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

[Umbran]

That depends, can we quit pretending that a character collaboratively grown through adventures run by a second person in a group likely to have even more people contributing in various ways were the exclusive creation of one single person with no involvement from others? You know... Since that's a critical problem for your statement

Then, by all means, how about you sit there while everyone else at your table plays your character.

Honestly, why do they need you any more? The character is as much theirs as yours - they've got as much stake in it as you do. You can go home. They've got it covered now, without you.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then, by all means, how about you sit there while everyone else at your table plays your character.

Honestly, why do they need you any more? The character is as much theirs as yours - they've got as much stake in it as you do. You can go home. They've got it covered now, without you.

eh?... It's page 44 & I could have blinked... Where did I (or anyone on the retired/unused-PC=NPC side of the discussion) say something to give an impression I was talking about the GM meat puppeting the player's current PC like some kind of weird GMPC twist like that bold bit implies?

Yes it is a thing they are free to do in some other game or while I'm playing some other PC, but that bolded bit I quoted painfully contorts around it. I believe I might be the only one in the thread who has admitted to both encountering problems with someone feeling they "own" a retired PC -and- described those problems in detail in this or the original thread. My problem with the "bob OWNS his retired PC & can force the GM to do things not covered by any d&d book I've described more than once in this thread (like here)" stance is the idea that bob doesn't need to ensure there is a session zero so he can voice his redflag while simultaneously sandbagging anyone who pushes back against an unreasonable expectation as I've done with two different players over the years.

Why does this thread keep jumping away from the discussion to some extreme that pretends this is about the GM giving Bob's Blackleaf character to Dave the necromancer or throwing it into a brothel in Dis for the lulz. rather than the GM maintaining consistency☆ in their game world. The GM is well supported to an almost extreme degree in using a notable retired PC in the role it previously established should that come up down the line. Here's just a few sections supporting the GM's use of a former PC as NPC.

Spoiler: ☆

5e DMG4:
PART 1 : MASTER OF WORLDS
Every OM is the creator of his or her own campaign
world. Whether you invent a world, adapt a world from
a favorite movie or novel, or use a published setting for
the D&D game, you make that world your own over the
course of a campaign.
The world where you set your campaign is one of
countless worlds that make up the D&D multiverse,
a vast array of planes and worlds where adventures
happen. Even if you're using an established world such
as the Forgotten Realms, your campaign takes place
in a sort of mirror universe of the official setting where
Forgotten Realms novels, game products, and digital
games are assumed to take place. The world is yours to
change as you see fit and yours to modify as you explore
the consequences of the players' actions.
Your world is more than just a backdrop for
adventures. Like Middle Earth, Westerns, and countless
other fantasy worlds out there, it's a place to which you
can escape and witness fantastic stories unfold. A well
designed and well-run world seems to flow around the
adventurers, so that they feel part of something, instead
of apart from it.
Consistency is a key to a believable fictional
world. When the adventurers go back into town for
supplies, they should encounter the same nonplayer
characters (NPCs) they met before. Soon, they'll learn
the barkeep's name, and he or she will remember
theirs as well. Once you have achieved this degree of
consistency, you can provide an occasional change. If
the adventurers come back to buy more horses at the
stables, they might discover that the man who ran the
place went back home to the large city over the hills,
and now his niece runs the family business. That sort of
change-one that has nothing to do with the adventurers
directly, but one that they'll notice-makes the players
feel as though their characters are part of a living world
that changes and grows along with them.

Spoiler: downtime activities

DOWNTIME ACTIVITIES
The campaign benefits when characters have time
between adventures to engage in other activities.
Allowing days, weeks, or months to pass between
adventures stretches the campaign over a longer period
of time and helps to manage the characters' level
progression, preventing them from gaining too much
power too quickly.
Allowing characters to pursue side interests between
adventures also encourages players to become more
invested in the campaign world. When a character owns
a tavern in a village or spends time carousing with the
locals, that character's player is more likely to respond
to threats to the village and its inhabitants.
As your campaign progresses, your players'
characters will not only become more powerful but also
more influential and invested in the world. They might
be inclined to undertake projects that require more time
between adventures, such as building and maintaining a
stronghold. As the party gains levels, you can add more
downtime between adventures to give characters the
time they need to pursue such interests. Whereas days
or weeks might pass between low-level adventures, the
amount of downtime between higher-level adventures
might be measured in months or years.

Spoiler: DMG33 ending a campaign

ENDING A CAMPAIGN
A campaign's ending should tie up all the threads of
its beginning and middle, but you don't have to take a
campaign all the way to 20th level for it to be satisfying.
Wrap up the campaign whenever your story reaches its
natural conclusion.
Make sure you allow space and time near the end
of your campaign for the characters to finish up any
personal goals. Their own stories need to end in
a satisfying way, just as the campaign story does.
Ideally, some of the characters' individual goals will be
fulfilled by the ultimate goal of the final adventure. Give
characters with unfinished goals a chance to finish them
before the very end.
Once the campaign has ended, a new one can begin.

