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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4732591" data-attributes="member: 4937">You ask very hard questions, that are beyond my ability to answer.Therefore, I'll let The Good Professor answer that question for me:I do.  I consider that I own them in a legal as well as ethical sense.  Former DM's that I've had, hold the same opinion.  That said, any particular character, the character's characterization, the character's memorable lines, and so forth are the property of the player who created the character.  Former DMs who are working their material into other forms of art (such as novels) have approached me to ask if I'd consent to the use of my character.Obviously, if your story is based on some prior work, any part of the story which is largely derived from the prior work without substantial transformation belongs to the original copyright holder.You win all the time in the since that every time you overcome some challenge, you've 'won'.  But since the game is open ended, you obviously never 'win' in the sense usually associated with that term of the game being 'over'.  I guess some people would say that you've won if you've just had 'fun', but I think that's stretching the definition of 'winning' past the breaking point.  You don't always win a game with a traditional victor, but whether you won or not is not necessarily tied to how much enjoyment you derived from playing.Remember how you used to play 'Cops and Robbers' or 'Cowboys and Indians' or 'Spacemen and Aliens', but at some point you stopped playing it?  Role playing is one of the earliest games to manifest itself in humans, and is I think to some extent the foundational play experience behind all games.  Typically you stopped playing it not because it ceased to be fun, but because you reached a point where one party to the game said, "I shot you.", and the other party to the game said, "No, you missed.  I shot you."   At that point, most role playing games collapse because they are unable to arbitrate conflicts like that, and young gamers move on to different sorts of games that are capable of arbitrating the conflicts that come up in them.  Role Playing Games allow you to continue the primal play experience within a framework that allows you to arbitrate the conflicting perceptions of reality that emerge within the shared imaginary space.  Thus, you never have to stop playing 'Cops and Robbers'.</blockquote>

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