A question I've had simmering in the back of my mind for a couple decades

[Mark]

back in my/our day....it was all home-brewed worlds. so i can't see how that is the case.

except conventions of course.

Testify, Brother!

You see, back in the day, we didn't have "campaigns", we had "adventures".

As diaglo was saying, for my part and back in the day, it was all about the campaign and adventures were something you had when you played in a tournament or as a pick-up game at Gencon. Dragging your baggage from one DM to the next was a definite faux pas.

Yeah, I remember it. It always seemed to make for some really goofy PCs.
"I'd like to bring my psionicist into your game."
"Well, we don't use psionics."
"She could be from another dimension."
"Hrm... uh... er.... I guess."

Or, as sometimes happened, halfway through a session that second sheet would come out from the folder with all of the extra stuff the player "forgot" to mention while you were approving the character for that game. "But my last DM gave it to me, so my character has to have this artifact!"

When I began playing in the 1980's, D&D was still very much about dungeons. Greyhawk and the Known World were there, but took a backing role in the game to "the Dungeon". It was more about DM's inventing increasingly nasty dungeons, getting harder each level you went down, where characters would gain XP and treasure. Why were the monsters and treasure there? Didn't really matter. It was more roll- then role-playing, which was perfect for 12 to 15 year old kids. I think that this style of D&D has now been transferred to computer games, which are more prize- and combat- oriented. When a CPU is your DM, there's not usually much room for acting. This has left the pen & paper games more focused on playing a role and interacting with a world, thus making immigrant characters a less attractive (to the DM, anyways) option. Anyhow, just my opinion.

As much as it was about "the Dungeon" I think it was also about the characters' relationships with one another. An early game I remember at a game club I frequented back in the mid-seventies, one fellow insisted on playing both of his stock characters, one a fighting man fashion after Thor and complete with a returning hammer, the other a hobbit thief named Loki. Both were incredibly out of balance with the rest of the PCs but since we were playing in this guy's world, being run by one of his buddies (and several of his buddies took turns so that he could trot out his characters), there was not much else we could do. None of the other characters matter to him as long as he could lead the group, garnering the lion's share of experience and treasure. When some of us split off to game in a more equitable setting, he was quite put out.

This happened all the time, and still does, today... Especially in online play. Since I have a character that I had to type in (again) at 7th level, I also have him at 1-6th, as well. Soon, I should have him at 8th, as well.

Online, especially, there is almost no difference between PCs created for this game, and ones imported from elsewhere... The only problems occur with "Prestige" Classes (which I avoid), new spells and/or Feats (likewise), DM fiats (special powers, etc.; which I note, but allow the new GM to disallow), the occasional differences in rules interpretations, and campaign-specific items. The only unavoidable problems are the rules interpretation types.

Since character development is a major part of the game, for me, creating new PCs for every game is detrimental to my enjoyment. If I have to create a new PC for a D&D game (when I already have one or more of appropriate level), it just isn't worth it, to me, to play. I'll just wait for another game...

And most DMs that I know would be fine with your choice of waiting...

Personally, I have usually allowed people to bring in characters from outside provided they didn't mind me taking the big red pen to their character sheet and crossing off the things that were not making the trip...and even adjusting the stats when they were too low or too high (compared to the group average).

But, I know plenty of DMs who feel that if they can spend hours and hours a week building a setting for folks to explore, then the least effort a player can make is to take the time to build a character specific to their world and based in part on whatever information the DM is giving as potential background fodder.

Frankly, as a DM, I can see both points of view, but when I play in a new game as a player, I always like to build a new character so that I am not hamstringing the DM with concepts from other games that might not fit the new game. And, no matter how much someone tries, some of that is going to seep through even when you do make new characters, but moreso if you don't.

To each his own...

 

[doghead]

As someone mentioned, in the AD&d days, we (as in our group) did 'adventures' rather than 'campaigns', using whatever characters of the appropriate level that came to hand. Our gaming wasn't frequent enough for every character to be developed from first level, so we did generate higher level characters. But the idea of having everyone start from first would not have been so strange.

At that time, Greyhawk was a word we all knew, but knew nothing about. It was when we moved over to Warhammer Fantasy battle (with its much more intergral setting) that character/space/time consistancy became more important. Initially, we had a collection of characters that we played with several DMs. I have a notebook outlining the timeline of who was where doing what with whom. However, as the characters developed histories and personal agenda's (there was a fair bit of behind the scenes stuff going on by that time), it became harder to move them over to a new DM, who would be a player/character in another game. So we settled for allocating characters to DMs. Sometimes, one of the DM's characters in another game would make an cameo appearance. And sometimes characters would migrate across to another group (although this involved spilling the beans to the new DM, of course.). Levels in WHFRP were alot less of a restriction.

This seems to be how things stand with 3e.

