Character deletion on leaving game?

Player of mine is in multiple games. Quit a game without saying anything. I found out when I noticed his character sheet was missing. Player states he quit that game but did not delete his character. Is this something new with Roll20 - the deletion of characters when the player quits the game?

Hi Erich! If a user created a character with the Roll20 Characters feature, they are considered the ultimate owner of the character. If they leave a game, the character goes back to their Roll20 Characters library and is removed from that game. The only way to keep the character sheet in the game is for the GM to make a copy while it is still there. It is relatively new (it came out early this year), and is a different approach to character sheets than what has come before. If this behavior is a hindrance to your gaming style, you can disallow importing of Roll20 Characters into your game, and require that all players make their characters inside the game. This requires you to make and assign a blank sheet to them (as was the default procedure before the introductory of the new feature.)

To elaborate on Keiths response:  * Go to Roll20.net * Click the name of your game (not Launch) * Click Settings * Click Game Settings * Set "Allow players to create their own Characters?" to No. This prevents players from using the +Characters button in the game. That button links Player created sheets to Roll20 Characters.  * Set "Allow players to transfer Characters" to No. This blocks players from importing their characters from Roll20 Characters. 

Interesting - I'd never heard of a character self-deleting when a player leaves the game before.

Erich S. said: Interesting - I'd never heard of a character self-deleting when a player leaves the game before. Yup, it's a shift introduced by the (relatively) new Roll20 Characters feature. It's tripped up several other folks since it was introduced, but eventually it will become more familiar over time.

You may recall I wrote several months ago about not being able to reassign a character, in this very same game. The player left and I was handing the character off to another player. I had to copy the character in order to reassign it. But in that instance the character was not deleted from the game. That is the difference I noticed.

That was a bug. The way the Devs have it set up is to remove characters when the player leaves the game if the character is in Roll20 Characters. 

Do most players leave their characters in the game when the game ends or when they're not playing anymore? I've been a player for many years with only minimal GM experience and that was tabletop, don't know if I'll ever cross the GM threshold again. I have studied as a writer and have always viewed my PC's as my property.  Now, maybe I need to share more but It's my ideas and it's a lot of time I've put into to coming up with storylines, creating the sheet online, a pic converted to a token. I don't feel like that I'm a genius or master creator with PC's, and I view other player's characters in the same way. I know that I may feel more territorial than many others and this is probably not the place to ask for an informal poll, but I think the player should always been given the freedom to choose to leave that PC behind or not, if they created it. I understand that the PC stays in the players vault so it's not truly lost. I can also appreciate that utility of that character being available to continue with the game.

Michi said: Do most players leave their characters in the game when the game ends or when they're not playing anymore? Hello Michi, interesting question. In my ten years on Roll20 and the previous decades of face to face gaming, if someone created a character in one of my games it became part of that game. Often it never matters but if that player character was "someone" in the game then to have them suddenly disappear can cause problems. Anyway, Until recently I never knew players thought of their characters as solely theirs: I always thought of them as becoming part of the campaign world. As a side-note the player who left my game and the character auto-deleted did not intend to remove his character. This new change cuts both ways.

A player character in my campaign usually  remains as an NPC if the player leaves the game or drops the character in favor of a new one (it happens), especially if they had a significant impact on the storyline. What the player does with that character outside game is no concern of mine. If the player would insist, I'd change the (now NPC's) name to disassociate it from whatever that player wants to do with that character i the future.