D&D General Do you transfer characters between campaigns?

[Warpiglet-7]

A discussion in another thread made me reflect on a practice that I think has all but vanished from modern TTRPGS: the character who is considered separate from the campaign.

Back in the day (late 70s/early 80s), it was common practice to have one or two primary characters that you took with you to play in different games run by different DMs. Mine was a ranger. If you levelled up or got a new magic item, that counted going forward, even if your next game was with a different group of players, in a different setting. This was a widely accepted practice, and Gary Gygax sometimes discussed D&D as all of it was all one big campaign, with different iterations.

It strikes me that TTRPGS have radically changed in this regard. Now, it is typical for a character to be confined to one campaign, where their narrative arc plays out. Does anyone still have characters that they take with them to different campaigns? Do any games still assume this practice?

I don’t know exactly how to say this. We do what we want.

My groups are friends. We discuss what level and in the old days evil or good.

Back as teens in 1e days which stretched all the way to 3e for us, we might say “let
Me see that sheet” and say “uh, that’s a bit much” if they brought a +6 defender +4 full plate and…

But generally it’s friends
Playing for however long with what we want.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I used to do that back in the '80s with my bard. Nowadays I have recreated the same character in different campaigns and different systems.

 

[Rabbitbait]

I have a couple of examples of this.

The first is where in a game I was a player, we all got transported to another world that looked suspiciously like my campaign. At that point the DM got up, got into my seat and took my character and I jumped behind the DM screen. "You're in my world now, b**ches". The players suddenly went from the epic campaign they had been playing where they always succeeded to my darkgrim setting where death is around every corner. They loved it but they were terrified.

The second is where I took the characters from an old game that had faded away. The characters had just entered the feywild in that game. In the new game I provided each player with a character sheet, but it had no name and no gear. They were all wearing comedia del arte costumes and woke up with no memory in a forest. It took them about 3 sessions before they realised who their characters were.

 

[Rabbitbait]

I have a couple of examples of this.

"You're in my world now, b**ches".

It was just a one-off though - by the end of the session they were back in their old world with their normal DM

 

[aco175]

We did some early on when we took turn being the DM more. It was short lived since one of the DMs gave out every item there was to make people feel cool or like him more and another DM gave out hardly nothing. There was problems

Today, we mostly just play one campaign with the same character and retire them. There seems to be faster leveling now and more options to play different characters.

 

[Lanefan]

But running the same character in different games by different DMs concurrently?

Not cuncurrently, consecutively.

As in, you started Ezo the Fighter in Bob's campaign but that game fizzled, so you joined Steve's in-progress campaign and he let you port Ezo the Fighter as-is over from Bob's game and pick up where you left off.

 

[Lanefan]

It was just a one-off though - by the end of the session they were back in their old world with their normal DM

In the 3e game I was in we did the same thing: by prearrangement during a session both the DM and I got up to get tea, and when we came back we sat in each other's chair. The difference was that both the characters and the world continued; what I was running was a "dream" dungeon, and three sessions later when it finished the original DM and I swapped places again and the characters woke up in the morning.

This also represents the entirety of my 3e DMing.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

Well... Laszlo, The Crimson Piss-badger of the Steppes, begat Laszlo the Warshrike, cousin to Laszlana, The Desert Fish, who could not birth children but was nonetheless betrothed to Laszlo, The Whirling Dervish - who crossed Gehennom's Quim with a 35 lbs cheese wheel strapped to his back at his coming of manhood. If you see where I'm going with this... Laszlo, is from a massive line of of Laszlos and there is always another. Some DMs will let me keep base attributes d/t a love for the ongoing character and culture and the characters write themselves with the foundation laid

 

[Umbran]

Does anyone still have characters that they take with them to different campaigns? Do any games still assume this practice?

Not in the sense you mean.

I have a couple of character concepts that got a start, but I didn't really get to play enough to do them justice, that I might try to re-use in the future.

 

[ezo]

Not cuncurrently, consecutively.

Perhaps not what you intended, but from the OP:

If you levelled up or got a new magic item, that counted going forward, even if your next game was with a different group of players, in a different setting.

So, my fighter Bob is playing in different groups, different settings. He levels up in group A and gained a magic item Friday night, so when I join group B the next afternoon on Saturday, he is higher level and has a new item which he didn't have last week.

I don't see how the other players in group B, who now see the "new and better Bob with his shiny new toy", could be okay with that.

It seems like the OP is implying concurrently, @Lanefan.

As in, you started Ezo the Fighter in Bob's campaign but that game fizzled, so you joined Steve's in-progress campaign and he let you port Ezo the Fighter as-is over from Bob's game and pick up where you left off.

Things like this, of course happened. Or someone would bring in an old PC from a campaign from a different group that hasn't been played in years. The current DM reviews the old PC, and if everything is cool, it gets played.