World Hopping, Character Conversion, and Tying Characters into Adventures

[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.

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.

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.

@ 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? 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? 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. 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".

"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.

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 )

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.