D&D General Character Swapping - How Much Player Agency

[Lakesidefantasy]

How about this for a secret that steps on a player's agency: I'm planning on giving my players a quest where they can instantly make one magic item (just about anything they want). But, this is simply a ploy for me to inject a sentient magic item into the possession of whoever ends up wanting it the most. I'm going to have it slowly Awaken. It's kind of a curse because sentient items can be annoying. (I don't want it to be annoying. I just want to try putting a sentient magic item into the game.)

On a scale of 1 to 10. How bad is this!

 

[Lanefan]

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).

Ah, perhaps that's where we differ: to me, to some extent D&D is a little silly, and largely played for laughs. I mean, I take it seriously enough to show upon time for the games (or write-run them, if DMing) and do my homework between times, but it's a great game if-when the characters are saying and-or doing silly things that make us all laugh.

I mean, really - don't we all get enough law-and-order in real life? The game exists as an escape from all that, where we can in character be the chaos-raising law-be-damned provocateurs we can't be in reality; and - intentionally or not - that sometimes includes annoying the other characters we run with to the point where they might want to throw down and fight.

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.

Those two things cannot, in theory, happen in tandem.

If a PC has a secret that means its player has a secret; thus meaning another player can't make up a new chaacter to take over the reveal of that secret because no other players know about it.

 

[Lanefan]

How about this for a secret that steps on a player's agency: I'm planning on giving my players a quest where they can instantly make one magic item (just about anything they want). But, this is simply a ploy for me to inject a sentient magic item into the possession of whoever ends up wanting it the most. I'm going to have it slowly Awaken. It's kind of a curse because sentient items can be annoying. (I don't want it to be annoying. I just want to try putting a sentient magic item into the game.)

On a scale of 1 to 10. How bad is this!

At first read it seems fine. Question, though: is the item going to want its existence kept secret from those other than its possessor?

I did something like this a while back - a PC Thief had snuck off and found an intelligent and rather nasty item which almost immediately took control of her. I passed the player a note advising him of this, and told him the item would let his character act normally except that nobody else was to be told of its presence. Player went along with this, and for the rest of that adventure and most of the next the PC secretly carried this thing around in her backpack while otherwise carrying on as usual.

Late in the next adventure the item took over and forced its carrier to deliver it to its real owners, confusing everyone else both in-character and out who were in process of trying to thwart the activities of said owners. Good times.

 

[Clint_L]

A PC can definitely have a secret from the other characters that some or all of their players might know about. It’s a role playing game. Playing a role means acting from the point of view of your character, not your own.

In this case, the players have plenty of knowledge about Dorg that their characters lack, because he’s had several visions which his player opted to have as part of the regular session, not a sidebar.

This has nothing to do with the core conflict of the OP.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Ah, perhaps that's where we differ: to me, to some extent D&D is a little silly, and largely played for laughs.

Doesn't sound like the OP's game at all, they seem to be taking their character story arcs pretty seriously. I also think they spend more than the 15-30 minutes making up a character that in another thread you say is your absolute limit (pretty sure just the conversation in the OP involved more than 15 minutes of effort). They also clearly care about the stories of individual characters, they don't only care about the story of the group as a whole. Your way of playing is not universal, and acting like it is and that everyone else is Doing It Wrong if they use a different style is pretty unreasonable, moreso since what you're doing seems to be a very uncommon playstyle.

Also 'Dave made a hater character to fight me, let's roll out a lopsided CvC combat instead of doing anything interesting' doesn't sound like something that would provoke many laughs from me. Your game can have as much repetitive uninteresting combat driven by a player picking fights that you call CvC as you want, but it's not at all the kind of silly I want in D&D.

Those two things cannot, in theory, happen in tandem.

If a PC has a secret that means its player has a secret; thus meaning another player can't make up a new chaacter to take over the reveal of that secret because no other players know about it.

As I said before, it absolutely can happen, and I have seen it. Your unwillingness to acknowledge the difference betwen IC and OOC knowledge doesn't change that, and the fact that your group doesn't make the distinction doesn't change that the OP's group obviously does, as do pretty much everyone I've played RPGs with.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

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

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.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

At first read it seems fine. Question, though: is the item going to want its existence kept secret from those other than its possessor?

I did something like this a while back - a PC Thief had snuck off and found an intelligent and rather nasty item which almost immediately took control of her. I passed the player a note advising him of this, and told him the item would let his character act normally except that nobody else was to be told of its presence. Player went along with this, and for the rest of that adventure and most of the next the PC secretly carried this thing around in her backpack while otherwise carrying on as usual.

Late in the next adventure the item took over and forced its carrier to deliver it to its real owners, confusing everyone else both in-character and out who were in process of trying to thwart the activities of said owners. Good times.

Sounds cool! No I don't expect the item to be secretive. The secret is that the Player and their Character wouldn't know the item is sentient until later.

I had a Player who wanted an "unholy revenger" at, get this, 1st level! So, we make a deal with a devil. The sword starts as a +1 sword and grows with the Character as he levels and forges devil blood into it. Part of the deal was that I get control of his Character at some unspecified time in the future--this was a secret.

At about 17th level he has finished the sword so I send a devil to take over his body and destroy his party members. That [CENSORED] used his action to toss the sword to another party member informing him to escape and destroy the sword--which he did.

I was so impressed by this narrative act that I awarded his Character enough ad hoc experience points to get him a level higher than his peers.

Such fun and great memories!

 

[Umbran]

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.

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.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

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

 

[AlViking]

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

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.