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

SableWyvern said:

We're saying any moral right that may exist doesn't and shouldn't prevent me from using a version of your creation in my private, home RPG game (or drawing pictures of it in my spare time, or writing steamy journal entries to myself about your creation (even if I then share those entries with a few close friends), or whatever people want to do in private, with their friends.

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You are putting words in my mouth, please refrain from doing so.

TwoSix brought up his moral rights, and my comment on Moral Right was this:

"So you are asserting that your moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their rights not to have it used without permission."

It's was not "Do I have moral rights to use their character without permission", but "Does my moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their moral rights not to have it done".

Think about the other person as a human being who also has moral rights; I'd love to hear your answer to that.

One disconnect in ethics seems whether DM and players view the socalled retired characters as PCs or NPCs. (In my campaigns, strictly PCs, always.)

An other disconnect seems whether the characters are old school "disposables" in a lethal game with Bob 2 and Bob 3, ready in line. Oppositely, new school "narrative" characters tend to be heroes of the story that invite the players to self-identify. To violate a new school character overlaps violating a reallife player. Most games agree to the possibility of death of the character or even of magically charming the character. Nevertheless to say the player character was raped or other kind of violation couldnt be done today, unless there were completely nonambiguous agreement during Session Zero and it would be nonnormative.

tetrasodium said:

Yes when "your" is the gm who ran the game where that player played a character (let's call the PC Andy) that achieved notable accomplishments. When those past accomplishments come up in future gameplay sessions the player's failure to make known their expectations to gain benefits for their future PC Bob through Andy should it ever come up very much puts that player in the wrong.

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This has nothing to do with the point under discussion. History of the campaign is there. We're talking about appropriating them as an NPC without permission.

tetrasodium said:

Alternately they are a disruption to the future session should they disrupt the session by making a surprise reveal of those hidden expectations. In making that disruption the player is even more in the wrong by using an unstated expectation to justify disrupting everyone's fun with the goal of metagaming.

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Flag on play: "Hidden" and "unstated" are based on your table's assumptions of play. As seen from others arguing in this thread, these are default positions for others. Please don't try to speak for everyone as an attempt to justify a position.

But addressing it as a seriously. A character who dies can be out of the game and not run as an NPC in future session, but asking that a retired character is not run in future sessions by the creator is impossible to do because it is disruptive and metagaming. I don't see how that tracks, it is already being done for one category of character.

tetrasodium said:

@Lanefan it's extremely rare for a player to have multiple PCs in modern RPGs barring things like a dcc funnel with random pregens or an unusual circumstance like a small group. What was common in 1e is no longer the case for many many reasons

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West March campaigns and other games with stables of characters are still played, a quick web search will find this assertion incorrect. (And that's before even getting into other genres of games, but this is posted in the D&D forum.)

Blue said:

You are putting words in my mouth, please refrain from doing so.

TwoSix brought up his moral rights, and my comment on Moral Right was this:

"So you are asserting that your moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their rights not to have it used without permission."

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In the post you just quoted, the opening words are "We're saying." Unless you think you are part of the "we", that means the words are explicitly not intended to be yours. I'm literally stating my position on the topic. Note also that you specifically asked for clarification of the position (of @tetrasodium, to be fair, but I feel safe in the knowledge that we see eye-to-eye on this).

Blue said:

It's was not "Do I have moral rights to use their character without permission", but "Does my moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their moral rights not to have it done".

Think about the other person as a human being who also has moral rights; I'd love to hear your answer to that

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Yes, my moral rights to use someone else's character in the privacy of my own home, among friends, exceed the rights of someone else to tell me that I may not do so in the privacy of my own home, among friends.

This is pretty well established in law and society in general. It's accepted throughout the TTRPG community; no one bats an eyelid at people playing characters that are established literary characters, and no one ever asks for permission from an author before setting a home game in their world, or playing some existing movie, comic or book character.

As I've mentioned several times, this doesn't mean I can't have a polite conversation with someone who feels strongly about protecting their character from use by others, but it does mean that it's on them to have that conversation, and they shouldn't be doing it from a position where they claim the right to dictate to me which characters I can play in a game they're not participating in.

