World Hopping, Character Conversion, and Tying Characters into Adventures

[Quertus]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss a number of what, on the surface, seem like unrelated topics. These include converting characters from one system to another, moving characters from one world to another, and tying characters to the campaign. Plus things like characters knowing themselves, and being connected to the setting.

To start things off, here's my general theory on character conversion (basically ripped from another thread, apologies if I missed something in editing):If the entire bloody planet of Oerth gets pulled out of its universe, and sucked into another, that happens to be based on different mechanics, no-one on Oerth should notice (unless they should)".

To keep modern Earthlings from noticing that they'd been abducted, you'd probably need to pull their entire galaxy, plus several other, nearby galaxies along with them. Or fake that you've done such - otherwise, our Observatories would notice that something had changed. But, mechanically, we shouldn't suddenly all start hurling cars, spitting fireballs, full healing every time we rest, have trouble putting on our pants, have half the population competing to publish their cure for cancer first within the first day of arrival, or magically have our possessions and spending capabilities / income / wealth change just because our world moved.

If an adventuring party is adventuring on Oerth, and the entire planet gets sucked into Gurps, they should be able to continue their adventures without noticing, rather than everyone in the world suddenly wondering WTF just happened as suddenly possessions, distances, travel times, and capabilities change the world over.

Or, at least, that's my general theory of character conversion, and what I aim for when I help others convert their characters between systems, or on the much rarer occasion that I get to do the same.

In short, I believe that the best conversion is one where you can change the underlying mechanics seamlessly, without the character or an outside observer noticing.

[Knaight]

I think I've made my contentions clear on the other thread - which has to do with who has permission to do these things (though only some have been mentioned). Switching systems during a campaign needs to be a collective decision, and even then I wouldn't recommend it.

This thread also dances around the specific area that was the center of this conflict - bringing a character from one setting to another while keeping the mechanical and character history, including jumping from one GM to another. Converting a character doesn't necessarily do that at all, neither does bringing in a previously played character from their starting point.

[NichG]

This is where rules as physics tends to introduce confusion.

Some rules are there to provide convenient abstractions, and some rules are there to introduce new elements or remove expected ones from the world, and of course some are both. A rule describing how in this game system someone born a 7th son of a 7th son inherits magical powers that let them heal wounds on touch is pretty clearly of the type to describe a novel element of this world that could not be anticipated from our knowledge of real life. The part that goes on to say 'this means that anyone in physical contact with a 7th son of a 7th son regains 1hp per 6 seconds' is on the other hand more about providing an abstraction.

If a character is brought over from one setting to another in such a way that the abstractions need to give way a bit, that's generally at worst a local problem and is often an OOC one - that is to say, the character may require stats that don't correspond to legal build for a player character or may be a bit over or underpowered compared to the other characters. To the degree that it's an in-character problem, its still going to either be fairly easily absorbed into 'well, this person is just a bit exceptional' or 'its harder to do this than you remembered, but maybe you're just seeing the past through rose colored glasses, eh?'.

If a character is brought over from one setting to another in such a way that the cosmological rules - the things that specify 'how is this setting distinct' - have to give way in order to make them not be noticeably affected, then be careful - whatever you choose to do here, you're making a strong statement about how the world works: what exactly is 'magic', etc. This can have non-local consequences, and no matter what you do its basically going to be impossible for it to go unnoticed by either the natives or the transitting character. E.g. when a non-Darksun wizard comes to Athas and doesn't need to drain life energy to cast spells they're going to create a huge push by all the powerful figures in the setting to steal their trick; or if they find that now they have to drain energy, you've established that it's something about Athas itself that creates the need which means that a properly dedicated party might decide that its their quest to go and hit the source of the problem with swords until it stops; or if it turns out they were draining energy all along, but there was just more available, that may or may not be compatible with how the character understands magic and certainly could have implications. This kind of thing is fine and totally doable, but it does tend to take a central role in the campaign once it starts to come up, since it hints at stuff going on that can be poked at.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This kind of thing is fine and totally doable, but it does tend to take a central role in the campaign once it starts to come up, since it hints at stuff going on that can be poked at.

And this is one of my big issues with it. It unilaterally attempts to take control of the narrative, in a way that disrespects the rest of the party (since whatever their goals/motives/etc are just got trampled on) and disrespects the setting. It requires the DM to specifically write in room for that character, in a way that feels (to me) quite selfish.

[Thrudd]

System conversions are rarely/never seamless. The reason for changing systems is usually that the group/GM wants the world to operate on the new rules. There is always going to be some degree of retconning, where something used to work one way and now everyone needs to pretend it has always worked in the new manner.

Playing parallel versions of a character, starting at level one, in different campaigns is no issue at all.

Bringing a character with all experience, abilities and equipment from one campaign to another is only possible if specific conditions are met- playing something like D&D official adventure league. At very least it will need to be the same game system and the same setting or one that is similar enough to facilitate a visitor (no or little homebrew regarding character abilities and equipment.)
It is not something that anyone could or should assume will be possible most of the time outside of organized play.
In the early days of D&D, when there basically was only one game system that everyone used, your odds might have been better. Now? The community is too varied unless you stick with official WotC products and players.

Converting a character from one system to another is always an act of reinterpreting the character to some extent, and it would be more apt to view it as a new but similar person with new memories rather than the same person that has lived through some kind of weird reality shift.

That said, the idea of a D&D character that has lived through all the edition changes as though they were metaphysical events in the fictional universe, getting sucked through portals or hopping across dimensions, each time finding that his abilities and equipment works differently or outright disappears, and remembers a series of past timelines that have now disappeared is sort of amusing. But it could definitely be disruptive or annoying to the other players if that player insisted in always going on about their past exploits and trying to get their old defunct spells and items to work.

[OldTrees1]

Having a world be closed, even if other DM's use a very similar world as an open world, is an acceptable DM decision. It is not the only acceptable decision on that topic, but it is one of them.

Requiring the PCs to be locals for a campaign is an acceptable DM decision. It is not the only acceptable decision on that topic, but it is one of them.

Declaring DMs are doing it objectively wrong for doing either of these acceptable decisions is imposing your personal preference as if it were an objective truth. That is not a healthy attitude and will cause disagreements/arguments even with DMs that share your personal preferences but don't take them to be objective truth.

That should nicely summarize the argument from the other thread.




Quertus' language did not imply they would impose on tables where Quertus does not fit BUT their language did imply you were "doing it objectively wrong" if you could not accommodate Quertus at your table.

This is fair.

Quertus is among my most successful multi-table-friendly characters, and, if I'm not mistaken, is the character that has been most requested (by both players and GMs) for me to play. The hate leveled at the concept is as more baffling to me than hating on Santa as a creepy stalker. :smallconfused: Still, if he's legitimately not wanted / not a fit somewhere, I've got a whole folder of characters to choose from.

In all my years, I've never met anyone who claimed that, by cannon and RAW, the published settings are disconnected from one another. In fact, in another thread, someone posted how, by cannon, some of the big names from different worlds have met each other (in fact, one GM spoke of a module where such was the case. I never read it, so this may or may not be real), and I know that they have cannon connections to this world. IIRC, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape all connect to most of not all those worlds. And almost everyone's world has, say, Evard's Black Tentacles or Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which kinda says that they are all connected, too. Seriously, has anyone - other than me - ever actually banned all of Rary's / Mordenkainen's / Bigby's / etc spells in their "closed" worlds? So, that doesn't leave much that isn't connected by cannon, or in actual games. So, yes, I tend to think that those who believe that D&D worlds that are divorced from the larger D&D universe is somehow normal, and not "special snowflakes", are wrong. However, having now been introduced to the concept, it's at least a question in my mind, rather than an "of course it's this way".

Now, normally, I'd be all for special snowflake worlds, as it's a good opportunity for Exploration. But playing throwaway characters at closed tables seems a waste of my time. No single GM will ever provide as rich and diverse of content as 20 GMs can. So why would I bother?

[NichG]

And this is one of my big issues with it. It unilaterally attempts to take control of the narrative, in a way that disrespects the rest of the party (since whatever their goals/motives/etc are just got trampled on) and disrespects the setting. It requires the DM to specifically write in room for that character, in a way that feels (to me) quite selfish.

Works quite well if the game is about a party of worldwalkers, though. Or if the setting is explicitly one in which worldwalking has a place.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Works quite well if the game is about a party of worldwalkers, though. Or if the setting is explicitly one in which worldwalking has a place.

True. If you were playing as planewalkers from M:tG, it works great. In just about any other game, it's a recipe for hurt feelings unless handled very carefully.

I don't have any problem with someone importing an old character's starting point--build, starting equipment, attitudes, beliefs, even whatever backstory components (minus setting-specific names and places) can fit. I find it boring if they want to force the gameplay to reproduce the old character's end-state--why retread old ground? Do something new.

I have a huge problem with wanting to remain unattached to the setting and the party. Tourists who have little stake in events (or who just meddle safely from their "I'm untouchable" standpoint) have no place in my games, or in any game I want to be in. Everyone should find a reason for that character to be there and be involved. If they can't without damaging the character, retire them and make a new one.

I've said it before--I want characters to grow and change as a result of the events of play. Having ones that are locked into a rigid, pre-determined framework that's independent of events disrespects the setting, the DM's work in creating events, the play of the game, everything. This includes both mechanics and personality.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Frankly, I even consider someone remaking a character they've already played to be a fairly big warning sign in and of itself, outside of exceptions like the campaign they were originally designed for collapsing after a few sessions or the character dying immediately in the first session. Reusing literally the same character is on a whole different level from that.

[Rhedyn]

My newly printed Rules Cyclopedia for Basic D&D had a section on converting characters from DM to DM.

The BECMI system with the Mystara setting had these kind of conversions make sense. Keeping a pretty random character alive seems like part of the fun along with having retired characters that you can bring back for when the adventure calls for it.
Having characters of vastly different levels isn't that big of problem and you are encouraged not to risk your high level character in normal adventuring because they can farm exp in relatively safer ventures like managing fiefs, temples, monasteries, clans, villages, or magical research.

That kind of set up and the incentive it creates, causes converting characters to be both desirable and doable. If I convert over a level 36 wizard from an epic level 3.5 campaign to a starting 3.5 campaign, the setting now revolves around countering my level 36 wizard.

Character conversion falls apart as a concept depending on leveling speed. If your group normally goes from level one to max in a year, that really cuts away that accomplishment of having a high level character. Without that accomplishment, there is no reason to preserve it between GMs let alone settings.

At least in my group, a new set of characters per campaign is the norm even for games like Savage Worlds, where converting over characters from different genres is easy, let alone settings, or GMs.

[kyoryu]

The idea that your character is going to go from system to system without realizing anything is rather silly.

Given two systems of sufficient difference, the only way to accomplish this is to houserule the destination system to the point where it is not recognizably the same system.

If a D&D fighter is in GURPS, and treats an enemy with a crossbow the way that they would in D&D (not really a threat), they'll be dead VERY QUICKLY. If you modify GURPS enough to let the fighter have the same 'abilities' (ignore crossbows), it would vary sufficiently from the base assumptions that someone has when "playing GURPS" (though there might be some variant rules for that kind of superhuman resilience).

The hypothesis is fine, given that the games model realities that are similar enough to each other (often measured against actual reality). The problem is that very few games do that well at all, and the biggest games in the hobby diverge exceptionally hard from "reality".

Could you convert a GURPS character to BRP, or Savage Worlds, or even Fate? Probably, with some level of fidelity, though there may be details lost, abilities that don't really transfer, etc.

Doing so to D&D/PF is extremely hard.

[Quertus]

Wow. I'm sure I'll not be able to get to all this for some time, so let me hit the easy bits, the low-hanging fruit that will be quick first.



If a character is brought over from one setting to another in such a way that the abstractions need to give way a bit, that's generally at worst a local problem and is often an OOC one - that is to say, the character may require stats that don't correspond to legal build for a player character or may be a bit over or underpowered compared to the other characters. To the degree that it's an in-character problem, its still going to either be fairly easily absorbed into 'well, this person is just a bit exceptional' or 'its harder to do this than you remembered, but maybe you're just seeing the past through rose colored glasses, eh?'.

Historically, I'm strongly on the side of, if the character isn't within the group's balance range, I'll just bring someone else rather than mangle my character (even if it's the same group, table, system, etc, where I played the character before, and no conversion is otherwise required).


E.g. when a non-Darksun wizard comes to Athas and doesn't need to drain life energy to cast spells they're going to create a huge push by all the powerful figures in the setting to steal their trick; or if they find that now they have to drain energy, you've established that it's something about Athas itself that creates the need which means that a properly dedicated party might decide that its their quest to go and hit the source of the problem with swords until it stops; or if it turns out they were draining energy all along, but there was just more available, that may or may not be compatible with how the character understands magic and certainly could have implications. This kind of thing is fine and totally doable, but it does tend to take a central role in the campaign once it starts to come up, since it hints at stuff going on that can be poked at.

I thought that's how Preservers worked all along?

Also, I'll definitely try to remember to circle back to this example when I get to the idea if tying the PCs into the game


Bringing a character with all experience, abilities and equipment from one campaign to another... is not something that anyone could or should assume will be possible most of the time

Agreed.


Having a world be closed, even if other DM's use a very similar world as an open world, is an acceptable DM decision. It is not the only acceptable decision on that topic, but it is one of them.

Requiring the PCs to be locals for a campaign is an acceptable DM decision. It is not the only acceptable decision on that topic, but it is one of them.

Declaring DMs are doing it objectively wrong for doing either of these acceptable decisions is imposing your personal preference as if it were an objective truth. That is not a healthy attitude and will cause disagreements/arguments even with DMs that share your personal preferences but don't take them to be objective truth.

Agreed (haven't read the spoiler yet).


Frankly, I even consider someone remaking a character they've already played to be a fairly big warning sign in and of itself, outside of exceptions like the campaign they were originally designed for collapsing after a few sessions or the character dying immediately in the first session. Reusing literally the same character is on a whole different level from that.

Why?

Have you only ever posted on one website, only ever lived in one house in one town, only ever held one job, only ever hung out with one group of friends? Are you not enriched by the broader experience? Why, then, if we want PCs to be more like real people, and not caricatures, should we not expect a character with a more diverse set of experiences to be a fuller, richer character? In fact, why wouldn't we view these characters whose experience is limited to a single table echo chamber to be a warning flag for an underdeveloped personality?

EDIT: should we demand that all Playgrounders have no gaming experience before they join the site? What possible value could such limitations provide? I see things the opposite way, that more experience is generally better in most things, including with a character. Why do you feel otherwise?

[Koo Rehtorb]

Why?

Because if you don't have the ability to make new interesting characters that fit the situation and instead just keeping jamming the square peg of an old character into a round hole then you're probably not very good at roleplaying. It's not necessarily true, but like I said, it's a warning sign. And my experience has generally proven this to be true, most of the time.


Have you only ever posted on one website, only ever lived in one house in one town, only ever held one job, only ever hung out with one group of friends? Are you not enriched by the broader experience?

It seems to me like you have things backwards. You get a rich diversity of experience by playing different characters, not the same one over and over.

[Cluedrew]

I'm going to continue some comments from the last thread.


Hmmm... I think we need to tease this apart.Oh, I think the point comes down to setting hopping vs. system hopping. Of course to move systems without moving setting you have to have the same setting in multiple systems... which for "earth" wouldn't be so bad, for some settings linked to systems it could be a nightmare.


D&D is a game about adventurers, about exploring the blank parts of the map that read "here be monsters". A character who just inherently wouldn't explore a whole new world is probably a poor fit for a classic D&D adventurer.

Why do soldiers ever go fight wars in other countries? Don't they have anything back home that they care about? And why do some of these soldiers choose to stay in these new countries? Don't they have anything back home that they care about?OK... possibly Playgrounder's again, but the more important point is, well they have reasons to go there. They travel to do the thing, they do the thing and then they usually come back. I don't know many soldiers who (for instance) wondered over to a different country, then decided to join that army and fight a war having nothing to do with their homeland.

So why is X adventure wandering really far off the map, to an unknown area what probably doesn't have much if any communication with their origin area and getting in this big adventure before coming home? I mean there are characters who do just that, I have a character who wonders a semi-multiverse alone, making friends and helping them save the day. But that character was designed from the ground up to do that, and even then suffers for it on occasion. Most notably I have a hard time tying the story together, because they just keep on wondering.

Put a different way, I feel like the world hopping would have to be set up ahead of time, and even then you only have 1 or 2 jumps before the character's story just becomes a series of meaningless episodes. Which can be fun, but is not what I am usually going for.


You mean, like how Harry Potter knowns little of the world outside his cupboard, and nothing of Wizards, so that we, the readers, get to explore the world with him?Yes, I consider the fact that Harry (who has much better social skills than I) made 0 friends worthy of mention in his first 10 years of life to be a bit contrived. Not too bad given the social situation and the oddities around him, but even with those it is stretching it a bit.

[Quertus]

Because if you don't have the ability to make new interesting characters that fit the situation and instead just keeping jamming the square peg of an old character into a round hole then you're probably not very good at roleplaying. It's not necessarily true, but like I said, it's a warning sign. And my experience has generally proven this to be true, most of the time.



It seems to me like you have things backwards. You get a rich diversity of experience by playing different characters, not the same one over and over.

For the second, sure, one might argue that I have and prefer depth, not breadth. But that didn't address my question of whether the character oughtn't be deeper and richer by virtue of their experiences.

For the first bit, the value of having multiple characters and seeing what fits was lost in translation?

[Cluedrew]

I would not bother to argue that you (Quertus) prefer depth over breath. I would simply state it and would be mildly surprised if anyone disagreed.

Also no, in my experience at least no matter how long and deep you backstory is it will not make a richer character. What makes a rich and deep character is what they do now, what they have done. Now a long backstory you have played through (giving background information and practice) would probably help you play the character better now (is that what you meant?), but in and of itself I doubt it does anything.

[Florian]

I call bull on the entire topic. In the best case, the rules, or rather, the mechanics, serve to model the setting and also the expected gameplay.

[Quertus]

I would not bother to argue that you (Quertus) prefer depth over breath. I would simply state it and would be mildly surprised if anyone disagreed.

Hahaha. 'Tis a fair cop.


Now a long backstory you have played through (giving background information and practice) would probably help you play the character better now (is that what you meant?)

That sounds close to what I'm asking, at least.

I once had the goal to play with every group, and in every system, that I possibly could, to maximize my exposure to the variety of gaming cultures, practices, rules, etc, to maximize my knowledge of the subject. This doesn't sound like utter nonsense, like, "I sacrificed as many chickens as possible to bring the moon as close to Jupiter as possible", because, at some level, we recognize that experience and knowledge are related, that depth and breadth of experience both have value.

Along the way, I discovered that all GMs have their own take on things, their own flavor, their own set of things that they do well and things that they do poorly. Further, that characters I had played for X length of time under only a single GM had a much less diverse set of experiences than those played under multiple GMs over the same length of time. I came to realize that, while using my characters to comprehend various facets of the human psyche, I would never get a satisfying experience out of playing under only a single GM, because they would never be adept enough to provide good examples of a diverse enough array of stimulus by themselves.

My question is, can a character who has only ever existed in the experiential equivalent of an echo chamber ever actually be as developmentally and experientialy rich as one with a more diverse play experience?

Or, more succinctly, why would one expect caricatures to be more common from characters with a diverse background of play experience than those from a more monotone, singular existence?

[PhoenixPhyre]

snip

Honestly, your whole perspective here is alien to me. I don't expect to learn anything real about "the human condition" by playing an RPG, no more than by reading fiction or watching TV. They're all fictional mirrors, reflecting only what you put in.

[Darth Ultron]

So the question is what about random having characters stay in the same fictional setting universe, but suddenly have the ''mechanics'' of the universe change?

And I guess your talking about where everyone in the game agrees to this as part of the game? Like the game will use 'game rules A' until 7pm, then we will switch to 'game rules B'.

Though, over all, converting a character is a bit of a work...and for no real benefit. It's hard enough when the two systems are 'close' and use roughly the same(often copied from D&D or another popular system) rules, but it's near pointless when the systems are miles apart. It's tricky enough to say a ''sword +2'' in system A is a ''laser sword type D4'' in system B; but when you get to what is the ability ''Self'' in system A to, well, any ability in system B.

Really, if you want to switch systems and play the same character, your much better off just making a new mechanical character for the system.

And I guess, if you want, you can have all the players role play like ''nothing happened'', so on round one Warrior Dug has a sword +1, but on round two Space Solder Dug has a plasma rifle x2, every one can just not say anything and keep playing?

[Quertus]

Honestly, your whole perspective here is alien to me. I don't expect to learn anything real about "the human condition" by playing an RPG, no more than by reading fiction or watching TV. They're all fictional mirrors, reflecting only what you put in.

Sure, I guess. I put in things, I don't get "humans", I realize that that must not be how humans work, wash, rinse, repeat.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, was me trying to understand how someone could possibly play a game for years (or decades!) and still not get it. I made my recipe, played it, and got someone who, even at epic levels, still didn't get it. Human emulation successful!


So the question is what about random having characters stay in the same fictional setting universe, but suddenly have the ''mechanics'' of the universe change?

Really, if you want to switch systems and play the same character, your much better off just making a new mechanical character for the system.

And I guess, if you want, you can have all the players role play like ''nothing happened'', so on round one Warrior Dug has a sword +1, but on round two Space Solder Dug has a plasma rifle x2, every one can just not say anything and keep playing?

