An interesting tidbit from the german hangout games community
Thanks Roland P for reminding me;
For all i know there is no regular german Hangout campaign going on BUT there are a bunch of one-shots being run. Mostly by David Reichgeld (and me). What has come from that is that players bring their characters they played in other games and use them going forward. Do you see that stuff happening too? That people bring characters they played in other guys’ games?
To be clear, i don’t see a problem with that. On the other hand the oneshots run in the german community are mostly scenarios more then a first session as described in the book or by Ezio Melega recently. I wonder if the first session procedure being used more often would change that kind of behavior. Since a world created from these specific characters would bind the characters more into that world. When you bring that character into a completely new world it might feel weird.
The other thing to do would be to create a living campaign world from all these oneshots with an ongoing document that specifies it. That would however leave less and less empty spaces for new players to establish their characters…
I don’t think that leaves less space but more opportunity for new characters to tie themselves into the blanks left in between the holes that are already filled. Also, a clever GM could ask some questions to find out what some of the important things are to the character and then seed them into the current scenario. There’s a lot of possibility as long as every one at the table is willing to put in a little bit of effort and give a little as well as get as any quality game table should.