I have been impressed with the most recent James Bond movies for just this reason (it isn't only because I think Pierce Brosnan is the handsomest, sexiest, best Bond yet; while I also adore Sean Connery, I think he's far yummier now than he was in his Bond days).

There has been change. Bond himself is still Bond no matter who's playing the role ... there has always been Moneypenny ... but first they introduced Judi Dench as the new M ... and then they addressed the issue of Q's impending retirement.

While I was distressed at the prospect, I was pleased to see that they were being realistic. Desmond Llewellyn wouldn't be able to play Q much longer (or indeed at all, for as it turned out he passed on not long after The World is Not Enough).

As he'd been Q for so long, the thought of replacing him with another actor in the same role seemed wrong, much more wrong than the different faces of Bond over the years.

I felt they handled it well, and I hope that when the next Bond movie comes out, it will include a tribute to the man who made the role his own.

Change.

Good or bad, for us or against us, it is. In real life, the best we can hope for is to deal gracefully with the changes thrown our way.

In gaming and in fiction, we are the agents of change. Even those most final, implacable events that can forever alter the course of a game or a story.

Death

My games have the lowest PC death-rate of any GM I know. I hate killing off characters. Even when the situation demands it, I hate it.

I make magical and divine healing fairly available. I allow players to add any Will bonuses their characters may have to die rolls on "death checks." I have a brief window of opportunity immediately following a failed death check during which, if proper healing measures are applied, I'll permit a "do-over."

I've even been known to let the gods personally take an interest in preserving the lives of those whose work is not yet done (ie. -- I have something really cunning planned for them and couldn't bear having them miss it).

Part of this, I'm sure, is because in my games so much time and effort on the players' parts goes into making their characters real people, and seeing all that work go to waste is purely awful.

In my fiction, where luck is not a factor, I'm even worse. I don't want to get rid of someone and then have a really brilliant idea but have it be too late. There are ways around this; at a convention I laughed to hear the creator of Gargoyles describe how he'd introduced a character, and only later realizing what a great character he'd been, with such potential ... but the character had died at the end of the episode! (he called backsies with the application of a little judicious time travel, which I covered in a previous column).

I also get too attached. In some cases, when I've known a character had to go, I've found myself rushing the job, doing it badly, approaching it the way I'd face a cup of NyQuil -- quick, quick, get it over with, gahhh! that was ucky! I still regret the treatment that a fanfic fellow named Vito Draconi suffered at my hands.

Another hindrance for me is that, as I mentioned in July, I love the villains. That puts me in quite a spot, because most of the time, they're supposed to die for the story to be complete.

I've gotten better recently. Sometimes, the death of a character is unavoidable. In a game, they may find themselves in an impossible situation with no chance of survival no matter how fast and loose we're playing with the cinematic rules. Or the dice will just fall in the stark, unmistakable truth of numbers.

So, if they gotta go, I like to try and make it good. Major characters especially, good or bad, always have a chance for a final action, dying speech, or last goodbye.

In fiction, I prefer deaths to be dramatic and meaningful, as opposed to the often random and senseless ones we see too frequently in the real world. Though dramatic and meaningful death does sometimes happen in the real world; I found Charles Schulz's passing the night before his final new Peanuts strip was published to be so sadly apt that it was nothing short of eerie.

Retirement

Death isn't always the reason that a character will need to move on.

Sometimes they become so wealthy, settled, or influential that there's little need for further adventure -- "The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia."

They may, especially in games like mine, find love and start a family. The duties of high rank and position may eat up all of their time.

Or they might become too powerful. It's darn hard for a GM to come up with physical challenges for characters of amazingly high level / point value / whatever your system. Not impossible, just hard.

After all, even if they're kings and queens, heroes of incomparable physical prowess, masters of magic, and laden down with every enchanted item known to Man, they can still be tormented emotionally ... my personal area of expertise! <g> Who needs to think up an even tougher monster to pit them against when there are relationships to mess with? The best stories are not about events, they're about people.