Ok, that last paragraph is just... no. But the rest? Well, imagine if the GM leaves, dies, loses his books in a house fire, retired from the game / gaming, or just gets burnt out on the system. But the players want to keep on playing... so someone (maybe even the same GM in several of those examples) offers to continue the game in a different system.

Can also happen when you have rotating GMs, or when a new system comes out that the group is dying to try - but they don't want to abandon their current game.

Clearly, making a new character in the new system is not at all what the group is interested in in these scenarios.

[NichG]

I thought that's how Preservers worked all along?


In terms of the setting elements, canonically the Preservers are Defilers who hold back before they kill the local plantlife, but everyone is draining from something to cast (sorceror kings use obsidian foci to drain from animals instead). In terms of what it means to 'hold back', what it means to drain, etc, there are specific mechanics that differ between editions.

One version is that basically Defilers get access to higher spell levels more quickly because the thing that changes as mages improve is the radius of their drain, so the reason a mage of a certain level can only cast up to certain level spells is just whether they can cast a wide enough net to pull the energy. Another version I've seen (in a 3.5ed conversion) maps to caster level instead, so a Defiler can get a caster level buff by killing the local plantlife (while the mechanically default wizard is assumed to be Preserving).

But just that ability to e.g. permanently kill the land in a 50ft radius and prevent it from ever growing crops again would correspond to a pretty potent spell effect itself in various editions, so the fact that your basic Athasian wizard - Preserver or Defiler - can just do that at will is already pretty distinctive.

[SimonMoon6]

I'll mention times when I've done this sort of thing:

I had a campaign that was using the Runequest/Elric/Call of Cthulhu/Superworld rules. I think these days, people will only be familiar with the Call of Cthulhu rules, but the company Chaosium put out lots of games in slightly different genres. The setting was a multiverse, appearing at first to consist of five universes. The characters could travel from one universe to another, but it was a fairly seamless transition as the same rules worked for all the settings, regardless of whether the characters were in the Young Kingdoms (the setting of Elric) or 1920s Earth (the setting of Call of Cthulhu), or even a world with superpowers (Superworld rules).

However, the multiverse expanded to what seemed like 23 universes, including Star Trek, Doctor Who, D&D, and DC superheroes. But the problem was that the Chaosium rules didn't really handle high powered things (like DC characters) very well. So, I needed a new system, one that was versatile enough to handle all genres and all power levels. So, there was some in-game reason given (involving various entities) that caused the multiverse's entire rules set to change. I didn't ask the players' permission, but it all seemed to work out fine. (This was already, as you might surmise, a somewhat experimental and strange game where anything could happen.) And I ended up using Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG because nothing else had both the detail and flexibility to handle everything with great simplicity and ease.

I'll admit I never looked at the possibility of how the characters in each world would react to the new rules, but I guess I assumed that nobody would realize anything was different, though obviously things would be working differently.

Then, near the end of this campaign, things changed dramatically. One of the PCs asked an entity a question that should never be asked, and the answer caused the multiverse to end. But the PCs survived and were in a new setting, where there were only five universes again, but each universe had its own rules. So, when they went to the GURPS world, they would be a GURPS character, but when they went to the D&D world, they would be a D&D character. If they went to the DC universe, they would be a DC Heroes character. This caused obvious differences as each character was dramatically different in each universe. The game didn't last too much longer after that (as we all sort of went our separate ways), but I think it was an interesting experiment to try to capture the feel of a character in several completely different game systems, including the rather unflexible second edition D&D.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, imagine if the GM leaves, dies, loses his books in a house fire, retired from the game / gaming, or just gets burnt out on the system. But the players want to keep on playing... so someone (maybe even the same GM in several of those examples) offers to continue the game in a different system.

Can also happen when you have rotating GMs, or when a new system comes out that the group is dying to try - but they don't want to abandon their current game.

Yea, but even in those cases, it's much better to just make the character mechanically from scratch in the new game. Your not ''converting'' or just ''creating a character''. You can keep the same fluff character and even setting, and just chance the rules.

[CantigThimble]

Honestly, your whole perspective here is alien to me. I don't expect to learn anything real about "the human condition" by playing an RPG, no more than by reading fiction or watching TV. They're all fictional mirrors, reflecting only what you put in.

I would respond to that by saying they you can often learn a great deal by looking into a mirror. Any form of wisdom begins with introspection.

I rarely expect to learn anything from fictional stories (in any form) but I am often pleasantly surprised to find that I have.

[Mordaedil]

Reading it on a forum seems so weird and alien, but I actually realize I'm doing the exact same thing as Quertus in a campaign I'm in right now.

I played a on a Naruto NWN server back in the day with a friend of mine and got to somewhere in the epic levels and got to bring that character over into his Forgotten Realms campaign, because he's done it before with his own character from that server, and it fit well with the other players being in the same level range. And there's a lot of concessions we've had to make, for instance my character does not know any spells (despite 4 levels in wizard) and has no clue about magic items (despite having a few mechanically magic items, it was trying to emulate ninja stuff though) and despite otherwise being a subpar rogue/fighter multiclass, I am compensated by having access to ninja arts skills that frankly make me way more overpowered than I'd otherwise be.

It's like having access to cheats all of a sudden, like being able to run on walls and ceiling, instantly grab people from a distance and pull them with you, leap around the battlefield and still perform full attacks (effectively giving me a pounce-ability, which combined with 8d6 sneak attack is devastating)

It's still strange to read about, but having played in it, it is kinda fun, but you do become sort of a literal murder hobo of epic proportions. And in the terms of Forgotten Realms, a wild card that upsets all of the checks and balances that setting has.

[Jay R]

Honestly, your whole perspective here is alien to me. I don't expect to learn anything real about "the human condition" by playing an RPG, no more than by reading fiction or watching TV. They're all fictional mirrors, reflecting only what you put in.

This is only true if I'm the only one putting anything in. But if there are GMs or authors, then I'm getting what other people put in.

I learned some things about early 20th century upper middle class England by reading Saki. I learned about a slice of the 19th century American midwest by reading Mark Twain. I learned about ... etc.

But more than that, I've read about being in a war, about being rich, about being poor, about how women think and feel, about living in New York, about sky-diving, about panning for gold, about running in a cattle drive, about flying to the moon, about a thousand experiences I haven't been able to have myself.

I've learned a lot about the human condition in contexts I could never experience myself -- by reading.

RPGs? The most limiting aspect of learning about the human condition is that I play with my friends, whose experiences I already share. I don't believe that being a medieval fighter is anything like playing a D&D Fighter, but I do get to see people interact in situations I would never see otherwise.

--------------------

Back to the main topic. I dislike translating characters from one system to another, or moving a character from one game to another.

Twice I was in games in which the system was being changed, and in both cases, it would take my character from one I loved to a very different character who wasn't what I hat put into it over time - because I design with the rules in mind.

We were playing a game of original D&D, and the DM wanted to switch it to AD&D 1e. I was playing a Bard (from the article in The Strategic Review.

An original D&D Bard is a great character. A Bard in 1e is a very different three-step process that grows and develops very differently in play. It would be impossible to treat somebody whose actual experiences involved being a weak first level bard and treat him like he'd spent his first several levels as a Fighter, and then several more as a Thief. All his spells would change (from the Magic-User spells to the Druid spells), so none of the magic he'd ever performed (except a few crossover spells like Light) could have happened.

He would be a totally different character, with totally different abilities and a totally different set of adventures. (And incidentally, would not have been able to use many of his magic items.)

Later, I was in a 2e game, and the DM wanted to switch to 3.5e. That would be fine for the Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, and Cleric, but my character was a Thief / Wizard. That's a powerful combination in 2e, but crippled in 3.5e. The other characters were about 11th level, and mine was 10th/10th. But a balanced Thief / Wizard in 3.5e who had the same experience as the 11th level party would be 5th / 6th or so, and far behind them in abilities.

There's nothing wrong with either set of rules, but there's no way to build a 3.5e character who was anything like Ornrandir.

Fortunately, both games died while in the conversion process.

I once heard of a player from a game I had run who moved his PC into another DM's game. I realized that as soon as he did that:

His cursed sword just lost its curse (because the player didn't know about it yet),
The potion of confusion that he thought was a potion of flight just became a potion of flight, and
The wish that he had and didn't know about yet had just gone away.
This isn't just moving a character to another world - it's erasing part of what happened to that character.

These kind of experiences have convinced me that a character is part of the world he exists in, and the world he exists in is part of the character. So I have no interest in either changing a system underneath the players or playing an old character in a new DM's world. I recognize this as a personal taste, and have no problem with other people disagreeing.

[Grod_The_Giant]

My question is, can a character who has only ever existed in the experiential equivalent of an echo chamber ever actually be as developmentally and experientialy rich as one with a more diverse play experience?
Conversely, can a PLAYER who's only ever explored things from a single perspective ever get as rich an experience as one who makes more frequent changes?


Or, more succinctly, why would one expect caricatures to be more common from characters with a diverse background of play experience than those from a more monotone, singular existence?
If you create a new character for a game, it is (hopefully, at least) tied into the setting and story and party in fundamental ways, and will learn and grow and change over the course of that one single narrative. By contrast, one who is constantly being recycled will be stuck in a constant state of being, with what to others is a transformational story being simply one small chapter in a larger life.

It's the difference between, oh, Supernatural and Stranger Things. The former has some metaplot and character development, but it's cyclical, tracing the same arcs and never really changing too much because the series is expected to go on indefinitely. The latter knows its going to have a limited number of episodes, all tightly plotted around a single theme.

[CantigThimble]

Conversely, can a PLAYER who's only ever explored things from a single perspective ever get as rich an experience as one who makes more frequent changes?


If you create a new character for a game, it is (hopefully, at least) tied into the setting and story and party in fundamental ways, and will learn and grow and change over the course of that one single narrative. By contrast, one who is constantly being recycled will be stuck in a constant state of being, with what to others is a transformational story being simply one small chapter in a larger life.

It's the difference between, oh, Supernatural and Stranger Things. The former has some metaplot and character development, but it's cyclical, tracing the same arcs and never really changing too much because the series is expected to go on indefinitely. The latter knows its going to have a limited number of episodes, all tightly plotted around a single theme.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. If a character came from another world and can just go back at the end of the adventure then they won't be any more affected by the events that transpired than a character living through a series of unrelated episodes in a TV show. The reason for that is that they can always get back to 'normal' after every individual plot arc. Someone for whom the current plot is the story of their life, not just one more episode, will be far more invested.

[Darth Ultron]

My question is, can a character who has only ever existed in the experiential equivalent of an echo chamber ever actually be as developmentally and experientialy rich as one with a more diverse play experience?

Or, more succinctly, why would one expect caricatures to be more common from characters with a diverse background of play experience than those from a more monotone, singular existence?

By ''character'' you mean ''Player'' right?

So your going by the old elitist idea that unless a Gamer is a Player in a multitude of games, run by a multitude of GMs, they are some how missing out on something. And, of course, you yourself having met the requirement are not that type of gamer.

And your elitist idea is full of all the classic flaws:

-Just how many game experiences are enough for the requirement?
-How many GM's meet the requirement?
-And who, exactly (you?) decides what is what?

If a Gamer is a Player in only one game system, but plays with 12 different DMs, does that could towards your diversity requirement? Or must is be other games?

How do you know or tell GMs are different. Even a glance at the broads here will show you the vast majority of DMs are all alike, agree with each other with out question and fill your echo chamber?

[CantigThimble]

By ''character'' you mean ''Player'' right?

So your going by the old elitist idea that unless a Gamer is a Player in a multitude of games, run by a multitude of GMs, they are some how missing out on something. And, of course, you yourself having met the requirement are not that type of gamer.

I don't actually think that he meant 'player'. I think he believes that a character is more interesting and less monotone when you play the same character in a bunch of different games.

[Quertus]

This is only true if I'm the only one putting anything in. But if there are GMs or authors, then I'm getting what other people put in.

I learned some things about early 20th century upper middle class England by reading Saki. I learned about a slice of the 19th century American midwest by reading Mark Twain. I learned about ... etc.

But more than that, I've read about being in a war, about being rich, about being poor, about how women think and feel, about living in New York, about sky-diving, about panning for gold, about running in a cattle drive, about flying to the moon, about a thousand experiences I haven't been able to have myself.

I've learned a lot about the human condition in contexts I could never experience myself -- by reading.

RPGs? The most limiting aspect of learning about the human condition is that I play with my friends, whose experiences I already share. I don't believe that being a medieval fighter is anything like playing a D&D Fighter, but I do get to see people interact in situations I would never see otherwise.

That sounds almost exactly like my reasons for enjoying taking characters to multiple tables.


Conversely, can a PLAYER who's only ever explored things from a single perspective ever get as rich an experience as one who makes more frequent changes?

Having played hundreds - not quite 4 digits yet - of characters character-shaped playing pieces, I feel confident answering "no". I play Fighters to get a view from the trenches, so as to play Wizards better, for example. Playing from multiple perspectives definitely enriches the player.


If you create a new character for a game, it is (hopefully, at least) tied into the setting and story and party in fundamental ways, and will learn and grow and change over the course of that one single narrative. By contrast, one who is constantly being recycled will be stuck in a constant state of being, with what to others is a transformational story being simply one small chapter in a larger life.

I'm too senile to be sure, but as I think I noticed in the thread that spawned this one, other people seem to like characters who are connected, and learn who they are. I like characters who know who they are, and grow connections throughout the game. If I ever get past the low hanging fruit, to going back and hitting the larger topics, I hope to discuss this further - probably around the point I get to "tying the character to the adventure".


I think you hit the nail on the head here. If a character came from another world and can just go back at the end of the adventure then they won't be any more affected by the events that transpired than a character living through a series of unrelated episodes in a TV show. The reason for that is that they can always get back to 'normal' after every individual plot arc. Someone for whom the current plot is the story of their life, not just one more episode, will be far more invested.

You know, I was going to disagree with you, but... That explains Armus rather well. Almost the entirety of his adventuring career was spent dedicated to creating a way to return, not just himself, but his entire party back to their respective homes.

Because Armus was a success on so many levels, it is difficult for me to evaluate how much of my love of the character to attribute to his investment in the various settings he found himself thrust into, since "home" wasn't an option.


By ''character'' you mean ''Player'' right?

No, I meant character. So the rest of that is irrelevant to the question asked.


I don't actually think that he meant 'player'. I think he believes that a character is more interesting and less monotone when you play the same character in a bunch of different games.

Yup. :smallbiggrin:

Well, it was a question, not a statement, but that was the implication what I expected people to infer about my position.

[Beleriphon]

I think the easiest way to get a character from one game system to another is to just rebuild the character as closely as possible in each game system. So you have a level 10 paladin in D&D 5E and the group decides GURPS is really the game system they want, but still want to play fantasy land games with the existing characters you just build the characters in GURPS and approximate the way they work in D&D in GURPS instead.

[kitanas]

@ quertus: one of the things I enjoy, both as a player and as a gm, is seeing how characters change in response to the world. That who they are is not a fixed thing. Quertus the character cannot change, or at least there are limits on how much he can change. I suspect this is what people are talking about when they speak of "static" characters.

[Quertus]

Well, it was a question, not a statement, but that was the implication.

I can't believe I made this mistake. :smallredface:

What I meant to say was, that is what I expect people will infer. Those who know me well enough should expect that, if I thought something was something, I wouldn't imply it, I'd be in your face telling you it was so.

It's a question for a reason.

I'll fix it above.


I think the easiest way to get a character from one game system to another is to just rebuild the character as closely as possible in each game system. So you have a level 10 paladin in D&D 5E and the group decides GURPS is really the game system they want, but still want to play fantasy land games with the existing characters you just build the characters in GURPS and approximate the way they work in D&D in GURPS instead.

That sounds like my general theory of character conversion. :smallbiggrin:


@ quertus: one of the things I enjoy, both as a player and as a gm, is seeing how characters change in response to the world. That who they are is not a fixed thing. Quertus the character cannot change, or at least there are limits on how much he can change. I suspect this is what people are talking about when they speak of "static" characters.

Quertus the character is every bit as capable of change as any other person-like character. He is highly unlikely to change in certain dimensions, as he was very specifically engineered to be unlikely to change in those dimensions - that was the bloody point of the character!

That he happens to be a character I enjoy playing, and that works well with the balance of most parties, and is enjoyable to most groups to the point that he is probably my most requested character is all just happy coincidence.

Also, by a definition posted in the previous thread, by adapting to overcome challenges, Quertus experiences far more character growth than most characters, IME.

But, to explore the topic more thoroughly, what do you believe character growth on the part of Quertus the character would / could look like? What would you desire to see? And, possibly more interesting from my PoV, why would you want to see these things?

[Quertus]

Ok, time to start pass 2. We'll see how long my battery lasts.

@Knaight - I was going to say more, but the crux of the matter is, there were so many objections to my objection in the previous thread - several of them being completely alien to me, and many of them having nothing to do with what I was saying - that I thought it best to evaluate the pieces individually before looking at them holistically. Honestly, if I had it to do over again, I might well make each piece it's own thread, and only worry about integrating them once all the offshoot threads seemed to have petered out. The only reasons I put them all together was fear that my senility would defeat my desire to discuss, and that there might be some value in discussing their interplay organically.


This is where rules as physics tends to introduce confusion.

Some rules are there to provide convenient abstractions, and some rules are there to introduce new elements or remove expected ones from the world, and of course some are both. A rule describing how in this game system someone born a 7th son of a 7th son inherits magical powers that let them heal wounds on touch is pretty clearly of the type to describe a novel element of this world that could not be anticipated from our knowledge of real life. The part that goes on to say 'this means that anyone in physical contact with a 7th son of a 7th son regains 1hp per 6 seconds' is on the other hand more about providing an abstraction.

I'd think "1 HP per 6 seconds" was intended to provide a gameplay mechanic, and to connect everyone's expectations regarding what "healing" means. Otherwise, you could get someone reading the concept, and believing that the character walks into a hospital, brushes against everyone, and everyone goes home, completely healed of all injuries, disease, heck, and mental issues, too. I'd think it's about being concrete, not abstract.


If a character is brought over from one setting to another in such a way that the abstractions need to give way a bit, that's generally at worst a local problem and is often an OOC one - that is to say, the character may require stats that don't correspond to legal build for a player character or may be a bit over or underpowered compared to the other characters.

If I read you correctly, this is the point where the character may not be a good fit mechanically. If so, agreed.


To the degree that it's an in-character problem, its still going to either be fairly easily absorbed into 'well, this person is just a bit exceptional' or 'its harder to do this than you remembered, but maybe you're just seeing the past through rose colored glasses, eh?'.

You're talking backwards to me. If the character doesn't fit mechanically (too many / few points or whatever), you don't shoehorn them in, you bring someone else - or, at least, that's WWQD. So, assuming that thought process, is there still an OOC problem to discuss?


If a character is brought over from one setting to another in such a way that the cosmological rules - the things that specify 'how is this setting distinct' - have to give way in order to make them not be noticeably affected, then be careful - whatever you choose to do here, you're making a strong statement about how the world works: what exactly is 'magic', etc. This can have non-local consequences, and no matter what you do its basically going to be impossible for it to go unnoticed by either the natives or the transitting character. E.g. when a non-Darksun wizard comes to Athas and doesn't need to drain life energy to cast spells they're going to create a huge push by all the powerful figures in the setting to steal their trick; or if they find that now they have to drain energy, you've established that it's something about Athas itself that creates the need which means that a properly dedicated party might decide that its their quest to go and hit the source of the problem with swords until it stops; or if it turns out they were draining energy all along, but there was just more available, that may or may not be compatible with how the character understands magic and certainly could have implications.

Now, I'll preface this with a reference to both senility and your better knowledge of Athas, but I was under the impression that later 2e books included rules for importing defilers to other worlds, from which I inferred that there was nothing special about Athas to fuel defiler magic. Of course, I also believed that preservers were just standard Wizards. Where my thought process falls apart is that I believed that the draconic transformation was a property of the world (what with the "there can be only one" and all), when it may in fact be a property of the class / character.

So, I suppose I'd say that, even if they are objectively wrong (when compared with actual canon), everyone at the table (or at least the player and the GM) needs to be on the same page regarding the physics of the source and destination world. Or, in the case where something being unknown is acceptable, no-one should explicitly be on a different page.


This kind of thing is fine and totally doable, but it does tend to take a central role in the campaign once it starts to come up, since it hints at stuff going on that can be poked at.


And this is one of my big issues with it. It unilaterally attempts to take control of the narrative, in a way that disrespects the rest of the party (since whatever their goals/motives/etc are just got trampled on) and disrespects the setting. It requires the DM to specifically write in room for that character, in a way that feels (to me) quite selfish.

I am struggling to see how, from a sandbox PoV, this is anything but a good thing, that there is now one more free adventure hook in the world.

Compared to the examples others gave in the spawning thread, about characters trying to assassinate key political figures and take over the world, or adventuring in a future where nearly the entirety of their connections to the world had been removed from existence, having a character who makes it easier to explore / realize what is actually possible with the underlying physics of the world seems positively tame by comparison.

