Nightmask wrote:Balabanto wrote:Nightmask wrote:Whatever your intents for publishing might be unless you're creating the characters and handing them out to the players (like is often done at a convention) if the player created it it belongs to the player and not you. Just because he ran it in your game world doesn't make it yours, not without him agreeing from the start and quite explicitly that he's turning the rights to his creation over to you. It also has nothing to do with messing with someone's dream of publication, as you've no reason to be needing to take any player's character to be able to publish your game world if that comes about. Whatever things are unique to your idea for the game world the players and their characters aren't your unique creation, if anything you're interfering in their dreams taking their characters and claiming them as your own.
That's called "participating in the game." That constitutes an oral contract between that player and you that said player is playing in a game world with outcomes that affect others. We don't dance around consequences in my games, and we play fair. If a player leaves the game, his characters don't turn into giant plaid muffins. They continue to exist as NPCs. When you play in my game, that's the rule, not the exception. I would never allow a published character from another game, continuity, or published product in my champions world. It's been running for 25 years with only two hitches created by other designers who I never met, resulting in hitting time with a hammer twice. I am not doing that again. I'm too old.
No reason to be taking a players character? I don't consider that "Taking." I consider it redesigning. The truth is, my players fully support this because I have professional writing talent and they don't. Do you really think worlds are made of just bad guys and tofu? Characters affect outcomes. You can't have nebulous tofu man where "Champion, Master of Justice" once stood. That player played that character, that character deserves to be included. When a world is published, it should retain what the players did. If it doesn't, you're just throwing your players under the bus. If you replace that character with another, you had better have a darn good reason.
You're a strange man, Nightmask. You don't understand that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. That's what superheroes are all about.
Participating in the game does not mean that someone's handing things over to you just because they are. Your players may be willing to just give up the rights to what they've created but I'm not one of those sorts.
If anything you're the strange one, you try and claim I don't see that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and yet wish to deny the players their due credit and act as if it was really all you. You want all the credit if it sells and throw the players under the bus giving them nothing for that contribution, since I haven't heard you say anything about sharing any of that possible success with them. You want them to feed you ideas to profit off of but apparently give them nothing save perhaps a footnote somewhere.
For the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts all the parts work together sharing in good and bad, 'I'm the GM and everything's mine including what you contributed' isn't working together or sharing. The superhero wouldn't go trying to take what others created and claim it as their own like that either, if they did it would be depicted as a moment of moral weakness that the hero must overcome.
That's funny. I never said it was all me. That's why they get credited at the top of the sheet. But they aren't doing any of the labor, writing any of the backgrounds, or crafting any of the products. All they're doing is telling me what they want, I'm building the initial sheet 90 percent of the time, and then I write a background up more formally and we play some Champions.
This is what being part of a playtest group means. And believe me, the players get to share in the good and the bad, considering that most of them would owe me thousands of dollars between the food I pay for, the meals I cook for them, the adventures I bust my hump creating, and all that other stuff that constitutes running a gaming group. Which, I might add, is work. A LOT of of work. The world does not exist without it's players, so they get credited for creating the characters. If I actually charged full value for all the food and other stuff I just let my players eat and drink, I estimate they'd owe me buckets of money.
But they don't. Because we're friends. I ask for a donation. Most people donate when they can. They're good people. You, on the other hand, clearly need to find another gaming group, or have been screwed in the past by someone who threw you under the biggest bus in the world.
The milieu, the environment, and everything else that becomes a part of those characters the moment they enter that setting. That's why I'm entitled to do what I wish once they participate in a few sessions with that version of the character, because once they participate in that world, that character exists there, and removing it creates this magical thing called a continuity void.
That's why playing in any game is an oral contract of this sort, and why I always create characters that belong in the world that they're created for with no duplication allowed.
Respect your players, and they'll respect you. Playtesters always get a free copy, signed by me. When a player dies, and this has happened, an adventure or publication gets dedicated to them. Rest assured, my players will never be forgotten, as long as I outlive all of them and finish all my products before I die.
Respect others. They'll respect you.
you some might think you're a 
but you're cool in book 
). We argued and it escalated much farther than it should have. Long story short, I wound up getting a few stitches and he had a broken wrist. Oddly enough, we are good friends now...
No seriously though that is just freaking rediculous when GMs feel that they are entitled like that. I mean I know I don't like it when someone makes up a character for one of my games and goes and plays in someone elses game with the same character. I think that I helped make that character what it is but I'd still never think it is mine to destroy, I don't even try talking the player out of playing in the other game. But I absolutely hate when a player does the other/side game and gets some equipment or powers and then expects you to let them use it in your game. It is one thing if it was an "I'm going to out so why doesn't Jim run the next Rifts session." where you've "authorized" the game.
Are you really that shallow?
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