D&D General Character Swapping - How Much Player Agency

[Lakesidefantasy]

You go to a movie - let's say Disclosure Day. But when you get into the theater they start playing the Jackass movie. It likely felt like a bait-and-switch to the players. Not only did they plan for a specific experience, they're spending a fairly significant amount time and likely money to attend one of their favorite activities only to have a switcheroo.

If I show up to play D&D at a convention, I don't want the organizer to go "Surprise! We're actually playing CoC!" It's not what I signed up for.

That's fair man. I think maybe their are usually more Players in a LARP and people are moving around the space so it's easier to just step out of you're not having fun. Whereas at a table-top game you're usually in a room alone with maybe five other players so you would have to wait for a mid-game break to walk out without creating a scene.

I've wanted to do that before. Particularly when I walk into the room and see a big Dwarven Forge diorama on the table.° My heart sinks because I know our entire session is going to be contained within that 'known' space. But, I don't walk out because I just think that would be incredibly insulting to the Game Master.

° No offense to people who like Dioramic play. I like it too when I'm expecting it. Particularly when the diorama is large and impressive like "The Return of Ymir". But it's not my bag most of the time. I wish Game Masters would indicate Dioramic play when describing their games.

 

[Scott Christian]

You seem to be reading that backwards.m, and seem to want to think "mistake" is necessarily small, which is by no means true. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge self-destructed in the wind due to a mistake.

In order for a friend of years to walk out, it needs to be a pretty BIG freaking mistake. Like, big enough that it is strange you didn't know better, or at least know and respect them enough to ask.

That is my point exactly. That sounds more like the friends wanted a reason to walk out. You literally said the DM made a "mistake" in your session. They didn't step over the line by revealing some horrible secret of his friend. They didn't refuse to acknowledge someone's choice as a person. They didn't get drunk and threaten someone. They didn't step over some odd sexual boundary. You said:

I was playing NPCs for a live-action game once, in which the GMs set up a game of noir-era archaeology, intrigue, skullduggery, and politics in pre-WWII Egypt. And then... whoops! The entire game is transported back in time thousands of years!

Between one session and the next, they lost a third of the player base, as people who had engaged expecting one type of play, and built characters and spent resources on it, found their expectations violated and resource expenditures lost.

You called it a mistake. So, for year-long friends to walk out because of a mistake, well that sounds to me like they were fishing for a reason. But, context is king, so I will just assume what you call a mistake is actually a keystone to an entire campaign.

 

[Clint_L]

That's fair man. I think maybe their are usually more Players in a LARP and people are moving around the space so it's easier to just step out of you're not having fun. Whereas at a table-top game you're usually in a room alone with maybe five other players so you would have to wait for a mid-game break to walk out without creating a scene.

I've wanted to do that before. Particularly when I walk into the room and see a big Dwarven Forge diorama on the table.° My heart sinks because I know our entire session is going to be contained within that 'known' space. But, I don't walk out because I just think that would be incredibly insulting to the Game Master.

° No offense to people who like Dioramic play. I like it too when I'm expecting it. Particularly when the diorama is large and impressive like "The Return of Ymir". But it's not my bag most of the time. I wish Game Masters would indicate Dioramic play when describing their games.

I mean, you normally just use them for the battles. There’s nothing inherently limiting about using miniatures and terrain. I’ve never heard the term “dioramic play” before, and I’ve never heard of a campaign exclusively confined like that, though I guess anything is possible.

If a particular session takes place entirely within a built set, that’s likely because it’s a dungeon crawl or something. This is no different than if it was drawn on a Chessex mat.

Your idea that DMs announce their use of terrain in advance is weird to me. Should they also announce if they are going to use a flip map, or scrawl on a whiteboard? What is it about using Dwarven Forge that you think is so limiting? I use it, and I think you can see from this thread that my campaigns hardly lack for scope.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I was playing NPCs for a live-action game once, in which the GMs set up a game of noir-era archaeology, intrigue, skullduggery, and politics in pre-WWII Egypt. And then... whoops! The entire game is transported back in time thousands of years!

Between one session and the next, they lost a third of the player base, as people who had engaged expecting one type of play, and built characters and spent resources on it, found their expectations violated and resource expenditures lost.

Got it. So the DM makes a mistake by misreading the table, and the players walk out on him. Because they made a mistake. No, that says more about their friendship with the DM than it says about the DM's friendship with them.

The DM pulled bait-and-switch by promising one game, selling players on that game so they invested a lot of energy in it, then completely changing the concept of the game out from under them. That is made a mistake closer to sense that people who get caught cheating on a partner claim they just made a mistake (multiple conscious decisions including deception about what was happening), not something like 'I thought it should be a DC15 to investigate the wall, but it's really a DC20'. And the players didn't walk out in the sense of storming out mid-game, they just decided between sessions that the game they got wasn't one they're interested in so didn't come back.

