How Often do your Players Backtrack?

[Raven Crowking]

But they aren't really re-examining the same entry caverns, right?

Sure they are, to the degree in which they are not certain what changes have occurred. Some areas of the caverns that they noted, but decided were not essential to their goals then, may well be examined more closely now.

This is an exact parallel to the statue-room, where the statue was passed earlier, and the party returns to examine it when something else makes them think it important.

Set aside the definition of "backtrack", and rephrase the question as, "How often do your players go back to things they've seen to re-engage with them?"

For my players, it usually only happens when they come to some specific thought that it might be relevant. They don't go back to look things over again, "just because they might have missed something".

By making a world in which the relevance of its features are interlocking, what might seem to be a piece of decoration when the party first passes through some place might seem like more later.

Specifically, the original thread example had a statue placed by the GM, which the GM thought would be relevant to the PCs. The GM was claiming that irrelevant features should not be included. I countered with words to the effect of, "What if they don't find it relevant now? Should it not have been included? What if they find it relevant later, and go back to it? Does that make it retroactively relevant?"

So, again, the context is

(A) Something potentially relevant that
(B) Is not examined at the time which
(C) The PCs return to at a later date.

Change that context, and you change the question.

But you also remove the likelihood of any "backtracking" at all. Even if the PCs go back to look things over again "just because they might have missed something" one can claim that it isn't really backtracking, because their goal is to engage with whatever it was that they missed.

The question becomes meaningless.


RC

 

[Umbran]

Sure they are, to the degree in which they are not certain what changes have occurred. Some areas of the caverns that they noted, but decided were not essential to their goals then, may well be examined more closely now.

Well, then that's different.

Imagine a person leaves their sunglasses in my living room, and then leaves my house. Yes, to get back to my living room, they go through my front porch again. But, by and large they ignore the porch, because it is not the subject of their search. For this discussion, the porch is largely irrelevant - it is a space between point A and B that they ignore unless it bites them.

If they are not sure exactly where they left their sunglasses, so that they check around on the parch too, then that's a different activity. Standing on the porch idly staring at the door for a moment waiting for me to answer the doorbell is not the same as searching the porch for lost sunglasses.

This is an exact parallel to the statue-room, where the statue was passed earlier, and the party returns to examine it when something else makes them think it important.

If the party searches the entry-cavern again like they search the statue again, then yes, it is an exact parallel.

But you also remove the likelihood of any "backtracking" at all.

Er, no. Not at all.

Even if the PCs go back to look things over again "just because they might have missed something" one can claim that it isn't really backtracking, because their goal is to engage with whatever it was that they missed.

Funny, I think by my own definition that going back "just because they might have missed something" is definitely backtracking - their goal is to interact with the statue, in hopes of finding something else that they may or may not contiue to pursue.

Definitely backtracking. My players simply don't do it often.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If the party searches the entry-cavern again like they search the statue again, then yes, it is an exact parallel.

Um....again, the initial scenario is that the statue is mentioned, but is not interacted with the first time. They are not searching the statue "again".


RC

 

[OnlineDM]

Interesting... when I answered the poll (I said "sometimes") I was thinking about backtracking to earlier points of the plot rather than physical locations in the game world.

For instance, my in-person campaign's first adventure had them travel from a town to a manor and then onto an orc stronghold. To get from the town to the manor, they hired a boat. The boat's captain said he would give them free passage if they would agree to help him in the future when he would make a delivery high into the mountains to a dangerous area where he would need guards.

After dealing with the orc stronghold, the party could have moved on in their investigation of what they found there, but they decided that they wanted to find the boat captain and honor their promise to him first. In my mind, they "backtracked" to him, and they did end up on the same boat on the same river again, but they didn't come back to examine a physical location - they came back to help an earlier NPC.

That's probably not what the poll had in mind, but I thought of it as backtracking (though not at all in a bad way - I was excited when they remembered the boat captain and wanted to go back to help him!).