Also, @PP - I find this sentiment quite odd coming from you. As we've discussed, I have been conditioned to find it quite disruptive and selfish to bring a character, billed as loving chemistry over physics, and hating both heat and high school, to a med school game, only to have them realize that they don't care about med school, and have them drop out of the game to ultimately teach high school chemistry in Florida. Whereas you have had the wonderful fortune to be conditioned to call this fine and dandy. While I'm still jealous, I am unable to reconcile your stances. Can you explain how it's fine for a character to subtract themselves from a game, disrupting the overall flow and cohesion, but not for them to add to the game, and bring their own goals, motivations, and story elements?

[NichG]

I'd think "1 HP per 6 seconds" was intended to provide a gameplay mechanic, and to connect everyone's expectations regarding what "healing" means. Otherwise, you could get someone reading the concept, and believing that the character walks into a hospital, brushes against everyone, and everyone goes home, completely healed of all injuries, disease, heck, and mental issues, too. I'd think it's about being concrete, not abstract.

It's an abstraction in the sense that, characters in that world are not really intended to have things called 'HP' which quantize and measure their degree of being healthy or alive, but rather HP and the dynamics of HP are used as an approximation of a more complex underlying fiction.

Because HP are meant to approximate an underlying deeper reality as to what being wounded and healing and so on actually mean, if you change the abstraction and use, say, Wound Checks, then no one in the setting should notice. That is to say, since we know that HP are intended to act as an approximation, we assume that any errors or weird nonsensical stuff comes from the fact that that approximation is imperfect and is failing. If you switch over to another approximation, it can be wrong in different ways, but there's still a common thing they're both supposed to be modelling which remains the same. So e.g. when one observes that it's possible to drown yourself in order to survive a gaping chest wound, we shouldn't say 'ah, thats how this universe is supposed to work' but rather we should say 'okay, that's a place where the rules are wrong about what should happen'.

On the other hand, the fact that 7th sons of 7th sons magically heal people isn't some approximation of the real world that just happens to be really weirdly wrong in a specific way, it actually is a statement 'this is a thing that is true in this universe'. If you change those things, they will and should be noticed in character. Similarly, if those things are inconsistent between different characters' experiences, that's actually evidence about something in the world and should be taken as such.




If I read you correctly, this is the point where the character may not be a good fit mechanically. If so, agreed.

You're talking backwards to me. If the character doesn't fit mechanically (too many / few points or whatever), you don't shoehorn them in, you bring someone else - or, at least, that's WWQD. So, assuming that thought process, is there still an OOC problem to discuss?


I'm not trying to argue for or against bringing in characters from other campaigns, I'm trying to explain why there's more nuance than just whether or not you can sort of build them to be pretty close. Mismatches in places where 'rules are abstractions' are far less impactful in any important ways than mismatches in places where 'rules are physics' - that's my point.



Now, I'll preface this with a reference to both senility and your better knowledge of Athas, but I was under the impression that later 2e books included rules for importing defilers to other worlds, from which I inferred that there was nothing special about Athas to fuel defiler magic. Of course, I also believed that preservers were just standard Wizards. Where my thought process falls apart is that I believed that the draconic transformation was a property of the world (what with the "there can be only one" and all), when it may in fact be a property of the class / character.

Yeah, 2ed has a lot of planehopping, and all of this stuff is more or less integrated in a greater cosmology. I'm also using the Darksun novels as reference here, where e.g. Sadira slips up at one point and defiles in order to cast Black Tentacles even though it's a higher level spell than she can properly handle.



I am struggling to see how, from a sandbox PoV, this is anything but a good thing, that there is now one more free adventure hook in the world.


It's not 'a' hook, it tends to be 'the' hook.

For example, I had a campaign once where, at the end of the campaign, the characters got the ability to send one thing forward into 'the next campaign'. They chose to send a comic book that an adoring fan of the party had made at one point, depicting a bit of their adventures.

In the subsequent campaign, the characters found that something they had in common was that they had all picked up that comic book issue recently, saw it as too strange a coincidence to leave alone, and enacted a summoning ritual to bring one of the characters from that story into their world - who promptly told them about worlds upon worlds out there and roughly how to access them. So the campaign became planehopping through those worlds, and the stuff going on in the characters' actual homeworld became of secondary importance. You might say 'great campaign!', but that opinion is not necessarily going to be shared among others. If I had really really wanted to run a campaign about politicking in alternate universe industrial revolution Spain, I would have just shot myself in the foot pretty badly by letting that sort of distractor in.

When I do so, I let that stuff into my campaigns intentionally because I know how powerful and focusing the effect is on the alien element. Throwing it at a DM who isn't trying for that sort of game and asking them to help you make it work, well, it makes sense that people would be resentful of the idea that they should be expected to accommodate that, regardless of how careful you say you intend to be about the cross-over. It's good to be sensitive about the kind of game that the DM is trying to put together.

[Quertus]

There is always going to be some degree of retconning, where something used to work one way and now everyone needs to pretend it has always worked in the new manner.

Not only strongly disagree (in terms of this being an acceptable outcome), but demonstrably false (as my own conversations demonstrate). If anyone felt that something didn't fit, we kept grinding and polishing until it did.


Playing parallel versions of a character, starting at level one, in different campaigns is no issue at all.

Sure it is. The campaign is starting at level 15! Do you really expect someone to bring a level one character?

Also - and this was the crux of my gripe in the other thread - do you really believe that a brand new level 15 character is really better than one that has actually seen play for those first 14 levels? Because I've got plenty of reasons why I believe that an actual 15th level character is better than one made whole-cloth.


Bringing a character with all experience, abilities and equipment from one campaign to another is only possible if specific conditions are met- playing something like D&D official adventure league. At very least it will need to be the same game system and the same setting or one that is similar enough to facilitate a visitor (no or little homebrew regarding character abilities and equipment.)

That is entirely table-dependent. Some GMs can't be bothered to make any homebrew; others will happily brew every single component of the character.


That said, the idea of a D&D character that has lived through all the edition changes as though they were metaphysical events in the fictional universe, getting sucked through portals or hopping across dimensions, each time finding that his abilities and equipment works differently or outright disappears, and remembers a series of past timelines that have now disappeared is sort of amusing. But it could definitely be disruptive or annoying to the other players if that player insisted in always going on about their past exploits and trying to get their old defunct spells and items to work.

I'm pretty sure Realms cannon (and definitely novels) has edition changes be a real thing that happen in universe, that don't erase history. I find your confusing baffling.


Works quite well if the game is about a party of worldwalkers, though. Or if the setting is explicitly one in which worldwalking has a place.


True. If you were playing as planewalkers from M:tG, it works great. In just about any other game, it's a recipe for hurt feelings unless handled very carefully.

I know human feelings are rather fragile things, but why in the world should anyone care?


I don't have any problem with someone importing an old character's starting point--build, starting equipment, attitudes, beliefs, even whatever backstory components (minus setting-specific names and places) can fit. I find it boring if they want to force the gameplay to reproduce the old character's end-state--why retread old ground? Do something new.

See "it's a level 15 campaign" line, above.

Also, unlike myself, some gamers do want to aim for a specific end state, and want to work with the GM to metagame this. And you are going on record as having a problem with this?


I have a huge problem with wanting to remain unattached to the setting and the party. Tourists who have little stake in events (or who just meddle safely from their "I'm untouchable" standpoint) have no place in my games, or in any game I want to be in. Everyone should find a reason for that character to be there and be involved. If they can't without damaging the character, retire them and make a new one.

Good thing that I want the game to be about forming connections (rather than about learning who my character is) then, eh?

Also, I can't agree strongly enough with the idea that every character should have a reason to be involved. Hopefully, I'll get to circle back to that soon.


I've said it before--I want characters to grow and change as a result of the events of play. Having ones that are locked into a rigid, pre-determined framework that's independent of events disrespects the setting, the DM's work in creating events, the play of the game, everything. This includes both mechanics and personality.

Unless I've missed something, unless you're playing Calvin Ball, your comment about mechanics is... either ill-conceived, or worthy of pejoratives.

However, do see my questions to a previous later poster (I'll copy them here, unless my senility wins another round) regarding why you want this. I find this sub-topic quite fascinating.


Frankly, I even consider someone remaking a character they've already played to be a fairly big warning sign in and of itself, outside of exceptions like the campaign they were originally designed for collapsing after a few sessions or the character dying immediately in the first session. Reusing literally the same character is on a whole different level from that.

Presumably, you don't reinvent yourself daily - presumably, you use the same you every day for a lifetime. Yes, you get changed over time by your environment, or suddenly in character-defining moments, but you keep reusing the same you, don't you? And you keep learning and growing and exploring new places, new lessons, new experiences, right? Is this a warning sign that you are somehow mentally unhealthy?

Why should desiring depth on a character from play time be a warning sign of lack of role-playing? :smallconfused: I can honestly only comprehend the opposite - that either not caring or actively desiring a new blank piece would correlate to a lack of role-playing.

[CantigThimble]

It's not 'a' hook, it tends to be 'the' hook.

For example, I had a campaign once where, at the end of the campaign, the characters got the ability to send one thing forward into 'the next campaign'. They chose to send a comic book that an adoring fan of the party had made at one point, depicting a bit of their adventures.

In the subsequent campaign, the characters found that something they had in common was that they had all picked up that comic book issue recently, saw it as too strange a coincidence to leave alone, and enacted a summoning ritual to bring one of the characters from that story into their world - who promptly told them about worlds upon worlds out there and roughly how to access them. So the campaign became planehopping through those worlds, and the stuff going on in the characters' actual homeworld became of secondary importance. You might say 'great campaign!', but that opinion is not necessarily going to be shared among others. If I had really really wanted to run a campaign about politicking in alternate universe industrial revolution Spain, I would have just shot myself in the foot pretty badly by letting that sort of distractor in.

When I do so, I let that stuff into my campaigns intentionally because I know how powerful and focusing the effect is on the alien element. Throwing it at a DM who isn't trying for that sort of game and asking them to help you make it work, well, it makes sense that people would be resentful of the idea that they should be expected to accommodate that, regardless of how careful you say you intend to be about the cross-over. It's good to be sensitive about the kind of game that the DM is trying to put together.

I think this covers the problem well.

When world-hopping is an aspect of the story, then any given problem in one, single world cannot possibly be any more than a sub-plot. The main plot will always be the world-hopping.

People react differently to the main plot and sub-plots. This ties back to the point I made earlier about how just having the ability to walk away from a problem prevents you from really being that invested in solving it.

Basically, if you enter a campaign and declare that your character is an interplanar traveller who has seen many worlds, then you're basically declaring that your story is one about world-hopping and whatever the DM is trying to run is a sub-plot in that story. On the other hand, if you created a character from their world, then the plot of the campaign would be the main story. Many DMs would definitely prefer that.


On another note, you seem to be repeatedly making the assertion that "more worlds = better".

I don't think that's actually true. More worlds is different, but better?

Would Harry Potter have been a better series of books if book 2 took place in Greyhawk, book 3 in Camelot, book 4 in the Forgotten Realms etc. before he just returned to his world in book 7 to beat Voldemort? I don't think so. It certainly would have been very different, and maybe some people would prefer it that way, but just throwing the character into more alien environments doesn't make things better.

[Lapak]

and is enjoyable to most groups to the point that he is probably my most requested character is all just happy coincidence.Just a side question, because you have stated this several times - can you give me some context for this? I have gamed online and IRL, I've run the games and played in them, played with friends and with strangers, and never once in all that time has anyone, player or DM, requested that someone play a specific character. In what environment are you joining games where the expectation is that people will have a variety of preexisting characters and will choose one to play, rather than building one for the game in question? The only precedents I can think of off the top of my heads are Living Greyhawk campaigns or the loose OSR collective of FLAILSNAILS games, one of which had pretty solid conventions for character transitions but all into the same setting, and the other I don't *think* is your default rule-space.

Edit to clarify: I am not doubting you, I am sincerely curious.

[Darth Ultron]

So I'm not talking about the special character known as Quertus. I accept that Quertus is special, so nothing said here apples to Quertus.

Now, for all the other Player Characters: a Player Character is a fictional construct made to be used in a role playing game. In short, a player character is not real. They can't change or grow or really do anything.

So the question of anything about any player character is a bit pointless, and this includes using the same character in any and every RPG.

And, if fact, from the real life human perspective of the Player: for a Player to always play the same character all the time in every game is very limiting, stunts any real growth by the real player and is repetitive. A good role player should explore the full depth of role playing and, in fact, role play as many different characters as they can in as many games as they can.



Also - and this was the crux of my gripe in the other thread - do you really believe that a brand new level 15 character is really better than one that has actually seen play for those first 14 levels? Because I've got plenty of reasons why I believe that an actual 15th level character is better than one made whole-cloth.

This is a bit of a half question: Does it matter if a 15th level character was made in five minutes or if it slowly went up level by level over two years? No it does not matter at all: A character is still just a fictional construct.

Now a player who used the character in a game for two years and had them slowly level up organically over time is generally better then a player that just 'improvs' a character in a couple minutes. In general, a player that uses a single character for a long time they should know the mechanics of their character and the game better.

But, the above really depends on the Player. It has nothing, at all to do with the character: it is all on the Player. A Player, as a person, can change and grow, if they have the desire and ability to do so.



Presumably, you don't reinvent yourself daily - presumably, you use the same you every day for a lifetime. Yes, you get changed over time by your environment, or suddenly in character-defining moments, but you keep reusing the same you, don't you? And you keep learning and growing and exploring new places, new lessons, new experiences, right? Is this a warning sign that you are somehow mentally unhealthy?

You simply can't compare a real person to a fictional character.



Why should desiring depth on a character from play time be a warning sign of lack of role-playing? :smallconfused: I can honestly only comprehend the opposite - that either not caring or actively desiring a new blank piece would correlate to a lack of role-playing.

Playing a character with depth is a sign of good role playing. Always playing the same, static, character is a sign of bad role playing.

[PersonMan]

Also - and this was the crux of my gripe in the other thread - do you really believe that a brand new level 15 character is really better than one that has actually seen play for those first 14 levels? Because I've got plenty of reasons why I believe that an actual 15th level character is better than one made whole-cloth.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily the case, though for me what comes to mind isn't a pair of characters who are similar except that one played through their backstory, but rather the entirely different types of characters available for differing starting levels.

An example - a character who grows up poor, impresses a duelist as a child and is then trained to fight, proceeding to go out and adventure when their mentor dies of illness. They start at level 1, and adventure their way to level 15. This character can be played from level 1, and by level 15 they have a great deal of played-through backstory.

Then you have a character who, over the course of a lengthy life, grows in power mostly through lengthy periods of training, surviving inhospitable environments, and spending a great deal of time in contemplation. They start at level 15. Playing through their backstory and the acquisition of their skills and powers may be possible, but it certainly isn't suitable for a typical group-based game. They simply can't be played from level 1 unless the group consents to making it about them and their story, with pre-planned events and endpoints.

I wouldn't say either is superior to the other, as a whole. It may be worth expanding on what exactly you mean by 'better', and why exactly a character with more time played is superior to one with less? What is the fundamental difference between a character shaped by events written vs events played?


I know human feelings are rather fragile things, but why in the world should anyone care?

Well, assuming:
A. You want to play with people
B. You want to play long games
C. You want to be able to play with new groups
D. You want to be able to continue playing or interacting with people after problems occur

You want to care. And that's assuming you're an entirely selfish person who lacks empathy entirely - if not, there are further reasons (like "hurting people is bad" or "my friends being sad makes me sad").


Good thing that I want the game to be about forming connections (rather than about learning who my character is) then, eh?

It doesn't seem to be your main point here, so this could just be you leaving things out for brevity, but there isn't an either-or relationship between "forming connections" and "character discovery", nor are they the only options.


[...] actively desiring a new blank piece would correlate to a lack of role-playing.

And if they don't want a blank slate at all, but rather a new developed character?

[Quertus]

I lost my first rely, so I'll be brief.


My newly printed Rules Cyclopedia for Basic D&D had a section on converting characters from DM to DM.

The BECMI system with the Mystara setting had these kind of conversions make sense. Keeping a pretty random character alive seems like part of the fun along with having retired characters that you can bring back for when the adventure calls for it.

Nice to know that there's some support in older editions, too.


The idea that your character is going to go from system to system without realizing anything is rather silly.

Given two systems of sufficient difference, the only way to accomplish this is to houserule the destination system to the point where it is not recognizably the same system.

If a D&D fighter is in GURPS, and treats an enemy with a crossbow the way that they would in D&D (not really a threat), they'll be dead VERY QUICKLY. If you modify GURPS enough to let the fighter have the same 'abilities' (ignore crossbows), it would vary sufficiently from the base assumptions that someone has when "playing GURPS" (though there might be some variant rules for that kind of superhuman resilience).

The hypothesis is fine, given that the games model realities that are similar enough to each other (often measured against actual reality). The problem is that very few games do that well at all, and the biggest games in the hobby diverge exceptionally hard from "reality".

Could you convert a GURPS character to BRP, or Savage Worlds, or even Fate? Probably, with some level of fidelity, though there may be details lost, abilities that don't really transfer, etc.

Doing so to D&D/PF is extremely hard.

As I covered in the previous thread, is that a property of the character, the item, or the system, that D&D and WoD characters respond to armor differently?


I'm going to continue some comments from the last thread.

Oh, I think the point comes down to setting hopping vs. system hopping. Of course to move systems without moving setting you have to have the same setting in multiple systems... which for "earth" wouldn't be so bad, for some settings linked to systems it could be a nightmare.

OK... possibly Playgrounder's again, but the more important point is, well they have reasons to go there. They travel to do the thing, they do the thing and then they usually come back. I don't know many soldiers who (for instance) wondered over to a different country, then decided to join that army and fight a war having nothing to do with their homeland.

So why is X adventure wandering really far off the map, to an unknown area what probably doesn't have much if any communication with their origin area and getting in this big adventure before coming home? I mean there are characters who do just that, I have a character who wonders a semi-multiverse alone, making friends and helping them save the day. But that character was designed from the ground up to do that, and even then suffers for it on occasion. Most notably I have a hard time tying the story together, because they just keep on wondering.

Put a different way, I feel like the world hopping would have to be set up ahead of time, and even then you only have 1 or 2 jumps before the character's story just becomes a series of meaningless episodes. Which can be fun, but is not what I am usually going for.

Yes, I consider the fact that Harry (who has much better social skills than I) made 0 friends worthy of mention in his first 10 years of life to be a bit contrived. Not too bad given the social situation and the oddities around him, but even with those it is stretching it a bit.

This, too, sounds like it ties strongly into my hopefully not too future discussions about tying the character to the adventure.


I think this covers the problem well.

When world-hopping is an aspect of the story, then any given problem in one, single world cannot possibly be any more than a sub-plot. The main plot will always be the world-hopping.

People react differently to the main plot and sub-plots. This ties back to the point I made earlier about how just having the ability to walk away from a problem prevents you from really being that invested in solving it.

That's not my experience. Players rarely seem to care about such esoteric things, preferring to focus on "the adventure", or the zombies trying to eat their faces off.


Just a side question, because you have stated this several times - can you give me some context for this? I have gamed online and IRL, I've run the games and played in them, played with friends and with strangers, and never once in all that time has anyone, player or DM, requested that someone play a specific character. In what environment are you joining games where the expectation is that people will have a variety of preexisting characters and will choose one to play, rather than building one for the game in question? The only precedents I can think of off the top of my heads are Living Greyhawk campaigns or the loose OSR collective of FLAILSNAILS games, one of which had pretty solid conventions for character transitions but all into the same setting, and the other I don't *think* is your default rule-space.

Edit to clarify: I am not doubting you, I am sincerely curious.

IRL. It's like how humans don't get married the same day that they meet, most of the most successful gaming groups I've experienced have a courtship period before diving into a campaign.


Now a player who used the character in a game for two years and had them slowly level up organically over time is generally better then a player that just 'improvs' a character in a couple minutes. In general, a player that uses a single character for a long time they should know the mechanics of their character and the game better.

Not just the mechanics, but the personality as well.


Well, assuming:
A. You want to play with people
B. You want to play long games
C. You want to be able to play with new groups
D. You want to be able to continue playing or interacting with people after problems occur

You want to care. And that's assuming you're an entirely selfish person who lacks empathy entirely - if not, there are further reasons (like "hurting people is bad" or "my friends being sad makes me sad").

Um, I was asking why the other players would care, not why someone should care that they care.


It doesn't seem to be your main point here, so this could just be you leaving things out for brevity, but there isn't an either-or relationship between "forming connections" and "character discovery", nor are they the only options.

In the thread that spawned this one, that's not what people were saying. They were saying that they want characters who don't know themselves, and characters who have connections. I was saying I like characters who know themselves, and form connections. Now, maybe others will eventually agree that they like characters to form connections, but I haven't seen that yet.


And if they don't want a blank slate at all, but rather a new developed character?

We may be reading different threads, but blank slates seem all the rage now.

Also, I've long contended that these a qualitative difference between backstory and play time.

[PersonMan]

Um, I was asking why the other players would care, not why someone should care that they care.

Ah! In that case, I apologize - I completely misunderstood, sorry about that.

I don't actually have much to say in regards to the actual question, I'm afraid; I can extrapolate from my own experiences to consider why it would be an issue, but I wouldn't use the term "hurt feelings" to describe what I'd say (which is more along the lines of "discontent with how things went because something other than what was expected ended up thrust into the spotlight, potentially sidelining one's own contributions and/or the 'real' focus of things").


In the thread that spawned this one, that's not what people were saying. They were saying that they want characters who don't know themselves, and characters who have connections. I was saying I like characters who know themselves, and form connections. Now, maybe others will eventually agree that they like characters to form connections, but I haven't seen that yet.