But in many of these cases, retirement may be called for. Time to leave the quests and perils to someone else. The players, if in a game, can make up new characters and start fresh -- just beware, oh GM, of players with strong emotional ties to their old characters who then want to play the younger brother, daughter, or apprentice of the retiree; having access to such a patron can upset the balance of the game and put you back in the same position you were!

I tend to write and GM the way I like to read or play. When I am following a series of books or a game, I love the sense of continuity that comes from familiar faces and places. It's a feeling of getting an answer to "whatever happened to so-and-so," that helps make it seem more real.

The connections between Stephen King books are a constant source of delight to me. In one of his forewords, S.K. himself mentioned getting fan mail asking that very thing -- "whatever happened to so-and-so?" -- as if he heard from them regularly. In Bag of Bones, for instance, we see that Norris Ridgewick (Needful Things) is now Castle County Sheriff.

My own ElfLore trilogy will pick up twenty years after the end of the MageLore books, and many of the same characters will put in appearances -- "whatever happened to Sybil and Rayke?" They won't be the center of things, though. That honor has passed on to the next generation; their sons and daughters will have the main roles in that series.

But time passes and the world marches on, and eventually even folks no longer in the main spotlight will be getting older, approaching death by natural causes. (Unless, of course, we're talking about the Xanth novels, in which everybody just gets doused with youth elixir in one of the lamest cheats I've ever read ... it's wonderful that Piers Anthony is still interested in them, but please!)

Becoming Divine

Now, it happens in almost every game sooner or later ... the character seeking to become a god. In a world where the gods exist as beings that can be challenged and whose power can be attained, eventually someone's going to try it. Usually, it's the mages ... whether Raistlin from Dragonlance or Teflon Billy from Knights of the Dinner Table ... what is it about those mages?

Anyway, in a world where there's the possibility, the GM should expect it. Mystic artifacts, properly-worded wishes, doing favors for existing gods and catching them in the same fine print that tripped up Zeus and Apollo (getting the god to swear an oath beforehand to grant any boon, then springing it), making deals with demons, whatever it takes ... they will try and you can't always just swat 'em down for impudence.

Should something like this happen, you might consider letting it succeed, along the "beware of what you ask for" lines.

A character wanting to become a god is probably going to be planning on having a lot to do with the mortal world, helping his or her friends, smiting his or her enemies, etc.

That just might not be permissible. The gods have to have their own rules too. Maybe they're not allowed to do much business with mortals. Maybe there is a searing physical transformation that strips away all aspects of earthly life (including memory, ha-ha, that'd get 'em!).

Maybe the power a deity possesses relates directly to the number of temples and worshippers; a new god on the block isn't likely to start off with any of that -- and those friends left behind, if they're anything like the PCs that I've seen, aren't exactly going to be falling all over themselves to start a cult, especially if there was any dispute over who got dibs on the artifact / wish / boon / whatever.

And what of the other gods? How are they going to react to this interloper? In pantheons like those of the Greek gods, they all guarded their own spheres of influence pretty jealously; Hermes had to bargain big-time with Apollo to get something to be in charge of. Any newcomer might be stuck becoming the god of the leftovers that none of the rest wanted to claim.

A game could, if the GM is up to it, shift to this level, focusing on interactions among the gods, problems and adventures of a divine nature, and so on. This works best as a solo campaign or by elevating all the PCs; because having one player as a god and everyone else not causes all sorts of problems.

A character that becomes a god could also simply be removed from the player's control, becoming an NPC.

Endings

There comes a time when all the stories have been told. When you've done all you can with a given world, storyline, or campaign. When it is just naturally time to move on.

Earlier this year, something like that happened to me. I'd been writing a series of Gargoyles fanfiction, and without my planning it to happen, the stories came to a conclusion. I could have gone on from there, but it would have seemed anticlimactic to do so, and weaken the power of what I'd accomplished in the finale.

