Taking over existing characters?
I took over a character one time, and it turned out to be one of my favorite characters to play. Admittedly, it was a game that I already had a friend playing in, and not just a random ad that I spotted, so there's that. Still, it was an awesome character, of a class that I would never have made for myself, so it gave me a new experience I wouldn't have otherwise had. I've also played a few characters that were previously background NPCs for other PCs that let me dip my toe into a pond I wouldn't have otherwise touched yet turned out to be great fun, but I suppose that's not really 'taking over'.
A few of my games are often shopping for replacement characters - they're long-running games, and RPoL attrition being what it is, sometimes there are just characters that need another warm body running them to make it easier on the GM. Sometimes it's a case of 'We can only take a new player if they take over this existing character because of where we are in the story', too, so random RTJs that come in get pointed in the 'replacement player' direction.
I've seen it done really well. I've seen it done really badly. I've seen one poor character that went through THREE players before finding one that would stay in him and handle him okay. I think the challenge is always finding out 'why did the previous owner leave?'. If it's because they borked up their character's relationships with the other PCs, well... that's going to be problematic and/or no fun to take over and play. (Unless you get other players that are willing to handwave a 'this never happened' with regards to previous character interactions, which I personally disagree with but that's another story...) If it's because the player just stopped having time to play, it's much easier.
The one caveat I would put out there, for players, is to be careful about just how -much- of "your own stamp" you try to force into an existing character, particularly if it's one that has history in the game. I've seen more than one character ruined because the player that took them over just went too far off the deep end trying to be "different" from the previous player (which in my mind is really the antithesis of what you should be doing when you take over an existing role - much like a recasting in Hollywood, it would be most ideal if the audience never noticed the shift) and made the character just so freaking strange that the other PCs could no longer relate to it.
Also, try not to drastically change appearances, because it's weird. It's one thing if the blonde you adopted suddenly decides to try out being a redhead (at least in a setting where hair dye is a thing), but if a diminutive and slightly geeky character suddenly becomes a smokin' hot supermodel through portrait and description photo changes, well, it's weird... and is one of those things that makes all the other players go 'I would have interacted with this character differently all along if they'd been like this, but they weren't', and then it just kind of borks up the interaction history.
Think of what's there as a pond - throw a few rocks in to make some little ripples, and it's okay, but don't dump an entire truckload of gravel in all at once.
As a GM, I understand letting players know that 'Hey, Joe Bob is under new management', particularly if you have a game where there's a lot of OOC communication going on. As a player, though, I think that the most ideal situation is when the replacement player is indistinguishable from the original. Obviously, that works better when it's a character that's had minimal impact on the story to that point, and probably should be limited to those sorts of characters. It's going to be almost impossible to take a Major Story Character that's been being played for years and have someone new take it over - that's best left to the GM - but it's pretty simple to slip a new player into a Supporting Character role that's only had a bit of a cameo to date.
This message was last edited by the user at 12:29, Wed 29 May 2019.