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

[Lanefan]

Not in the games I run.

So, not a fan of the DCC funnel?

 

[Lanefan]

Yes when "your" is the gm who ran the game where that player played a character (let's call the PC Andy) that achieved notable accomplishments. When those past accomplishments come up in future gameplay sessions the player's failure to make known their expectations to gain benefits for their future PC Bob through Andy should it ever come up very much puts that player in the wrong.

Alternately they are a disruption to the future session should they disrupt the session by making a surprise reveal of those hidden expectations. In making that disruption the player is even more in the wrong by using an unstated expectation to justify disrupting everyone's fun with the goal of metagaming.

I'm working on an underlying assumption here that this sort of bad-faith metagaming isn't part of the equation. Guess that needs to be made clear.

@Lanefan it's extremely rare for a player to have multiple PCs in modern RPGs barring things like a dcc funnel with random pregens or an unusual circumstance like a small group. What was common in 1e is no longer the case for many many reasons

Which is neither my fault nor my problem.

 

[Lanefan]

The original premise the thread was built on is that the original player of a PC gets absolute right of veto over anyone ever playing the same PC in any game ever. I disagreed. Overgeeked decided the topic interesting enough to start a new thread.

As the originator of that tangent in the other thread, I'll just say this isn't quite right: I jumped on someone's suggestion that a retired PC automatically becomes an NPC, and things went off from there.

 

[Irlo]

Non-commercial use is still use. If you've done an original piece of art and put it online, in theory I've no right to print that image out and hang it on my wall without your permission even if you never had any intention of using or selling the piece yourself.

But you do have the right to draw or paint or sculpt the piece yourself and display it in your home.

An orignal piece of visual art is not equivalent to a character played in an RPG.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm not sure I see the relevance. Nobody's talking about violence that would cross someone's lines. And as far as comparing older school play vs newer school, Lanefan is pretty old school in style and is adhering as extreme a line in favor of PC ownership as anyone else. I think the issue of ownership and NPCness seems orthogonal to old vs new school RPG players.

Some of the posts in this thread explicitly describe grossly humiliating a player character. At my tables, that would be clearly offensive in reallife and out of bounds socially.

Unless of course, Session Zero is explicitly intending to play this kind of game.

 

[Yaarel]

But you do have the right to draw or paint or sculpt the piece yourself and display it in your home.

An orignal piece of visual art is not equivalent to a character played in an RPG.

Heh, what some of your posts take for granted is legally incorrect.

With regard to your own art in your own home, it is more a case of nobody else knows about it, as opposed to you have a legal right to do it.

Many people create Superman artwork without permission. Obviously DC likes this fandom. But DC still owns it and could do something about it if they wished. At this point, legal concepts like "transformative" or "parody" and "commentary" and other forms of "fair use" would become relevant. According to Wikipedia, DC Comics currently owns the copyright of Superman, after sorting thru certain legal disputes.

 

[TwoSix]

There's a fair-size difference between making a more-or-less copy of someone's character (Lanefax) and playing it in a different game than taking over and using the actual original character (Lanefan) in its original game.

I certainly haven't been talking about that scenario.

There's way too many hypothetical scenarios being tossed around here to try and answer them all under one particular principle.

 

[TwoSix]

Non-commercial use is still use. If you've done an original piece of art and put it online, in theory I've no right to print that image out and hang it on my wall without your permission even if you never had any intention of using or selling the piece yourself.

And that's what I would say is ridiculous. If you've put it up online, it's now available for distribution. If you're not charging for it, of course I can take it and print it and hang it on my wall.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't actually see the difference in any meaningful sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also get the impression that if @TwoSix said, "this is LanefanPC, complete with his whole background from a previous game. He was sucked through a dimensional rift into this new world" you would have a problem with it.

Yes; and even more so were Lanefan still theoretically in play (or retired) somewhere else. But if he rolled up as close to a copy as he could in terms of class, personality, etc. but with its own history in that other world, and played that, I'd have no problem with it...I mean, imitation is the best form of flattery after all.

Which does bring up a tangential (and probably rather corner-case) question around character poaching.

If I-as-DM am running a game and I've seen your really cool character in play in another DM's game and know that character is now retired, I'd say it would be highly unethical of me to arbitrarily say - without asking either you or the DM - that character has just blipped over to my world and is now an NPC there. Not only am I violating your ownership over the character, I'm violating the continuity of the other DM's setting as she thinks that character is still in her world.

 

[TwoSix]

You are putting words in my mouth, please refrain from doing so.

TwoSix brought up his moral rights, and my comment on Moral Right was this:

"So you are asserting that your moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their rights not to have it used without permission."

It's was not "Do I have moral rights to use their character without permission", but "Does my moral rights to use someone else's creation without permission exceed their moral rights not to have it done".

Think about the other person as a human being who also has moral rights; I'd love to hear your answer to that.

I didn't bring up MY moral rights. I said no one has a moral right to assert ownership over a character they made in a shared roleplaying game, IF they aren't involved in the game anymore.

I'm not asserting I have any more rights than anyone else.