D&D General Character Swapping - How Much Player Agency

[AlViking]

My home games are pretty open-ended but if I'm running a game at a con or gameday? You're getting a linear game. In most cases I have a 4 hour slot and if we're lucky we'll have 3.5 hours of actual play by the time everyone gets settled down and introductions are out of the way, we simply don't have much time for exploration and free-form play even if that is my normal preference. I'm not going to completely railroad the group and most people understand what they're signing up for, but if the direction the group is taking is not headed where they need to go I'll redirect. In theory even calling a time out course correcting outside of the game, although it's never gotten that far.

Sign up for an ongoing game? If you can convince the other players to go a different direction than the original premise indicated? I can adjust, even if it means I can't deliver on the new direction until next session when I've had time to think about it. Want to disrupt a 4 hour one-shot session? We're going to have to discuss expectations. It doesn't matter if I have a prefabbed setup or not (I won't, although I might have prepped maps), there's only so far off course you can go.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

All of that is done before play starts. During play is what I'm referring to, when the party goes off the map or out of the pre-built set-up.

The same thing happens in our online play: we-as-players know the DM might have spent hours setting up the map, which puts meta-pressure against our going elsewhere even if it's what the characters would otherwise do.

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.

I'm talking about home games here. Convention games are a different animal, where by sheer necessity things have to be limited due to the tight timeframe. For those, doing up a fancy diorama of the complex where the whole game takes place could make loads of sense, and add to everyone's fun.

But for home games, a DM isn't going to want to spend hours building an elaborate set-up of a castle only to have the players decide to explore the outbuildings or surrounding woods or nearby caves instead.

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.

Again this sounds like convention games. Home games are (I hope) considerably more malleable over time and might well jump all over the place as the campaign goes on. Sure you say you're starting with Keep on the Borderlands but that doesn't (I hope!) mean the party are committed to staying there should things in the game suggest otherwise. Example: the party get to the Caves of Chaos and get thrashed on arrival, the survivors go back to the Keep then decide "Screw this, we're going to seek adventure in the lowlands as this is just too bloody dangerous!"

Player agency being exercised, that is.

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.

If I join a game and the DM says "I'm running The Sunless Citadel", I would assume that to merely be the starting point for a much bigger campaign, meaning after Sunless (or even during, if things go badly) we-as-characters can go wherever in the setting and find other adventures. If that assumption is wrong and Sunless is in fact intended to be the entire campaign then I wouldn't even bother joining.

In fairness, I'd also warn the DM that I'm familiar with Sunless Citadel in case she wants to modify it or choose another.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I'm talking about home games here. Convention games are a different animal, where by sheer necessity things have to be limited due to the tight timeframe.

OK, that's what confused me - this branch of the conversation started with someone talking about seeing setups at conventions and being disappointed that the game wasn't open world. They specifically mentioned the Return of Ymir as an example of what they don't like to see, which is an elaborate setup for convention games The Return of Ymir I figured you were talking about that, but it sounds like you weren't. That's what I found bizarre, the idea of signing up for a specific one-shot game and being disappointed at an elaborate setup when you know it's a very specific scenario.

Though I will note that a lot of the games I've seen like this aren't actually convention games, there's a lot of AL, West Marches, and general one-shots that people will advertise locally that work in a similar way.

 

[Clint_L]

But for home games, a DM isn't going to want to spend hours building an elaborate set-up of a castle only to have the players decide to explore the outbuildings or surrounding woods or nearby caves instead.

So, the context of the discussion was, specifically, one-shot games.

But for home games, I do in fact build sets or prepare maps all the time that wind up unused. Usually, you have a pretty good idea where things are going to go. But sometimes, something else happens instead. So you're making assumptions that are incorrect.

 

[AlViking]

So, the context of the discussion was, specifically, one-shot games.

But for home games, I do in fact build sets or prepare maps all the time that wind up unused. Usually, you have a pretty good idea where things are going to go. But sometimes, something else happens instead. So you're making assumptions that are incorrect.

While I don't use build sets because I've just never found anything that works for me for a variety of reasons even if they do look awesome, having predefined locations prepared was required when we were doing online play during COVID.

Most of the time I knew which maps I'd need with 90% plus accuracy. Even if they went left when I was certain they'd go right most of the time I could still use the maps I had prepped. The monsters encountered may have changed, what the goal is for that particular set piece changes, but the map could be substituted without issue. The way a location is approached, what preparations they made, how they interacted with what they encountered was still always up to the players.

 

[Scott Christian]

So, the context of the discussion was, specifically, one-shot games.

But for home games, I do in fact build sets or prepare maps all the time that wind up unused. Usually, you have a pretty good idea where things are going to go. But sometimes, something else happens instead. So you're making assumptions that are incorrect.

I literally have 16 maps pulled for our session tomorrow. In part because our last session was very linear. So tomorrow's game is extremely open ended. It has been a beast to plan, but fun at the same time.

PS - Probably all but one or two will get used. The others, oh well.

 

[TwoSix]

I literally have 16 maps pulled for our session tomorrow. In part because our last session was very linear. So tomorrow's game is extremely open ended. It has been a beast to plan, but fun at the same time.

PS - Probably all but one or two will get used. The others, oh well.

When you say "map", are you talking about like the layout of an exploration site (dungeon, ruin, castle, wizard tower, etc.)?

As opposed to a geographical map of a region?

 

[Scott Christian]

When you say "map", are you talking about like the layout of an exploration site (dungeon, ruin, castle, wizard tower, etc.)?

As opposed to a geographical map of a region?

An exploration site. The group is heading back into the city and trying to infiltrate its underground. There are four contacts (NPCs) they can learn info from, and from there, each contact has about two to three locations they are aware of. (They have been infiltrating the underground too.) On top of that, there are just seedy locations and regular locations the group might visit. So the locations they might venture to are pretty vast. And, just as one of them texted in our group chat, "We're going to go to the one place you haven't thought of." And I texted back, "That will be equally excited if they do."