Passing notes at the table

[Kid Charlemagne]

I like notes, because although my players can seperate player vs character knowledge, sometimes the "big reveal" is more fun when it happens in a certain manner, and notes allow you to control that manner. I personally prefer not to know what my character does not know until my character learns of it.

 

[Desdichado]

D and D is described in the DMG as a cooperative role playing game, thus it is seen as so. There are systems where adversarial play is the game but d and d is not it. Groups in movie may not get along all the time, but usually they accomplish their goals as a team. If there is going to be the "betrayer" character it will be an NPC as opposed to being one of the PCs.

And what I'm describing is not otherwise. The players cooperate to create the story; just because they cooperate doesn't mean that their characters always should.

Look, I understand the idea of a cooperative game. I'm just saying that there's nothing inherent in the game that fosters that. Also, I've never necessarily held that view; even my junior high days seemed to be all about character vs. character duels, moreso than cooperative party play.

What I'm expressing surprise about is that so many people immediately dismiss the idea of any type of "inter-party conflict" as a bad thing. Or as you say; the only "betrayers" can be NPCs. WTF? Of course that's not true. All kinds of people play games that put the lie to that statement every week.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm just saying that there's nothing inherent in the game that fosters that.

I don't agree with you here. D&D does foster a certain type of play, as we discussed above, which I would call co-operative. By co-operative I don't mean perfect unity. In a co-operative game there can still be arguments about priorities, methods and whether or not to kill gnoll children but there would not be attempts to actively harm or steal from the other PCs and most of the time they work together for the common interest.

We can't say that D&D as written makes no assumptions about whether one of the PCs will side with the orcs or stick with the party. The default is four PCs versus a dungeon, not three PCs versus one PC and a dungeon. Yes you can run the second scenario with the D&D rules, but you should not be surprised if the CRs are out of whack as a result.

There are other roleplaying games, such as Vampire and Amber, which foster a different style of play, in which PC conflict is more common.

 

[buzz]

I'm just saying that there's nothing inherent in the game that fosters that.

The CR system is based on the assumption of a four-PC party that has access to arcane magic, divine magic (healing, mostly), melee prowess, and, to a lesser extent, expertise in various core skills. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other RPG that relies on intra-party cooperation as much as D&D does. I mean, there is a reason for that section of PHB2 that advises how to balance a party that lacks one of the four key character roles. Remove any one role completely and the default mode of play gets dramatically more difficult.

Now, note the "default mode of play" in my paragraph above. Obviously, PvP style play is going to be less of an issue if you're drifting D&D away from its "core story." And regardless of this, there's no reason that PCs can't have their own spotlights and side-plots no matter what mode you're in.

I think all of this is orthogonal to the note-passing issue, though.

 

[fusangite]

I'm just saying that there's nothing inherent in the game that fosters that.

There isn't anything inherent in the game to foster this. But the game is, nevertheless, characterized by a lack of tools for managing it relative to games where the designers anticipate intraparty conflict and provide GMs with tools to make it work better.

It's like people who successfully run low-magic D&D campaigns. Sure, you can use D&D for that but there are other systems that make doing so easier than D&D does.

What I'm expressing surprise about is that so many people immediately dismiss the idea of any type of "inter-party conflict" as a bad thing. Or as you say; the only "betrayers" can be NPCs. WTF? Of course that's not true. All kinds of people play games that put the lie to that statement every week.

Agreed. But it sounds like quite a few people on this thread have had bad experiences where they were unable to communicate their co-operative party social contract to a player or two and everybody's fun got ruined. But I agree with you that nobody should be accusing you of wrongbadfun.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's like people who successfully run low-magic D&D campaigns. Sure, you can use D&D for that but there are other systems that make doing so easier than D&D does.

I don't think that is difficult at all.

RC