The idea that friendship means you should dedicate hours of time and energy on character and story stuff, and make an ongoing commitment to a regularly scheduled game, and regularly spend time, energy, and money traveling to the game even though you don't enjoy the game is bizarre. I know it's a controversial position on these boards, but I (and I think most actual people) just don't keep playing games they don't enjoy, even if they are friends with someone involved in the game.

I have a hard time understanding being so emotionally invested in a game that I would walk out.

Makes sense to me either way. If I am emotionally invested in a game, having all the energy I've invested yanked out from under me when the game changes to something completely different is a pretty good motivator to not invest any more energy. If I'm not emotionally invested, skipping out on something I don't care about if it doesn't seem fun is no big deal. If I go to a sushi restaurant and they decide to serve me a burger instead, I'm probably not going back, whether I was deeply into the idea of sushi that day, or just happened to pick it.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I mean, you normally just use them for the battles. There’s nothing inherently limiting about using miniatures and terrain. I’ve never heard the term “dioramic play” before, and I’ve never heard of a campaign exclusively confined like that, though I guess anything is possible.

If a particular session takes place entirely within a built set, that’s likely because it’s a dungeon crawl or something. This is no different than if it was drawn on a Chessex mat.

Your idea that DMs announce their use of terrain in advance is weird to me. Should they also announce if they are going to use a flip map, or scrawl on a whiteboard? What is it about using Dwarven Forge that you think is so limiting? I use it, and I think you can see from this thread that my campaigns hardly lack for scope.

It's just that sometimes it's more about the diorama than it is about the game. For instance, in "The Return of Ymir" you know exactly what you're going to do. You're going to go from one end of the diorama to the other end, and that's the game. But, and the Dessert Nomad should appreciate this, you know that's what you're signing up for.

When I sign up for a Dungeons and Dragons game I'm expecting an open world where anything is possible, or at least the illusion of such. When my Dungeon Master pulls out an elaborate diorama or I walk into a convention game and see one, I know that, more than likely, we're going to be stuck in there. There's no mystery--at least when it comes to the 'shape' of the adventure. At some point we're going to be like, "Well, it looks like there's one last corner of the board we haven't explored."

There's nothing inherently restrictive about dioramics. Like graphics they extend the immersive experience. I wouldn't refer to a convention game as a campaign, but I have experienced a few convention games where it is the case that the Dungeon Master has the entire adventure contained in one elaborate diorama. It is a strange request that Game Masters let players know that, but if my wishes could come true they would and I could avoid it, or at least I'll know that it's what the game is going to be.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

It's just that sometimes it's more about the diorama than it is about the game. For instance, in "The Return of Ymir" you know exactly what you're going to do. You're going to go from one end of the diorama to the other end, and that's the game. But, and the Dessert Nomad should appreciate this, you know that's what you're signing up for.

When I sign up for a Dungeons and Dragons game I'm expecting an open world where anything is possible, or at least the illusion of such. When my Dungeon Master pulls out an elaborate diorama or I walk into a convention game and see one, I know that, more than likely, we're going to be stuck in there. There's no mystery--at least when it comes to the 'shape' of the adventure. At some point we're going to be like, "Well, it looks like there's one last corner of the board we haven't explored."

I agree that's definitely what you're signing up for in a Ymir game, and I also think you're setting yourself up for disappointment in general with that expectation. If what you mean by 'sign up for a D&D game' is that there's a single session of D&D advertised in some way (discord, warhorn, meetup, posting on a forum or reddit) and you sign up to attend it and then show up without necessarily having met with any of the people before, it's a really bad idea to assume that the default is an open world where anything is possible. For a single-session game with open signups, I'd be shocked if the game was actually just 'wander around and do whatever you feel like' rather than 'here's the scenario that we're running, here's the hook, grab ahold and let's go'. I really would not expect in a FR game to be fine with PCs doing anything from poking into weird temples in Chult to going on a tour of Waterdeep with maybe a delve into the Dungeon of the Mad Mage or Skullport, or becoming pirates on the sword coast, or to go plane shifting off to hang out in Sigil for a bit. Even with a narrower focus, I wouldn't expect stuff even 'one town over' to be in the scope of a one-shot.

People might have had different experiences, but all of my experience with one shot games with signups is that you're signing up to do a particular adventure (often a short published module or part of a campaign book), not that you're going to do some kind of open world gaming.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I agree that's definitely what you're signing up for in a Ymir game, and I also think you're setting yourself up for disappointment in general with that expectation. If what you mean by 'sign up for a D&D game' is that there's a single session of D&D advertised in some way (discord, warhorn, meetup, posting on a forum or reddit) and you sign up to attend it and then show up without necessarily having met with any of the people before, it's a really bad idea to assume that the default is an open world where anything is possible. For a single-session game with open signups, I'd be shocked if the game was actually just 'wander around and do whatever you feel like' rather than 'here's the scenario that we're running, here's the hook, grab ahold and let's go'. I really would not expect in a FR game to be fine with PCs doing anything from poking into weird temples in Chult to going on a tour of Waterdeep with maybe a delve into the Dungeon of the Mad Mage or Skullport, or becoming pirates on the sword coast, or to go plane shifting off to hang out in Sigil for a bit. Even with a narrower focus, I wouldn't expect stuff even 'one town over' to be in the scope of a one-shot.

