@DocRock Never mind someone bringing in a character they have used before as long as it fits the RP. Though I have found that surprisingly that most characters can fit with minor modifications. (I have seen 2nd Edition ADnd Bards and Warriors be revamped well enough to use in modern day settings and even TWD.) - Glad the general CS templates I provided are getting some use. Sadly the Firefly RP completed some time ago, though another will start up eventually. Right now though I have 6 I am Gming with a 7th in the works, so the next installment of that is on the back burner. (But funny enough many of the Rpers in that one are planning on using their characters from that into the upcoming one lol.)

@Lady Amalthea

Totally getcha. I can probably adapt a variant of the Good Doctor into things. Her series is weird(no joke, you have war elephants alongside tanks and airships being used, along with mounted knights as the most common fighters, but then the bad guys had a giant floating air fleet of stone ships), but fun. Fantasy/Steampunk/Science Fiction. They even had running water and electrical energy despite looking straight out of the middle ages.

Good old Rune Factory. And then the Expanded Universe happened, and chaos ensued.

I love writing, so its a load of fun to come here, and realize that I'm finally amid folks who aren't either college kids ready to retire, or thinking they will, or high school and lower who are the rising crop of new rpers. As a college senior, I'm like one of the older rpers from my writing group. But here, dunno if I'm on the younger end, or just about average. Still, its great, to find so many wonderful tales being told.

Well, I've been playing the same character almost exclusively since around 2002 or so, within a group framework with other players who do the same thing. We've always just jumped from thread to thread/forum to forum and adapted to the rules accordingly. Players have come and gone, but the core members of my group are still around and active. In between "adventure" or "battle" (lots of those) threads, we'd often have kind of intermission type threads where we'd kind of just take a load off and take stock IC for the next round of whatever we had in mind at the time. We've also always had a larger overarching plot to fall back on whenever there wasn't anything going on for us to get involved in.

Typically, any of the threads that we posted ourselves were considered to be "open" for other random people to jump in on as well. It's pretty much been one huge ongoing interconnected saga. Hasn't always been perfect (nothing is), but I personally find it to be the most fun and interesting.

We're currently in the midst of one of our own plot threads elsewhere at the moment, but once that's over with, we're planning on creating one of our trademark open-adventure style threads here. Probably in the Advanced section. No timeline on exactly when that'll happen. Maybe Spring? I dunno. I'll be advertising it when the time comes.

I have a few characters I come back to a lot because I've clicked with them, but every time I use them, it's a different version of that character. They're in a different canon, nothing they've done before carries over, there are probably changes to their backstory and personality, etc.

I apperciate all the feedback folks, all of ye commenting has given me plenty to consider and think upon.

@Silver Carrot
Funny enough, back when I first started seriously rping, after I left the first forum I was on, I drifted from place to place, where there wasn't a dedicated system for higher ups to take care of the common rper. So while each community there was my own new take on a given template for it, I never felt like there was a reason to stick. Then I found a place that was like a Persistent World, and ended up sticking with one character, plus a few others I made over time, tweaking them as I went. Eventually that made me jump into a new chapter of a connected tale, and from there, well, eventually when we learned our site was going downhill, I cast out for solutions. Aside from the place our group of rpers ended up migrating too enmass, I came here.

And found a system similar to what I had found in my early serious rping days, but with people who actually cared about each other. So that meant a lot. It just took me adjusting a bit, since I'd been in one Persistent World type narrative for a few years. I'd always wanted to get back into the whole various narrative thing, so that's another reason to be happy here. Now if only I could work up the courage and motivation to finish a personal CS for my personal CS thread. So folks can see where I derived the various Serene Light variants from, lol. Thanks for your input again Silver, and also for helping me with my plot ideas in Santa Celia, can't wait to see where that goes.
I'd say more, but I have to run, see you on Discord, later all! Best of wishes to ye on your plots!

@DocRock I actually do this all the time, and have done it for years, on other websites that I role-play on. I like to continue the progress of my characters. One and done characters are fine too since it allows me to explore a lot more possibilities.

Reading some of the replies to you above, it saddens me that this is becoming a lost art.

Well I do not know how my experience can contribute to the topic but I am going to try anyway, when I first started roleplaying on another site on a more often basis I generally only made one character and made sure it was adaptable to the roleplay and for what I needed and it worked very well.
Later on, now it has gotten shall I say bad on other sites despite having the one character plan I made others over time through the one I stuck to has been used a lot more than others when I was getting serious and now at that point of seriousness before it went downhill and I was finding my serious footing roleplaying wise.
I'm sad to hear things like this becoming a lost art, I don't wanna rant on more things I feel is a lost art as well but I feel more characters helps to diverse yourself as a roleplayer or even one in multiple settings can help for some people.