D&D General PCs jumping to other campaigns/DMs

[TwoSix]

A few sessions in, he finally admitted that he was intimidated by our backstories and how well our characters worked together- he felt our stories were overshadowing his own adventure (?) and that we'd taken over the game, because any time there was a decision, we had a "voting bloc" that could often force the other players into doing what we thought was best.

That seems like much less of an indictment of recreating old characters, and more of the DM being somewhat insecure and railroady.

 

[James Gasik]

That seems like much less of an indictment of recreating old characters, and more of the DM being somewhat insecure and railroady.

Well that may be so, but I still think it shows that this is not something that can fly at all tables anymore.

 

[TwoSix]

Well that may be so, but I still think it shows that this is not something that can fly at all tables anymore.

As someone who didn't start playing until the '90s, I'm surprised it ever flew anywhere at all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

However, the idea of the exact same character going from one GM's game to another is just not something that fits my playstyle. I know it was done in the early days, but even then, I think it relied on the fiction of a uniformity of rules that simply wasn't true. The game differs too much from GM to GM for this to be hassle-free (unless you really heavily standardise rules like organised play does).

It really wasn't. But that was partly because it was mostly in the OD&D days, and you had to houserule awfully heavily before it would impact the downright schematic structure of OD&D characters. The only issue that occasionally came up was item portability, and it was just taken as a given GMs would vet those before letting them in.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That seems like much less of an indictment of recreating old characters, and more of the DM being somewhat insecure and railroady.

That. And what was wrong with the other players that any two people could force anyone into doing what they didn't want to do? Two people is not a dominant "voting bloc" unless it was a three-player or maybe four-player game, and I doubt the twosome were regularly bullying anyone. Was the rest of the group a bunch of brand new players or something?

And really, if it wasn't for the eight-page backstory, would anyone even have known these were updated older characters without explicitly being told so? They were re-built using the campaign's rules and would have been perfectly legal as new PCs, right? This was a play style issue, not something actually involving mechanics or past history with a Monty Haul DM or something.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As someone who didn't start playing until the '90s, I'm surprised it ever flew anywhere at all.

Its easy to overestimate what "campaign" even meant in a lot of cases in those days; a lot of sessions were just random dungeon raids and wilderness treks, without a lot of particularly significant continuity. I'm not going to say the whole stop-the-dark-lord thing didn't exist in those periods, but it wasn't much the dominant approach the way it became later.

 

[billd91]

And what was wrong with the other players that any two people could force anyone into doing what they didn't want to do? Two people is not a dominant "voting bloc" unless it was a three-player or maybe four-player game, and I doubt the twosome were regularly bullying anyone. Was the rest of the group a bunch of brand new players or something?

Don't underestimate how intimidating a pair of dominant players can be, even if they aren't an outright majority. The number of gamers I know who will defer to anyone with a stronger personality is legion.
But for a historical example of how a two-person voting bloc can dominate a 4-person system - there's a reason that George Harrison's first solo effort after the Beatles was a triple album. The Lennon-McCartney partnership wasn't just a song-writing powerhouse, it was also a collusion that throttled George's writing contributions appearing on Beatles albums.

 

[tetrasodium]

That seems like much less of an indictment of recreating old characters, and more of the DM being somewhat insecure and railroady.

From my reading of post 40, the two of us do not appear to be participants in that game. That leaves other possibilities. For ease I'm going to call the GM Bob.

A couple easy options among those is that the Bob actually wanted to integrate character backstories into the his world, but not in the way a player had already written them. Maybe Bob has already decided but not yet revealed or become relevant setting elements that he feels compelled to change because the players had already established them with something he had no part in. Maybe the other players were starting to feel like sidekicks along for someone else's railroad ride & Bob noticed or the players brought it up privately

That. And what was wrong with the other players that any two people could force anyone into doing what they didn't want to do? Two people is not a dominant "voting bloc" unless it was a three-player or maybe four-player game, and I doubt the twosome were regularly bullying anyone. Was the rest of the group a bunch of brand new players or something?

And really, if it wasn't for the eight-page backstory, would anyone even have known these were updated older characters without explicitly being told so? They were re-built using the campaign's rules and would have been perfectly legal as new PCs, right? This was a play style issue, not something actually involving mechanics or past history with a Monty Haul DM or something.

Easy. Nobody wants to be the bad guy and it's only this once, "obviously those two will start pulling away from something that should have been in the background & moving towards the setting for this game soon enough?" Eventually it's a whole mountain of one offs