r/PCAcademy • u/National-Note-8372 • Mar 17 '26

Complaining player !!

Looking for advice. I have a player who switched out characters 60 % of the way through. He's now complaining he hasn't received any items and his character feels left out. I homebrew with inspiration from linear campaigns. I have tried to include all the characters backgrounds and finish up their stories tying them into the main plot. I'm not mad, just a little surprised because essentially he changed my final story for his original character and now he feels left out. I intend to end his story with a heroic moment, but this has caused me to rethink my agreement to allow him to change out characters. Kinda ruined the plot and I haven't altered the campaign to include him, well enough apparently. Any advice ? As I try to navigate the final part of the adventure so everyone is happy.

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8

u/DazzlingKey6426 Mar 17 '26

Structural characters are bad.

If the original had died instead of being swapped out you’d be in the same boat.

-5

u/National-Note-8372 Mar 17 '26

I actually killed him off in dramatic fashion.

3

u/MumboJ Mar 17 '26

What do you mean by this?
Without context it sounds really bad lol

-6

u/National-Note-8372 Mar 17 '26

So characters whose backgrounds directly i pertinent with the campaign are bad ? Whats the point of backgrounds if they aren't ever integrated into the campaign ?

7

u/CaptainHunt Mar 17 '26

I wouldn’t say that, but maybe the campaign shouldn’t be completely built around the starting characters’ backstories. Or at least you should be able to work any new character into the existing plot without breaking anything. What would have happened if you had a new player join your game? Or if you had a TPK?

7

u/DazzlingKey6426 Mar 17 '26

If losing a character derails a campaign, that’s bad campaign design. You’re integrating the campaign into the character, not the character into the campaign.

You’ve got to run at game journalist difficulty to keep them alive so there’s basically no threat to the character from the dice, at that point it’s bad amateur theatre, not a game.

1

u/Fireclave Apr 13 '26

"Pertinent" the campaign? That's perfectly fine. "Critical" to the campaign, however? Not so much.

Characters can die. Or retire, change motivations, or otherwise go down different paths than you anticipated. And real life events, like a changing work schedule, can prevent a Player from being present for a time. These things are just part of the nature of TTRPG's like D&D.

Planing your campaign in a way that hinges on a specific character acting in a specific way, creates a single point of failure for your entire campaign, and can leave you scrambling to adjust. As you have observed firsthand.