 

[Lanefan]

Varies widely in my game, completely dependent on external factors:
- whether they're on a clock
- whether they remember they have any reason to go back
- whether I'm re-using a particular dungeon or adventure setting they've been through earlier and-or they didn't finish the first time

Also, if the definition of back-tracking is expanded to include multiple attempts to finish the same adventure, then it happens all the time.

Lanefan

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's probably not what the poll had in mind

I tend to agree.

The original thread example had a statue placed by the GM, which the GM thought would be relevant to the PCs. The GM was claiming that irrelevant features should not be included.

I countered with words to the effect of, "What if they don't find it relevant now? Should it not have been included? What if they find it relevant later, and go back to it? Does that make it retroactively relevant?"

So, the poll relates to a discussion of whether or not something not examined initially becomes relevant at a later date because the players make it so by going back to it.

Not re-examining something, as Umbran would have it, but rather examining something at a later date which was previously ignored. I.e.,

(A) Something potentially relevant that
(B) Is not examined at the time which
(C) The PCs return to at a later date.​

Change that context, and you change the question.

Unfortunately, the poll does seem to change the context for those who haven't read the thread that spawned it.

I imagine that the OP wanted to determine how likely the above was, as it relates to the previous thread. IOW, is a something that is irrelevant/ignored in Game Session 1 likely to remain irrelevant/ignored forever? Or are the PCs likely to return to it?

If the former, then that gives strength to the OP's opinion in the other thread. If the later, then that gives strength to the converse opinion.

I assume that the lack of clear context (as relates to the previous thread) is unfortunate, but not intentional.



RC

 

[Sunseeker]

Rarely to never outside of my more "living worlds". The adventurer's go and kill some goblins, and for my sake as well as purposes of advancing the game, those goblins never return. Those traps in the cave never reset, those poisonous mushrooms never regrow. There's no need, once an "area" has been cleared, the adventurers move on to bigger and better things.

Sometimes in my smaller games, things "return", as the nature of a more localized setting forces me to focus more on this area as living microcosm than a fairly irrelevent fraction of a massive world.

For the most part, I find backtracking pointless. It reminds me of MMOs where you are constatnly running back and forth between "area where you kill things" and the town where they give you quests, and then upon subsequent return to "the area where you now have to kill more things", the things you previously killed are back, as though you had never even been there.

Short story: No, 99% of the time, areas do not "respawn".

 

[Oryan77]

I haven't had PCs go back to areas as far as I can remember. But I did just prepare the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga and the PCs started to try and enter the hut. But they left to continue on with another adventure after they found it difficult to get inside. I'm not sure if they will ever go back and try again, but I sure hope so.

 

[Haltherrion]

I voted often although that's probably more appropriate for the current campaign. Other campaigns might require more progressive travel.

For this one, some examples:

• In session one players met an air-spirit in an area and one of them decided to worship her. 5-6 sessions later, they agreed to get some griffon eggs for someone, remembered the air spirit and got some sand from her that would down flying creatures. They then used cover of a storm to get the eggs and didn't use the sand. Later when facing a dragon they used the sand to bring the dragon to the ground making a huge difference in that battle (I'd forgotten about it myself although the sand only lasted about a week in-game).
• They were searching for some lost chambers with a clue to one of the puzzles they were working on. They found one in a tidal zone filled with mud. They couldn't really excavate it without help and came back later to do it after getting some assistance from another spirit. And in addition they searched the area earlier for it before finding it on the second visit (based on some research in yet another area they went to several times).
• Currently, they are exploring an isolated valley in the mountains and have returned to it for 3-4 sessions in a row in between wintering at their base to the north. Within the valley, they have established a base they return to having made friends with yet another spirit and have returned to several locations within the valley, especially a set of caves in the south. Each trip they've learned a bit more about the caves.

But this campaign is set in a relatively small area compared to other campaigns.

 

[Hussar]

I have to admit, I'm a bit surprised by the results. Although, it's very early, only 40 votes in, I'd have thought it was a lot more rare that people go back to re-investigate stuff. I guess it's because I play a lot of modules that I don't see it that often. In most modules, you do the module and it's done. You generally don't go back (how often did your character's go back to the Slave Lords Stockade for example?) after you finish a module.

Interesting.