D&D General Character Swapping - How Much Player Agency

[Umbran]

We aren't sure. But, we are sure it would be there if the player knew the information. And if the player doesn't know the information, then there is a better chance they will respond how they think their character would. It's not a crazy idea.

Yeah, but "it isn't crazy", is a pretty low bar.

It goes back to the argument of whether a player should use their knowledge of the Monster Manual to increase the efficiency of their attacks. ...

Yet, what we are discussing is a bit more subtle, no?

If what we are talking about is more subtle, then it doesn't go back to that less subtle case, no.

The fact that a player cannot be surprised if they know the secret. And yes, it can go all sorts of ways depending on the circumstances.

Which is a central point.

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.

From this comes a basic tenet to follow - screw with the characters, not with the players. If that means making sure they are okay with a "secret", and thus cannot be surprised by it, then that's what you do.

 

[Scott Christian]

Yeah, but "it isn't crazy", is a pretty low bar.

That doesn't make my claim any less valid. A player who doesn't know the secret would have a better chance of responding how their character would than if they knew the secret.

If what we are talking about is more subtle, then it doesn't go back to that less subtle case, no.

Fair enough.

Which is a central point.

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.

From this comes a basic tenet to follow - screw with the characters, not with the players. If that means making sure they are okay with a "secret", and thus cannot be surprised by it, then that's what you do.

See how you say screw with the players. That is an awfully negative viewpoint to take. Maybe the DM thought it would be a blast for you all? Maybe he just misjudged how much everyone was enjoying the present setting? Maybe he wasn't trying to screw anyone over, but was just adding a layer to the game, that perhaps those that left never got to appreciate.

And again, it is all a detailing of subtleties. If that group's experience had been they were friends for years, and they left, that can say more about their friendship than the game. How about this, don't screw with characters or players? Be a DM that is fair, in it for your players and yourself, and one that knows your table.

 

[AlViking]

That doesn't make my claim any less valid. A player who doesn't know the secret would have a better chance of responding how their character would than if they knew the secret.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The player is more likely to react how the player would react to learning a secret but to me those reactions can and oftentimes should be different. Adding another level of complexity is that depending on the secret, the player might feel that there should have been times when the PC should have realized something was up. I may not have a +10 to insight for example but my character could.

I'm not saying there should never ever be secrets between players, once in a while depending on the circumstances I think it's more fun for the whole group. But I also think it's something that should be used fairly sparingly in team-oriented games like I run.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

It's utterly impossible to ignore something you know, when that something holds any relevance to anything. Once you know it, you can't un-know it.

The only possible way to not know something is ti, yes, not know it.

Which merely serves to make the 'reveal' a fake experience. Sure the character gets that 'Aha!' moment, but the player does not and so you're not going to get a true reaction.

If done maliciously, sure.

I've had players, though, who did this to each other just for kicks, laughing (and entertaining the rest of us to no end!) all the way.

I've also had numerous situations where it was an existing character in the party - usually after a Detect-xxxx spell or two - sticking a knife into the new one.

"Driving the story" is what happens when nothing else is going on. If they want to spend the session on in-party feuding I'm quite happy to let 'em do so, the adventure can always wait till next session...

And sure, it's maybe not for everyone. That said, if it's what the characters would do to an NPC then the same should happen to a PC.

On the OP's specific situation, were I the DM I'd likely have pushed back as well, for two reasons: one, the player isn't supposed to know what he obviously does know and I'd raise a bit of hell about that; and two, ordering someone else's character around is highly likely to end both quickly and badly - is the player of the new character prepared for some serious pushback, to the point of having another new character ready to rock when this one gets chucked out or killed.

I don't play my games like Lanefan does, but I think I would like to experience it. It sounds kinda' fun.

It's amazing how often I get in an ENworld conversation and find out that I and a lot of people I've games with have actually been doing something impossible for years without thinking it was something special. Truly I must have encountered a plethora of miracle workers, who manage to keep IC and OOC knowledge separate even though it cannot be done.