Well, I can't speak for those posters, but for me personally it's a mix of both and other things - I generally like characters who aren't made for a character arc or are fundamentally at peace with who/what they are, who can still change based on what happens, who begin with some strong connection to the campaign premise (say, a philosophy that includes moral imperatives to rebel against the evil empire, which keeps them strongly inclined to work with the party) and make relationships along the way that propel them further, all with large helpings of "this character is fun to play in a mechanical sense", "this character's interactions are enjoyable and interesting" and so forth.

Based on this - and this is speculation - I would say that there may be some degree of miscommunication present, either here or before. It could be me missing that we're talking about primary rather than sole reasons (though even then I'd argue that it's not a dichotomy and that a mix is possible), or it could be people using different terms to describe similar things.

Thinking more on it, I actually think I have made characters who might be described as characters who form connections, but I would describe it differently (namely as more a sort of "see the results of adding X to Y situation" thing than "see X grow to know and care for Y world").


We may be reading different threads, but blank slates seem all the rage now.

I think so, since I had no idea that blank slate type characters were desired in any but a few niche situations; it may be that I assume a vastly different playstyle because of my own experiences.


Also, I've long contended that these a qualitative difference between backstory and play time.

Have you gone into detail about why? I can try and find earlier posts on it if I'm a ten-page discussion behind the times here and you aren't keen on repeating it, but I'm interested in figuring out the reasoning behind that.

[CantigThimble]

That's not my experience. Players rarely seem to care about such esoteric things, preferring to focus on "the adventure", or the zombies trying to eat their faces off.

In my experience players care about overarching plot more than they seem to. If they find out that the various adventures they've been on weren't actually related or building up to anything then they have a tendency to lose focus and the group quickly devolves into screwing around instead of engaging with the game.

[Knaight]

Also - and this was the crux of my gripe in the other thread - do you really believe that a brand new level 15 character is really better than one that has actually seen play for those first 14 levels? Because I've got plenty of reasons why I believe that an actual 15th level character is better than one made whole-cloth.

It depends. If the character in question has seen play for the first 14 levels in the actual campaign in question, it's probably better than a whole new character. If the first 14 levels were in an entirely different campaign, then the character is absolutely worse than the brand new character. Instead of nothing you have a giant pile of inaccuracy that gets in the way. You have outside baggage that contaminates the new campaign. At best, it's a whole bunch of material that has to be meticulously worked over, altered, unlearned, and just generally dealt with to incorporate the character into the new campaign. At worst, it ruins the whole campaign for everyone else.

[Quertus]

Ah! In that case, I apologize - I completely misunderstood, sorry about that.

Have you gone into detail about why? I can try and find earlier posts on it if I'm a ten-page discussion behind the times here and you aren't keen on repeating it, but I'm interested in figuring out the reasoning behind that.

People are so polite. :smallredface: Apology unnecessary, but, um, thanks?

You'd have to dig a good bit to find the conversions where I've made such statements. Let me see if I can prevail over my senility enough to explain why I believe time spent playing the character is qualitatively different than character background.

Hmmm... It would seem to have become an untested part of my gaming religion. Nice catch!

So, last time I really even discussed it (not necessarily thought about it) was, IIRC, in what was, likely an echo chamber with regard to the belief in play time having value, on the Playground, where we were discussing the difference between playing from 1-11, vs playing from 10-20. Or something like that.

So, why do I believe this? Hmmm...

Well, let me start with the appeal to the obvious: if there was no difference between playing a character and writing background story, nobody would bother fighting over conflicting schedules, role-playing vs roll playing, linear vs sandbox vs Sandboxy, etc. Nobody would actually play the game, they'd just write backstory. So, clearly, were either all gluttons for punishment, or there really is some difference.

Now, that difference may just be in the expertise of the player, but as DU helpfully pointed out, those experiences mean things, like the player getting better at the game (or not, which puzzled me, and is why I built Quertus in the first place), and at the mechanics of the character.

Now, the next most obvious / easy to see difference comes from those players who like characters to start out as blank slates. They figure out who the character is in play. While this mindset may be foreign to me, it's pretty easy to see that their characters will be different - more defined - when they have been played.

Perhaps the next most obvious baby step is from a conversation I had with PP. I am accustomed to the idea (and here, I'm both oversimplifying, and jumping ahead for this thread) that it is generally optimal to discuss the campaign, and how the characters will be connected to it ahead of time. Further, that it therefore behooves the player to know their character well enough to correctly gauge how their character can be connected to the campaign. And that it is bad form to misunderstand the character and bail due to unforseen incompatibility with the basic premise of the game. PP, contrarywise, put forth that such behavior would be perfectly acceptable in his games, and is, in fact, preferable to the undesirable behavior of bringing a character that you actually understand and can predict well enough to know of they're suitable for the campaign. Because he values characters getting to know themselves, and does so over the campaign continuity that I have been conditioned to value. Or, at least, that's what I took away from the conversation.

So, clearly, even though we place opposed values on this, both PP and I recognize that players come to know their characters / characters come to know themselves as they receive screen time.

Have I delved deep enough into this, or should I go further / attempt a different tact?


In my experience players care about overarching plot more than they seem to. If they find out that the various adventures they've been on weren't actually related or building up to anything then they have a tendency to lose focus and the group quickly devolves into screwing around instead of engaging with the game.

There is that...

[Quertus]

It depends. If the character in question has seen play for the first 14 levels in the actual campaign in question, it's probably better than a whole new character. If the first 14 levels were in an entirely different campaign, then the character is absolutely worse than the brand new character. Instead of nothing you have a giant pile of inaccuracy that gets in the way. You have outside baggage that contaminates the new campaign. At best, it's a whole bunch of material that has to be meticulously worked over, altered, unlearned, and just generally dealt with to incorporate the character into the new campaign. At worst, it ruins the whole campaign for everyone else.

... Well then. I take it you can't really comprehend the notion that it's a giant pile of accuracy, can you? Because, in every instance of character conversion that I've ever been a part of, that's what it is. It's, well, it's nothing like what you just described.

Now, why in the world would you ever do it your way? You are expending extra effort... for what perceived gain? What benefit do you expect to get by hacking the character apart and altering them?

[Knaight]

Now, why in the world would you ever do it your way? You are expending extra effort... for what perceived gain? What benefit do you expect to get by hacking the character apart and altering them?

My way is to just build a new character. I'm just saying that if you're going to import a character those are necessary concessions to make for them to be able to fit games not explicitly designed for character import.

[PersonMan]

Have I delved deep enough into this, or should I go further / attempt a different tact?

I'm specifically thinking about it from the perspective of after the fact - especially if you're with a different group, potentially playing a different system. Ignoring the experience itself, what are the end benefits after, say, playing through levels 1 to 10 or from 100 points to 170 points vs creating a character at that later stage? I can see a lot of theoretical advantages; a group of people playing will easily create a backstory as a byproduct that will otherwise take a great deal of effort to make, there's far more variety in possible events, and so forth - but these are all generalized, without necessarily having benefits for the individual character.

Then there's the side question of concepts viable at higher levels, but I don't think there's much to say there.

---

To directly address the idea of character conversion: I think it's not entirely viable to seamlessly convert from one system to another. As an example, converting GURPS characters to DnD ones will create problems (they can be fixed with homebrew, but only to some extent) if only because the two systems have entirely different ways of going about adventures and combat. Some mechanics, like GURPS' disadvantages, break outright unless you preserve, say, the connection between "I need to protect this child" and "I am X better at using a broadsword" somehow, to simulate the original mechanic.

In my opinion, converting a game between systems is too much work, with too many problems cropping up (that are likely to multiply rather than die down over time; a party of adventurers whose main strategies all involve using their environment to their advantage and spreading burning oil to use as a barrier in combat will only get less able to function normally as they gain levels in DnD, for instance) that are all coming on top of the ones already present in a situation like "old GM is gone, new one offers to continue the game" - my own experience with that has been limited, but it's yet to really go well except in one case.

[Florian]

@Quertus:

Let´s tie up some lose ends from previous discussions.

First, a lot of it depends on how your basic stance and understanding of things are. Do you understand a thing like "D&D" as one complete rules system and setting(s) as a complete package, then saying "I play D&D" is akin to saying "I play FIFA league soccer". Or you understand a thing like D&D and the various settings as a heap of building blocks that each GM/group builds their game from, then it´s more like "We play in grey box era Toril, but use this version of the D&D 3.5E rules for it, with these modifications and house rules". There's a drastic and fundamental difference between those two stances.

Second, we've already discussed that a setting can either be the stage or the backdrop, depending how a given campaign works. The difference between a gm who runs a game world with a lot of little things to do in it, or a gm who runs one massive story-driven campaign is as drastic and fundamental as the stance towards the system.

Third, a lot of game systems are geared towards achieving a certain look and feel and also to encourage certain play styles or "stories" or are directly tied to simulating their specific setting, giving the "fluff" primacy over the rules. Just look at the ugly mess that D20 Rokugan is, compared to the RnK original, to see how some conversions are not really desirable.

So, I hope that helps you understand that for people who work on either a character-driven or story-driven basis, what you write makes little or no sense and comes over as pretty insulting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

@Quertus

I don't have tons of time right now, but I'll try to clarify my stance.

Premises
* It is bad role-playing form to make the game about yourself, unless that was the agreed premise.
* It's bad form to unilaterally compromise the agreed premise.
* Characters must be open to change in regard to changing circumstances, even if they have bounds beyond which they will not go.

Note that "making the game about yourself" includes such things as strongly deviating (in either direction) from the group's optimization/power level (since then the DM has to take special care for you and things get written specifically for your character instead of for the group as a whole), making a character with a backstory that causes conflict (e.g. playing a "fresh off the farm, you know nothing" game and making a "seasoned world-traveler who's seen it all" character, or making a "royal prince in line for the throne of the kingdom we're playing in" character), or making a character who demands particular approaches to problems (making a character who relies on being sneaky in a group full of kick-in-the-door types. Or vice versa.)

Conclusions
* When, due to changes in the game flow, a character that once was a good fit ceases to be a good fit and cannot be made to be a good fit without total retcons, they should be retired and a better fitting one found. This is both more true to the character (as opposed to just rebuilding them and pretending they loved chocolate the whole time) and better for the group (than dragging an unfit character around). This prevents violations of the premise, while still allowing characters to change.

* Bringing in a character with an extensive world-hopping history inherently makes the game about world-hopping, unless that history is brushed under the rug. And very few games are already about world-hopping. It feels like a "look at me, aren't I special" move. Just like being Edgy-McEdgelord IV who dresses in black and dual wields katanas.

Note:
When I said "mechanical changes", I was implying that the character was planned to be a primary "big weapon" type but realizes that they actually should do X instead, so they refocus their build from that point forward. In 3e's system, that's a recipe for disaster due to trap options. That's what I don't like. The idea that you have to know exactly what the character will be doing at each checkpoint (level, XP value, whatever) along the way. Especially if the build requires XYZ items--that says either a) crafting must be available and easy, or b) the DM must give me those items or I'll be angry (going back to the premises, that's a form of making the game about one character, in a small way). "I'm a paladin, I deserve a holy avenger. Not only any holy avenger, but a glaive (because I took those 3 feats that use glaives only)."

[Cluedrew]

Having played hundreds - not quite 4 digits yet - of characters character-shaped playing pieces, I feel confident answering "no"."Well there's your problem."

Referring to the character-shaped piece. You do say something about a "Fighter" helping you play a "Wizard"*. Those are some pretty broad strokes. For me the biggest contrast between two characters came from Kelly and Ammanda. Both mercenaries who worked in the same kind of area, independently, their gear and stat lines were similar as were their motivations for getting involved in the campaign. Really it wasn't until you noticed that Kelly had dumped the stat used to deal damage while Ammanda had pumped it to the ceiling that what made them different became notable. Kelly defended, Ammanda attacked. And this carried through to their personalities and their approaches to problems. Kelly took a situation from "we are here to kill you" to "we will help you fix your car", Ammanda had some people who wanted to see her dead but were too afraid to try.

* OK fighter was a the beginning of the sentence, but wizard was caponized for no discernible reason. I feel that this is significant but not entirely sure why.

[Quertus]

My way is to just build a new character. I'm just saying that if you're going to import a character those are necessary concessions to make for them to be able to fit games not explicitly designed for character import.

You are still saying that all X are Y. All I need to do is point to a single X that is not Y - not even that all X I have encountered are not Y - for this to be false. However, it is possible that we are using our words differently, so can you spell out exactly what you mean by "fit games not explicitly designed for character import"?


I'm specifically thinking about it from the perspective of after the fact - especially if you're with a different group, potentially playing a different system. Ignoring the experience itself, what are the end benefits after, say, playing through levels 1 to 10 or from 100 points to 170 points vs creating a character at that later stage? I can see a lot of theoretical advantages; a group of people playing will easily create a backstory as a byproduct that will otherwise take a great deal of effort to make, there's far more variety in possible events, and so forth - but these are all generalized, without necessarily having benefits for the individual character.

Well, answers so far in just this and the spawning thread include

DU: you know the character's mechanics better.

Q,PP: you know the character's personality better / the character knows themselves better.

Blank slate crowd: the character actually has a personality.

... And here's where I'll go ahead and add, the character is much better suited to be tied into a game.

-----

A big part of the point to boot camp is to tear the person down, so that they can rebuild themselves, stronger. I think firefly said it best: "Live with a man 40 years. Share his house, his meals. Speak on every subject. Then tie him up, and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man."

When you - or, at least, when I - build a character, they have a background, and I can intend them to play a certain way, I can expect certain behaviors, but, until they've had their trial by fire, I can't really know that that's who they really are.

A character isn't finished until it's had its trial by fire, until I know who it is. And this isn't just a single session of play, and certainly isn't just being hit from a single angle. To truly be forged in flame, the hammer must strike from many angles. (Which ties strongly into my desire to run a character under many GMs, to compensate for the fact that they all only swing that hammer at certain angles, well or at all).

Once a character had been properly forged in flame, that character now has functional, predictable personality traits, barring further character-defining moments. The key here is, these act like load-bearing structures, that one can use to hang other characters and entire campaigns off of.

Most of the most successful games I've been in, the group has actually sat down before the game, and discussed the lead-in, where they want things to start at T-0 when the curtains rise, how they want the characters initially tied into the campaign, the party, whatever.

If you try to build that on the shaky foundation of untested characters, things will break, campaigns will fail, feelings will get hurt.

Maybe it won't be as bad as trying to run a med school game, and having a character billed as loving chemistry over physics, hating high school, and hating warm weather realize that they're not really into med school, and quitting the campaign to go teach high school physics, but, IME, campaigns with such untested characters reaching a satisfying conclusion is the exception, not the rule.

-----


GURPS' disadvantages, break outright unless you preserve, say, the connection between "I need to protect this child" and "I am X better at using a broadsword" somehow, to simulate the original mechanic.

Um, what? IIRC, GURPS is point buy, and those two facets of the character are no more intrinsically tied than "I can't cook because I bought that last +1 with my sword" or "I am not a noble, because I am intelligent".

[Quertus]

* It is bad role-playing form to make the game about yourself, unless that was the agreed premise.

Agreed.


* It's bad form to unilaterally compromise the agreed premise.

I think I agree? But, then, you've got your med school game, and I've got my first campaign where the party completely ignored the agreed-to scenario, so... I'm not sure where that actually leaves us.



* Characters must be open to change in regard to changing circumstances, even if they have bounds beyond which they will not go.

Agreed, insofar as some characters are inherently more open to change than others. For an extreme example, see, say, Rain Man.


Note that "making the game about yourself" includes such things as strongly deviating (in either direction) from the group's optimization/power level (since then the DM has to take special care for you and things get written specifically for your character instead of for the group as a whole),

You wisely made that a conditional. Therefore, do note that, for GMs who do not vary the opposition based on the party, who do not tailor the adventure to you, this is a different issue. Yes, Thor needed to quite literally carry the sentient potted plant - but one could quite easily argue that the adventure was actually about the characters who lived in the middle.


making a character with a backstory that causes conflict (e.g. playing a "fresh off the farm, you know nothing" game and making a "seasoned world-traveler who's seen it all" character, or making a "royal prince in line for the throne of the kingdom we're playing in" character)

You aren't using your words the same way I am here. A UA/AU 2e(?) barbarian causes conflict in a party with spellcasters. A Frenzied Berserker causes conflict. The characters you described could enrich a story, if that's what the group signed on for.


, or making a character who demands particular approaches to problems (making a character who relies on being sneaky in a group full of kick-in-the-door types. Or vice versa.)

Now that's a great example of causing conflict - often, the good kind. How will the party resolve this issue?


Conclusions

I'm not sure these follow from your above statements - were they intended to?



* When, due to changes in the game flow, a character that once was a good fit ceases to be a good fit and cannot be made to be a good fit without total retcons, they should be retired and a better fitting one found.

Agreed.


This is both more true to the character (as opposed to just rebuilding them and pretending they loved chocolate the whole time)

Agreed. Strongly agreed.


and better for the group (than dragging an unfit character around).

Agreed.


This prevents violations of the premise, while still allowing characters to change.

Ah. Thank you so much for spelling this out. Putting this line after your other "conclusion" lines makes it very clear what you value, and why.

Funny thing is, I hold very similar values (as you can see by my repeated "agreed" comments). The difference is, you value playing untested characters, where more will need to fall by the wayside, whereas I have been conditioned to value continuity, and picking characters who will go the distance.


* Bringing in a character with an extensive world-hopping history inherently makes the game about world-hopping, unless that history is brushed under the rug.

That hasn't been my experience. So, um, not inherently?



Note:
When I said "mechanical changes", I was implying that the character was planned to be a primary "big weapon" type but realizes that they actually should do X instead, so they refocus their build from that point forward. In 3e's system, that's a recipe for disaster due to trap options. That's what I don't like. The idea that you have to know exactly what the character will be doing at each checkpoint (level, XP value, whatever) along the way. Especially if the build requires XYZ items--that says either a) crafting must be available and easy, or b) the DM must give me those items or I'll be angry (going back to the premises, that's a form of making the game about one character, in a small way). "I'm a paladin, I deserve a holy avenger. Not only any holy avenger, but a glaive (because I took those 3 feats that use glaives only)."

That sounds like something where my response is "not a fan". :smallfrown:


"Well there's your problem."

Referring to the character-shaped piece. You do say something about a "Fighter" helping you play a "Wizard"*. Those are some pretty broad strokes.

I've played in many games, often at a moment's notice, where I don't have time to craft a rich history and personality. Or in closed worlds where I know that the "character" will never get hammered out by multiple GMs, and so isn't worth my time to make them into more than a playing piece. And in my early days, straight from war gaming, where I'd be hard pressed to call them much more than playing pieces. :smallredface:

So, I can't say I've played nearly 1k characters, as I use the word, as many of them were merely character-shaped playing pieces.

As to the broad strokes... Um... I recently watched... Something... Where Shakespeare told an actress that she needed to learn to act like a man before she could learn to act like a woman. Hmmm, that probably didn't make much sense. Let me try again.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, is tactically inept. If he lays down BFC, he can lay down whichever BFC, and place it whatever, and it's all the same to me. And the party knows to laugh at his antics.

But, playing as a Fighter, I get to feel, much more personally, the effects of that BFC. I get to know how it feels for a Wizard to drop which BFC on which foes. Oh, and arguably to have a better appreciation for its tactical value, too. From this experience, I can better play Wizards designed to elicit certain responses from the party - most obviously, the feeling of competence at my role / gratitude for my assistance. (EDIT: to make that make sense, understand that the party's response to some of my early BFC was that I was getting in the way :smallfrown:)

But this is mostly about the tactical minigame, and mostly only intersects with role-playing at the point of "want to roleplay a competent Wizard".

I feel I should probably look back for context before responding further.

[Quertus]

This is only true if I'm the only one putting anything in. But if there are GMs or authors, then I'm getting what other people put in.

I really want to emphasize the importance of this statement in the context of my trial by fire / forged in flame, making a character capable of being tied into a campaign. Creating Backstory is generally a solo act; it's only when you add others into the mix that you can get something with more impact.


If you create a new character for a game, it is (hopefully, at least) tied into the setting and story and party in fundamental ways, and will learn and grow and change over the course of that one single narrative.

Consider this statement in the "forged in flame" context. You can either tie together random bits that might fall off, or you can tie together tested load-bearing structures. Which would you prefer?

[Cluedrew]

I feel I should probably look back for context before responding further.Don't worry about figuring it out too much, that post explained its point rather badly. In short is "fill in the playing piece with character" but might actually be out of date. Because of the bit about not bothering to create a full character if you are not going to get to do the whole multiple GMs thing. Well if you aren't going to try of course you will not get true characters that way. But I'll assume you did and it didn't work.

So I'm going to have to ask: what do you mean by character then? Because I know plenty of characters who felt like characters instead of playing pieces by the end of character creation, let alone the end of the first session. In fact I can't remember a single character who I was fumbling over who they are by session two, at least for any of mine. There have been other player's characters it took longer to get the feel of because they were kind of blank slates. Only in D&D though, never had that problem in other systems.


Consider this statement in the "forged in flame" context. You can either tie together random bits that might fall off, or you can tie together tested load-bearing structures. Which would you prefer?In real-life or in a role-playing game? Because in a role-playing game the fact that I don't know what is going to happen (what pieces will fall off, what will they hit) is part of the point. I've got different moods and hobbies, some time I want to tread familiar ground and appreciated the little details. Other times I do role-playing games, that are about the foraging.

