[RPG] How should I handle retconning (or not) a session with a drunk player and character deaths

character-deathgm-techniques

What Happened

Tonight, one of my players began the session pretty drunk. That's not the problem I need help with; it hasn't happened before, and if it becomes a thing then I can deal with that. But I continued with the session anyway, hoping it wouldn't turn out too bad.

Predictably, it turned out pretty bad. His character is normally very reserved and conservative, and is essentially the party's moral center. Since he was drunk (much drunker than I first thought), he played the character completely against the character's personality and coup de graced an unconscious opponent from a friendly duel. Said opponent was being tended to by a paladin who retaliated and critted the PC, killing the character and bringing the session to a record-scratching halt.

Now, I feel that in-character actions should have in-character consequences, but my problem is that these weren't in-character actions. So I'm torn on how to handle this from the standpoint of immersion: to me, even acknowledging that this session happened damages immersion because it acknowledges that the character became a totally different person for no reason.

On the other hand, retconning even a 3-4 hour session without much plot development feels like it poses a much bigger threat to immersion, not because it would set a precedent, but because I could see it destroying the illusion that we're actually participating in a story as it unfolds, rather than selectively writing it as we sit around a table with dice and pencils.

What I'm Asking

My question is specifically about this case, but I would like some rationale that I can use to grow as a GM. How far can I go in retconning a session, and how far should I go to maintain immersion? What are some techniques for elegantly "rewriting history" in cases such as this? If you think I needn't retcon at all then I'm interested to hear why, but do keep in mind that I feel the player just made an honest mistake, so I'd rather avoid punishing him for what I feel is a one-time thing.

What I'm Not Asking

While I believe my handling of the situation during the session could be more closely analyzed (specifically allowing the session to go on, and having the NPC paladin react the way she did), this question is purely about changing something after the fact.

And I acknowledge that roleplaying is a hobby that thrives on communication and cooperation, but an answer that solely focuses on hashing it out with the players and seeing what they think wouldn't be terribly constructive for me; I'll of course be seeing what the players think, and I could see different players having different levels of tolerance for this kind of thing, but I'd like a perspective from outside our inexperienced group.

Best Answer

Retcon the session, just this once

I empathise with your dilemma: the session itself is already immersion-damaging, but so would be retconning it. You can't win either way, so what's the path of least damage? Given the details you wrote, putting myself in your shoes as an immersion-centric player and GM, I would absolutely call for a one-time, exceptional-circumstances do-over.

The balance of issues

First, here are the elements of your question that I'm considering, pro and con, and how they're relevant:

  1. The player was extraordinarily off their game for exceptional reasons. Doesn't matter why—drunk, bereaved, recently traumatised—something happened that made out-of-game events entirely eclipse the continuity of the story you're exploring. As you say, the out-of-game situation was such that the session shouldn't have even happened, if you'd known.
  2. There wasn't much plot development outside of the uncharacteristic events. If you had a lot of other threads develop in the session then you'd have a knot to untangle if you decided to retcon, but you don't. That makes the situation much simpler.
  3. Your immersion is damaged by letting the session stand. There are lots of ways to weave the events into a coherent narrative using reveals of previously-unknown information. That's a considerable amount of work, and carries no guarantee that the immersion damage will be healed. After all, that stuff is being "written in" to explain something that you know happened for out-of-game reasons. Post facto justifications are of the same class as a retcon, actually, when it comes to their relationship to immersion and investment in story—both are editing the game's reality for out-of-game reasons and convenience.
  4. It's damaging to your players' immersion. This is the one point where I'm making an intuitive leap off the details you give, but here's why: You are running a certain kind of game, where the continuity and integrity of the story as an unfolding story is important, and that seems to be, from how you wrote about it in the question, a fairly integral part of your GMing style. If I can assume for the moment that this is an established group that has reached the stage of playing well together, your players have adjusted to and entwined their own playing styles and methods with your GMing style. If so, then they've come to trust the integrity of the story in a similar way, and letting this session stand will damage their immersion too. It may also damage their ability to trust the cause-and-effect relationship of things within the world, if out-of-game circumstances are allowed to eclipse in-world causes of events in determining what happens.
  5. Retconning is damaging to investment in the integrity of the story. If you retcon now, what's to say you won't retcon again later? You open the door to further retcons for more frivolous reasons, both in your mind and for your players. If you're going to retcon, you need a solid rationale that explains why this time it's justified, but not next time someone is slightly unhappy with how a session advances the action.

Those all, except for (5), overwhelmingly shout "retcon!" Since I believe (5) can be mitigated with a solid rationale, this interpretation of the details of your question heavily tips the balance toward retconning the session.

Rationale

  • The session's events were overwhelmingly driven by out-of-game circumstances, that—if you'd known about them—would have justified not playing in the first place.

In-world causes of events were drowned out almost entirely by out-of-game causes of events. Effectively, this session wasn't even about the stuff in your game. That's not going to happen very often—possibly never again—and sets a very high bar for ever considering a retcon in the future. That should give you a solid bulwark against the temptation to start on a slippery slope of retconning for lesser reasons.

So, with that rationale to justify this retcon, but not lesser temptations to retcon in the future, retcon the session. Wind back the clock, cut out the piece of timeline irreparably damaged by an invasion of causality from a foreign reality, and settle back into the true-to-itself reality that the game had already established before this unfortunate series of events.

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