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The Ring Of Ted started as a simple improvised idea during a game one evening, several campaigns ago. A generic ring is found as treasure and if the players figure out to slip it onto the finger of a skeleton, any humanoid skeleton, then the skeleton animates just like normal undead skeletons do, but has no desire to be of any particular alignment, just knows its name is “Ted”, and will go with whomever it encountered first and start picking up on how they act or treat Ted and grow a personality from there.
When I first slipped this into a game I had zero plan for a long term Ted concept because it was just supposed to be a dumb skeleton NPC that hung out with the party as filler for awhile.
After awhile Ted became an absolute obsession for everyone in the game and more of a backstory was created indicating that a powerful wizard had concocted the ring, later that mutated to a druid being the creator, and ultimately Ted got upgrade paths where he could start taking on either plant or humanoid elements, and be playable as a PC. Ted got stats, a real character sheet, and eventually communication by various means.
The beautiful thing about Ted, the skeleton, was that he only exists for as long as the Ring Of Ted remains on his finger. If Ted gets killed, the ring de-animates the skeleton and current incarnation of Ted is simply lost. BUT because all RPG players get attached, it is possible to slide the ring onto an entirely different skeleton found laying around anywhere (just dig something up) and restart the whole process, raising a new Skeleton Also Named Ted and going through the motions. Familiar, but a LV 1 restart, maybe with some slightly different outcomes than the last incarnation(s).