[Darth Ultron]

My way is to just build a new character. I'm just saying that if you're going to import a character those are necessary concessions to make for them to be able to fit games not explicitly designed for character import.

First off, converting the mechanics game to game is a bit time consuming and pointless, and that is assuming you stick to game systems that are ''close'' to each other rulewise and settingwise. And once you get to games, rules and settings that are in no way compatible...you should not even bother.

You are much better just making a ''clone'' of the character concept for the new game and setting.

And even with ''close'' game rules and settings, you are still limiting your role playing to the same stale character. And for a random sandbox game it won't matter too much as your character is just whatever in the random mess world, but in any other game your character can very much be a 'fish out of water', often very literally.

It's bad enough when a player in a single game makes an annoying character, like a gnome jokester tinker that is tactically inept. But it's worse when that player is always ''that'' character no matter what game they play. Sure, it's sort of fun for some players the first 12 times the tactically inept gnome joke character gets the whole group killed. But after like time 13 it does wear a little thin, and people will ask why you can't ever play any other character. And the player of the tactically inept gnome joke character, with the lampshade on their head, will just say ''because i know the character so well!"

[Quertus]

Because of the bit about not bothering to create a full character if you are not going to get to do the whole multiple GMs thing. Well if you aren't going to try of course you will not get true characters that way. But I'll assume you did and it didn't work.

Yup. And I do continue to occasionally try a 1-GM character from time to time. But, even under the best GMs I've had, past or present, the charter just isn't the same, isn't as rich as when exposed to the more diverse content of 20+ GMs. There's still too much of the character left unexplored.


So I'm going to have to ask: what do you mean by character then? Because I know plenty of characters who felt like characters instead of playing pieces by the end of character creation, let alone the end of the first session. In fact I can't remember a single character who I was fumbling over who they are by session two, at least for any of mine.


In real-life or in a role-playing game? Because in a role-playing game the fact that I don't know what is going to happen (what pieces will fall off, what will they hit) is part of the point. I've got different moods and hobbies, some time I want to tread familiar ground and appreciated the little details. Other times I do role-playing games, that are about the foraging.

So, as usual, I'm kinda answering your questions sideways. Let me know what does and doesn't make sense.

The easy solution here would be to point you at PP, and his requirement for character growth.

The next easiest solution would be to start with that step, then claim - accurately or not, and that's the issue - that any of my characters that didn't experience such growth in their first couple of sessions weren't something I'd consider worth playing.

Perhaps more reasonably (but more... difficult to understand), I could describe my characters as recipes, as random (or not so random) ingredients thrown together with questionable expectations as to the outcomes. Some GMs mix, some blend, some bake, some steam, some baste, some microwave, some add paprika, some add rum. The character evolves over play.

Eh, that metaphor wasn't so good. Let's see if I can do better.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, was created with a singular purpose. I had played war games, and D&D, with some people for years, and they still hadn't seen the elephant, still just didn't get it. I just didn't understand how this was possible. So, being me, I decided to attempt to explore this aspect of humanity through the medium of role-playing. I put together a bunch of ingredients that I believed might increase the probability of producing such a result, from having lost family in the war, to a belief that trained war wizards had some "special sauce" that he lacked, to a belief in solving problems through inventing new spells. Multiple redundant layers of reasons why Quertus might not grasp basic tactics as quickly as others.

And it worked. Quertus was a resounding success. He has delved deep into epic level, and still remains tactically inept to this day. His repeated successes have driven home the "correctness" of his flawed methods.

However, with so narrow a focus on crafting one specific aspect of the character, some of Quertus' emergent personality traits surprised me. For example, Quertus is fine with slavery*,**, and generally treats the serving class poorly***. He's not only set my record for number of times someone tried to slap one of my characters, he may have exceeded the total number of slaps of all the rest of my characters put together.

Not knowing these things about Quertus at character creation, I could easily have signed him up for a game for which he was not compatible.

But that wasn't your question. You asked why they don't feel like a character. For that, I'm a little confused. Do you mean, why do I make a distinction between characters and character-shaped playing pieces? If so, having played with so many war gamers, one possible answer would seem obvious: it's the difference between role-playing and war gaming. It's the difference between a personality trait, complete with history and the reasons behind the trait, and just the trait in a vacuum. It's - as PP will likely be glad to hear - the difference between a being capable of change, and one so two-dimensional as to be functionally impervious to change. If I'm guaranteed to not get a full pallet rich enough to paint a good portrait of a character, I see little reason to bother creating anything but a character-shaped playing piece.

Am I anywhere close to answering your question?

* on an individual level (such as being sold into slavery because of debts), not on a racial or even familial level.
** on the flip side, he is adamantly opposed to the enslavement of elemental spirits in the creation of golems (and has developed custom spells to seek out willing spirits)
*** at least in comparison to most of my other characters

[Quertus]

Once a character had been properly forged in flame, that character now has functional, predictable personality traits, barring further character-defining moments. The key here is, these act like load-bearing structures, that one can use to hang other characters and entire campaigns off of.

Most of the most successful games I've been in, the group has actually sat down before the game, and discussed the lead-in, where they want things to start at T-0 when the curtains rise, how they want the characters initially tied into the campaign, the party, whatever.

A corollary to this is, yes, those "forged in flame" traits can still be changed in character-defining moments. If the GM is custom tailoring the game at all, probably their first priority should be "don't **** it up!" - don't include character-defining moments that could change the characteristics that you've hung the campaign on! And, even if they're not custom tailoring the game, they should have the wherewithal to look ahead for such pitfalls, and figure out what to do about them - hanging the campaign on something else, for example.

On a related note, it's interesting what you get when you combine two stances mentioned in these two threads: making characters who are central to and inseparable from a campaign, and making characters who don't know themselves yet. You get a really high probability that the campaign will tank, when central characters suddenly change to become incompatible with the campaign. I've seen that happen far too many times.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, the basic, but vague question is: Is a Character that is played long term more developed then a Character that is just created? Well, that vague answer is yes.

You really do go off on a tangent talking about ''the character'' and how they, um, ''emerge'' and ''do things'', but I guess such thoughts are common among many gamers.

But I think you are over looking the Big Thing in Reality: It is You the Player, and nothing else. This question has nothing at all to do with the fictional character, and everything to do about the Real Player.

It does not matter how long a character is played, it matters what the Player thinks and does. A non role playing type of player, can play the same character for years, and even today they will be exactly the same as the very day the character was created. This is even more true for the non role players that ''just play as themselves''.

A character can never grow and change, not really, only a Player can grow and change: If the Player has the Opportunity, Will, Ability and Desire the Player can change and grow; and then and only then can the player role play fictional (but not real) growth and change in the character.

After all if the Player is Closed Minded and never changes or grows to any real extent, then they can't fake role playing that happening to their character.

When people say a fictional character or object ''did'' something, they really mean THEY did something. But this is very human: It is very common to project things outside of ones self to ''see'' them better. And this is very much true with creating things: very often a song or story or such ''is great'' in the mind....but once it's 'put on paper' and made for 'real' it is often not so great.

You can't ever really know a fictional character well, both as they are not real and it would be impossible to write out a trillion or so pages about them. But then most people don't really know all that much about themselves, so how can they be an expert on another character?

[Quertus]

But I think you are over looking the Big Thing in Reality: It is You the Player, and nothing else. This question has nothing at all to do with the fictional character, and everything to do about the Real Player.

It does not matter how long a character is played, it matters what the Player thinks and does. A non role playing type of player, can play the same character for years, and even today they will be exactly the same as the very day the character was created. This is even more true for the non role players that ''just play as themselves''.

You know, your way of looking at it is quite possibly optimal here. Attention is finite. For a new character, you are learning their mechanics, learning their personality / who they are, etc. Whereas, for an old character, these things are old hat, the character fits like a well-worn shoe, and you can focus your attention on role-playing. I remember one actor commenting, on the night of the last performance, that he finally "got" his character, that he was now ready to actually act the part.

I'd say that, from this PoV, it would be easy to see why I prefer established characters, why I'd like to actually roleplay a character in a role-playing game.


A character can never grow and change, not really, only a Player can grow and change: If the Player has the Opportunity, Will, Ability and Desire the Player can change and grow; and then and only then can the player role play fictional (but not real) growth and change in the character.

After all if the Player is Closed Minded and never changes or grows to any real extent, then they can't fake role playing that happening to their character.

When people say a fictional character or object ''did'' something, they really mean THEY did something. But this is very human: It is very common to project things outside of ones self to ''see'' them better. And this is very much true with creating things: very often a song or story or such ''is great'' in the mind....but once it's 'put on paper' and made for 'real' it is often not so great.

You can't ever really know a fictional character well, both as they are not real and it would be impossible to write out a trillion or so pages about them. But then most people don't really know all that much about themselves, so how can they be an expert on another character?

From my computer programmer PoV, role-playing is about running an emulator. You are attempting to emulate the personality of another (in)human being. That emulated personality can grow and change.

Your comments about... projection? I feel like that's the opposite of what I/you mean... are really quite insightful. I'm sure many people use characters as a way to externalize the introspection process. Myself, I generally use it as an attempt to understand other people, but the general mechanics seem like they would be similar enough.

[Quertus]

So, what does all this have to do with character conversions and world hopping? Well, numerous posters inexplicable keep talking about world-hopping characters who aren't connected to the adventure. This is horribly wrong-minded. One should never attempt to run an adventure where the PCs lack a demonstrable connection to the module. When the curtain goes up at T+0, I want to know how my character is connected. I want to be able to answer the actor's classic "what's my motivation?" question. And, OOC, I want to believe that this has a decent chance of being a successful adventure, because I know that the GM has discussed things with the players, and tied the campaign onto sturdy character traits.

Did I say "never"? Let me back that up a bit. There are exceptions to this rule, where the point of the adventure is the lack of connections: four characters, any reality, wake up in stasis pods on a space ship, go. But, barring something like that, if the GM expects to run Necrophilia on Bone Hill, they had best have made sure that my character is actually a good fit for the module, made sure that my character has an established character trait that can be used as a hook to tie them to the module. Regardless of whether I'm Sam the gardener who lives next door, or "not from around here".

[Jay R]

What a DM-hopping character loses is any complication, plot element, or other incident that takes longer to develop.

I already gave the example of the player who took a character in my world to another one. When I heard that he had done that, I realized that:

the curse on his sword that would only activate when he faced a dragon had just disappeared
the potion of delusion he thought was a potion of flight had just become a potion of flight
the wish he had and didn't know about yet was gone forever.



Similarly, there can't be a long-term rival, a plot-sensitive detail returning a long time later, or any other continuing plot element that isn't completely under the player's control.


D'Artagnan was threatened by Milady's son twenty years after he defeated her.
Lex Luthor is Superman's enemy for decades.
Han Solo and Chewbacca re-discover the Millennium Falcon years after they flew it against the Death Star.

Even in stories where the authors change, like long-running comic book stories or long-term movie franchises, the new authors are expected to know the entire background of what came before.

These kinds of stories can't occur, and you can't even believe that they might occur, if your current DM doesn't know about your earlier adventures.

I repeat: There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play games that cannot have a continuing plot element. But I won't play in such a game, and no character from another DM will play in my game.

[Quertus]

What a DM-hopping character loses is any complication, plot element, or other incident that takes longer to develop.

I already gave the example of the player who took a character in my world to another one. When I heard that he had done that, I realized that:

the curse on his sword that would only activate when he faced a dragon had just disappeared
the potion of delusion he thought was a potion of flight had just become a potion of flight
the wish he had and didn't know about yet was gone forever.


There is nothing inherently preventing this from happening. You could, for example, simply tell these things to the player's new GM. Problem solved.

The issue is, it isn't automatic, either. Characters don't exist in some central database, where GMs can add and review such "hidden information". But it's not an inherently unsolvable problem.


Similarly, there can't be a long-term rival, a plot-sensitive detail returning a long time later, or any other continuing plot element that isn't completely under the player's control.


D'Artagnan was threatened by Milady's son twenty years after he defeated her.
Lex Luthor is Superman's enemy for decades.
Han Solo and Chewbacca re-discover the Millennium Falcon years after they flew it against the Death Star.

Even in stories where the authors change, like long-running comic book stories or long-term movie franchises, the new authors are expected to know the entire background of what came before.

These kinds of stories can't occur, and you can't even believe that they might occur, if your current DM doesn't know about your earlier adventures.

Well, even if you / your old GM don't educate your new GM, they can still occur when you return to your previous GM...


I repeat: There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play games that cannot have a continuing plot element. But I won't play in such a game, and no character from another DM will play in my game.

Now, this is interesting. So, do I read you right when I say that your stance is that RPGs aren't worth playing unless they contain continuing plot elements, where the entirely of the character's life is tied together? Where you would accuse players who don't care about such things (or label them as narrative casualty or verisimilitude-breaking coincidences) as having Badwrongfun, and won't allow such people to have their brand of fun in your games? Would that be a gross misrepresentation of your position?

Yes, it would, because you explicitly don't call it Badwrongfun. So, what then? If it's not Badwrongfun, why are you denying other players their fun? What am I missing here?

This did not convey the meaning I intended - I'll try again in a future post.

[Jay R]

There is nothing inherently preventing this from happening. You could, for example, simply tell these things to the player's new GM. Problem solved.

It's a sheer accident that I found out he had used the character elsewhere. I learned it years after the fact, and never knew the GM. You can't just handwave it away. The problem is real.


Well, even if you / your old GM don't educate your new GM, they can still occur when you return to your previous GM...

If you return to your previous GM, and if you haven't already drunk the potion of delusion that you thought was a potion of flight, and if ...

But enough. You're trying to invent ways the problem might not exist, in the face of a specific, real example when the problem did exist.


Now, this is interesting. So, do I read you right when I say that your stance is that RPGs aren't worth playing unless they contain continuing plot elements, where the entirely of the character's life is tied together? Where you would accuse players who don't care about such things (or label them as narrative casualty or verisimilitude-breaking coincidences) as having Badwrongfun, and won't allow such people to have their brand of fun in your games? Would that be a gross misrepresentation of your position?

Yes, that is a gross misrepresentation of my position, which included the specific words, "There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play games that cannot have a continuing plot element." Saying I called it Badwrongfun is simply, directly, and obviously false. Saying I "accuse[d] players" of anything is equally false. I stated that there is nothing wrong with it.

There's an easy test for whether you are reading me right. If you block quote my words, with relevant context, then you are probably reading me right. But if you have to type in new words I never said, and that you know I would never say, then you are probably reading me wrong.

Yes, of course I won't let them have "their brand of fun" in a game I'm running that precludes it. My recent game was in a world that had no elves or dwarves, for plot reasons that the players could not know in advance. And that meant that they couldn't play an elf or a dwarf. Nobody complained, everyone enjoyed it.


Yes, it would, because you explicitly don't call it Badwrongfun.

Far more importantly, because I stated directly that there is nothing wrong with it.

Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.
Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.
Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.


So, what then? If it's not Badwrongfun, why are you denying other players their fun? What am I missing here?

What are you missing here? You are missing the fact that not all ideas work together, and that my ideas aren't badwrongfun either.

I am not denying them their fun. They can play games the way the like, and (I repeat) there's nothing wrong with that. I will also play games the way I like. Sometimes this means we can't play in the same game. I'm not calling chess "Badwrongfun", or denying people their fun, when I don't allow them to use a rook or a knight in a checkers game I'm running.

I wasn't calling dwarf and elf PCs badwrongfun, and denying people their fun, when I ran a game in which elf and dwarf PCs couldn't be played. 50 years ago, the last of the dwarves were thought to be killed in the Giant wars, but were in fact captured and held as slaves by the giants, for a possibly high-level adventure. The elves would appear soon, and be the elves of Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies. These are potentially fun adventures, but they require no elf or dwarf PCs.

I like some games but not all games. You like some games but not all games. That may mean we can't play a game together.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

[OldTrees1]

Now, this is interesting. So, do I read you right when I say that your stance is that RPGs aren't worth playing unless they contain continuing plot elements, where the entirely of the character's life is tied together? Where you would accuse players who don't care about such things (or label them as narrative casualty or verisimilitude-breaking coincidences) as having Badwrongfun, and won't allow such people to have their brand of fun in your games? Would that be a gross misrepresentation of your position?

Yes, it would, because you explicitly don't call it Badwrongfun. So, what then? If it's not Badwrongfun, why are you denying other players their fun? What am I missing here?

You can be unwilling to do something without claiming that anyone who would be willing therefore must be wrong.

Imagine something you don't enjoy but I might enjoy(you don't have to be accurate, just be fair/charitable in this hypothetical). The two of us having different preference does not require you face a dilemma of "do what you don't enjoy OR decry it as badwrongfun" because that is a false dilemma.

[Quertus]

Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.

Apologies - I was trying to make it very clear that I wasn't accusing you of claiming Badwrongfun, and clearly flubbed.

EDIT: let me try to ask my question a different way. You say that you wouldn't allow such characters in your games, my question is, why? Let's say my favorite color was blue. I then want my towel to be blue. Why would not allow anyone in my house to have a non-blue towel?

My question is, in what way does it affect you whether the character had zero history with you, or zero history with anyone, including you? There is still exactly zero threads for you to work with, zero things that you know to tie together, so why are you adamant that you would want one but not the other in your game? To me, it would seem that there should be no difference to you - you would need to spin threads either way.

What am I missing?

[kyoryu]

Far more importantly, because I stated directly that there is nothing wrong with it.

Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.
Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.
Don't claim I said something was wrong when I said there was nothing wrong with it.

Also, not wanting it in your game doesn't mean it's BadWrongFun. Just a poor fit for what you're trying to do.

There's nothing wrong with sushi. A steakhouse that doesn't serve it isn't saying sushi is bad and people who like it are bad. They just aren't a sushi restaurant.

Not all games do the same thing. Because of this, not all games can contain all elements. That doesn't mean that those elements are bad, it just means that those elements aren't being served up at that particular game. And no GM has an obligation or duty to serve you up exactly what you want - you have a conversation with them about what you want, and if you find a place of agreement, you play together. A failure to do so doesn't indicate wrongness, just that one of you likes steak, and the other likes sushi.

[Jay R]

Apologies - I was trying to make it very clear that I wasn't accusing you of claiming Badwrongfun, and clearly flubbed.

Thanks. The best aspect of internet discussions is the ability to go back and forth until all miscommunications are fixed.


EDIT: let me try to ask my question a different way. You say that you wouldn't allow such characters in your games, my question is, why? Let's say my favorite color was blue. I then want my towel to be blue. Why would not allow anyone in my house to have a non-blue towel?

Drying is not (inherently) a co-operative venture; a D&D game is. Your towel doesn't have to work with everybody else's towel. The analogy is not analogous.

I don't enjoy designing adventures for characters with no connection to any part of the world, and furthermore, I can't hook them into the plot directly. I can't bring up fun backstory returns (an old love, and old rival, etc.) to complicate the situation and make the PC more a part of it.

Furthermore, I have some hidden facts about many of the PCs that they don't know about. One of my recent players wanted a non-human character, and I wouldn't allow an elf or dwarf, so we made him a half-Fair-Folk. But neither he nor his character knew anything beyond the fact that he had pointed ears, could see in the dark, had a connection to nature, and was kind of an outcast in his home village. When he met Fair Folk and learned more about them, and about himself, it was a great adventure -- designed around him.


My question is, in what way does it affect you whether the character had zero history with you, or zero history with anyone, including you?

Thank you for coming so directly to the point. A character should have history. There is no particular difference between no history with me, or no history with anyone. A character I'm writing scenarios for should have history with the world.

D'Artagnan ceases to be D'Artagnan if he isn't a Gascon in Paris, with all that that means. Superman came from another planet, but he has strong roots from Krypton, and strong roots from growing up on a Kansas farm. When Voldemort returned, it's an important part of the adventure that he knew Harry Potter as a baby. Luke Skywalker's family history, unknown to him, was the biggest revelation of The Empire Strikes Back.

Also, I always start at first level. On those rare occasions that somebody joins the game later, I help them design a character which has history with the world, as much as the current PCs do.


There is still exactly zero threads for you to work with, zero things that you know to tie together, so why are you adamant that you would want one but not the other in your game? To me, it would seem that there should be no difference to you - you would need to spin threads either way.

What am I missing?

You're missing the fact that character generation does create threads to work from. Some of them are from pre-adventuring days, and some from the character's earliest adventures. If somebody comes into the game late, the player and I will work together to explain why a character at that level is at that location, with enough direct background to make them part of the game.

If I get back to that dwarfless, elfless game, I have a new player who is coming in. She and I know where her character grew up, and why she is the one sent with a message for the party. She will meet somebody else from her home town two adventures in, which will connect her life to their quest.

As near as I can tell, the real disconnect is that you really don't understand that I build scenarios that involve the background of the specific characters. I know why this party's earliest encounters will affect their future just as much as Dumas knew why the man D'Artagnan fought on his way to Paris would be important, even though D'Artagnan and the readers did not.

Now I have a question for you. My position is based on four basic assertions.
1. You should play games the way you like.
2. I should play games the way I like.
3. Sometimes that means we can't play the same game.
4. There's nothing wrong with that.

Clearly this bothers you. Which of my main four points is the problem?

[Quertus]

Thanks. The best aspect of internet discussions is the ability to go back and forth until all miscommunications are fixed.