Spoiler: DMG21 factions & organizations

FACTIONS AND
ORGANIZATIONS
Temples, guilds, orders, secret societies, and
colleges are important forces in the social order of
any civilization. Their influence might stretch across
multiple towns and cities, with or without a similarly
wide-ranging political authority. Organizations can
play an important part in the lives of player characters,
becoming their patrons, allies, or enemies just like
individual nonplayer characters. When characters join
these organizations, they become part of something
larger than themselves, which can give their adventures
a context in the wider world.

Nobody seems to be saying that a player who proactively expresses that they want their character to fade away & never be seen or similar should show up in dis or whatever, but people are actually saying that a player should gain benefit or authority from a PC they are not playing & that the player should not even need to voice that expectation proactively rather than reactively pointing to a cracked & crumbling copyright claim with more problems than just the one you quoted.

 

[Lanefan]

So why were you mad about it? What was it about your former PC being turned into an NPC that was so maddening for you? Were you planning on coming back to the game and taking up that character again or had you completely moved on from that group?

I was still in the game.

The odd thing is that the character of mine* that got used as an NPC was actually dead at the time. Without my knowledge, he was put up as a divine champion against another PC, with the battle taking place in the land of the dead. He won, and as a reward was returned to life; but in the process had his leg chopped off at the thigh by the sharpness weapon wielded by his foe. So much for that reward, until real-world years later when he acquired - again through very strange means - a new leg.

My take on it was that if he was going to be someone's divine champion, fine; but at least call me up and let me come over and play him through the combat. That way, I can be the author of my own misfortune.

* - as fate would have it, that character was Lanefan.

 

[MNblockhead]

Bring your legal counsel to Session Zero.

I think my take away from this long thread is that the next time I run a campaign in my homebrew world, I will sign, and require all of my players to sign, a CC0 1.0 DEED: CC0 1.1 Universal license agreement for all characters, NPCs, campaign content, and other non-rules content that is not third-party content covered by other licenses or other legal protections.

If I'm willing to put my commissioned map and all personally-created homebrew campaign content into the public domain, the players can darn well put their precious PCs into it as well.

 

[aco175]

Consistency is a key to a believable fictional
world. When the adventurers go back into town for
supplies, they should encounter the same nonplayer
characters (NPCs) they met before. Soon, they'll learn
the barkeep's name, and he or she will remember
theirs as well. Once you have achieved this degree of
consistency, you can provide an occasional change. If
the adventurers come back to buy more horses at the
stables, they might discover that the man who ran the
place went back home to the large city over the hills,
and now his niece runs the family business. That sort of
change-one that has nothing to do with the adventurers
directly, but one that they'll notice-makes the players
feel as though their characters are part of a living world
that changes and grows along with them.

You forgot to argue for the second part that says after you have consistency, you can provide occasional change to make your world more living. So, the paladin that was the mayor and helped them out all this time now works in the brothel- might be worth checking out.

If the DMs only answer is that he is mad at the past player and punishing his old PC, then that is another problem and one should likely leave.

 

[tetrasodium]

You forgot to argue for the second part that says after you have consistency, you can provide occasional change to make your world more living. So, the paladin that was the mayor and helped them out all this time now works in the brothel- might be worth checking out.

No I did not forget, that second part only becomes relevant if a player expects the GM to make use of it always instead of occasionally.. I can't see how expecting the GM to be making those sort of changes always for no reason other than to simply to swap out the retired PC with someone new even if some other change would better convey things would be anything but a player calling for B or C . There might be a D, but so far it's just been calling for variations on those two. That's not reasonable for the player to expect without needing to make it clear by waving their red flag for discussion acceptance or rejection.

Not every former/retired PC becomes notable to show up in a future campaign. Even those who might manage it don't always do it I'm a way that makes them relevant to come up like Bob's retired baronet of the town where the campaign was centered or Alice's old PC who created a library the players could seek out on their own in a future campaign with new PCs.

If the DMs only answer is that he is mad at the past player and punishing his old PC, then that is another problem and one should likely leave.

That was not the scenario that occurred at all. Bob became baronet of town and wanted to retire the PC he had been playing several months to make a different character only for him to expectbeing able to run both whenever the baronet came up despite being told what retired PC meant. Alice was ummm... "Twisting [her] fur" (she used the word "my" at the table) over the fact that her "roleplay" away from the table that she never mentioned had developed the "fursona"(Alice's word choice again) differently after the campaign and expected me to make a bunch of world changes to fit.