I decided, after much soul-searching, that it was time to move on. Since then, I have continued with "spin-offs" based on and inspired by that original series. This change, a fresh start, wasn't easy but I recognize how necessary it was.

This happens in games too. Sometimes it's just done. The characters have fulfilled what they were meant to do or wanted to do, and the campaign reaches a sense of closure and completion. The GM could go on and the players probably would not object, but all involved should examine the possibility that to keep playing might take something away from what had come before.

In a game, you also have to deal with player reasons for endings. People might move away, have fallings-out, experience schedule changes or other commitments that cut into their gaming time.

If this is the GM, that's pretty much it for the campaign; I would not recommend someone else trying to take it over. Nor would I recommend having a new player step in and pick up an existing PC. A GM can run a character whose player has left for a while as an NPC, but with thousands of other NPCs in the world, I'd suggest letting the character retire instead of giving the GM the extra work.

When games have ended on me, I use it as an opportunity to shift mental gears. The next game would be set elsewhere on my game world, encouraging me to develop the geography and culture of a new land. Or in the past or future, requiring the development of another aspect of the world's history.

Or it'll involve a different race. I ran one in which everyone played elves; when that ended, I began work on a new campaign set in a dwarven kingdom. Flexibility and versatility, challenges for myself and my players. I'm all in favor of these things.

Sometimes the writer or GM will burn out, get tired, or just want to explore something new. Most of us have more ideas than can be used in a single storyline, and it can be a refreshing change to get into something new.

My serial novel, "A King for Hothar" (written exclusively for Sabledrake), was the first time in years that I'd done something completely new. Prior to that, I had been writing fanfiction, fantasy novels based on a game, and horror novels loosely based on fanfiction.

"Hothar" was brand-new. A world in which I'd never gamed, characters I'd never written about before, everything had to be created from scratch. And fit into the monthly theme for each issue! It has been a delightful experience, and I don't regret for a moment the time it took away from my other projects.

If you're really burnt out, lacking the creative energy to tackle something all-new, take a break. Tell yourself you're not going to write or GM, and give yourself a time limit. Odds are, you'll break your oath (couples counselors sometimes use this technique when clients are having bedroom problems; we are a strange little species in that the minute we're told not to do something, it becomes what we want to do).

Read a lot of books, especially the less-than-great ones, to remind yourself that you can do better than that.

For the GM, do a stint as a player in someone else's game. I find nothing makes me itch to get back behind the screen than being trapped on the wrong side of it with only one character at my disposal and not having the world at my fingertips.

Another thing that works for me is to remind myself what I enjoy about gaming, by attending a convention to immerse myself in the general gaming atmosphere, or by turning to the great gamer-comics: Dork Tower and Knights of the Dinner Table.

Conclusion

I can't imagine a life for myself that doesn't involve writing and gaming. It's how I met my husband, something I can share with my daughter, and a bond between me and my friends.

There may be times when we're between games, but I know I will always come home to it. There may be times when I take a break from writing, but never for long. Too many stories, too many ideas, in this mind of mine.

At the moment, my projected list of book titles is long indeed. I have the ElfLore trilogy to finish, the ThiefLore and SwordLore ones already planned out, and many other possibilities. This isn't even counting any potential horror novels; I intend to do more of those as well. And fanfiction. And short stories. And a book of fairy tales for adults. And so on ...

Whether I ever make a living at it doesn't really matter. Oh, sure, I'd like to, I wouldn't turn down a fat publishing contract or a movie deal or anything like that, but even if I never "make it big," it won't stop me writing.

A writer is what I am. A gamer is what I am. It's how I identify myself. Not by whatever job I happen to have. I've been working in the psychiatric field for ten years now, and I don't think of myself as "I am a counselor." That's only what I do. I might do it until I retire, but it's not who I am.

Think about it ... how do you identify yourself? What are you, and what do you do?

-- Christine Morgan

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