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Again, I feel like the problem here is far more than just the loss of player agency. The example you give is so hyperbolic that I'd like to hope that it doesn't come up in the majority of tables. What kind of games are you playing that the first idea that comes to mind when a PC gets dominated...

Yes, but that kind of limit is - as you say so as well - down to preference. Some people want character death to only happen when it is meaningful and that's a valid choice (it's what I agree with in 5e most of the time as well). But the point is that it's a matter of preference, not morality...

Eh, I don't like the moralising (and legalising) tone that you're taking over what is supposed to be what happens to your imaginary character in your imaginary pretend game of elves*. Sometimes, things you don't like happen to your character, either while you're at the table or when you're away...

Where do we draw the line at disrespecting the inworld character of a player though? Is a character dying in a random encounter also disrespectful because it does not give the player an end that that they had agreed to? Is challenging a PC's personality traits also disrespecting the player since...

You're missing the point by focusing on the noncommercial part. The important part is non-public. We're talking about home games that people play with their friends.

There is also the fact that TTRPG is an international hobby. I'm currently living in Switzerland. Sure, theoretically American copyright law may allow WotC to sue me for infringing on their copyright by, I don't know, running an extremely erotic Greyhawk game using FATE rules. But does Swiss law...

People get those letters when they publish copyright-infringing work, yes. But who the hell is going to stop me from establishing rules for element bending for my 5e game that only people in my home D&D game can see? How could Viacom even know that their copyright is being infringed? I am...

Every day, these forums remind me that common sense is not as common as I think it is.

So are D&D 5e home games that use IPs that aren't officially adapted to the 5e ruleset (Star Wars, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Marvel Comics, etc.) illegal?! I mean, you realise how ridiculous that sounds, right? I can tell you why they're saying this: Copyright protects commercial use and no...

Absolute poppycock. I can place and use whichever copyrighted character I want in my non-commercial home game, and Disney can do nothing about it. We're talking about campaigns and DMing here, of course commercial products are different. But for home games, nothing can legally and morally stop...

@Yaarel furthermore, I gave the example of Mordenkainen for a specific reason: He has a current canon status in official D&D (like I said, mad and amnesiac in a certain D&D adventure). If I gloss over that canon plot point entirely and say he has never had such an affliction and never will, am I...

Well yes. But that's not the point. I can also add Darth Vader to my D&D campaign even though I have no permission from Disney to use that character in that particular game. This does not mean that I have somehow committed a slight against George Lucas (or Disney) by using his character in a way...

This is actually well-done and really helps people avoid unexpected surprises! Thank you :)

If you like playing the same character across multiple games (I know some people who play the same character from D&D to World of Warcraft), sure, they can have the same name, personality, core concept etc... Provided those fit the campaign we're running. I'd strongly encourage a player to not...

While I respect whichever cosmology you use for your games, you have to admit this is a very strange and uncommonly held ontology for fiction. Batman has a thousand different variations (Silver Age, New 52, Modern, 90s Animated Series, Nolan, Snyderverse, Arkhamverse...) and nobody thinks it's...

But why are you assuming that it's the same character? I feel like it's really obvious that when you take a friend's character as an NPC in your game, what happens is the "clone or copy" situation as you describe it. Unless the DM who used that character has an insane multiverse theory that...

Page 9 please!

I haven't looked at the drama for a while, but did LaNasa actually found a company named OSR GAMES? He really likes sullying wider swaths of the hobby, doesn't he...

Boring answer, but I agree with the others who say that it's a co-ownership situation. When it's the exact same character, in the exact same setting, and I want to use the character in a way that changes their status quo (say it turned out that a character got married in their epilogue but I...

I'm honestly surprised by people's negative reaction to the XP curve. Ever since I first discovered it, I thought it was a clever piece of design. What you call "blurting out stuff", I call "giving the players the chance to actually see high levels for once". It's not like 5e is singular in not...