People might have had different experiences, but all of my experience with one shot games with signups is that you're signing up to do a particular adventure (often a short published module or part of a campaign book), not that you're going to do some kind of open world gaming.

You know, I think my use of the term 'open world' was incorrect. I should have written 'real world'. I don't want to feel like my Character couldn't get out of that diorama, no matter how beautiful it is, unless, of course, that is what I want. For instance, if somebody built the entire Castle Ravenloft in Dwarven Forge and ran an adventure through it, I'd sign up for it! I wouldn't even care about the adventure itself--I'm there for the Castle!

But yeah, I agree, I don't expect* an 'open world', but I do desire the illusion of such. I'll happily suspend my disbelief and play along. I mean, I'm not a butthole. I know the Dungeon Master has an adventure planned; it would be absurd to suggest otherwise. But we seem to have different experiences, because I have played many convention games where I felt like anything was possible and it was my Character making the decisions, not necessarily that I made the right decisions but, like, my Character's decisions happen to coincide with the Dungeon Master's plans.

 

[Clint_L]

As someone who's run a lot of one-shots, often with a constrained schedule, it pretty much has to be a very narrowly focused adventure. There's player agency in terms of how to deal with the situation, but games like that have limited options. For an example, see the "ProD&D" game I posted here about a month back. Yes, there was a touch of investigation and exploration, but all roads were leading to very specific situations, for which I indeed had Dwarven Forge sets created.

What I find odd is singling out physical terrain rather than, say, a Chessex mat or a VTT or whatever. That seems like a pretty superficial distinction, because anyway you slice it, player options were always going to be limited.

Incidentally, I really hate the term "diorama" in this context. A diorama is fixed. A battle map is fluid. In fact, one of the things I like about using 3d terrain as opposed to a flat map is that it often inspires players to think in 3 dimensions and be more tactically creative.

 

[Lanefan]

What I find odd is singling out physical terrain rather than, say, a Chessex mat or a VTT or whatever. That seems like a pretty superficial distinction, because anyway you slice it, player options were always going to be limited.

It's a fairly large distinction, in that it takes the DM no time at all to erase a mat or chalkboard and draw something else if the party suddenly decide to go elsewhere, while it would take the DM much longer to build a new scenario out of Dwarven Forge pieces.

What this means is that there's a certain amount of out-of-game pressure to stay within what the DM has built in order to avoid invalidating all the work the DM did to build it, which pushes against the players' collective agency to have their characters do what they would do if it involves going somewhere else.

Incidentally, I really hate the term "diorama" in this context. A diorama is fixed.

Whenever I see a Dwarven Forge or similar set-up on a table - unless it's just a few walls to indicate hallways etc. - I assume it's fixed in place for the session, as it probably took ages to build.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

It's a fairly large distinction, in that it takes the DM no time at all to erase a mat or chalkboard and draw something else if the party suddenly decide to go elsewhere, while it would take the DM much longer to build a new scenario out of Dwarven Forge pieces.

I don't have much experience with Dwarven Forge, but I know the writing on a mat to draw a map is the least time intensive part of making a scenario. Deciding on story, description of areas, character names personalities, terrain and obstacles, enemies and combat setups, and all of the other stuff is massively more work than just drawing some lines to show room sizes. Even deciding what an area looks like and how it's connected is much more time than the physical assembly.

I wouldn't expect someone to build the not-the-map part of a scenario on the fly at a convention game in a narrow timeframe with players they haven't met before even if they had helpful elves who could instantly reconfigure any terrain in seconds, that's not the difficult piece.

What this means is that there's a certain amount of out-of-game pressure to stay within what the DM has built in order to avoid invalidating all the work the DM did to build it, which pushes against the players' collective agency to have their characters do what they would do if it involves going somewhere else.

Whenever I see a Dwarven Forge or similar set-up on a table - unless it's just a few walls to indicate hallways etc. - I assume it's fixed in place for the session, as it probably took ages to build.

If I'm running a game with open sign ups, there's a hard requirement to stay within what I've prepped and advertised that I'm running. I wouldn't call it a 'certain amount of out-of-game pressure', that understates that if you don't want to play the game you signed up for, I'll tell you to leave the table. As would every other DM I know, and I know a lot of DMs who run at least some games in a 'signup' format.

Do you really sign up for a game that's advertised as running "The Sunless Citadel" and then insist on your characters spending the session shopping in Waterdeep or sailing out on the Moonsea as pirates or wandering off into the woods looking for fey instead of going into the sunken keep? I've literally never encountered that behavior, and I'd probably think someone doing that was either mentally unwell or trolling, it's like going to a book club and insisting that people play baseball instead.