# RPG A DAY 2025: Day 17 - Renew
tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2025
![[RPG a Day 2025 (illo).png]]
How do you feel about the concept that within a particular game, the protagonists, the PCs, come with an expiry date right off the line? Sure, it's got that new PC smell, but you can look over at one of the gauges, and the Sword of Damocles dangles ominously overhead, with your distance from its drop clearly depicted. Not necessarily death, because death can come to any of us, but the point at which the character will be retired and achieve, or fail to achieve, whatever it is that they've set out to do.[^1]
I want to be clear, despite the fact that some games do involve mechanisms which effectively act as a ticking time bomb on every character, if not to their death, to their retirement, that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm specifically thinking about characters that you as a player recognize to have a point at which they'll have done or failed to do what it is that you wanted to do with that character, and having achieved either of those states, it's time to move on to a new one.
Are you willing to let a character go, or perhaps more importantly, see a point at which the character recognizes that fact themselves and puts themselves on the final approach for that resolution? Is a character just a pawn in your play, or just an element by which you affect the ongoing story?
I realize there is a significant number of my audience who are scratching their heads and absolutely can't conceive of the idea that you may create a character that has a thing they want to do, and when that thing is done, the character is done. The idea of not trying to keep playing that character as long as possible to accrue as much power, position, wealth, or just good deeds as possible leaves you absolutely cold. I get it. I understand.
In my mind, this simply expresses another type of fictive positioning in order to better choose what my actions for a character should be at any given moment. Is he trying to redeem his family name, which has been besmirched by terrible tragedy? Is she stalking her rapists one by one, luring them into a false sense of security and then murdering them in ways that show their vulnerability? Is he just a good old boy shade tree mechanic, caught up in a galactic war he never chose, but resolved to get home and start a family, elementally changed by what he's seen?
These are all character motivations that come with a built-in use-by date. They either happen or they become impossible. Sometimes it's a good idea to have that narrative deadline visible on the horizon, either rushing toward you or pulling away, to help guide you in how intense you should be pushing this character. Because whatever it is, it's a thing they want and a thing they can't have.
What they do next should be reflective of that, even when there are lots of other more immediate things going on.
And when they get that thing they've been looking for, when they've achieved the vengeance they so righteously sought, when they've cleared their name, when they've finally made it home, through trials and tribulations, it can feel very good to just let them go. Let them live their lives. Let them flow back into the narrative from which they came. Let that story end.
After all, no one's safe from the sequel.
[^1]: Look, this could have been a completely different insert here. Man, good luck trying to find a version that's actually embeddable. They give up on so much money, they just don't know.
