Notepassing, Sidebars and Split Adventures

[Zogg]

How often do you, in your gaming group, pass 'secret notes' to the DM or other players?

How often does your DM take you or other PCs into another room to RP a particular portion of the adventure, far from where anyone can here?

Does your adventure group ever split up to where the DM must run two or more separate adventures?

I would post a poll but there are three questions here - similar but different enough. Our group passes notes fairly often- mostly to and from the DM. It doesn't get in the way of the adventure and it often results in some really good gaming.

Has anything funny come from this kind of secretive gaming?

 

[Mark Chance]

How often do you, in your gaming group, pass 'secret notes' to the DM or other players?

Three or four times per session on average, I'd guess.

More words from Zogg
How often does your DM take you or other PCs into another room to RP a particular portion of the adventure, far from where anyone can here?

So far, only two or three times during the entire campaign.

Why can't I stop quoting Zogg?
Does your adventure group ever split up to where the DM must run two or more separate adventures?

Almost happened once.

Zogg, bo-bogg, banana-fanana, fo-fogg
Has anything funny come from this kind of secretive gaming?

Party's cleric of Pelor had a chance to do a mental commune-type thing with Pelor. The party gave the cleric a list of questions. Cleric's player and I went to another room, and the cleric's player deviated noticeably from the question list. Much eye-rolling and tongue-lashing followed. I took the opportunity to have a beer.

 

[mmu1]

I generally don't do it, and I don't like when other players do it, because it usually means someone had the bright idea to do something so stupid they don't trust the other players to keep player and character knowledge separate and not react to it.

Although I can definitely see situations in which it'd be perfectly reasonable and could help the game...

Unfortunately, most times I've seen it come up it originated with the "I want to play a Chaotic Evil character in an otherwise Good party." type of players, and it's kind of a slap in the face - "Ha-ha! I'm going to screw with your characters because I'm evil, and you can't do anything about it, because your characters have no idea."

 

[Ashe]

In my former campaign we used to do this quite a bit, and we would get notes from the DM as well. I really enjoyed it because it was easier for the others to rollplay. If the DM blurted out, "You (player 1) notice there is a path just out of sight." And then usually what will happen Player 2, or 3 or both will say that they look around some more. Now why would they do that? If they didn't notice it before how would they know to look around?

BUT

If the DM passes a note, and Player 1 is a bit of a smarta*s. They can assist with ropes or what not and then as 2 and 3 are climbing up, 1, can go up the path and meet them at the top smiling all the while.

Now this is a funny example, but it helps devious characters be devious. If everyone knows what everyone is doing/thinking then it causes problems.

Case and point

The new group I am in does not believe in notes and sidebars, and it sort of bugs me because it encourages meta gaming and other players trying to play your character by way of advice and saying, "Do this." or "Just cast this." or "Say this." That annoys me to no end.

Anyway I think you can see where I'm going with this.

 

[Anavel Gato]

Passing notes:
we do pass notes on occassion, especially if only one character made a spot check or something of the like. We had a newer player playing with us and several people passed notes and he didn't get one, he became very upset. So the next session he made a point of passing a note every time something was happening...that was maybe more annoying than funny.

Sidebars:
These happen often in my group, except we usually make send the other players someplace else.
That same new player used to hate this as well and talk about how they (the dm and other player) where plotting something against our PC's.

Splitting up the team:
This does happen on occasion. We have one player though who is I guess you could say a veteran and he refuses to let a group split up. He always says, "don't split up or that'll mean we have to split up you don't want to do that." I personally think it makes it more interesting if not a little hard on the DM...

good questions. Peace.

 

[blackshirt5]

Actually, the group is getting ready to split up(the party is, not the gaming group), and the different main PCs are going off into their own little things, with the players making NPCs for the games that aren't centered around their main character. The PCs are splitting up for 5 years(gametime), and when they get back together I shouldn't have as much of a problem with splitting the party, since they can always enlist help from their friends.

 

[Shallown]

I usually don't pass notes or have players pass notes. My players are pretty good about keeping OOC knowledge seperate. I do on occasion take a player out of the room for a discussion but only when A) the character is getting info that I think the player would get a kick out of revealing or B) when I don't want the little bit of OOC knowledge Creeping that always happens to happen.

I know OOC knowledge once learned cannot be unlearned and does affect the game but I put some of this up to be the Character's intuition / gut instinct than the player's instinct.

 

[dagger]

Heck yea, notes are nice when you have something going on the side that the other players don’t need to know.

Like last year I ran an LE mage with a group of good characters including 2 LG's. So I needed to do 'things' and not let the group in on them.

They wouldn’t have played off the info (ie meta-gamed), but no need too tempt them.

Some of us also use notes when we don’t want to interrupt the flow of play for something that is minor.

Another common note passing reason for me is when I run a paladin. I pass a note when I want to Detect Evil, that way, the party does not know the result of the detect, unless I tell them.

Or detect magic from a wizard (if he wants the info for himself for whatever reason)

Or the party rogue, trying to take a small cut from a chest...


Who knows, there are many reason too pass a note.


Also, we still use common sense on the note passing thing, for example: Let's say the note says "I whisper to the guard that I will give him 50 GP if he will let us go."

The DM might give the party members (or other NPC's) a Listen or Read Lips check depending on the situation.

 

[Gothmog]

Passing notes: Yep, I do this all the time when I DM (probably 6-10 times per session). For example, sometimes a character will ask a question about his surroundings only he would would have knowledge of (like a Spot or Sense Motive check). Rather than blurt it out at the table and risk tons of meta-game comments from other players, I pass the player a note. This is especially fun to do when I (the DM) roll the check and pass the character a note- the other players start getting nervous. We also have a house rule that the other players can't ask the player about note he just recieved- for all they know, nothing happened. The joys of being an evil DM.

Sidebars: Yep, do this frequently too (maybe 3-4 times per session, never more than 5-10 min each time). Usually this is done when one character is off by himself, or has an experience no other character would (dream, holy visions, etc). Again, other players are not allowed to ask about what happened, although the PC can volunteer info.

Splitting the Party: I very rarely intentionally do this (maybe only 5 times in the last 90-100 adventures I have run IMC), and the players avoid doing this like the plague- because they know that if any enemies are watching them, this would be the perfect time to catch them with their guard down.

Maybe my group is unusual, but when we pass notes or do sidebars, its never to screw other characters over or try to pull fast ones. Its always done for the purpose of the story, and my players (and the PCs) trust each other enough not to do this. Thats not to say that some PCs don't do illegal things other party members might not approve of, but very rarely are they careless enough to leave evidence leading back to the group as a whole.

 

[Psion]

I'll occasinally take the player aside if they have an individual experience that I think is important to veil, but try to keep it short.

I genreally don't split the party, but sometimes it happens. A lynchpin player was missing for what I had planned last Friday, so I ran a foray into the undermountain... and the party ran across a random teleporter. And actually, I sort of contradicted the text in order to minimize the impact and help get them back together.