this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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...fair enough; i don't invest my time in campaigns where players don't retain agency over their own characters...
...west marches vs. one-shot campaigns, plenty of tables for both styles...
Within the campaign you have agency. Across multiple campaigns and we'd need a long talk.
I don't consider each session of a west marches campaign as separate campaigns. That's a single campaign and then yes, a different one of your characters could potentially be looped in.
...if player characters aren't at liberty to move between campaigns, then ultimately no, they don't have agency: they're just ephemeral labor playing-out the DM's narrative with nothing to show for it afterward...
...mind, i'm not damning that arrangement - some folks enjoy the transient experience - but i have no interest in investing my own creative energy toward anything that i don't keep...
^(i^ ^already^ ^deal^ ^with^ ^that^ ^sixty-five^ ^hours^ ^every^ ^week^ ^and^ ^remuneration^ ^barely^ ^suffices^ ^to^ ^stay^ ^my^ ^contempt)^
I build the world your characters does what they want. If I build two worlds and you want a character from world one to go to world two that's not an "agency" problem but a logistical one. Why and how your character would transfer, general balance of combat/interactions, etc.
Games are ultimately transient, that's just their nature. The controller gets put down the board is packed up. You don't get to transfer your oblivion character to morrowind or skyrim. You don't transfer assets from one game of catan to the next time you play. Were here for the experience not for "something to show for it"...Idk your perspective is so entitled and alien to me...let's just be glad we don't game together and I hope you treat your dm very well.
...yeah, i think that's essentially a cultural distinction between tabletop and videogame backgrounds; i started seeing the transition in parallel with the advent of structured campaign narratives around the mid-eighties leading into the nineties...
...by contrast, our groups routinely swap DM roles across multiple tables which all share the same more-or-less persistent world, although individual character and DM experiences can vary within the boundaries of narrative coherence...that sustained investment is the fundamental point of of our tabletop campaigns; it distinguishes freeform from prescribed gameplay and is why we chose roleplaying campaigns over boardgames...
...are you familiar with the old RPGA living campaigns?..ignoring the structured campaign setting, that style of pickup game used to be how most folks played...