(This post has spoilers for Rotted Capes episode 16: The Vault)

There are lots of words to describe Goldshot. Cat burglar. Fashionista. Misanthrope. Selfish. Loyal. But perhaps number one is survivor.

Really, most characters in Rotted Capes deserve that term – after all, the whole pitch of the game is to play the super powered survivors of the zombie apocalypse, but sometimes it feels like Torchlight, Shepherd, and Sentry (or whatever he’ll call himself now!) survive in spite of themselves. Those three run into danger because they are heroes, and survive because they are good at their jobs.

Goldshot actively runs away from fights that aren’t in her favor. She hides resources. She splits the party!

Goldshot is not a good hero. And so while it was tons of fun playing a street-level cat burglar surrounded by people with legit superpowers (or magic mimicking powers), the time finally came to retire her for good.

I’ve been thinking about retiring Goldshot for over a year now. She just increasingly didn’t feel like she fit with the story of the other characters, and the last thing I wanted to do is end up playing the asshole and defending it by saying, “I’m just playing my character!” So Jesus and I have been looking for ways to write her off for awhile now.

When we sat down to play The Vault, I actually didn’t know how it would go. I told Jesus this would probably be Goldshot’s swan song, but didn’t want to go in with that being a foregone conclusion. I wanted her send-off to feel earned, and Jesus did in fact set it up perfectly (though oh man it would have been hilarious if Billy had never used that mirror to reverse her. That was an excellent artifact to put in front of Goldshot).

Playing a character whose whole ideology is essentially at odds with the rest of the party is a difficult needle to thread. Maybe it’s a bit easier if you lie about it for a year (David, I’m looking at you), but openly being antagonistic to the goals of the group is hard! You want to tell a compelling story for your character without standing in the way of everyone else’s. And ultimately, it was going to be difficult to continue to tell a compelling story for Goldshot when her goal was “stay put, don’t take risks.”

That’s not what PCs are about, after all.

So I’m very happy Goldshot got one last adventure, and then sent off to a peaceful world without magic or zombies or anything weirder than cosplayers and baseball teams sponsored by Jack Stallyn. Selling off those magic-less precious gems from the skull is going to give her a nice nest egg to get started in this strange new world, but I’m sure that she’ll get back to her old tricks soon enough. She wanted to be safe, not boring after all.

Both the comments on the last episode and our Patreon Discord have been filled with excellent character suggestions for me to pick up next. I wish I could use QUINN’S facility to clone myself and play all of them! But since I can only play one, I’ve already statted out the new character (that’s a date night for Billy and I these days!), and can’t wait for you to meet her. I think she’ll introduce a fun dynamic to the party, and she has an ultimate goal that really couldn’t be more different than Goldshot’s.

In the comments, I’d love to hear about your beloved characters who retired before the end of a campaign! What happened to your character, and why did you choose to change it up?

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