Passing notes at the table

[dagger]

We are mature and experience, but some notes still get passed.

 

[Jubilee]

Note passing doesn't happen very often in the groups I play in; however, a couple of the GMs and Players do far too much, imo, "let's go out of the room and have a whispered conference." I find this to be very tedious and quite boring, because all play has to stop and usually gets interrupted even longer because the people left behind inevitably revert into out of character chatter and banter, and then the jokes have to be explained to the GM and missing player when they get back.

I think if something can't be done at the table, it either shouldn't be done or should be saved for email or before/after the game time. If I can't be included in the action or info gathering for some reason, I should at least get to enjoy witnessing it!

 

[Hypersmurf]

I haven't found a lot of it in D&D, but in systemless games, the notes flow thick and fast at times

Then, of course, there was the 'evil characters' D&D PbEM, where I think there were more private posts than public posts...!

-Hyp.

 

[Ry]

We're all pretty above-board. No notes, although there's no rule against them. It's just not how we play.

 

[Agamon]

Yes, but no one ever does it.

dittoaroonski!

 

[brehobit]

I find that despite people's best intentions some level of metagaming occurs which can be easily prevented via note passing.

Exactly. I generally take people out of the room...

Plus, as a player, I find it more fun when _I_ don't know what's going on. But hey, that's me...


Mark

 

[Thunderfoot]

Not only is it allowed, if you are a rogue, that should be the ONLY way you communicate your...special (wink wink) abilities to me. Also, there is a lot of intrigue in my campaign so several players are part of secret societies and can only communicate through notes and such.

 

[Hussar]

In tabletop, I didn't see a whole lot of note passing - mostly DM to player stuff.

Using Virtual Tabletop, there is a lot more whispering going on between players and between players and DM. It doesn't tend to slow things down and it can be very helpful in maintaining a certain level of verisimilitude.

To be fair though, it's usually me making jokes to one of the other players.

 

[Desdichado]

I do not grok your lack of grokking. Perhaps because I have no more interest in books, movies, TV shows etc where there is a team of people but they don't work together or have a "plotting" level of intergroup tension than I do in a PvP rpg.

You're not interesting in books movies and TV shows with a team of people that don't have tensions between them? Do you actually read any books or watch any movies or TV shows? I don't know if I can think of any with an ensemble nature of characters that don't follow that route, because it's good drama and ultimately much more interesting.

The most basic plot of a D&D game is that a small group of people fight things together then take turns watching over the rest while they sleep in shifts. Maybe it doesn't have to be a team game, maybe you are just so over non competitiveness, but "surprised by the notion"? Can't help you there, except to say "Hobo, meet a few decades of "The Party"; a few decades of "The Party", meet Hobo, dunno how you two crazy kids managed not to run into each other."

I reject the notion that the game as a whole has a basic plot, sorry. The game is just a facilitator for whatever plots the group wants to run.

In any case, you're also misrepresenting my point; of course I grok the idea of a party of adventurers that works well together, what I don't grok is the idea that that's the only way to play the game.

Which you've actually ratcheted up even further by claiming that that's the basic plot of the game. The game itself has no plot. People's games have plots, but D&D as a whole does not.

 

[Desdichado]

Conversely, people in my groups (and this applies to more than one, including some I play in and some I DM) thoroughly enjoy watching other PCs doing stuff their characters don't know about, including things that are inimical to their PCs. For us, it's entertaining as heck to watch other PCs get into trouble, do things that'll screw the group, etc. Ofen we'll even be egging on the players to have their PCs do things that our characters would hate them to. But then, as Mallus (whose CITY game I'm in) noted above, we can separate player and character knowledge easily and do so by choice, not compulsion.

YMMV, and evidently does.

Ditto. To me, that's half the fun of the game.