Recycling Characters?

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I prefer to recycle my characters. I don't like having a new character for every roleplay. I think it's more fun to put a character in different settings, because they could act different in one genre than they do in the other. It's just like a real person, just not real. Plus, it's kind of frustrating when there's a character you want to roleplay with, but then the person says "oh, no they're taken". I think that's bothersome, and then the person misses out on what could be a good RP.

What do other people think about reusing characters?
 
I have been against recycling characters for a very long time, since, in my experience, it was just a way for one to tell the person that they are roleplaying with that their character or style had to be a certain way, and I did not much appreciate that. It was all about reading up on the past of the re-used character rather than finding out about it in-character, as you would have to do in any normal roleplay.

It also felt a little to me like a way of proving that one is "elite" for having all these questionably developed characters, to scare off people who were not like that, but this may just be my shyness talking (or I have just roleplayed in not-very-good-places in the past).
 
I recycle names. ALOT.
because cute names are hard to come by!
over the years, I've recycled pictures, too.

I don't think I've ever recycled name, picture, personality and biography all at once for a roleplay.
I tend to style my characters specially for the setting, so there are similarities, but they're never quite the same in context.

 
I recycle characters a lot! There's a lot of times where I use a character but the roleplay dies and I never really had a chance to develop them. Thus, I try them again in another RP.

And then there's moments where I really -loved- a certain event that happened in the roleplay, so I use that event as back history for my character and then continue their life in another roleplay!



I think the thing that makes people get pissy about recycled characters, is that some people don't consider whether or not the character fits in to the design of the roleplay. XD A lot of people just copy-paste the entire character as is, and they don't adapt the information to the roleplay, so it looks like the player didn't bother to read the info or doesn't understand themes/concepts. Player might say "Oh, well my character did ___ in this other rp, therefore I refuse to change them." Which isn't fair to the Game Master at all. If you're joining someone else's game you need to adapt your character, or just don't play that character at all. ><

And then there's the people that use the exact same character in EVERY roleplay with the same players, over and over. I can understand that being annoying too, cause it's not very creative. D: Partners get kinda bored when you play the same char with them all the time across every roleplay.
 
I have a very similar approach to Sakura.

I reuse a similar concept for characters. Names, physical features, things like that. I just make tweaks to them to fit the current story I am roleplaying in. Hirohashi is my most commonly revisited character theme. To the point I use the name as my online identity now. He has gone through so many unique versions I sometimes have trouble keeping track of them. XD
 
The only thing I recycle is name and appearance. My characters cannot be put into the same situation with their personalities ^^' I want each character to be unique and suited specifically for that particular roleplay. Each character should be well developed, so that means one well developed character definitely won't mold with well with another roleplay... Eer... Hope that makes sense xD
 
I have a few characters that I have played in multiple games, always the same genre though. For instance, I have one character that I use in almost every apoc type setting, he just fits well in a scenario where the earth has ended. I like the development aspect of it, it really helps me expand on my original concept, regardless if the game dies or not.
 
I do recycle characters a lot and like Diana said, there are times when I make this really awesome character for a roleplay that ends up dying. So I just tweak a couple of things about their personality and especially their history, take away powers if it's a modern setting, and go from there. I don't like it when people don't change their character around for a particular roleplay just because it was their character's history. Personally, I feel like you're telling the GM you don't care about what they're planning for the roleplay.

Several of the characters I'm playing come from the books I'm working on and I've tweaked them around to make them playable. And sometimes I just want to use them, but oftentimes I feel like my characters need some work, so I roleplay with them.
 
Nah, I really don't enjoy recycling characters at all. Each setting gives an opportunity to create a totally new face that could be used again in the future, so to me I always feel like I need to create something new for each setting.

Also, some of my characters really just don't work in any setting. That's just the way it is.
 
I tend to reuse characters that I've wanted to develop more in other stories. Personality will mostly stay the same but other parts will not. I tend to use the term archetype over recycled character because often times will be adapt the characters into someone else altogether.
 
I am kinda against it because characters feel so personal for a story, but I do occasionally take a concept and redesign the character around it.
 
I am AWFUL about this.
I recycle characters...all...the....time. Even when it doesn't make much sense.
I only have one character I can use in any given situation (Todd) and because of this, I tend to recycle him fairly often. I also tend to reuse old DnD 3.5 characters from my real life games...in the context of basically everything.
Yeah.
I'm a horrible person.
 
I don't recycle too often, but when I do it's a character from the same genre and it's often a different time in their life. I usually want to continue on the story of characters lives when games die too soon, but I come up with so many ideas that it's hard not to make new people.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to try to find a player to play opposite an idea that's been running around in my head for months.
 
I may recycle small bits and pieces from characters but that's really all. I never copy and paste entire characters into new roleplays...

I'm okay with recycled characters, as long they are adapted to the RP and aren't constantly doing the same thing over and over again.
 
Sure. Can work out nicely, you just gotta try to do something different with em so they aren't totally the same as past incarnations. Now if you just recycle and only re-fit them to the world of various RPs instead of altering them, then yeah that'd be dull.
 
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