this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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...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 an essential cultural distinction between tabletop and videogame backgrounds; i started seeing the transition in campaign styles in parallel with the advent of structured 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 open-ended campaigns over closed-form 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...
What an interesting position. So, ultimately, you feel that, if you can't personally shatter the laws of reality and time, then you don't have "agency"? I literally cannot even imagine trying to DM for you. I feel so sorry for your past DMs. The story's either collaborative, or it's not, and it seems you are just completely unwilling to collaborate within the confines of a given world. You don't want to play RPGs, you just want to write fanfiction.