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

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

This is not a direct answer to your question, but a suggestion that I feel is worth noting.

Don't retcon past events, expand upon them.

Instead of saying this never happened, say that it has. Exactly like it happened. But not because the player was drunk. Assuming your players are not omniscient, you can write things into the past, present and future of the world that they just don't know about. Your player just served you plot on a silver platter. Use it, make it a sidequest. Heck, make it (part of) the main quest.

Of course, everyone at the table will know you retconned it. But at least it's a way to continue your shared narrative relatively smooth.

So in your case, you have a character who does not act like himself out of nowhere and kills some NPC in a friendly duel, getting his character killed in return. Why did that happen in game?

Quick example plot fix:

Possession/Domination is the thing that springs to mind immediately. Someone got the PC to kill a target and get himself killed/permanently silenced (If he is raised -> amnesia; a bit cliché, but it works). Can you say crime without witness?

Have drunk guy run a new character during the ensuing detective work, and possibly bring his character back at the end (if he wants). You could also have him run the Paladin that killed his character, who got divinely scolded for killing an innocent albeit possessed man and is now on a quest of penance.

Answer 3

Do you need to retcon this?

First I would ask the drunk player when he is sober his feelings on the session. Bring up the plot points from the game and ask him what his thoughts are on what happened. It is entirely possible that the Paladin critting him will feel like a cheap-shot to the player. Get his opinion on: the game/plot thus far, his character and if he wants to keep playing it or if he wants to play something different. Finally ask him if he would oppose ret-conning some or all of that session.

Now that you and he are on the same page, get the rest of the group's opinion on the events of the evening. Did you come down too hard on him? Did he act that horribly out of character. Would they oppose a retcon?

Damn the torpedoes!

If he and the group don't want to retcon, make this a plot-point. Something happened to Sir Noble to cause him to fly off the handle like that. Demon possession? Psychotic break? Disease? Curse? I would weave the events of the evening into the ongoing plot. Especially if the current campaign villain has the ability to mind-control a PC into acting very out of character. The other PCs will have to roleplay that their moral compass just started pointing South instead of North. Great RP scenes to be had.

Do-over!

I have a rough policy that if someone has a bad night, I don't want to use it against them. Maybe his girlfriend just dumped him in a very humiliating way and he needed a little D&D Hack and Slash Therapy that would have been out of character no matter how sober he had been. Maybe he thought he was good to go but you all found out together that he was drunker than he should be. I would get everyone on the same page, ret-con (however you want to) as much as makes sense, and go forward.

Going forward

As has been said in other answers, revisit the social contract for how drunk you can be and still game, and what to do when someone shows up with a too-pickled liver. Do you play poker? Cancel the session? Watch a movie?

Answer 4

How far can you go?

As far as you, as GM, and the group as a whole, desire. Remember the rule 0 of RPG: This is for having fun, all of you.

How far should you go?

You can decide, if the group agrees to, just to not retconning anything, as a punishment to that player who ruined a session and the flow of the history (even when you pointed that this is not your case). Or you can go back to the critical point (his PC killing a disarmed opponent). Or you can simulate that the entire session did not happen and just play it again. It is all up to the decision of the group as a whole.

How to do it elegantly?

If you go for entire session retconning, you need nothing. Just the agreement from the group, and play it all again. If they discovered something, to avoid metagaming you can advise them that this specific thing must be discovered again, or that it is different.

If you go for crucial point retconning, all the previous weird actions for the character can be explained as an evil, powerful wizard that mentally altered the PC up to that point, or a strange drinking the PC took (quite appropiate). Use your imagination.

Answer 5

Use this to your advantage

You can have a brilliant idea to do another campaign, player was drunk, he played against his character, ok.

What rest of players did about that? Did they were suspicious why their friend behave like that? Maybe he was under some spell, maybe doppelgänger impersonate him.

Now him and rest of the team need to find who was behind that to clean good name of that character.

Answer 6

Meta game: recon whatever you wish as long as everyone is happy about it. After all, you're here to have fun and if the game is no longer fun you should fix that. Personally, I would then add a "no drunk" at the table clause. Most of the time, this is easiest solution.

In-game: Do not recon anything! Instead, make this a new plot twist: why did the character kill someone in cold blood? What happened there? Is this a nefarious plot by a dastardly wizard? Basically, use this episode to enhance your story.

Answer 7

I guess it's worth noticing that you can distinguish between an off-game retcon (you just delete the last session and play it once again) and an in-game retcon (twist your plot and try to get the "stuff" out of that bad session).

I usually prefer the second one. Players are usually incline to meta-play, and I wouldn't opt for re-playing the session. There are lots of in-game retcon techniques that can be seen in movies, tv series, and fantasy books, and some of these can be applied to RPGs too.

