How Do I Drop A Character Courteously?


Communicate

Inform the players of characters who this will effect, e.g. family members, best friends and perhaps even the leader of the relevant coalition. I don’t mean a passing comment in the Cbox or through an absence message (both easily missable and perhaps too public), but a PM or even a private IM conversation.

If you’re planning to quickly or eventually swap the character with a new creation, why don’t you try to make it up to the players effected by your dropping? You could make your prospective new character another relation, friend or zoanthrope of the group that you’ve left.

On the other hand, you probably shouldn’t connect your characters to others or fulfil/create character requests if you tend to drop them regularly or unpredictably. You’re only upsetting, disappointing or messing about other members.


Threads

Finish your existing threads. There’s nothing worse for other members (especially new ones!), then being left with a dead thread owing to a dropped character.

If you need to drop a character in a hurry, you’re very welcome to continue your unfinished threads with the NPC account. Let those who are in your threads know what’s happening through PMs or IMs.


Story

Decide how you’re having your character “exit” story-wise from the role-play.

Are you still fairly attached to the character and want to role-play them now and again? Maybe you want to eventually bring them back properly? It sounds like you should keep them as an NPC, which is a great way of preventing their dropping from effecting associated characters too severely.

Are you busy in real life and need to drop the character, but plan to bring them back properly in the future? Perhaps you should archive the character completely and invent a reason behind their disappearance, e.g. they moved away or got abducted. You can temporarily end their story in the role-play with a one-shot.

Have you lost all interest in them? Maybe killing the character off in the story is the right decision? We’re always eager to find victims to use in the darker elements of the site wide plot.

If you’re planning to do something drastic or heavy with the character (running away, killing them, etc), I urge you to talk to those characters connected to them, because it may effect them negatively, e.g. you and your friend have a mother and child character respectively. Without saying anything, your friend has the child abducted, tortured, abused then brutally killed. That would leave a real “normal” mother upset and traumatised for years! It forces you to play the mother in a certain way (e.g. absolutely bloody anguished). You may be one of the players that struggles with tragic plots or you just don’t want to role-play such heavy material.


Summary

The key point is: Communication! Talk and brainstorm with the people who this character dropping will effect.