Now I have a question for you. My position is based on four basic assertions.
1. You should play games the way you like.
2. I should play games the way I like.
3. Sometimes that means we can't play the same game.
4. There's nothing wrong with that.

Clearly this bothers you. Which of my main four points is the problem?

So glad we can understand each other. :smallbiggrin:

This is, IMO, more important than the little details, so let me address this piece first: it bothered* me because you declared them incompatible, and I did not know why.

And here we are.

* bothered, interested, was an opportunity for me to learn, whatever.

[Darth Ultron]

You know, your way of looking at it is quite possibly optimal here. Attention is finite. For a new character, you are learning their mechanics, learning their personality / who they are, etc. Whereas, for an old character, these things are old hat, the character fits like a well-worn shoe, and you can focus your attention on role-playing. I remember one actor commenting, on the night of the last performance, that he finally "got" his character, that he was now ready to actually act the part.

I think your going to far in making the default player a bit too perfect. Your example is for too ''near perfect good players and good people'', and you don't seem to be acknowledging the other types of people and players.

Lets just take Player Steve. He wrote down his character, Orin, back in '88 and for personality he put 'is a cool dude'. Steve has only sometimes looked at a rule book and really knows next to nothing. He is just fine rolling a d20 and asking the DM to tell him what happens. Steve has used character Orin for years....yet in 2018 when using Orin in a 2E game(that Steve has played for decades), Steve will still say ''I shoot a magical missile at the goblin and rolled a 13, do I hit?".

Or Player Fred, and his character Fred Doom. Fred has been gaming from '96, and has never role played and never will. He only cares about pure combat, and sure he knows the combat sub rules of the game...but has ignored anything else. Character Fred Doom sees things and attacks...and loots dead bodies...and does that again. Even in 2018, playing 5E with Fred Doom converted, player Fred still just rolls and attacks everything in sight.

See, the only player can ''use the well worn character sheet'' is a good, deep role playing person that cares about the character and has a good memory. All the other player types don't have the will or ability or desire to do it.


One should never attempt to run an adventure where the PCs lack a demonstrable connection to the module. .

This is just a matter of taste and style. You really get these two broad ones:

The Characters are super special parts of the world and the whole world revolves around them.

OR

There is a World, and the Characters are in it.

Both are common ways to play the game.

The first type of game would have say the Evil Lich that was....Character A's brother, Character B's best friend, Character C's ex girl friend and they killed Character D's family. So all four player characters have big role playing reasons to want to go after and ''do something'' about the Lich.

The second type of game is the classic ''the characters are a group of rag tag hardy adventurers " that wander the lands. They hear about the lich, and decide to do something about it.

[Knaight]

There is nothing inherently preventing this from happening. You could, for example, simply tell these things to the player's new GM. Problem solved.

Oh joy, homework. Now, not only do I have to accept taking players that don't fit my game under your method, I also have to take the time to understand an inherit another GM's plot elements I don't care about - or, when going the other way, take the time to systematically explain to another GM a whole bunch of setting specific secrets that they have, and be party to imposing on their game. What fun.

[Quertus]

The problem with backstories, especially ones done in isolation, is that they get people invested into the idea of a certain story for their character, and that may be one that's incompatible with what the rest of the group wants.

If you want to have backstories, I'd recommend having them roughed out in session zero and writing them afterwards.

The whole "make your character before the first game, with no idea of who everyone else is or what the game is about" thing is just such a recipe for disaster.

You know, I'd be tempted to say that this was one of the most insightful comments in this thread... Except that you didn't make it in this thread! :smalltongue:

Yes, if you want a game where character X is the childhood friend of character Y*, you can't do that if one character is "not from around here". However, you can still tie them together - perhaps even literally, with rope, when they were captured by bandits together before the curtain rises. How long before the curtain rises this happened changes a great deal about the initial state of the world - at the very least, whether the characters are still tied up. :smalltongue:

* now, why you would want this still eludes me, but that may be because the only time that I ever had a GM mandate that, it was in the party that consisted of a Paladin, an Assassin, an Undead Hunter, and his dear childhood friend, an Undead Master. And my character.


Thanks. The best aspect of internet discussions is the ability to go back and forth until all miscommunications are fixed.

IMO, the world would be a better place were this sentiment more common in IRL conversations, too.


Drying is not (inherently) a co-operative venture

Thank you for that mental image. :smalltongue:


You're missing the fact that character generation does create threads to work from. Some of them are from pre-adventuring days, and some from the character's earliest adventures.

That's part of it. Or, rather, that's it, but only from one PoV. It's still missing why you care about those threads.


I don't enjoy designing adventures for characters with no connection to any part of the world, and furthermore, I can't hook them into the plot directly.

Ah, that's the other half, I guess. I can't say as I understand why you only enjoy one specific thing.

But for hooking them into the plot? Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I believe that this is a solvable problem. See my example above for a silly and heavy-handed example. I believe that the player and GM can work together to tie the character into the adventure in a way that they'll both be happy with - or determine that the character is incompatible, and the player brings a different character*.

Even a complete outsider can be made to care if you give them the right motivation. As the character forms connections to the world, this gets easier, and you can have connections be recurring characters. More on this in a moment (or not, if I can't figure out how to say it...)

* Or, I suppose, the GM runs a different story - especially if multiple PCs would actually be better suited to a different story.


I can't bring up fun backstory returns (an old love, and old rival, etc.) to complicate the situation and make the PC more a part of it.

Yes and no. You can do it by introducing the character, and making them a recurring character. You have to actually build the relationship in play first, though, which may go against your desired "beats". Which is part of why I'm poking around here, to see what your objections are.

Now, for my next option you and I may have irreconcilable differences here, but let me explain my personal hangups, and see how you feel about my suggested solution(s).

See, I'm very... picky. One of the reasons I play a character who is "not from around here" is to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Whenever a GM has run someone from my backstory before, my response had always been that they are not role-playing them correctly - that my character never would have formed the relationship that they did, had the memories that they did, become the person that I've been roleplaying them as, if that had been the person in their backstory. Seriously, if I tried to describe my parents / siblings / childhood best friend to you, do you honestly think that you could pull them off convincingly? I tend to think not.

So, the only way I can see to make something like what you and I both want work, would be if my background connections were with established NPCs that I, as a player, was familiar with. Kind of a catch22.


As near as I can tell, the real disconnect is that you really don't understand that I build scenarios that involve the background of the specific characters. I know why this party's earliest encounters will affect their future just as much as Dumas knew why the man D'Artagnan fought on his way to Paris would be important, even though D'Artagnan and the readers did not.

Ok, but... why do you do this? It has obvious disadvantages of straining verisimilitude and coincidence, so what is the payoff? What benefit do your stories get to make it beneficial for you to both do extra work, and require Participationism? Is it purely related to your enjoyment being limited to a very specific pallet, or are there other reasons?


Now I have a question for you. My position is based on four basic assertions.
1. You should play games the way you like.
2. I should play games the way I like.
3. Sometimes that means we can't play the same game.
4. There's nothing wrong with that.

Clearly this bothers you. Which of my main four points is the problem?

I guess I just don't like declaring problems as unsolvable until I've not only found the wall, but beaten my head against it a few times? So, the principle behind #3?


This is just a matter of taste and style.

Dagnabbit, you're right. I clearly haven't integrated the lesson PP taught me yet, that there apparently are ways to play the game for which my assertions are not requirements.

[Quertus]

Oh joy, homework. Now, not only do I have to accept taking players that don't fit my game under your method, I also have to take the time to understand an inherit another GM's plot elements I don't care about - or, when going the other way, take the time to systematically explain to another GM a whole bunch of setting specific secrets that they have, and be party to imposing on their game. What fun.

First, I thought I was talking about characters, not players; second, I've been contending that having characters fit the game is one of the advantages of my method.

Now, I don't think anyone has mentioned anything resembling a setting specific secret affecting the mechanics of a character yet, but, if they did, that would be... interesting.

[OldTrees1]

Quertus, why do you think your hopping trait makes a character fit in better when it is the hopping trait that is being seen as making them not fit. Even if it is true that, ignoring the new issue, the character fits better -> the character still does not fit due to the new issue.

Additionally since you keep asking: What you are missing is: You are forgetting that DMs and other players can have preferences. Somehow you are only looking at the player's preference to have a world hopping character rather than seeing the preferences of the other players/DMs.

It is not a mystery of:
"Why does the DM refuse to accommodate the player on something the DM has no preference about?"
Instead it is the simple thing of:
"Why does the DM consider coordinating their preferences with those of the players they let join their game?"
Duh, because the DM wants the preferences to be compatible. (Rather than have to choose between 2 mutually exclusive preference).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Quertus, why do you think your hopping trait makes a character fit in better when it is the hopping trait that is being seen as making them not fit. Even if it is true that, ignoring the new issue, the character fits better -> the character still does not fit due to the new issue.

That would be my question, although not only the world-hopping trait is a problem, but the "pre-existing character" trait is a problem.

How is a pre-cut, non-campaign-specific character, with pre-established habits, likes, dislikes, friends, enemies, etc. going to be a better fit than a purpose-built, hand-crafted character designed for the campaign at hand? One brings with them tons of baggage, the other starts fresh. One has built-in assumptions about the way the world(s) work that almost certainly conflict with the new campaign. The other doesn't. The one requires starting at a high level with relatively free-rein on gear (unless you strip them bare each time, which might get problematic in 3e). The other can be made at any level, with any defined set of gear. And the list goes on.

I've spoilered a metaphor, because it could possibly cause contention. But I think it works pretty well here.
Pardon the metaphor, but there's a reason that the divorce rate goes way up for second, third, etc. marriages. The two people come in with pre-existing baggage that often interferes with the adaptation to a new marriage. And a party is much like a marriage (although certainly not identical :smallbiggrin:)--it requires flexibility, compromise, and a willingness to value the opinions and desires of other people at least as highly as your own.

[Quertus]

Quertus, why do you think your hopping trait makes a character fit in better when it is the hopping trait that is being seen as making them not fit. Even if it is true that, ignoring the new issue, the character fits better -> the character still does not fit due to the new issue.

You know, I tried to tease this apart for a reason. Let me try again.

There are numerous - generally related - factors here. They include world hoping table hoping system hoping multiple GMs existing character

My contention is not that world hopping makes the character a better fit. No, my contention is that tested characters are more predictable to know how they'll fit, much like tested RPGs have known balance. The "existing character" trait is the most obvious one to make a character "tested", but, as I explained in the "forged in flame" bit, "multiple GMs" also plays a role.

I did not in any way contend that world hopping made a character a better fit for a game, other than by relation to how the character came to be tested in the first place.

Now, the other side of this is, that there is nothing inherent to most of the systems that I play to make world hopping make the character fit poorly. Most if not all established cannon D&D settings have world hopping engrained in their history (and cannon items for system-hopping, to boot), reality hoping is the bread and butter of the superhero genre, Warhammer (and CoC, IIRC) even make time travel more mundane than D&D, and RIFTS is made of (and literally named for) this concept. So any incompatibility with world hopping is purely at the table level.


Additionally since you keep asking: What you are missing is: You are forgetting that DMs and other players can have preferences. Somehow you are only looking at the player's preference to have a world hopping character rather than seeing the preferences of the other players/DMs.

It is not a mystery of:
"Why does the DM refuse to accommodate the player on something the DM has no preference about?"
Instead it is the simple thing of:
"Why does the DM consider coordinating their preferences with those of the players they let join their game?"
Duh, because the DM wants the preferences to be compatible. (Rather than have to choose between 2 mutually exclusive preference).

Thing is, most people's objections have been about spotlight stealing, and it inherently making the campaign about world hopping. Given that this has never been the case in my repeated experience, I reject these as solvable problems and educatable bias.

I am, however, quite interested in any other reasons it wouldn't work - both to stubbornly test them to make sure that they're actually real show stoppers, and, well, to learn everything I can. Because learning.


That would be my question, although not only the world-hopping trait is a problem, but the "pre-existing character" trait is a problem.

How is a pre-cut, non-campaign-specific character, with pre-established habits, likes, dislikes, friends, enemies, etc. going to be a better fit than a purpose-built, hand-crafted character designed for the campaign at hand? One brings with them tons of baggage, the other starts fresh. One has built-in assumptions about the way the world(s) work that almost certainly conflict with the new campaign. The other doesn't. The one requires starting at a high level with relatively free-rein on gear (unless you strip them bare each time, which might get problematic in 3e). The other can be made at any level, with any defined set of gear. And the list goes on.

Wow. You really don't get the concept, do you?

So, back in the day, across the... well, to narrow the time frame, I'll say "dozens", not "hundreds" of tables I played at, adventures were billed with statements like "explore the ruins of Mount Pied, with characters level 5-7". If interested, prospective players would check their folders of characters, and submit a character in that level range.

Characters were mostly viewed as playing pieces. No one ever asked about the character's personality, it was merely a matter of the GM assessing their balance. There was no written concept of "WBL"; most GMs had their own personal opinions on this matter (which were about as informed as 3e is balanced). For most people, it was a purely gamist environment, where people brought their own playing piece (like a MTG deck, or those little plastic minis that interact with console games), and it fell apart if you looked behind the curtain, or thought about it too much.

Back then, I was the odd man out, caring about role-playing, and trying to get people to make the worlds make sense.

But, point is, your comments about gear are... bafflingly disconnected from how it was done, and how it likely would play out. As with any aspect of the character, if it doesn't fit, people can choose to retool, or bring someone else (me, I aim for the latter, because I care about verisimilitude and character continuity). Especially in the 3e WBL era, I can't really comprehend the disconnect.

As to the rest, "baggage" is what games are made of, assumptions and culture shock are an expected part of travel (even if within the campaign, under the same GM), and, as I covered in the "forged in flame" bit, all those pre-existing bits are the sturdy building blocks of successful campaigns.

Now, yes, you've said that you're happier with characters who don't know themselves, whose hand-crafted bits fall off in the fires of play, than ones forged to go the distance and actually remain compatible with the campaign from start to finish, but you still haven't explained why. Care to take this opportunity to explain now?


I've spoilered a metaphor, because it could possibly cause contention. But I think it works pretty well here.
Pardon the metaphor, but there's a reason that the divorce rate goes way up for second, third, etc. marriages. The two people come in with pre-existing baggage that often interferes with the adaptation to a new marriage. And a party is much like a marriage (although certainly not identical :smallbiggrin:)--it requires flexibility, compromise, and a willingness to value the opinions and desires of other people at least as highly as your own.

The hilarious part of your metaphor is that the correct parallel would be polygamy in a successful marriage - because, rather than having a failed marriage behind them, we're talking about characters that have demonstrated the traits that make for a success. Do you have any statistics for how well that works out? Because, based on my gaming experience, I'm guessing that the answer would be "rather well".

[OldTrees1]

You know, I tried to tease this apart for a reason. Let me try again.

There are numerous - generally related - factors here. They include world hoping table hoping system hoping multiple GMs existing character

My contention is not that world hopping makes the character a better fit. No, my contention is that tested characters are more predictable to know how they'll fit, much like tested RPGs have known balance. The "existing character" trait is the most obvious one to make a character "tested", but, as I explained in the "forged in flame" bit, "multiple GMs" also plays a role.

I did not in any way contend that world hopping made a character a better fit for a game, other than by relation to how the character came to be tested in the first place.

Now, the other side of this is, that there is nothing inherent to most of the systems that I play to make world hopping make the character fit poorly. Most if not all established cannon D&D settings have world hopping engrained in their history (and cannon items for system-hopping, to boot), reality hoping is the bread and butter of the superhero genre, Warhammer (and CoC, IIRC) even make time travel more mundane than D&D, and RIFTS is made of (and literally named for) this concept. So any incompatibility with world hopping is purely at the table level.


So world hopping characters, being tested characters, are more readily identified as not being suitable for games that world hopping characters are not suited for. This means you should be more (not less) trusting of a DM that says a world hopping character is not suitable for their table.


Thing is, most people's objections have been about spotlight stealing, and it inherently making the campaign about world hopping. Given that this has never been the case in my repeated experience, I reject these as solvable problems and educatable bias.

I am, however, quite interested in any other reasons it wouldn't work - both to stubbornly test them to make sure that they're actually real show stoppers, and, well, to learn everything I can. Because learning.

I understand that things occurred differently in your experience. Perhaps that is due to these DMs being mistaken, perhaps it is due to different outcomes, or perhaps it was due to the difference in vantage points. However you have been demanding reasons for why the DM's don't play against their preferences. And that is a different ball of wax.

However let's compare these claims:
1) A world hopping character is a character + they hop worlds. Having one player play a character+ while everyone else is playing a character seems like a recipe that lends itself to spotlight stealing. It might not happen everytime. However you would be hard pressed to argue that a DM can't have valid preference on the matter or that they need to give you some reason for why they are not playing against their preference.

2) A world hopping character existed in another world. If that prior existence has no impact then there is no reason for this instance to be connected to the past instance (and thus it stops having its world hopping history). Alternatively the prior existance has an impact, in which case the campaign suddenly has to deal with that impact. It is now a campaign that is, at least in part, about that world hopping. You have heard numerous preferences against dealing with impact of that sort.

However here is a 3rd reason you have ignored:
3) The DM does not want world hopping characters.

[kyoryu]

Ultimately, this is another example of "I like this thing, others don't like that. I want to prove them wrong!"

You can't. People like what they like, and they aren't obligated to do things they don't like. Find people to play with that like what you like. That doesn't make either of you objectively wrong. And trying to find arguments against the preferences of other people rarely does any good, it's more likely to just piss them off.

I expect the desired conversation goes like this:

Person Who Likes The Thing: "Hey, I want the thing."
Person Who Doesn't: "I do not like that thing. No thank you."
PWLTT: "Here are my logical arguments for why the thing is good and you should like it."
PWD: "Wow, your reasoned arguments have changed my mind. I was so wrong!"
PWLTT: "Yay, I get the thing!"

This would work if liking the thing was objective and provable. 99% of the time, it's not, so you get this instead.

PWLTT: "Hey, I want the thing."
PWD: "I do not like that thing. No thank you."
PWLTT: "Here are my logical arguments for why the thing is good and you should like it."
PWD: "I understand that you like the thing, why can't you understand that I do not. Please go away now."

... and that's because if the thing isn't objective and provable, then you're really arguing preferences and arguments don't work in that case.

Really, just find a group that likes what you like.

If you really want to do whatever it is with a particular group, a better result might be using this strategy

PWLTT: "Hey, I want the thing."
PWD: "I do not like that thing. No thank you."
PWLTT: "I understand. I will find something else that I like almost as much and we will play together and have jolly times."
PWD: "Wow, you are a nice person and a joy to have around!"

<gaming ensues, after a while, a new game starts>

PWD: "You know, I said I didn't like the thing before, but you are such an amazing human being of awesomesauceness that I think we should try a game where you can have the thing."
PWLTT: "Yay! I get the thing!"

[Quertus]

So world hopping characters, being tested characters, are more readily identified as not being suitable for games that world hopping characters are not suited for. This means you should be more (not less) trusting of a DM that says a world hopping character is not suitable for their table.

Trust? A GM? Me? No, you clearly have me mistaken for someone else. :smalltongue:

However, a known ingredient is much more predictable in how it will go with a given dish / meal - whether we're talking taste, texture, acidity, color, whatever.

Similarly, a known character is, indeed, in a much better position to have a reasonable conversation around, and have it be rejected (or accepted) based on how / whether it would fit.


However you have been demanding reasons for why the DM's don't play against their preferences. And that is a different ball of wax.

Well, no. I may be interrogating people as to why they have such preferences, and whether it is because it actually adds something to the game. But, as you say, that's a different ball of wax.


However let's compare these claims:
1) A world hopping character is a character + they hop worlds. Having one player play a character+ while everyone else is playing a character seems like a recipe that lends itself to spotlight stealing.

You are correct - but not for the reason that you believe. The characters who are connected to the world will be more likely steal the spotlight - will have more narrative leverage - because they are connected to the world. There is a reason that "connections" costs points rather than being a disadvantage in systems that feature them.


2) A world hopping character existed in another world. If that prior existence has no impact then there is no reason for this instance to be connected to the past instance (and thus it stops having its world hopping history). Alternatively the prior existance has an impact, in which case the campaign suddenly has to deal with that impact. It is now a campaign that is, at least in part, about that world hopping. You have heard numerous preferences against dealing with impact of that sort.

I'm confused. Have you ever moved? Would you claim that, just because your old postman doesn't incongruously follow you around, you may as well have amnesia, and, functionally, have no past?

I'm assuming that you'll say no, that that's not what you're saying at all. So, please, dumb this down for me, so that I can follow your reasoning.

Because, at some level, I think that I agree - because your old postman isn't following you around, why the **** should I care where you came from?


However here is a 3rd reason you have ignored:
3) The DM does not want world hopping characters.

I find it difficult to believe that that isn't just the external manifestation of some other core issue.

The most obvious one is that the GM is running a closed world. Well, duh, that makes sense then. However, IME, very few GMs actually have good reasons to require their worlds to be closed.

So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.


Ultimately, this is another example of "I like this thing, others don't like that. I want to prove them wrong!"

While the two may look similar, this is actually another example of Quertus (me, the poster) saying something that produces WTF responses at best, completely unrelated misrepresentations of my position at worst, and me trying to explain my actual position.

Followed by my confusion at some of people's responses, and me interrogating asking them to explain their PoV.