Here are some examples:

• How about a jump back in time? Someone (an very powerful Wizard, a divinity, another hero who found a powerful Artifact...) didn't want that character to die and tries to change the timeline;

• Just one second before killing the guy, your player had a vision of what could've been happened if he killed him. You'll begin the next session from this moment on, when he's about to kill the guy.

• @MarcDingena in comments said something about dreams and nightmares, too. I would say that even if it's a cliché, it's always an useful and powerful escamotage.

There are lots of other ways indeed, and you could take inspiration from your own plot.

What if I prefer the off-game retcon?

Fine, there's nothing wrong with that! Just make sure your players agree with it and know about meta-play: ask them to please try to avoid doing so. Also, try to run the session in a different way (re-playing the very same session can be very boring for the players that already ran it) so that everyone can enjoy it and expect something new.

Answer 8

Your player was deliberately drunk. He could have not drunk, excused himself or bail out at any moment saying he is no longer able to play properly, but he didn't. Therefore he is responsible for what happened and it is a good thing - as a friend - to not fix what he did, but have him learn a lesson about life and consequences. He will probably not do that again if you do.

In game you need to find a proper explanation. There are several options which allow the game to continue without interrupting the flow of the story or pretending that certain things never happened:

• New story: The character was possessed or drugged for a brief time. It is up to the players to find out what really happened. This is the easiest of all, as it implies that this was not the fault of the player, but some external force.

• Role-playing: The character was actually drunk as well and behaved accordingly. If your players do a lot of role-playing it might be a topic to figure out why the otherwise conservative character suddenly fell out of his role. This will actually address both: the character and the player.

• Hardcore RP: the character for some reason developed a split personality. Something mind-shattering must have happened in his past that caused this. The ex-drunk player now plays his character with frequent out-breaks of that personality. You should only do this, if your group does hardcore RP most of the time, otherwise it might be too difficult/uninteresting.

Answer 9

Resolution vis Discussion

Presumably the party has enough of a connection to this person to want to know what occurred and to bring them back. So there's a subquest of evading legitimate authority to recover the body, bringing back the person, before they even get into the meat of this event, the 'why'.

Resolution of a genuine grievance via actual in-character discussion is the most powerful form of roleplaying. Creating bonds is infinitely harder than destroying them in a story sense and resolving conflict is the best way.

I wouldn't use the cop-out of 'magical mind control', either. The character who is the moral center of the party having a secret problem, perhaps the one that pushed them to become such a force for moral good in the first place? I reccommend that whatever you decide on with the player as the cause of their actions, it be an emotional problem (self-hatred, anger issues, family trauma), or a physical one (drinking, some unresolved/under the surface plot or thing going on that involved that guy (debts, coercion, blackmail, secrets)), not a mental one (mental illness of some description) as that's typically much harder to resolve and deal with respectfully at the table.

Benefits of this approach: You get sweet roleplaying gold out of it, there's no 'bad taste' in anyone's mouth about the 'wasted' session or having to retcon, character becomes deeper and more complex.

Downsides of this approach: Player might feel they lost agency over their character (but likely won't as they did show up drunk, so, the actions were their choice - you're just trying to work it into the universe).

But what if everyone doesn't want to go down that path? Then don't go down it. It's a superior path to retconning, from a storytelling perspective, and helps avoid bad feeling or guilt, but if your players aren't interested in that sort of thing at all, then they miss out and that's that. Even if it's better, it's not 'better enough' to warrant going against the entrenched views of the group.

Answer 10

Whether You Should Retcon

That's a decision only the group as a whole can effectively make. You appear to be already decided some level is needed.

How Far?

This varies by how as much as by the group's willingness.

How to Retcon

There are several approaches that may work well.

He was under a compulsion...

The simplest is that the character was under a compulsion of some form. The character awakens from their next sleep knowing they were compelled, but not by whom. This can lead to a mystery to be solved.

It can explain the whole out of character behavior nicely, but it also means having to prove it or face the consequences of the death.

It was all a dream.

As is common enough in soaps, and made really (un)popular with the evening soap, Dallas, it could be ruled that the whole session was a bad dream of one of the characters. This is a fairly drastic choice, but acknowledges the fiction, while not giving it impact upon the setting.

This can also be used for just the killing, or just part of the session, as desired.

The Nightmare Feeding

This is a subset of the dream.

In a fantasy game, the dream could be shared. A monster pulls them into the dream; they start the new session with one or more realizing that there was a consistent observer watching them; they can confront him/her/it, and when they do, it becomes clear it's in charge of the reality they're in. Limit this - but use it, and let players make a mental attack (say, DC18 Wisdom in D&D/Pathfinder) to create a simple change in the setting as well.

The advantage is that this form of dream has strong character tie-ins, allows keeping of XP's, and yet negates the whole damage to the setting issue.

The dead guy was an illusion.

The guy killed wasn't real. Someone's messing with the PC. Time to find out why and deal with them.

The drawback - if you've described physical evidence, then it needs to have been a potent illusion. Further, it's not a very subtle technique, and it doesn't address the out of character action.

