D&D General Who “owns” a PC after the player stops using them?

[GrimCo]

You can. And there is not much that DM can do about it, except bitch about it, call you names and stop associating with you.

But as soon as you start using it, you start adding your stuff in it, it starts to diverge from original idea. You start with their ideas and transform it into something yours by virtue of collective storytelling. Which is basically what we do when we run official settings anyway. We just pay for those since they come in physical form.

I can take Middle Earth as a setting. But it will never be Tolkiens middle earth from the books. It will be my reinterpretation and our collective re imagination of the Middle Earth.

 

[lall]

Actually. Something I've been meaning to ask, might have been answered by some people already, has anyone been in a situation where someone left the game and their character was made an NPC and the former player got mad about it?

Nope. I left and came back (about 6 months later) to learn some less than pleasant things had happened to my character. Shrug city though. The DM was still there and had to come up with some blah blah for what happened to my character, so totally fine with it.

 

[MNblockhead]

Lanefan said:
I get to control my character in your game, though; and that control extends beyond my time at the table.

And how do you enforce that? Do you only use paper character sheets and not let the DM have a copy of the character sheet?

And if you leave the campaign and take that character sheet with you, and the DM creates a new NPC based on your character, with the same name, race, class, and background as the DM knows it, are you good with that? If not, then what? Never play with the DM again?

EDIT: this was addressed at the post that Thomas Shey was replying to. I edited the quote to make that clear.

 

[Maxperson]

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

Sure. If you want to go off and run your own group through a campaign that I ran you though, go for it. Why should it matter to me?

 

[MNblockhead]

This thread has jumped the shark. I’m out.

I’ll be offline the rest of the day. I have to meet with my lawyers because the authorities discovered that I used to pretend to be Fonzie.

 

[tetrasodium]

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

Sure. The trouble is that there are players who want to do just that without mentioning it to the GM☆ (which is fine so far) and they want to expect the GM's game world conform to whatever away from table story writing/fanfic/"roleplay" they are doing with it when it's time for actual game sessions★.

☆ which is not required
★ Which is disruptive bizarre and unreasonable when not even mentioned to the GM.

 

[MNblockhead]

It breaks the idea that the DM can do anything they want and the player should have no say even with their own character.

I'm surprised they don't take the player's dice when they leave 'their' table too.

I've tried that, but a couple of my players are ex-military and would kick my ass. Actually, so would my fellow out-of-shape IT players. I really need to hit the gym. I need more dice.

 

[GrimCo]

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

If we scrutinize and go over all the characters, places, settings, story arcs, with fine tooth comb, there would be lots of stuff borrowed or inspired by other works of fiction.

 

[cbwjm]

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

I'd happily hand over the notes of my campaign world if a player wanted them to run adventures in. They'd probably be more comprehensive than what the player had only interacted with, while leaving plenty of room for them to develop as they wanted.

 

[DragonLancer]

For me, the character is part of the setting. Unless a player specifically says they don't want them to appear as an NPC (and I don't get anyone who say that if they aren't being played and will not be played again) they are fair game. I have a friend who hasn't played in our games for 30 years and he had a popular character when we played back then. I have since those times used his character as an NPC, usually for information or just as a cool cameo.

Why would anyone care less if they are no longer playing? If the player was still playing but a new campaign I could see just asking but it wouldn't bother me if things were the other way around. In our current Pathfinder campaign, the GM had our characters from a previous campaign pop up for a cameo, and no one was upset or angry. It was quite cool.