I play my games more like the Dessert Nomad, but this response is a mischaracterization of Lanefan's point: "It's utterly impossible to ignore something you know"

I agree with Lanefan because I've experienced it. I was going to respond but I didn't need to because Scott did.

Not to interject, but I believe @Lanefan means on a subconscious level. Meaning, it can cause a bias in your thinking regarding player actions. I think taking his statement to the extreme doesn't help when trying to understand each other's sides.

I wouldn't have used the word 'subconscious'. Grown men dancing and dallying around a secret door trying to pretend they don't know it's there is not subconscious.

So, the number of things that might be consciously or sub-consciously impacting the player away from acting strctly from teh character's vewpoint is... staggering.

So, the question is, among all that noise, how sure are we that the subconscious effect Lanefan refers to there is meaningful, in the context of all the stuff going on in the player.

And, how much is trying to stop is making perfect the enemy of good?

I agree with Umbran here, but Lanefan didn't refer to it as 'subconscious' in the post above and I don't think he meant to say it was. No, it's quite conscious.

If I were us, i'd drop the subconscious thing.

It's a straw herring.

 

[Umbran]

That doesn't make my claim any less valid.

"Not crazy," doesn't make it noticeably more valid, either.

A player who doesn't know the secret would have a better chance of responding how their character would than if they knew the secret.

Are you sure? I am not. At least, not in general. Like, actors generally think about and rehearse their portrayals to make them come out like the character, rather than like the actor.

Speaking for myself, at least - my characters are not me, at least not entirely. I am a middle-class desk-job holding intellectual with graduate degrees and a smartphone. Smok is a lizardfolk barbarian. One should expect that Umbran really ought to think about how Smok would react to things, that Umbran's mammalian, urbanite desk-jockey response shoud be unlike Smok's response to... loads of stuff.

See how you say screw with the players. That is an awfully negative viewpoint to take.

No. Not if you realize that not all surprises are screwing with the players. Screwing with the players is violating their base expectations of the game - like the stuff you set up in session zero. You violate your agreements, then it ought to be considered negatively.

Maybe the DM thought it would be a blast for you all?

Yeah. In that larp I mentioned up thread, the GMs thought the time-jumping thing would be a blast for all concerned! They were wrong. A third of the players thought it was bad enough to just quit - because not only were their character choices invalidated, but they no longer felt they could trust the GMs. It almost killed the game outright.

There are trusts you should not break just because you feel it would be a blast for everyone.

Maybe he just misjudged how much everyone was enjoying the present setting? Maybe he wasn't trying to screw anyone over, but was just adding a layer to the game, that perhaps those that left never got to appreciate.

The fact that they GMs can misjudge, or otherwise make errors, is why they ought to install/accept some guardrails.

I'm about to be playing in another larp, that learned from that previous one. The first session takes place in an entirely normal social gathering on Earth. The characters think it is just another night. The players know that these characters are going to leave Earth entirely, and not be back for a long time.

An, for our money, that's good. We get to think about how the people who we are portraying, who are not the players, would react in that situation. We don't have to worry about a player feeling betrayed, or unfairly disadvantaged, and having that color the reaction. Nobody is going to walk out over the change in scenery.

And again, it is all a detailing of subtleties. If that group's experience had been they were friends for years, and they left, that can say more about their friendship than the game.

Um, if you treat a friend of years so badly that they walk out, that says something about your friendship, not theirs.

 

[Lanefan]

(..."you" in this post is generic, not directed at Lanefan...)

Personal opinion...

There should be one desired outcome for PC secrets - that they come out! Secrets are for revealing, in dramatic fashion.

Disagree. Sometimes the challenge lies in successfully keeping the secret through the whole campaign or character career, only to be revealed after the campaign is done or the character is dead-retired-otherwise gone.

