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

[nevin]

I feel like the person saying 'no, this is mine, please stop' can't be considered to have abandoned anything.

And again, I can't just watch my neighbor lock his door to go off to work and decide his apartment is now abandoned, so it's looting time.

I feel like when they stop showing up at the game they have abandoned the game and by default the character. It's hard to own something in a world you don't play in. Nothing keeping you from hanging on to your copy of the player and doing other things with it though.

 

[Maxperson]

None of that matters.

I created the character. I made the build, I named them, I came up with their personality and and backstory.

They are my character. I get to decide how and when they're used and while I might be fine letting a group still use them if I leave the game, that is still MY choice to make/ You don't just get to take things from people because you feel justified and you personally don't feel there's any harm done--that isn't your place to decide any more than I might get to decide if you're done using your car.

You don't have unfettered ability to come up with a personality and backstory, though.. @Oofta says no evil characters. I allow evil characters, but require your evil characters to find some reason why they get along with the other PCs and aren't going to sabotage the campaign through evilness. Further, if you came to me with a backstory that you met a hermit that was a gold dragon in disguise, I am within my rights to say, "You can have a hermit in your backstory, but he wasn't a dragon."

I also have the ability to go into your backstory and bring elements of it forward into the current game, which most players find to be an amazing thing that DM's do. That hermit might show up for X reason.

Character creation is not 100% the players doing and as such the resulting character is not 100% the player's.

 

[Umbran]

These all seem to be based on the assumption that the player is still playing in the game.

I did address such cases directly, but my final point is general.

Unless you made an agreement with them before they left, that character is really still theirs, and if you care about being a reasonably good human, you ought to ask them about using it. Even if we don't go to copyright law, this is a Wheaton Law thing.

Don't be a jerk. If you don't have permission, buck up and make your own NPC instead.

[color]Unlike most intellectual property, a character is made to be shared in the game world.[/quote]

When authors of fiction do shared-world anthologies, they generally keep control of their characters, and come up with agreements for how other authors can use them in the anthology.

There is, I think, a typical implicit agreement that the character is made not for anyone to share, but for that player to share. It is their vehicle, and does not belong to the collective.

I've yet to be in a social contract that assumes that if a player leaves the game entirely, the DM can't use the character as an NPC.

Given how rare actual written social contracts are, that's not really a convincing statement.

Again, Wheaton's Law applies. If asking to too darned hard, just make a new NPC.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, that says some things...

If a player leaves instructions as to what's to become of her character after she leaves the game, do you at least try to honour those?

I did say I was going to step away from this thread, but I'll answer this since it was a question directly to me, about my personal decision making.

Honestly, I don't know what I would do. It would depend on the request and how much sense it made. I would generally go along with it, and I'd be way more likely to follow it if it's funny or interesting.

 

[GrimCo]

None of that matters.

It matters. For starter, you can use force to defend your material possessions. You can't use force to defend your imaginary possessions. I mean, you could probably but it would be fun case in court.

I created the character. I made the build, I named them, I came up with their personality and and backstory.

They are my character. I get to decide how and when they're used and while I might be fine letting a group still use them if I leave the game, that is still MY choice to make/ You don't just get to take things from people because you feel justified and you personally don't feel there's any harm done--that isn't your place to decide any more than I might get to decide if you're done using your car.

Yes. While you play, you can use it however you wish. But once you leave, your character isn't erased from game world or collective memory of players still in the game. Copy of that character stays in the game. You still have your original sheet and ideas.

And let's be honest. You cant stop people from using it if they wish. You can't use cease and desist if you haven't protected your work and don't know if someone is using your character in game which you are not part of.

I'm playing a bit of a Devils advocate here to be honest. I never met or played with anybody who cared about their character that much so this whole thread is a bit of a mental exercise.

 

[cbwjm]

I did ask my friend what happened to the PC I was playing, just to see if he'd turned him into something. He replied

"We don't know. He wandered off when the group got to Aristok, the near death experience in Anapolis made him need to reassess his priorities. Maybe he's a hermit somewhere... I guess it was technically a post death experience since he wandered around as a zombie."

I'd actually forgotten that I was killed and zombified. But yeah, that's basically what happened. He's still floating around in the world, maybe living the life of a hermit. I left no instructions for what happened to him, I didn't take the character with me and forbid him being used in the game since I don't place value on a character sheet. I still have the sheet in dndbeyond if I did ever want to use him again, but chances are I won't since I have too many other characters to play.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm playing a bit of a Devils advocate here to be honest.

Do you really need to?

There are plenty of people here willing to defend stealing characters of their own volition without devils advocating and weirdly suggesting violence as retaliation for material theft.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You don't have unfettered ability to come up with a personality and backstory, though.. @Oofta says no evil characters. I allow evil characters, but require your evil characters to find some reason why they get along with the other PCs and aren't going to sabotage the campaign through evilness. Further, if you came to me with a backstory that you met a hermit that was a gold dragon in disguise, I am within my rights to say, "You can have a hermit in your backstory, but he wasn't a dragon."

I also have the ability to go into your backstory and bring elements of it forward into the current game, which most players find to be an amazing thing that DM's do. That hermit might show up for X reason.

Character creation is not 100% the players doing and as such the resulting character is not 100% the player's.

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

 

[SableWyvern]

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

Everyone who says they can use the PCs of former players also agrees you can use any and all ideas from their campaign in your own private game.

So, "Yes." (Noting that zero backbending is required.)

 

[TwoSix]

So I can do a lot of logical backbends to self-justify stealing the DM's campaign setting without permission because my creation interacted with it then?

Just like if you chose to use one of my old PCs in your game, I'd be honored if you used any and all parts of my campaign ideas in your own games.

I don't own my settings; I made them for the players. To be played. Their value is 100% in their utility.

(And yes, I said I was out. I got pulled back in. I'm weak, I accept that. )