Who "Owns" Old PC's?

[seasong]

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.

Just to make this analogy relevant: if you and a group of friends make a mural together, and then one of the friends wants to take a print of the mural and reproduce it, do you want the friend to white-out the parts you worked on?

 

[seasong]

Okay, that was poorly phrased. Celebrim, I'm sorry - I admire most of your posts, but I opened my mouth the wrong way.

What I MEANT was: "I don't think that analogy works. I think it's more like this:"

 

[Belen]

Personally, I believe that the GM owns the right to use old PCs. I run a homebrew world. In fact, even my races are my own creations. When the PCs make characters, they are using my material for that creation. If I wish to reuse a PC as an NPC as a story point, then I will.

However, I never reuse PCs that are no longer gaming with me. The people who played the PC/NPC are always active members of my campaign and I use their old PCs as story points. They seem to enjoy it.

I also tend to write parts of their character history. My players choose a first name and write an outline of their history (personality, defining experiences) and I then fit their character into my game world. I give them last name and the background that goes with it. In addition, I add them into the story that I am creating. It works out well and I can fit the PCs together in order to avoid metagaming PCs that would never actually adventure together.

So, in most cases, a PC is at least partly my creation. If a player uses my material to create their PC, then that PC is fair game for my use.

Dave

 

[Sixchan]

There seems to be another issue being ignored here. Oaken, you said you still talk to the guy. That means you're still friends, right? If your friend doesn't want you to do anything to sometheing that has deep meaning to him, are you really perfectly happy with ruining a friendship because the Character belonged to you, whether just in your opinion or not?

While the PCs play, I even consider a homebrew world to be collective property. For Example, if one of the players didn't want the princess to die at the hands of the evil Necromancer in the Tower of Evil (something that I had planned into the story, and changing would lead to a lot of work to the future plot) because his character was deeply in love with her, I'd put make efforts to keep the princess alive.

Once the PCs leave, the world is mine, at least until the next group I game with comes along.

And if a player doesn't want me to use his or her character in the World after they leave, I simply ask for a reason why the Character is not around (Seclusion, Plane Shifting, death), or ask if I can just change the name.


And I'd do this because the players are (or were) my friends, and I don't want to ruin that.

 

[heldenhammer]

Whoever has possession of the character sheet, I'd say.

 

[F5]

Put me down as a member of the "I don't understand what the problem is" camp.

Not only are the DM and player working together to create a collective story, which is meaningless without input from both sides, but they're using someone elses' IP to do it. A character concept is created by the player, but the character itself, the collection of statistics and numbers and descriptive text, ultimately comes from the Players' Handbook (or whatever splatbook/rulebook/alt_game you're using). The character and personality of Dimitri Shadowlark, the tiefling mage may be uniquely mine, but all of his spells, equipment and even the Tiefling race came from a book published by WotC. Where do you draw the line?

Personally, I consider it a compliment if one of my characters is used as an NPC, and most of the people I've gamed with feel the same way. I feel that I've made a contribution to the game world that the goup has been creating. If my character had retired and become mayor of a city he helped found, and later I went on an adventure in that city, I'd be a little insulted if my old character didn't make an apperance. The history I'd helped build would have been wasted.

If someone feels strongly about character re-use, the DM should work it out with them beforehand. And if they're really adamant about not letting the DM use that character, keep 'em happy. But I can't personally see the reason why it's an issue.

 

[Oaken25]

Yes, we straightened it out as I said on page 1 of this thread but I was still looking for ideas on what other's thought about the topic in general.

Well the character sheet idea is nice but a lot of the times DM's and players both have a copy of the PC's char sheet. I always ask for a char sheet from players in case they cant make it to the game or a number of other reasons, like using char sheet for plot hooks etc.

It seems a lot of people are divided on this issue. Some run games like I always run my games, pc's are built into the story, they just don't disappear when the game ends. Some don't want that to happen and want total control over thier PC's and have said that the game world should never include thier PC's after the game ends. (Personally I find this a little hard to grasp).

 

[Celebrim]

seasong: I'm not sure how you think you've insulted me. Nothing you said was offensive, and it seems like reasonable criticism unless I mistake your intent entirely.

No, but, if I did want someone to in the reproduction white out the part that had been mine in the mural, would it be my right? As I said, I don't think it likely that many players would mind if thier work was reproduced, but if they did mind - can I say "Well because it is silly or stupid to mind me reproducing your work I'm going to do it anyway."

More to the point, the above continuation of the analogy is a somewhat rarer case. Most campaigns do not end up reproduced or published in some other form. The case at hand doesn't really have to do reproducing a whole work and its content as cleanly as possible, but rather whether the other people who have worked on the mural have the right at some latter point to repaint the whole of the mural without consulting the one painter on how he might like his portion represented - if it all. If he wants to say 'Simply leave out my portion. Don't take up my themes and work them to your desires, because they are mine', then I think he is perfectly right in doing so. If he wants to say, 'Set aside my portion in case I wish to come and work on it myself at a latter point', then that sounds perfectly right to me as well. It is not like we have a shortage of 'blank canvas' as it were.

This isn't a hypothetical problem with me, since at least three members of the longest campaign I was involved in are or would like to be published writers and some consider the material of the campaign a fertile ground for ideas.

 

[Lennis]

Howdy all. First time joining an en world chat. Been on webrpg for many years. Been DMing for over 20 years.

Anyway, I've never had this issue arise. My players never showed the slightest interest in what I did with the PCs after they were done with them. However, this is my take on the issue...

First off, I'm not talking about publishing something with someone else's PC. I'm sure that's wrong.

Secondly, I know it's all a game and we should lighten up.

If your PC's are playing in my world, we share ownership. Once you give up playing in my world, that PC is mine to do with as I please, in my world. You can take him and go play in another world, that's fine. You can request that I kill him off rather than have him continue, and I'll consider that request. But if I want to the PC to be an integral part of my world, that's my right. I'm not rewriting history because you feel I should give up your PC. I'm not stopping you from making a carbon copy of the PC and playing in another game. Go ahead. So don't make me alter my world because you feel an unhealthy attachment to this PC.

One thing that I DO do that I haven't seen mentioned - if a PC becomes an NPC I assume control. BUT, if that NPC is ever encountered by the current group, and that NPC's original creator is in the group, then I let him take control temporarily. In other words, if the current party encounters Tor the barbarian turned innkeeper, and Tor's original creator is now playing a different PC, that player is allowed to take control of Tor and speak and act as he sees fit. I admit, this could be difficult and require extensive briefing in the character has been an NPC for any length of time, but I haven't had that problem yet.

 

[Lisa Nadazdy]

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.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!112

Gaming is many things, but I hardly put it on the area of a Van Gogh. Roleplaying a game isn't art.