D&D General Do you transfer characters between campaigns?

[Lanefan]

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?

If there's a connection between the campaigns such that there's a plausible in-fiction explanation* for how-why this character jumped from one campaign to another, then sure - I love it. (though it really helps if the campaigns are using roughly the same rule-set; I'd have a hard time explaining how a 5e character could hope to function in my 1e-adjacent campaign, for example)

That said, back in the day it wasn't unknown for certain players' characters to mysteriously "acquire" powerful items and-or significant stat increases between leaving one campaign and appearing in another, particularly if-when the two DMs were strangers to each other. So there's that to watch out for.

* - which can include something as simple as a malfunctioning planar-travel device or spell, it doesn't have to be complicated.

 

[Sorinth]

Isn't this essentially Adventurer's League play?

 

[Tonguez]

I played Orbril the gnome (Alchemist and Master of the Grand Circus Maximus) over a few campaigns across maybe 4 or 5 different rules systems starting as a young gnomling leaving the burrow, through his apprenticeship as a young alchemist, his adventuring career, writing Treatises of Geology, Alchemy and Pyrotechnics, losing his finger when tortured by bandits, catching a pair of giant hamsters, starting a travelling circus (and breeding hamsters), spreading giant hamsters to all the gnome burrows around the world, his brush with politics, experiments in agriculture and aquaculture, extraplanar diplomacy, becoming a Professor of Applied Alchemy and eventual partial-retirement in the Fae Realm as a guest of the Fae Queen. He still shows up now and then as an NPC - but often just a glimpse of a Hamster pulled wagon driving pass as the PCs arrive in town...

Converting him between different systems was a challenge which is probably one reason I gravitated to free form narrative games rather than having to worry about converting math problems.

Other characters I might revisit in new campaigns but usually that's just taking the character concept and rebuilding them for the new rules (eg I had a half-giant character who later became a Goliath)

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Only when they take place in the same setting and the campaign is being run by a DM from our same large playgroup.

That, precisely. And since I haven't found myself in that situation since 1979, I really don't do that any more. Sure was the norm in my community back in the 70s, though.

Closest I get now is a long string of (quite different) Dwarven PCs in various editions of D&D (and 13th Age, which is D&D 4.5 as far as I'm concerned) that are theoretically distant descendants of the other ones. I think I'm up to six members of the Krakarok lineage at this point.

 

[Voadam]

I have played my eponymous character in multiple campaigns. My first transition was taking him from the original hometown AD&D game he was in into the college one I joined which had an Elric type of multiverse and the DM had no problem having my character sail in on his spelljammer though Dream in his world. I then played him in a 3e campaign with people from my original group, with an intervening story of being summoned by a lich/vampire and being horribly level drained from 20th level down to something like 5th or 7th and losing most of my items. Most of the rest are sort of multiverse incarnations of different versions of him, same core character aspects, but lots of different specifics (like edition or class or level or game system or racial version (human, aasimar, genasi)). I am playing a version of him in my current weekly game in a homebrew setting and system.

 

[GrimCo]

We have one homebrew setting dating to mid 2012, in which all campaigns, short campaigns and one shots take place. So all the characters we ever played, depending on timeline, might be alive and kicking. My current character was made way back in early 2013, played few sessions then, fast forward to 2022 when i played also few sessions with that character, fast forward to this year, now i play with him again (this time as part of campaign, not short adventure).

I recycled my old characters. I have solid binder full of characters, some of them i quite like, so if they fit thematically, i reuse them. As someone said, lots of games fizzle out. I have at least dozen cool concepts that were DOA or played for only couple of sessions. Why not reuse? After all, recycling is good for environment

 

[Baron Opal II]

Back in the day, absolutely. Characters migrated from my game, my friends, and to a local community center where there were four DMs running games every week. Lots of cross-planar shenanigans there. As long as it was a book race and class you were good. Sometimes your more potent or exotic magic items didn't work, but typical things were fine. All of the worlds were bespoke.

A lot of that was influenced by the Arduin books by Dave Hargrave. He was one of the early ones, and his home game conceit was Arduin was at a nexus of planes. The reason why there were so many different races, monsters, &c. was that there were hundreds of gates to other planes, both alternate Prime Materials and outer planes of various types. So, naturally, other people's campaigns were other Prime Materials with the PCs finding a gate and travelling through. "All of us" used or referenced them; at least a dozen to a score of people who ran games at the time that I talked to.

Lately? Close to never. Which I find rather sad. I don't see much cross-pollination of games like I used to. However, I also don't frequent community centers or game stores like I used to, either.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Isn't this essentially Adventurer's League play?

I believe that Adventurer's League, starting with Adventures in Ravens Bluff, was an attempt to recapture that feeling as well as giving people who aged out of their High School or College gaming circles a similar experience. When I was involved a big draw was that you gained and maintained friendships and rivalries with people and groups all over the country. A big difference was that the milieu was maintained. There wasn't a variety in each game. Living Greyhawk addressed that by having different areas of the country be different areas of Oerth, and that was interesting.

 

[Azzy]

I don't think I've ever done this. Something about it never worked for me. I associated PCs with certain campaigns, and with all the ideas I've had for PCs, I've always seen it as an opportunity to play a new one.

This has been my experience, too. Each different campaign would have new characters.

 

[Guest 7037866]

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.

Interesting. This was never my experience. Unless the DMs were running campaigns "in the same game world", one DM would pick up the game where the last left off, then the character might continue on.

But running the same character in different games by different DMs concurrently? Nope, never happened IME. I don't think I've ever even heard of that happening. It doesn't surprise me I suppose.