re named in the will, which involves a palatial mansion house. Bounty hunters pick them up. They’ve reached their destination. They want to leave it all behind and become a monk. They’re unexpectedly blessed with fatherhood, and answer the call. They have developed a non-terminal but difficult disease.
That’s for kicking them off the boat. You could keep their stuff, or maybe they take it, strip it out and sell the parts for a ticket onwards, maybe it breaks down or shuts off by itself and becomes dead weight. A new character might be able to change the workspace themselves or come with a windfall that makes it happen.
Unexpected meteor tears open a cabin and tragically kills a crewman, the ship limps to an outpost for repairs, the scope data on the meteor shower turns out to be valuable and they get their refit for free, thanks to a grateful and persuasive ambassador. Meanwhile, a gambler with an excess of debt is looking for a way off the station, and he’s a false mustache away from being the ambassador. Tada!
They mysteriously disappear suddenly. Have they been murdered? Are their bodies stuffed in a storage locker somewhere? Have they been spaced?
As long as there are more people on the ship than just the PCs, there’s lots of room for a mystery.
Maybe somebody is secretly planning something big, and they found out too much, so had to be eliminated. This means the very act of investigating their deaths could cause the remaining PCs to learn too much and become a threat, too.
Thanks for all the suggestions. The reason why some of these reasons aren’t easily apparent to me is because of the situation the PCs are in. They just completed a wild jump into unknown space. No police, no jobs, and no contact with any other living soul for now. I do have a fair amount of ideas generated from this brainstorm though.
If you need ideas for integrating new players who aren’t just background people who suddenly become important on the ship, you can always have a distress beacon from a small ship with the new guys and unravel the mystery of what these new people were doing way out here in the middle of nowhere and what happened to leave them stranded.