Bringing in a new character half way though ?

One of my player's characters died. He wants to start playing with a new character and playbook, I'm unclear about the best way to go about this since the rulebook States that all players should know each other at least in passing when the game begins, has anybody else got some experience with this?

I've experienced it, as my character The Brainer was killed by The Hardholder, (after The Gunlugger had tried and failed twice, but then did so ent passant, but saved her...). The Hardholder had protected her from both the Gunlugger and the Towers gangmembers, and it took us all by surprise.

In addition we had a Battlebabe, and as the Gunlugger also was the medic, the Angel was an unattractive playbook, so I took the Chopper.

The Procedure:

We established that my character and her band of waterjet bike-riding young guns had regularly been to the Tower and it was her favorite place. She also was attracted to the battlebabe and we agreed it was partly because she had stood up to me, whole gang and all (first Hx) and I believe the Hardholder had one as well, and then we read our on your turns and got off. I was included in most of the first scenes, (I think we even shot someone in the Hardholder's Office), and the Battlebabe postphoned her Change to another playbook-move to accomodate a new character.

In short: Do introduction and Hx like in session I and give room to the new character. The new character also knows people and places, or will soon. (Let two weeks pass and he/she/they will surely have met a large part of the 72 inhabitantes of whatever ramshackle place they live. If the role is completely new, just skip two months ahead in the story. Or two weeks. Hell, a new lone face with important skillsets would be known in two days, right?


The feelings:

At first it was a little underwhelming, as the others had their STATS+3, extra fancy moves, but I took the +1 HARD advancement really early, and +1 COOL, so I would regulary succeed in my base moves (I wouldn't have done this otherwise). As the Chopper is a bit distant and aggressive she didn't immidiately make any friends, besides the Hardholder who bonded with my violent and occam's razor-nature, but still had to treat her like a threath.

After two sessions I was right in the tick of it, the Battlebabe changed her view from "Wow, Diamond is really crazy" to "you guys suck, Diamond is the only one keeping it together here"

I'd like to add that everyone was really cool also in involving my dead character. The Hardholder would explain every bad luck with "This is Pallors doing!" and when there was some weird stuff they would say "She would have known what to do" (every character had -1 weird).


Things should work well, but take care to include the new character - and let the player "feel her out". As a new character, it might be better to have clear, easy-to-understand motivations, but that has more to do with group and it's playstyle.

One thing I should mention is that as the end game approaches it can be sad to never get the trancendent roles (for expanded basic moves), or to feel that the character has much more play in it while the others tear the locale apart in a local harmageddon...

It depends a lot on the context of play up to that point (how much time has passed, the setting in general), but in my experience there are two main options: the new character is also new to the area, or the new character is known to the area, but has been away for whatever reason. The former case is riskier, and works best if the new character has a skillset or role that has an obvious place in what is currently happening; i.e. a Brainer, when there is bad psychic stuff going down, or a Chopper if the local folks are in need of protection. Also, because hopefully you remembered about there being no status quos in AW, at least some of the other PCs should probably also have been new to the area when the game first started, which means that prior to that they could easily have a history with the new PC. You definitely need to do Hx for the new character, and depending on how they are being introduced you may even want to allow other PCs to re-do their Hx -- particularly if the circumstances have shifted enough for this to make sense.

In the case of the returning or once-local character, it's even easier to create similar connections and history, as you would in the first session -- but even moreso, because now that more about the fiction is known, the choices and answers to Hx and related questions can be even more pointed and focused on the current situation. This should make it easy for the character to get immediately involved, since their friends/allies/frenemies will want to pull them into the action ASAP in order to get their help.