Yaarel said:

An other disconnect seems whether the characters are old school "disposables" in a lethal game with Bob 2 and Bob 3, ready in line. Oppositely, new school "narrative" characters tend to be heroes of the story that invite the players to self-identify. To violate a new school character overlaps violating a reallife player. Most games agree to the possibility of death of the character or even of magically charming the character. Nevertheless to say the player character was raped or other kind of violation couldnt be done today, unless there were completely nonambiguous agreement during Session Zero and it would be nonnormative.

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I'm not sure I see the relevance. Nobody's talking about violence that would cross someone's lines. And as far as comparing older school play vs newer school, Lanefan is pretty old school in style and is adhering as extreme a line in favor of PC ownership as anyone else. I think the issue of ownership and NPCness seems orthogonal to old vs new school RPG players.

Blue said:

This seem that you are saying that the player DOES own the character but that doesn't restrict others from using the character.

This thread is about owning, I just want to make sure I'm reading this right and not putting words in your mouth.

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I'll clarify. In the context of this thread (and of the thread from which this one derived), the concept of ownership of a character is expansive and includes the right to restrict or allow the use of that content in RPG games (hence the "s around owns in this thread's title). At least, that's the context that some posters are using, and that's the only context that I'm responding to. I dispute that the creator of a character in a game or in any other context gives the creator any special rights or authority over the way the character is used by others in non-published venues. I can draw Spider-Man. I can tell my kid stories about his favorite fictional characters. I can use a D&D character played by another person in my game in any way I want without infringing on their rights as a creator.

I don't have enough legal knowledge to say if a player can own an RPG character in the less expansive sense (that is, whether the player has sole authority to authorize or prohibit the use of the character in published or otherwise disseminated works. That's not important in the context of who can determine if or how a character is used in D&D.

Blue said:

Do you bring up this policy to the players in Session 0, so they have a chance to discuss or perhaps not join the game? Or do you keep it a secret and trot it out when a player has already left and has no idea that you have assumed control of their character without asking?

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Nope, for 2 rations. First, cause i mostly play with same group of friends since 2008. We couldn't care less what happens with characters after we stop playing them. We had so many campaigns fizzle out after few sessions, i have full binder of barley played characters, both mine and my friends. Very few characters became memorable, and most that did, were meme characters. If i pull out some old character from 7-8 years ago and use it as a NPC, 99% percent of time no one remembers that character, who made it and for what campaign.

Second, on rare occasions i do run game for a group that has strangers (usually friend of a friend or acquaintance of a friend), i don't usually allow switching characters mid campaign. Last time it happened, 2 players left due to real life circumstances. One after only 2 sessions, other after 5-6. I asked friend to ask them if they plan to return to game in near future, since i didn't know them and didn't have their number. One said no, other didn't say anything. So i made decisions for their characters that fit story narrative. I don't think they cared enough what happened to their characters, and i generally don't care if they have problem with me using their characters after they leave my game since they weren't my friends anyway.

We had one guy in PF campaign who just stopped coming mid campaign. 11 levels, 35 5+h sessions in, and he dips. Doesn't responds to messages in Signal group. Doesn't respond to individual messages. Well, F him. We used his character as a meat shield until he died and then raised him as bloody skeleton. If you couldn't be bothered to type simple message, why should we care about not using his character? Or DM?

TwoSix said:

Because asking permission would imply some sort of explicit or implicit ownership of that character image that I don't acknowledge as existing.

If I liked a character you made in a game five years ago, and I make that same character (same name, same build) in someone else's game, I don't owe you a phone call to ask.

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There's a fair-size difference between making a more-or-less copy of someone's character (Lanefax) and playing it in a different game than taking over and using the actual original character (Lanefan) in its original game.

TwoSix said:

I would say they have ownership precisely to the point where it concerns trademark, copyright, or some other commercial concept.

They have zero moral right to restrict my usage in any non-commercial manner.

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Non-commercial use is still use. If you've done an original piece of art and put it online, in theory I've no right to print that image out and hang it on my wall without your permission even if you never had any intention of using or selling the piece yourself.

Lanefan said:

There's a fair-size difference between making a more-or-less copy of someone's character (Lanefax) and playing it in a different game than taking over and using the actual original character (Lanefan) in its original game.

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I don't actually see the difference in any meaningful sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also get the impression that if @TwoSix said, "this is LanefanPC, complete with his whole background from a previous game. He was sucked through a dimensional rift into this new world" you would have a problem with it.