If your character has a secret, and it never comes out, you know what you win? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You win a participation trophy for being boring! There is no award given for coming up with a cool and interesting element to your character that nobody gets to interact with! If a secret is revealed in a forest, and there's nobody there to hear it - NOBODY CARES!

"Nobody" here meaning other than me-the-player and the DM, I suppose; but we don't count I guess.

Unless you are specifically in a PvP game, then you should not be setting up the other players as antagonists - you cannot "win" by them not finding out your secrets.

Again, disagree: their not finding out IS the win. That, and good friends around the table can still play a pit of vipers as their characters.

It does not make you clever or special to have toys you do not share with the rest of the class.

If the rest of the class knows I have said toys then I agree with this. If they don't know, however, where's the harm?

 

[Lanefan]

It's amazing how often I get in an ENworld conversation and find out that I and a lot of people I've games with have actually been doing something impossible for years without thinking it was something special. Truly I must have encountered a plethora of miracle workers, who manage to keep IC and OOC knowledge separate even though it cannot be done.

Look carefully. Odds are extremely high they're not keeping it separate; they're either subtly (and probably unintentionally) using that out-of-character knowledge in their play or they're over-doing the roleplay of their characters not knowing.

It's a side branch of the whole metagaming question: should players know things their characters do not and cannot know.

 

[Umbran]

"Nobody" here meaning other than me-the-player and the DM, I suppose; but we don't count I guess.

Yeah, then this is just a separate game with you and the GM. The other players don't know the secret exists, so they aren't actualy playing in this part of the game. They are merely present.

Since you don't actually need the other players, it would be tons easier to schedule this as a solo game.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I don't play my games like Lanefan does, but I think I would like to experience it. It sounds kinda' fun.

Well, I have no desire to experience a game where a player makes up a new character that has a built-in fundamental conflict with mine, comes right into the game with fight-starting behavior, and the DM says 'it's fine, this is clearly CvC not PvP since it's a character conflict', and we spend at least a session on something boring like that instead of actually doing anything interesting. That just sounds exhausting, and not worth the effort of showing up for me, and most people that I know aren't interested in that sort of thing in a serious game (would be fine in something like Paranoia that's fundamentally silly and where characters are always trying to screw each other over anyway).

I also don't want a game where the only way for a PC to have a secret from other PCs that they will reveal on their own time as part of their character development is to not tell any of the other players about it, and where the DM is fine with someone making up a new character who takes over the reveal of the secret from that PC just out of the blue. I'd rather be able to collaborate with the table, and that seems to be a pretty common preference.

Look carefully. Odds are extremely high they're not keeping it separate; they're either subtly (and probably unintentionally) using that out-of-character knowledge in their play or they're over-doing the roleplay of their characters not knowing.

It's a side branch of the whole metagaming question: should players know things their characters do not and cannot know.

Or maybe they're just playing the game and waiting for one player to do the big reveal and of course not trying to make a new character that knows the secret and does the reveal for the player. Odds are extremely high that I know more about what I've seen in games that I've played than some guy online who's most likely never met anyone I've played with in real life.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Well, I have no desire to experience a game where a player makes up a new character that has a built-in fundamental conflict with mine, comes right into the game with fight-starting behavior, and the DM says 'it's fine, this is clearly CvC not PvP since it's a character conflict', and we spend at least a session on something boring like that instead of actually doing anything interesting. That just sounds exhausting, and not worth the effort of showing up for me, and most people that I know aren't interested in that sort of thing in a serious game (would be fine in something like Paranoia that's fundamentally silly and where characters are always trying to screw each other over anyway).

I also don't want a game where the only way for a PC to have a secret from other PCs that they will reveal on their own time as part of their character development is to not tell any of the other players about it, and where the DM is fine with someone making up a new character who takes over the reveal of the secret from that PC just out of the blue. I'd rather be able to collaborate with the table, and that seems to be a pretty common preference.

When you describe it like that it sounds bad.

I like the way Lanefan describes it.