EDIT: were I a caricature of myself, then you would be correct. The many wrong-minded GMs I had encountered IRL would have left me with an unflappable belief that all GMs are inherently completely wrong, and I'd be unable to see past that. Of course, that doesn't mean that, even as a real boy, that I'm immune to blind spots.

[CantigThimble]

So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.

This is a bit I still do not understand. How having an open world 'demonstrably advantageous'?

Is it just because you now have more options and options=good? Because if that is your premise then I disagree with it. Having more options for the sake of having options very often makes things worse.

Is it because you don't want to have to learn about the DM's world? Because if that's the reason then I think many DMs would be justified it wanting someone who was interested in learning about their world to join instead.

Is it because it allows you to drop in and out of campaigns with minimal fuss? Because I want players who are willing to make a long term commitment to the campaign. If you aren't interested in doing that then I want a player who will instead.

Edit: Is it because you believe that you can roleplay a character you've had for a while better than one you've just made? While that's true up to a certain extent, it's also highly beneficial to start fresh once and a while. (Some of my best characters have come from deliberately making a new character who was very unlike the one I had been playing, even when the old one was very good.) The beginning a new campaign is a good time to do that, and I don't think its unreasonable for DMs to ask their players to do this.

In addition, as to the advantages of a closed world: If there is a multi-verse worth of worlds out there for the picking for any powerful wizard that introduces a variety of elements into the setting that I don't want to deal with. I much prefer a limited set of planes, most of which are extraordinarily inhospitable for humans/demihumans.

[NichG]

I find it difficult to believe that that isn't just the external manifestation of some other core issue.

The most obvious one is that the GM is running a closed world. Well, duh, that makes sense then. However, IME, very few GMs actually have good reasons to require their worlds to be closed.

So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.


I remember you saying before in this thread how you're very picky, and how you don't want GMs to run characters from your backstory because they'll do it wrong and that will cause dissonance for you.

So here I think it would be useful for you to put yourself in the shoes of these GMs, and understand that you bringing in a character with hidden details may mean that you are playing their world wrong, in a way that causes dissonance for them, no matter how much before-hand discussion or hashing out or care you take about your character. By bringing in a character whose backstory exists in a space totally outside of the GM's control, you are requiring them to accept things about the setting itself which you inject into their campaign, or be forced to no-sell your character in a very disruptive way. This applies even if the character is from the same setting/world as the GM is running, because no two GMs are going to run identical versions of the world - not to mention that events which happened during the sessions are certainly not assumed to be shared.

I find it odd that you can understand how it would be frustrating and worth going way out of your way to avoid when a GM runs a family member or other backstory character in a way that doesn't mesh with how you envision your character relating to others, but you can't understand how when that's reversed it could possibly be seen as an undesirable negative.

If you create a character with a particular GM and say e.g. 'I want to have had a run-in with some cultists of a amputation-themed demon in my backstory', the GM can say 'there's no such group in the setting - demons are a particular thing and are well-understood, and that cult just doesn't mesh'. If you on the other hand bring in a character who in their past had such a run-in - that is to say, to you this is established fact - and mention it in-character at some point... imagine if at that point the GM outright said to the other players 'your characters know for a fact that this is untrue, and that the only explanation is that your companion is delusional'. Rude, right? But it'd be the same if the GM suddenly played your character's father - who you had decided was an exemplary rolemodel who shaped your characters growth - as a drunken layabout; at that point, you would probably feel that you should no-sell it and say e.g. 'you've changed' or 'I don't believe you're my dad' because the alternative would be disruptive to your character. Injecting uncontrolled history can be disruptive to a GM's plans in the same way.

That's not going to be true in all cases, and some GMs would welcome that history as a way to give you stake or have some of the work of enriching the setting done for them, and would welcome any disruption as a challenge to improvise around. But, since that's not always the case, there is an etiquette to those things - part of it is understanding that when a GM says they don't want that, you should take them at their word and not assume that they're just lying about what they actually want. Some GMs, indeed, simply do not want open world games.

[comk59]

See, the "known character" thing is the weirdest part of this for me. The idea of using a character from another campaign is odd, but I can understand it to some extent.

But the concept that you HAVE to use a character that you've already played (and not just the same build, but the exact same character with the same name and personality), because you won't know how to roleplay this hypothetical new character, is utterly alien to me.

Maybe it's due to my status as a perma-GM? Not only do I need to roleplay multiple characters per week, per group, but when I DO get to be a player the idea of wasting this rare opportunity on exploring a character concept and personality I've already played is bizarre. It'd be like being on death row, and asking for my last meal to be prison food.

[kitanas]

I think a lot of the disagreement can be boiled down to a fundamental difference in mindset, which I am going to call open-table vs closed-table. Open table as I understand it is as quertus describes it. Characters an settings are plug-and-play, backstories generally don't matter, anyone who wants to play, just show up. Closed tables expect long term commitment, and ideally everyone has worked together to make it fit. The difference between making something out of interchangeable parts, versus a hand crafted, custom made item.

I also think another reason people are reacting negatively to quertus is that you are demonstrating inflexibility. Your character is your character, it will be exactly the way you want it to be, and no one else gets any input. Whereas in a closed table environment, it is somewhat implicitly expected to make concessions to fit each other better. So when you bring your inflexible character into a closed table environment, you are in fact, by the unspoken norms of the table, demanding that the campaign be warped around you. Even if you don't intend to.

[Darth Ultron]

My contention is not that world hopping makes the character a better fit. No, my contention is that tested characters are more predictable to know how they'll fit, much like tested RPGs have known balance. The "existing character" trait is the most obvious one to make a character "tested", but, as I explained in the "forged in flame" bit, "multiple GMs" also plays a role.

Well, I agree it is accurate to say a Good Role-Player with the Will, Desire and Ability to do so will have a better and more well rounded character if they play that character for a long period of time.

And again, for the DM part: a Player that games with Excellent Role Playing DMs that have different views and styles will gain better and more well rounded character, as well as some personal effects.

But note this only happens with the above extremes.



I am, however, quite interested in any other reasons it wouldn't work - both to stubbornly test them to make sure that they're actually real show stoppers, and, well, to learn everything I can. Because learning.

Well, world hopping and game hopping are different. If your playing D&D 5E, and the character(s) go from World A to World B...well, that utterly does not matter for this thread.

Game hopping is the big one. Like taking Zor my Jawa Tech in the old D6 Star Wars, and having them in D&D 5E. Or how about Buck my gunslingger from Boot Hill to Pathfinder? How about Zor to Boot Hill? This type of conversions just makes a mess, just take Zor's Ion Blaster, and think of the head ache of converting that to each system. And that is on top of the role playing: in Star Wars, Zor's ion blaster is quite useful as the galaxy is full of tech, but in Boot Hill, even if you give Zor a 'mechanical disruption thing daggle', he can only use it like once a year or so, maybe, if he encounters like a Clock.



So, back in the day, across the... well, to narrow the time frame, I'll say "dozens", not "hundreds" of tables I played at, adventures were billed with statements like "explore the ruins of Mount Pied, with characters level 5-7". If interested, prospective players would check their folders of characters, and submit a character in that level range.

This is one of the two most common ways to Game. The other is the connected game.



Characters were mostly viewed as playing pieces.

But this has nothing to do with the style of game being played. THIS have everything to do with: Is the Player a Role Player or Roll Player....or even if the are a Casual Gamer or a Serious Gamer.



So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.

Well, is not the basic reason that the DM to not want to taint the world with whatever wacky thing the player might want to bring in; very, very, very often for no other reason other to spite and/or annoy the DM. It is the classic the DM picks a game and setting of Mystical Ireland, and one Player just has to be That Guy and Demand that he be allowed to use his Cybog Ninja.

[Cluedrew]

So I was reflecting on the exchange last time and I think I have some answers (and better questions) now.

On What is a Character: I was thinking about flushed out characters and all that and I realized something. It is kind of how I don't like flashbacks that detail some part of a character's background because many of them either A) cover information you can figure out by reading the main story and are so a waste of time or B) cover information that doesn't effect the main story and are so a waste of time. There is a space between these two but it is very narrow. A character is who they are, not who they were.

Long back stories might be a tool, but they don't make a character. As a simple example Ammanda (who I mention previously) wears a gold ring on each hand, the only decoration of her entire dress. She looks at these when she is upset and I think I even wrote down beside them "(won't sell)" or something to that effect. They carry obvious sentimental value. And I have no idea why. I thought up a reason or two, but I realized that she didn't know anyone in the campaign well enough to tell them. So I didn't bother to fill it in. Maybe that wasn't a simple example. But is Ammanda less of a character for there being this big question mark in her past? I don't think so, I could have made something up if it came up and it different.

Put a different way: A character is a (fictional) person as they appear in the story. Things that don't appear aren't part of the character in the same way.

On Closed Worlds: I default to closed worlds because I have standards about consistency and explanations that are really hard to meet with multiverse travel. Even harder with arbitrary multiverse travel opposed to a closed set.

[OldTrees1]

Trust? A GM? Me? No, you clearly have me mistaken for someone else. :smalltongue:

However, a known ingredient is much more predictable in how it will go with a given dish / meal - whether we're talking taste, texture, acidity, color, whatever.

Similarly, a known character is, indeed, in a much better position to have a reasonable conversation around, and have it be rejected (or accepted) based on how / whether it would fit.

Good, now you know to trust a DM when they say a world hopping character does not fit their campaign.



Well, no. I may be interrogating people as to why they have such preferences, and whether it is because it actually adds something to the game. But, as you say, that's a different ball of wax.

When you continue to refuse an answer and keep interrogating for another underlying answer, you are demanding an underlying answer rather that listening to the answer.



You are correct - but not for the reason that you believe. The characters who are connected to the world will be more likely steal the spotlight - will have more narrative leverage - because they are connected to the world. There is a reason that "connections" costs points rather than being a disadvantage in systems that feature them.
A world hopping character is a character that world hops. There is nothing in that definition that implies they would have less narrative leverage. In fact, since they can be as connected as other characters AND have world hopped, they have more leverage.


I'm assuming that you'll say no, that that's not what you're saying at all. So, please, dumb this down for me, so that I can follow your reasoning.

As you guessed, that is not what I said. So I will rephrase (I won't dumb down, but that is because you don't need that):

I have a character with a secret. If the secret never comes up, then my character did not really have a secret because it never affected play. On the other hand, if the secret came up, then the campaign is, at least in part, about that secret because it impacted play.

It is the same for world hopping characters. Either there is no reason for them to be world hopping, or the DM has to deal with the campaign being, at least in part, about world hopping.

Summary: If you don't see the world hopping impacting on the campaign, then don't make it a world hopping character. You are either being blindly insensitive to the impact or there is no reason for it to be a world hopping character. On the other hand if you see it impacting the campaign, then accept the fact that the DM chose to deal with the world hopping you imposed on the DM.

DMs can say no to world hopping characters without you needed to demand answers.



I find it difficult to believe that that isn't just the external manifestation of some other core issue.

Congrats! You now know what you are missing. You are missing the ability to believe that sometimes preferences have no underlying reason and yet remain preferences that can be acted upon in a valid manner!


Edit: Also 2 people explained things very well. I suggest you go reread them (since you will have read them before this post)

kyoryu post 80
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23127320&postcount=80
This does a good job of describing what you are doing and why it is not working. You have already said this is not what you mean to be doing, but then missed the message that this is what you are doing. Please read through it to understand what you are doing that makes you look like someone refusing to see an answer they asked for.

kitanas post 85
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23127666&postcount=85
They talk about how players inherently impact each other at the table. If you insist on being a world hopper, that forces changes to the characters of the other players and forces changes to the campaign of the DM.

[kyoryu]

I also think another reason people are reacting negatively to quertus is that you are demonstrating inflexibility. Your character is your character, it will be exactly the way you want it to be, and no one else gets any input. Whereas in a closed table environment, it is somewhat implicitly expected to make concessions to fit each other better. So when you bring your inflexible character into a closed table environment, you are in fact, by the unspoken norms of the table, demanding that the campaign be warped around you. Even if you don't intend to.

In almost any environment, some amount of flexibility, compromise, and concession-making is expected. An unwillingness to do so is the biggest red flag I can have in a potential player (whether I'm a GM or a player), or anyone I'm doing any activity with, to be fair.

[Quertus]

I think a lot of the disagreement can be boiled down to a fundamental difference in mindset, which I am going to call open-table vs closed-table.

I was going to limit myself to responding to just 3 posts, but then I read this line, and, while I haven't read the rest of your post yet, I'll go ahead and say that you're probably right.


This is a bit I still do not understand. How having an open world 'demonstrably advantageous'?

An excellent question. First off, I am clearly using my words wrong. :smallredface: A sports car is demonstrably superior to a pickup truck, because it's faster. A pickup truck is demonstrably superior to a sports car, because it can hold more. That's probably not how most people use those words.


Is it just because you now have more options and options=good? Because if that is your premise then I disagree with it. Having more options for the sake of having options very often makes things worse.

That wasn't what I meant, but thank you for adding that advantage to the list. A player who only has one character only has one chance for their character to be compatible with the adventure. The probability of finding a suitable character - or of having a more suitable character - go up as the portfolio of valid characters increases.

Tell me your world, ask me how many new character ideas I have, and I'll likely respond with a single-digit number ("zero" is a single digit number, right? Just checking). If instead, you ask me how many of my existing characters I can see having fun to play adventures on that world, and I'll generally respond with a number order(s) of magnitude greater.


Is it because you don't want to have to learn about the DM's world? Because if that's the reason then I think many DMs would be justified it wanting someone who was interested in learning about their world to join instead.

Clearly, you haven't been stalking my post history. :smalltongue: It's because - probably more than anyone I've ever gamed with - I want to learn about the GM's world. In character. Exploration is my favorite aesthetic (seriously, what did Angry rename those to?), my favorite / greatest source of fun in a game.


Is it because it allows you to drop in and out of campaigns with minimal fuss? Because I want players who are willing to make a long term commitment to the campaign. If you aren't interested in doing that then I want a player who will instead.

Strike three, you're out. :smalltongue:

So, why then? Well, I'm senile, but I think I've covered two reasons.

One is, attention is finite, head space is finite. When I'm learning a character, my head space that I would use for role-playing is competing with learning mechanics, and evaluating how the history and personality I crafted interact in actual play. With an existing character, they fit like a glove, and I can focus my attention on actually role-playing. But that's arguably just my fun, if no-one else at the table cares.

The second reason, though, as I tried to explain in the whole "forged in flame" bit is that well-played characters are known quantities. When you commit to playing a med school game, and have a good session zero where the GM and you tie the character to the campaign via one of their established character traits, then, unless the GM is incompetent or a ****, and throws a character-defining moment at your character designed to change that trait, you can be confident that the character will have the optimal chance to remain appropriate to the adventure.

And, the third, completely personal reason is, I see no value in putting effort into creating the history and backstory for yet another half-baked throwaway character that will never properly be forged in the flames of the variety of experiences that 20 GMs can deliver.


I think a lot of the disagreement can be boiled down to a fundamental difference in mindset, which I am going to call open-table vs closed-table.

You know, this clearly bears repeating.

If anyone wants a good laugh, just read me trying to understand and respond to NichG. I think it's pretty clear that we're not understanding each other - and I almost posted this without even having a guess why.


I remember you saying before in this thread how you're very picky, and how you don't want GMs to run characters from your backstory because they'll do it wrong and that will cause dissonance for you.

Yup.


So here I think it would be useful for you to put yourself in the shoes of these GMs,

Um, I also am those GMs, in that I've GMd for such characters, so, um, done?


and understand that you bringing in a character with hidden details may mean that you are playing their world wrong, in a way that causes dissonance for them, no matter how much before-hand discussion or hashing out or care you take about your character.

Nope, now you've lost me.

The only time I see this sentiment is when I try to run a character from their world, and get told that no-one from that region of their world could possibly hold that opinion on slavery, distribution of wealth, mercy to prisoners, whatever.

So, um, that's a reason why I'm "not from around here"?


By bringing in a character whose backstory exists in a space totally outside of the GM's control,

Can you say this in a way that doesn't make me respond, "control freak GM is bad GM"?


you are requiring them to accept things about the setting itself which you inject into their campaign

Unless I misread you and others, the setting is requiring them to accept things about their setting that they should have already accepted. You must mean something different than what I read.


, or be forced to no-sell your character in a very disruptive way.

Nope, still lost me.


This applies even if the character is from the same setting/world as the GM is running, because no two GMs are going to run identical versions of the world - not to mention that events which happened during the sessions are certainly not assumed to be shared.

Yes and no. Anne's Toril is not Bob's Toril, unless they are running a shared world. Completely with you there. Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has wondered at the meaning of the proliferation of copies of certain worlds.


I find it odd that you can understand how it would be frustrating and worth going way out of your way to avoid when a GM runs a family member or other backstory character in a way that doesn't mesh with how you envision your character relating to others

erm, that's only about half right. Imagine who you'd be if you had me for a father, or how insulting it would be for me to try to roleplay your mother after talking to you about her for a few minutes, then continue that thought.


, but you can't understand how when that's reversed it could possibly be seen as an undesirable negative.

Nope, you completely lost me here. What are you trying to say? Because I have no idea.


If you create a character with a particular GM and say e.g. 'I want to have had a run-in with some cultists of a amputation-themed demon in my backstory', the GM can say 'there's no such group in the setting - demons are a particular thing and are well-understood, and that cult just doesn't mesh'. If you on the other hand bring in a character who in their past had such a run-in - that is to say, to you this is established fact - and mention it in-character at some point... imagine if at that point the GM outright said to the other players 'your characters know for a fact that this is untrue, and that the only explanation is that your companion is delusional'. Rude, right?

No, that's just displaying the myopic ignorance of closed-minded individuals. It's to be expected. My character may have to educate them... or not.

No, seriously, my characters do exactly the same thing when encountering things outside their experience - whether that's characters from other worlds, or things that the GM added. We call this "Tuesday". Or "role-playing". Shrug.


But it'd be the same if the GM suddenly played your character's father - who you had decided was an exemplary rolemodel who shaped your characters growth - as a drunken layabout; at that point, you would probably feel that you should no-sell it and say e.g. 'you've changed' or 'I don't believe you're my dad' because the alternative would be disruptive to your character. Injecting uncontrolled history can be disruptive to a GM's plans in the same way.

That's not going to be true in all cases, and some GMs would welcome that history as a way to give you stake or have some of the work of enriching the setting done for them, and would welcome any disruption as a challenge to improvise around. But, since that's not always the case, there is an etiquette to those things - part of it is understanding that when a GM says they don't want that, you should take them at their word and not assume that they're just lying about what they actually want. Some GMs, indeed, simply do not want open world games.

Yeah, just.... what?

Over half the stiff you wrote doesn't make any sense to me, unless the GM took epic ranks in "being a ****", allowed the character, then went "backsies :smallbiggrin:", as though that was normal. But, since that can't be what you're saying... just... what?


See, the "known character" thing is the weirdest part of this for me. The idea of using a character from another campaign is odd, but I can understand it to some extent.

But the concept that you HAVE to use a character that you've already played (and not just the same build, but the exact same character with the same name and personality), because you won't know how to roleplay this hypothetical new character, is utterly alien to me.

Maybe it's due to my status as a perma-GM? Not only do I need to roleplay multiple characters per week, per group, but when I DO get to be a player the idea of wasting this rare opportunity on exploring a character concept and personality I've already played is bizarre. It'd be like being on death row, and asking for my last meal to be prison food.

Just in case you somehow missed it, existing characters are easier to roleplay, because you don't have to divide your attention to include things like learning their mechanics, or learning the intricacies of their personality.

As to the rest.... Hmmm... I imagine someone more well versed in human psychology could explain this better...

Psychology? Hmmm... Let me start there.

Different people have different personalities, different things they care about, different attention spans. I believe it was an Onion article that said it best:
Child Baffled By Stationary, Non-Violent Images
11/18/98 3:00pm
SEE MORE: NEWS IN BRIEF
NEWTON, MA–Local first-grader Jamie Linnell is in stable condition following exposure to a static, non-confrontational image Tuesday. The image, a 1947 Life magazine photo of a woman tending to a rose garden, left Linnell in a state of panic and disorientation. "Jamie was turning the picture in all directions, desperately shaking it in an attempt to make it move," the boy's mother, Rita Linnell, told reporters. "He was frightened and trembling, and he kept asking me, 'Mommy, why isn't this exploding?' Then he collapsed to the floor." Linnell regained consciousness after receiving emergency doses of Tekken 3.

Me? I tend to want to complete the "portrait" of a character. Consider it the difference between someone whose focus is on completing a level in a video game, and someone who wants to find 100% of the secrets on the level first.

[Jay R]

But it's not an inherently unsolvable problem.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I believe that this is a solvable problem.

OK, you said it twice, so I have to ask: what problem?

My games run well. Your games run well.
I enjoy the games I enjoy. You enjoy the games you enjoy.

So what is the problem you're trying to solve?

[kyoryu]

Just in case you somehow missed it, existing characters are easier to roleplay, because you don't have to divide your attention to include things like learning their mechanics, or learning the intricacies of their personality.

Protip: Instead of stating things as objective fact, state them as personal experiences. "I find existing characters easier to play" comes off entirely differently than "existing characters are easier to play."


Me? I tend to want to complete the "portrait" of a character. Consider it the difference between someone whose focus is on completing a level in a video game, and someone who wants to find 100% of the secrets on the level first.