An example of this going "Wrong" - the witnesses don't string him up like expected - without the quick necktie-party, the villain responsible has lost their shot. Come time to bury the body, it's gone, along with all the blood. Players may now need to solve the mystery.

The advantage - it's smooth integration.

Doppelganger

The PC was replaced by a doppelganger. Maybe the character is dead, maybe he was left for dead and is being cared for by a kindly stranger. Maybe he's a prisoner. Time for a little PVP...

The drawback is the PVP. Some players can't stand it. Some groups can't be trusted to not take it personal.

It Never Happened

Just say the whole session never happened. This loses the fiction changes, but minimizes the disruption to an ongoing plot arc, if one exists.

Answer 11

It's an interesting problem. I for one would not retcon the entire session, however I might alter the past slightly. Instead of having the Paladin kill the character, perhaps he was only severely wounded? Was the Paladin there for the whole duel? If so then perhaps she turned aside his blade at the last moment. I would still punish the in game character for in game wrongs. For example the player has committed murder, the guards are after him. Or the Paladin has reported the characters unsporting behavior and is now no longer welcome in the temples to the relevant god, perhaps restricting access to healing.

Speak to the other players as well, does the player want his character back? Do the others think it's unfair to retcon the character alive? Other answers have suggested making it part of the plot, you can do this and still have the character alive if you wanted to do that.

The no gaming drunk rule seems sensible, but then again I've always enjoyed having a beer during a game.

Answer 12

You raise several issues. I will thoughtfully attempt to prioritize and address each in turn... that said, setting the story challenge aside for a moment, I'll start with the boundary you tried to set.

WHY?

Because the real-life backstory is both an important part of the question, a real moral dilemma, and shapes the dialog for this teachable moment:

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.

First and foremost... you must not enable real-world behavior that is disruptive and/or abusive (to you, your group, or your story).

• Intoxication is a choice.
• Intoxication is not a mistake.

The social contract for your group has been (potentially) violated. Regardless of what you SAY, your ACTIONS will determine future boundaries. What you DO will forever change the direction of the group (if in some small way).

As you press forward with the story and mechanical considerations, don't lose sight of the social implications.

• There are relationships (friendships) to consider.
• Those relationships may be simple or complex.

---

As for the story...

How far can I go in retconning a session, and how far should I go to maintain immersion?

The short answer is you are limited only by your imagination and the "full faith and credit" of your group.

Ultimately, there really is no such thing as a "retcon"... there is only forward motion of events that step back in time. While you can hope the players forget, their memory of events will linger in direct proportion to the real-life drama that was foisted upon the group.

The story unfolds forward. You must surrender to history. And this is a segue to...

What are some techniques for elegantly "rewriting history" in cases such as this?

Initially, I felt this question was fallacious (false premise); however, if I broadly walk your inquiry, I would suggest that there are any number of paths FORWARD.

1. Leave the character dead and build story around his passing.
2. Revenant the character.
3. Create an intervention story hook for a group member.
4. Intervene via deus ex machina (crude, last resort).

However, let me be clear, I stand in opposition to the premise -- that is, a "retcon" -- and that circles back to the beginning and closes with the last quote:

If you think I needn't retcon at all then I'm interested to hear why

Actions have consequences -- both in-game and in real life. Gaming groups are governed (at the very least) by social contract, if not by actual guidelines. There are behaviors that are within the bounds of acceptable behavior and those that are without.

Rarely are the boundaries "Boolean", "good or bad", "in or out", "all or nothing", etc. This is why the group is facilitated.

Intoxicating substances affect more that those that consume them.

If the behavior that resulted in the circumstances you are in is acceptable... retcon. It will send a signal to your group that you are powerless over intoxication and that such behavior will be tolerated (or at least forgiven).

Answer 13

Why don't you just keep going?

TL, DR: and see what the players make up from this instead of artificially plotting it yourself

I don't like all those answers I have seen, which either give retconning possibilities, or debate on the retconning/not retconning and how to deal with drunk people and the rest of the group.

Because RPG is for fun, but this aside it is simulating real life, and in real life if a well behaved citizen suddenly gets mad for no reason and commit irreparable deeds there is no alternative but to pay its debt to the society. Jails are full of good people who forgot just one time to keep control of themselves.

So I would not retcon it, but I would not either plot on it. Just make it an accident of life, have some priest raise the PC and keep going. Later, if the player wants to use this opportunity to play a person who is usually calm but sometimes gets mad, it is up to him. I prefer doing like this, because if you don't force an explanation on the story and just observe how the players react, you will give them the opportunity to either forget it and do like nothing happened, or to build something by themselves that you will just have to integrate in the campaign.

On a side not I think I don't have seen a suggestion about retconning for the PC being ill (either hereditary illness or from having been bitten by a normal animal like a tsetse fly). That could give an alternative to the overused "dream" or "possession".