Who "Owns" Old PC's?

[Fenes 2]

I have never had much of a problem with reusing old PCs as NPCs - mainly, because we are on our 3rd and 4th campaign in the Forgotten Realms since 1992. The PCs of the first and second campaign settled in Waterdeep, but apart from one or two cameo-appearances they never met. The third campaign is set in Cormyr, and the Fourth in Unthalass, both pretty far away from Waterdeep and each other, so there is very little to no contact between old and current PCs.

When a player was booted we had some of his old and his current PC become "guest corpses" or "villain of the week" until we had that out of our system (and long it took - he had been a pain in the posteriour for years), but no other PCs so far were used as NPCs.

 

[Labmonkey-XL]

This is an age old debate that only Johnny Cochrane can end... an 8th level lawyer with his +5 sword against evidence.

 

[Ravellion]

I am somewhat surprised by, among others, Reapersaurus' reply. Would you rather I kill your PC in his sleep if we retire the campaign and hence the character than have him there as, say, Chieftain of the Black Elk tribe?

Because you do realise that any DM who has any connection with his campaign world will not just rewrite part of the history of any world changeing events? You are basically forcing him to write your PC out of the game world entirely if he doesn't want to advance the timeline by at least 600 years. The best way to that is actually letting him become a vampire or lycantrophe (or Bodak or ghoul etc)- that way the change to the character has come under an influence of the campaign world, hence making you lose control of your character in a far more drastic way... and you basically forced him to do it as well. I would feel honoured if a DM thought my character was great enough to fulfill a position of importance in the campign wolrd after its retirement.

Rav

 

[el-remmen]

Wow. I am amazed by the responses. If you are no longer in my game or playing another character -guess what? as a figure in my game I will use him as I wish. I mean, we are talking about an imaginary character in a collecitvely created story - it is ridiculous to claim "ownership" of it.

I have had ex-PCs come backs as rivals, villians, allies, sources of information, etc. . .

Personally, I would be honored if a DM of mine wanted to use one of my old characters - The character may have "belonged" to me while I played with it - but I carry the memory of those games and adventures with me and nothing that happens after changes that.

 

[diaglo]

are you all for "real"?

it is a game.

we play for fun.

i don't think it takes that much to let a character "go" when you aren't playing the game.

we never thought about ownership.

i held the character sheets for my players, but only for convienence. if they want to write a novel about them, more power to them.

 

[Arnwyn]

This is a joke thread, right? If not, this has the potential of being the most idiotic thread I've ever seen.

Now, if we are talking about publishing for public consumption (for profit or otherwise), then the comments about "don't use" apply.

However, if this is just a game you play with your buddies on the weekend, then WTF are these responses? If that player doesn't play anymore, then of *course* you can use that character in your game... in any way you wish (after telling the person who said "no" to get some serious professional help). This is totally a non-issue. For pete's sake, it's like saying I can't use the same name for my new cat that somebody back in high school used. Sheesh. For the love of god, it's only a game...

If this is a joke thread, then never mind what I wrote!

 

[Oaken25]

No it wasn't a joke thread, I wanted honest opinions about it. This person was really upset and some words were said, and I think also the person might have been pondering revenge or other nasty ways of getting the characters name changed or getting back thier PC, even though they had a copy of it.

It seems a lot of people really don't like DM's reusing thier old PC's I find this a little odd. I always thought and most of my players over the years agreed with me, that most players love when DM's add them into the world and the history of the campaign world changes because of that. Now it seems a lot of PC's don't want change in a DM's world and want thier characters to disappear after a game ends, seems very weird to me cause I care for my world and after gaming in it for over 10 years a lot of changes were made to it by PC's, if I ignore all those changes the world would be really different.

 

[seasong]

Sure, your character is yours. Your character's history, including all tales of defeating trolls, slaying dragons, and that tryst with the King's Daughter? MINE. And the background he's from, including the Juvari Barony he's second heir to? MINE.

Now, you can take your basic character concept with no stories home with you, and I'll take those stories back and give them to a more deserving NPC.

What kind of nonsense is this? A campaign is a collectively told story. If we start worrying about which parts of the story are yours and mine, we each end up with only half of the treasure map and no gold.

Well, mostly no gold. I guess you could count the satisfaction of screwing up a relationship over such dribble a moral victory or something, eh?

 

[Leopold]

Here's how i tell my players how i am doing it.

My world is 'new' i have taken several worlds and jumbled them together. Since this is my first run at DM in YEARS i let the players be the first 'heros' in this world. When a new game in the same world appears they will have known or heard about the previous lot of heroes that have come and gone and might even meet them. Time passes and the next batch will see the 1st and 2nd perhaps. Such is the way it goes on and on. Always evolving, ever changing.

The PC's in question are kool with this. Also, i keep them all using PCGen so i can easily spit out their PC when the time comes to update them and modify them while still maintaining the original...

 

[Celebrim]

Few artists, fews person for that matter, like to have a work of thier own taken over by other people. If you paint something, you don't want to see that work spray painted over - unless you created it with the intention of being space for others to paint on. If you write something, you don't want to see it rewritten to suit the tastes of some else, and you often wish to leave open what happened after the story perhaps even because you are thinking of coming back to the story and giving it a sequel. An architect does not want to see his favorite creation, renovated to a different standard or bulldozed over and made into a parking lot.

It is the same for player characters.