You're doing a very good job of explaining what you like.

You're doing a very poor job of understanding or even accepting what others like. Learning to accept the preferences or statements of others even when you don't understand them is super pro.


OK, you said it twice, so I have to ask: what problem?

My games run well. Your games run well.
I enjoy the games I enjoy. You enjoy the games you enjoy.

So what is the problem you're trying to solve?

That people won't let him do what he wants in their games.

[kitanas]

@querquertus find especially revealing is the reaction of a gm wanting any degree of control over your character is "control freak gm is bad gm". Yes, as a gm I expect some small degree over your character. In exchange, you receive a proportionate amount of control over the setting. This is to ensure a better fit, on both sides.

[Darth Ultron]

Different people have different personalities, different things they care about, different attention spans.

For example: Some people only have enough 'head space' to keep one single well rounded character in their head.

Some have the ability and 'head space' to keep several well rounded characters in their head.




So what is the problem you're trying to solve?

Any chance the problem is how to deal with the Closed World style DMs? Like you have some friends that get together to play a whole bunch of different games, with each player, of course, being a making a different character for each game.

Except you, as every single time in ever single game, you pull out the character Qbert...again. And the more closed world style DM is like, sigh..Qbert, again?

[CantigThimble]

Clearly, you haven't been stalking my post history. :smalltongue: It's because - probably more than anyone I've ever gamed with - I want to learn about the GM's world. In character. Exploration is my favorite aesthetic (seriously, what did Angry rename those to?), my favorite / greatest source of fun in a game.

Actually I brought that up because I (kinda) have. You repeatedly mentioned previously how you believed it wasn't reasonable to be expected to build a character from a certain world because you would need a masters in "their world" in order to do so. I interpreted that to mean that you didn't think it was reasonable to learn enough about the setting to make a character from that setting.


The second reason, though, as I tried to explain in the whole "forged in flame" bit is that well-played characters are known quantities. When you commit to playing a med school game, and have a good session zero where the GM and you tie the character to the campaign via one of their established character traits, then, unless the GM is incompetent or a ****, and throws a character-defining moment at your character designed to change that trait, you can be confident that the character will have the optimal chance to remain appropriate to the adventure.

Here, I would just say that I think that it's perfectly reasonable for a DM to want their characters to have the possibility of developing in play. You say that's a risk, and you're right, it is, but I think sometimes the risk is worth it. I'd rather have one campaign with great character development and 4 crash-and-burn campaigns than 5 increasingly stale, by-the-numbers campaigns with the same interactions between the same characters and no development. I seriously enjoy character development in play to that high of a degree. (Although I find the idea of a DM specifically targeting a certain character's trait to try to force one kind of development to be pretty repugnant. Character development can be induced much more naturally and easily without such brute force.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

(Although I find the idea of a DM specifically targeting a certain character's trait to try to force one kind of development to be pretty repugnant. Character development can be induced much more naturally and easily without such brute force.)

I find character development best when the DM gives opportunities to choose in ways that lead to development, but not when they try to force it down any particular path. Most of my good development has arisen naturally out of the interplay of characters--

* Spending a session playing with goblin children for a stereotypical "racist" high elf character. Totally unplanned, but led to nice growth.
* A naive "let's do the right thing guys!" cleric getting soured by some fellow characters who acted like total jerks; when she tried to do the right thing, she ended up taking all the blame and suffering a bit for it.
* A hippy nature cleric (ie stoner) getting converted into a bit of a fire-breathing zealot due to a run-in with a cult.

Things like this.

[CantigThimble]

I find character development best when the DM gives opportunities to choose in ways that lead to development, but not when they try to force it down any particular path. Most of my good development has arisen naturally out of the interplay of characters--

* Spending a session playing with goblin children for a stereotypical "racist" high elf character. Totally unplanned, but led to nice growth.
* A naive "let's do the right thing guys!" cleric getting soured by some fellow characters who acted like total jerks; when she tried to do the right thing, she ended up taking all the blame and suffering a bit for it.
* A hippy nature cleric (ie stoner) getting converted into a bit of a fire-breathing zealot due to a run-in with a cult.

Things like this.

Exactly. One of my favorite moments of character development was when a freedom-loving cleric/rogue was taken prisoner, along with the rest of the party. The paladin negotiated with the person holding them and at the end of it my pathetic, fragile 7 str 6 con cleric/rogue somehow got signed up for single combat in an anti-magic field with a powerful fighter, then the paladin thwarted his first escape attempt. He felt so betrayed went from a pretty positive, freedom-lover to a cynical burn-authority-to-the-ground anarchist overnight.

When the paladin died suicide-bombing a demon later, I didn't cry over him.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Exactly. One of my favorite moments of character development was when a freedom-loving cleric/rogue was taken prisoner, along with the rest of the party. The paladin negotiated with the person holding them and at the end of it my pathetic, fragile 7 str 6 con cleric/rogue somehow got signed up for single combat in an anti-magic field with a powerful fighter, then the paladin thwarted his first escape attempt. He felt so betrayed went from a pretty positive, freedom-lover to a cynical burn-authority-to-the-ground anarchist overnight.

When the paladin died suicide-bombing a demon later, I didn't cry over him.

Exactly. If I saw a character who underwent things like this and didn't change significantly, I'd be highly unimpressed. Even if it's just some moments of questioning and then a steeled resolve. But there should be some change. And due to inertia, this change becomes harder the longer the character is in play.

A character that's been played for years will often become fixed (and only available for epic level adventures, but that's a separate thing). Further growth and change are almost entirely precluded--after all, they've seen a dozen events like this, what's one more?

[JoeJ]

A character that's been played for years will often become fixed (and only available for epic level adventures, but that's a separate thing). Further growth and change are almost entirely precluded--after all, they've seen a dozen events like this, what's one more?

Apocalypse? We've all been there.
The same old trips. Why should we care?

...It's do or die.
Hey, I've died twice!

[NichG]

Nope, now you've lost me.

The only time I see this sentiment is when I try to run a character from their world, and get told that no-one from that region of their world could possibly hold that opinion on slavery, distribution of wealth, mercy to prisoners, whatever.

So, um, that's a reason why I'm "not from around here"?


I don't remember the exact details, but you've often told various stories about Quertus in other forum threads, that go beyond the beliefs or attitudes that Quertus holds. Specific things in his history - stuff he did, for example.
If Quertus is in a campaign, then either those things are factual events which happened, or Quertus is just imagining, making up, or lying about his past. The former places an imposition upon the GM, while the latter distorts your character. If the idea of being told that 'Quertus is just a delusional madman and that stuff didn't happen' holds any upset for you, consider it as the exact mirror equivalent as the GM being told 'no, in your setting things aren't the way you say, because Quertus did such and such in the past'.

There are settings where the very idea of a concrete validation of the existence of the divine would totally upend things - has Quertus interacted with gods before? Well, sorry, he hasn't.
There are settings which would be turned on their head by the concrete demonstration that a specific empire or city is not the center of the universe - Quertus came from another world? There are other worlds with people in them? No, Quertus just had an overactive imagination when he was 15 and all of those adventures are made up stories.
Quertus is an academician mage, so surely he must understand the common laws that have been discovered to restrict all magic across all worlds. Like, if he's in a Dragon Age campaign and all magic comes from the Fade and makes you vulnerable to demon possession and when you're born you either have it or you don't. So he'd better give up those 30 years of speculation about the commonalities between magic systems across various worlds, because they're provably wrong and this is how magic works - all those times in the past that his magic violated those laws obviously didn't happen.

I'm assuming these things would annoy you if they happened, otherwise I'm barking up the wrong tree here. So now lets flip them and restate them from how the GM might see things.

Setting: there are no such things as gods, angels, or demons. Quertus: Well, I've spoken to a few gods in my time, this is how they work, they're just elsewhere in the multiverse; not sure why this little plane doesn't have them, since they're usually drawn to sufficient concentrations of belief.
Setting: Creation began in the Golden City of Rua, where the gods toiled to construct the world piece by piece. In order to accelerate their task, they created the Three Races - each assigned to a different part of the job. Finally, after painting the stars upon the heavens, they declared their work done, and left to explore their creation. Now the Races inhabit Rua, the Seat of Creation, and administer over it as their sacred duty. Quertus: Well, maybe something like that happened here, but generally the stars are other worlds and there are lots more than three races out there.
Setting: Magic is dangerous, costly, is a curse you're born with, and will eventually consume all you love and everything around you unless it's kept in check. Quertus: That's only if you do it the stupid way by letting dream demons reach into your head to grant you spells. Here, let me tell you about a safe, versatile, and stable form of magic that anyone can learn so long as they put in enough time studying.

Granted, that's probably not how Quertus actually behaves, but even without explicitly saying it, a GM who doesn't want to no-sell Quertus' backstory and experiences has to take into account that those counter-statements are implied by his existence in the setting. If Quertus used magic safely in the past, it must be possible for magic to be used safely (even if that just means going off-world for a bit to get your plastic surgery done before coming back). If Quertus has met a god, then gods are a possibility - their absence from the setting doesn't mean that gods aren't a thing that can be, it at best just means that gods don't exist 'here'.



Can you say this in a way that doesn't make me respond, "control freak GM is bad GM"?


I could just as easily say 'control freak player is bad player', but both are unhelpful statements. Deciding that you don't like someone's GM preferences or style is a legitimate reason to not play with them, but it doesn't actually make it okay for you to browbeat them into accepting your preferences instead.

Yes and no. Anne's Toril is not Bob's Toril, unless they are running a shared world. Completely with you there. Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has wondered at the meaning of the proliferation of copies of certain worlds.

erm, that's only about half right. Imagine who you'd be if you had me for a father, or how insulting it would be for me to try to roleplay your mother after talking to you about her for a few minutes, then continue that thought.



Yeah, just.... what?

Over half the stiff you wrote doesn't make any sense to me, unless the GM took epic ranks in "being a ****", allowed the character, then went "backsies :smallbiggrin:", as though that was normal. But, since that can't be what you're saying... just... what?

I'm trying to demonstrate by example what the stuff you're saying sounds like to someone from the point of view of a GM who is invested in their setting detail, and to that extent I'm using more extreme examples to make it less liable to be misunderstood that in fact it can feel unpleasant. The fact that you are reacting to these things as 'wow, what a jerk GM' is the point - I just want you to connect that feeling to what you're making others feel when you give their campaigns and GMing style the same degree of consideration.

You are failing to obtain traction with others about the potential positives of bringing an existing character into their campaigns because rather than actually engaging with their concerns, you're telling them 'nah, you're wrong to have them, I'm just going to do what I feel like'. If Quertus (or whichever character) 'educates the myopically closeminded characters', that is disruptive to the setting the GM is trying to construct, and your failure to understand how that would feel isn't going to fill people here with confidence when you say 'no, its okay, I always carefully mesh my character choice to the setting to make zero disruption'.

Since this entire post might be a bit misleading as to my point of view, I just want to restate: I am not against bringing in characters from other worlds or game systems - but that is because I've felt this kind of disruption from such characters and decided that it's something I'm willing to deal with since my general preferences are actually for world-hopping types of games. What I am trying to do is to clarify what that disruption feels like by finding the closest analogy in what you've said, since I think the root of your confusion with respect to other posters positions in this thread is that you just don't have any awareness of this as being disruptive at all.

[JoeJ]

The idea that there are other worlds with people who can and sometimes do come to this one is a fascinating one. That's true whether those other worlds are parallel universes, alien planets, or even hidden places like Atlantis or Fairyland. It's an extremely cool idea. And that's why allowing characters with that origin is a problem.

If deliberate travel to and from other worlds is a thing, then it's one of the most interesting features of the setting. It's something that should absolutely be in the "elevator speech" that describes the world. It's not something I can just add as a footnote; once I've opened that door, Infinite Worlds becomes a major theme of the rest of the campaign. PCs should meet visitors from other world, travel to other worlds, deal with invasions from other worlds, etc. Which is fine, if I bake that into the campaign from the beginning. It's extremely jarring otherwise.

An accidental world hopper is a different matter, and in many ways much easier to deal with. But it does mean that the story now is all about the world hopper and either their search for a way home, or their struggle to adapt to a new home with new and unfamiliar rules. (And the rules have to be new and unfamiliar, because otherwise there's no good reason to have a world hopper in the party at all.) If all the other players agree to this, then I'm happy to let you go for it. If not, then it's only fair for you to create a character whose story won't overshadow theirs.

[Knaight]

I find it difficult to believe that that isn't just the external manifestation of some other core issue.

The most obvious one is that the GM is running a closed world. Well, duh, that makes sense then. However, IME, very few GMs actually have good reasons to require their worlds to be closed.

So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.

I run closed worlds because I like the cohesiveness that comes from them, the vastly larger allowed space that comes with getting to do things other than portal fantasy, and the general phenomena of running a lot of settings and not particularly liking the idea of being obligated to include certain things in all of them (e.g. access points that make it an open world).

Also the GM doesn't need good reason to require their worlds to be closed. Open worlds aren't some sort of default that you have to justify going against. Allowing in existing characters from other tables isn't demonstrably advantageous, given all the ways that doing so can break setting cohesion - it's a stylistic preference.

That said, after this thread I've slightly changed positions. All of the previous reasons I run closed worlds still hold, but I've now added one: keeping out a certain class of disruptive problem player, marked by their tendency to show up and hijack games with their preexisting characters.

[Koo Rehtorb]

After thinking this over, I think a world hopping character might not be terrible in a specific style of old school game in which a collection of random strangers meet in a bar and then go knock over a dungeon together for ill-defined reasons. Does it really matter if there's a character from another dimension in on that? Not really, character backgrounds are basically irrelevant fluff anyway that will never come up in the game. If I'm playing Torchbearer do I really care where another character is from, so long as they were made in the Torchbearer ruleset and hold true to basic setting expectations such as the Immortal Lords being a thing? Not really.

However, this is an extremely narrow subset of games and most people, most of the time, want something more involved and serious than this, frankly, inherently silly concept. Even D&D, which invented this whole random dungeon crawl style, has moved away from it. And for good reason. Wanting to show up to random games with a preexisting character, do a quest together, and then leave and move on to another DM is like watching someone who plays all their music on records. It's kind of neat, in a quaint sort of way that makes you smile fondly at them. But there's better options and those people need to realize that they have a weird fringe hobby and not walk around proselytizing the virtues of vinyl to everyone in earshot and tell people who went digital that they're doing it wrong.

[Satinavian]

Well, no. I may be interrogating people as to why they have such preferences, and whether it is because it actually adds something to the game. But, as you say, that's a different ball of wax.

I find it difficult to believe that that isn't just the external manifestation of some other core issue.

The most obvious one is that the GM is running a closed world. Well, duh, that makes sense then. However, IME, very few GMs actually have good reasons to require their worlds to be closed.

So, given that, for the reasons I've posted earlier in this thread, it is demonstrably advantageous to have open worlds to allow existing characters in from other tables, I am also poking at why GMs run closed worlds.In a closed world, the things that are part of that particular world are all the things that exist. It gives them more relevance. And it makes sure that the particularities of the setting actually matter and are not just a local effect.

Most fictional settings are such closed worlds. Most RPG settings are such closed worlds. Of those that are not closed, many are only connected to some specific kind of other planes but not to a multiversum of alternative realities D&D style. Because that is a bothersome setup weakening all setting construction by introducing reachable places where they don't work.

And that are the reason why i stronly prefer closed worlds. In fact i would never use an open setup if not world hopping was the intended main game.



Aside from that i do like table hopping and established characters. Tablehopping does not equal world hopping. There are so many official established settings in use that transfer of a character from table to table is not really a problem if the setting is the same. That is also true if people use popular fictional non-RPG settings like e.g. Star Trek.
Might table hopping or system hopping without world hopping lead to small canon discontinuities ? Sure, a different GM might have a different take on something but that is usually less of a problem than the stuff that gets handwaved away on other occassions (Star Trek, Star Wars, Comic continuities, basically every setting with a lot of contributions)

[Darth Ultron]

I don't remember the exact details, but you've often told various stories about Quertus in other forum threads, that go beyond the beliefs or attitudes that Quertus holds. Specific things in his history - stuff he did, for example.

This is a huge one right here and this is a great reason why not to 'hop' characters.

When you let a character world hop, you have to go through the characters history line by line...and chances are change and delete a lot of stuff. And this is on top of the Mechanics Conversion too, as DM A let the character have a Ring of Infinite True Strike +40 or five feats for free or used some 3rd party rules.

Just take D&D, for one example. I am a very 'hard fun' type of DM, so for example Dragons are very powerful opponents that are a huge challenge to beat in any way. Other DM's make it easy, the PCs can kill anything in the book in like two rounds. So it's bad enough like a 'game hopping character' would say ''yea, I have killed 10 great wyrm dragons'', when such a feat would be near impossible in my game....but it's just beyond worse when the character is a 7th level pixie monk that killed each dragon with the 'flying kick feat'.

And if you have a 'hopping' character, and like half or more of their actions or history is useless...why even be that character.

[Jay R]

Let's not go too far in the other direction, either. World-hopping characters are a perfectly reasonable approach for players and DMs who want that kind of story, and worlds designed to allow it.

They don't fit what I'm usually after, but that's no reason for me to disapprove of them for the people who enjoy them.

[Floret]

There was a quote in the thread that spawned this one, that never fully went answered, and that somehow deselected itself from being quoted. Apologies for the necessary rough transscription.

It was basically about "Why care about worldhopping", and iirc, also "can't you just pretend the character is lying, what difference does it make".

And from my experience, as someone who loves closed settings: A big giant difference.

Now, I Larp. And in German Fantasy Larp, the tradition is actually pretty much your ideal state, Quertus - characters come and go, from event to event, with little worry about what world they started in, are currently in or ended up as. Some events (Such as Drachenfest, the second biggest one) even have it explicitly, some have it handwaved how we got from Aventuria via the middenlands to the Forgotten Realms. I actually played an explicit (and unintentional) worldhopper myself, I realised, despite my initial reaction to your posts being "the **** are you on about". It can be fun, I'll admit. And to be fair, the whole "permutations of reality" does sound like an interesting philosophical debate.

But. There are also other, closed settings and I love them to bits.
Because they bring cohesion. They bring the ability to say "metaphysics work this way and no other", making it possible for a character to actually learn the truth about the world in that regard.
They make it possible to play a character that is wrong about things, and demonstrably so, without needing to tell everyone that (In Open world stuff? Might as well be from somewhere where metaphysics work that way and those gods are really gods.).
Because they make it possible to have shared expectations about power level, about what is possible within the world, baked in - less important for TRPGs, maybe, but more important in free-form Larp.
They make it possible for your character to know the world, be well-travelled, and have that mean something. When you meet some Russian-inspired character it isn't one of dozens of faux-Russias from all settings that have one, it is one from the Bornland (Or insert setting specific version).
I can tell a charlatan from the real thing, cause I can know what things can be true.

And now, I have a setting like this. And then a worldhopper comes along. And then talks about their worldhopping, and my immersion is instantly dead. Because much as my character had no ability to know, I as the player knew instantly what Drachenfest was and that they were saying the truth, despite that not being possible in the setting I was playing. And now I am thinking about stuff that doesn't fit the setting, and am out of the game. Really not nice.

It's the same when anyone (Even in Open world Fantasy) starts singing songs with real world places. Suddenly you are reminded of things outside the game. And nothing kills immersion as quickly as that.

And yes. I do realise that pretty much all of my points you, Quertus, will probably answer "so what" to. But other people won't. And that's the point.


Sure, I guess. I put in things, I don't get "humans", I realize that that must not be how humans work, wash, rinse, repeat.

Thing is, though, humans... possibly do work that way. Some, at least. Humans are incredibly varied creatures, and to act as if a simulation that is, to a large part, informed by your own biases can accurately judge that feels... presumptuous.

Every RPG character, no matter how intentionally far from yourself you make them, still is, on a fundamental level, you playing someone. That doesn't mean you agree with the character on everything, or even anything, but some bits of you will always creep in and inform the character.

Your experiment seems inherently tainted and compromised. Yes, RPGs can widen your perspective, but they cannot, ime, give you fully foreign ones through the character you're playing.

As much as it seems unfair to say, your statements on "real" characters, and the depth you see in them, to the point that the GM would be playing NPCs wrong cause you'd never have formed that relationship (I am assuming they honored character traits and events you ascribed those NPCs, so the "good dad is a drunkard instead" wouldn't have come up, except if intentional plot)... It seems to be a bit of illusionism you are playing on yourself, from all of my experience.

And yeah, I do treat my characters as separate people. Sometimes I almost feel like they help me out, Sense8-style. But they are still, inherently, through being characters played by me, part of myself. They aren't seperate, fully formed people. Pretending they can be feels... Almost delusional. Maybe you are doing something special, that I have, in all my years, never experienced in myself, nor anyone I have gamed with. I'd love to find that, it seems really interesting. But somehow, for me, after a short initial period, characters seem to be... formed. Further experience can be fun, if I enjoy playing that character, and interesting, to see where they'll still go, but not still form them beyond actual character development.

(So basically, this thread made me agree with Darth Ultron. ...)

I apologize for the wall of text. Those are thoughts gathered over two topics? Is that an excuse?

[JoeJ]

If you've got a character that's fun to play and that fits in a new campaign, a better idea than world hopping IMO is to keep the essentials of the character the same but retcon their backstory so that they were born in the new campaign world.