 

[Shemeska]

I've seen this before where one player would all but demand to use his drow chosen of mystra in virtually any campaign he was playing in. If it wasn't exact same character, they looked similar and had the same level build but a different name.

Myself I've done something akin to this once. I pulled in an NPC from my campaign to play as a PC for a super latenight (3am) oneshot in Ravenloft. Just for the amusement of a tiefling Xaositect dragged into the Demiplane of Dread by the mists. She was amusingly ineffective versus those goblyns

 

[pawsplay]

Back in the day, I think I imagined that D&D players everywhere were members of some kind of informal league. Campaign continuity was heck, but since most characters were either avaricious mercenaries or very serious-minded do-gooders, it was pretty easy to imagine people just joined up on different missions.

One kid on the block had his 20th level mage/10th level thief immortal with a ferret familiar. I could never get my halflings or lovely female elf archers past second level. He was older than most of us, and he was a killer DM. One day, he boasted his character was unbeatable. I and my usual DM took him up on that. We agreed to take turns designing rooms. As part of the challenge, everything had to cleave closely to published monsters, spells, traps, etc. All Baegin the Magician had to do was walk through the place (no teleporting). Naturally, the first thing we decided to do was to plant a couple of artifacts to ensure he would stay in until he had obtained them.

As it turns out, I out-killered him and everyone. In the hallway in, I killed his @#%$@#% ferret with an elaborate trap involving spikes and persian rugs. When he walked into the second room, he discovered magic radiating from under a curtain. He lifted it, and looked right into the Mirror of Opposition. Now faced with a duplicate of himself, with all his powers, he first attempted to disbelieve the "illusion." His duplicate cast the nastiest spell I could find in the book; even with his automatic save, the damage was so high it killed him. My co-killer-DM never even got to showcase the second room, something horrible involving anti-magic and the robot sentries from that spaceship module.

 

[Rel]

As diaglo was saying, for my part and back in the day, it was all about the campaign and adventures were something you had when you played in a tournament or as a pick-up game at Gencon. Dragging your baggage from one DM to the next was a definite faux pas.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, when I said "Back in the day, we had 'adventures', not 'campaigns'.", I meant "we" as in "those who I gamed with" not "we" as in "the whole of gamerdom". I can still recall us putting our first real campaign together and it feeling so novel. We just had no clue back then.

 

[Davelozzi]

We never really did the transferring characters thing. When we were young, we rarely actually played, and never made it past one adventure or so. But I don't recall every reusing characters.

My first real campaign started when in I was in junior high, and ever since ever player definately made a character specifically designed for the campaign. One of my players wanted to bring his character from our college campaign over when we started my current campaign. I DM'd both games, so there was no balance issue but I still didn't let him. The old campaign was Forgotten Realms and the new one was a homebrew and I told him the character just wasn't going to worldhop for no reason. Eventually he rolled up a new character - same race and class (dwarven fighter) but different name and slight differences in personality. That was good enough for me.

 

[eris404]

In many places through the years (most recently, many of the EGG articles in Dragon, but that isn't the only place), I've read references to an interesting phenomenon. Players having characters that they take from game to game.

When I first started playing it wasn't the case, because I only knew a few people who played and the same person was always the DM. No opportunity to port characters, really.

In my current group, something somewhat similiar to this is happening, but it's an unusual event. We have one DM who is running two games in the Forgotten Realms on different days with different groups. However, there is one player who is in both groups and is using the same character. Her character is the common thread between groups and from what the DM is talking about, may even be the messenger between them at some point. It's sort of like running one big game split over two groups and two nights.

Otherwise, players in our group tend to like making characters too much. And besides, my characters tend to die.

Hey, related to this subject, we used to have one guy in our group that was always trying to recreate characters he played when he was pre-teen or teenager. He would always follow the DMs guidelines, so if we were starting at first level and using 3.0 rules, he would simply recreate the character at that level. But it was the same name, same personality, same class, even the same ability scores and magic items if he could get away with it. Anybody done this or knew people who did this?

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I can still recall us putting our first real campaign together and it feeling so novel. We just had no clue back then.

Yeah, for me it was when I stopped rolling randomly for the monsters in various dungeon rooms, instead creating "complexes" of creatures that lived together, cooperated on defense, etc. All of a sudden the world started to feel a bit more real.

 

[pawsplay]

I often re-interpret a character for a new game. It gives my characters a sense of life to me, and since I usually GM rather than play, it's the closest I usually get to a story arc for my own heroes.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I used to do this all the time back in the 80's. Not at all since then.

ditto.

I had a particular cleric/fighter who was originally from Loftwick (in grayhawk), but later adventured in several homebrew worlds, the Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft before he retired at about 14th level.

I suppose I did it because I really liked the character and wanted him to advance, regardless of the game we were playing in. He was a lot of fun to play.

Today, each game is so different and I have so many ideas for characters that I don't ever play the same one for more than a few months.