Here’s a tidbit for players who have characters in a game where death is on the table.

Back in ye olden days of TableTop RolePlaying Games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, sometimes characters would meet horrible, grisly ends early on in their careers. One option to follow this was to make an all new character. There goes 20 minutes of game time.

Another option was to erase the character’s name from the top of the sheet and then have the “new” character go look for the party to find their twin sibling. Of course, we’d have to have the inevitable shock and horror of discovering one’s sibling had passed due to (insert name of dungeon catastrophe here) followed by, “Can I have his gear?”

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

Alas, poor Bob Smith the Fighter has passed. Luckily Rob Smith the Fighter is here. They were identical twins. Sometimes if things really weren’t going well their mother suddenly had triplets unbeknownst to everyone else.

A unique twist on this approach was to have the character’s twin die and the character run in to express their remorse. “Oh no, Rob, my twin brother fell into that meat grinder trap! Whew. Glad that wasn’t me.”

My group got a little out of hand with this idea back in the day, especially after the notion of multiple siblings came up in the Unearthed Arcana. Suddenly we had whole family trees of characters, some with different classes. Which was fine because most of us have a heap of D&D characters just waiting to be used. That’s even true now. (I have stacks of characters for Dragonbane, Shadowdark, ICONS… etc.)

To make it more entertaining, characters started having Last Will and Testament scrolls to make sure their magic items weren’t taken by the rest of the Player Characters. Conveniently everything was left to the next character, of course. Although as a DM it was sometimes hard to explain how the sibling got to the dungeon just in time to claim everything.

This idea might still work in games with high character mortality rates. Otherwise I recommend having a new character in the wings just in case the unthinkable would happen. I realize that this tactic is best suited to tongue-in-cheek, beer-and-pretzels gaming. Modern D&D and more dramatic games such as Blades in the Dark probably not so much.

Please do what works best for you as a Game Master and your group. What works for me at my table may not work for yours and vice versa. The main focus is to have fun. There is no right or wrong way to roleplay.

If you’re like me and you have lots of characters around to either use or hand someone, it’s no big deal. If you’re in a rush and don’t want to roll up yet another first level character in the same session, then erase the name and start a new career. LOL!

Have fun. Game on.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.