Playing without the GM present?

[The Soloist]

A long time ago, in the mid-80s, our AD&D characters acquired a valley. It had a ruined castle and a small farmer community. We divided the valley into four sectors, one for each character.

One afternoon, all the players were in a coffee shop. We had just seen a movie. The GM was not present. The Fighter player started talking about his plan for a militia to protect the valley. We talked for about an hour, more or less in character, and created a set of laws that governed how the militia could cross into our sectors in case of trouble. We wrote everything down and gave it to the GM at the start of the next session.

The GM was a true poker face. He took the document and respected it. I could never tell if he was happy, upset or just jealous he wasn't there to witness this.

Did you do this? How did it go?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

This sort of thing used to happen pretty regularly IME, although I haven't seen it much in the last 25 years or so. Sometimes it was like you describe - discussing "domain" stuff in and out of character and telling the GM about it afterward. More often it was scheming about what the PCs would do in various circumstances, whether in general (eg if there's an ambush, this is our default game plan for dealing with it) or against a specific foe or situation (eg if the council of wizards refuses to negotiate, this is how our surprise attack begins). That last tended to be "secret plans" that weren't shared with the GM, which felt very adversarial even back then. Of course, sometimes that was the de facto relationship between party and GM, so it wasn't surprising that the players didn't want to put their cards on the table and have the GM metagame to ruin them.

If it really is less common these days, it's probably because there's less of that awful GM vs. players nonsense now than in the 70s and 80s, which is where I saw it most commonly.

 

[Richards]

When I first taught my kids AD&D2E (the current edition at the time) - they were 10 and 8 - we would often play through a game session, finish up, and then they'd be in their room recreating the adventure (and expanding upon it) with their Legos.

Johnathan

 

[The Soloist]

This sort of thing used to happen pretty regularly IME, although I haven't seen it much in the last 25 years or so. Sometimes it was like you describe - discussing "domain" stuff in and out of character and telling the GM about it afterward. More often it was scheming about what the PCs would do in various circumstances, whether in general (eg if there's an ambush, this is our default game plan for dealing with it) or against a specific foe or situation (eg if the council of wizards refuses to negotiate, this is how our surprise attack begins). That last tended to be "secret plans" that weren't shared with the GM, which felt very adversarial even back then. Of course, sometimes that was the de facto relationship between party and GM, so it wasn't surprising that the players didn't want to put their cards on the table and have the GM metagame to ruin them.

If it really is less common these days, it's probably because there's less of that awful GM vs. players nonsense now than in the 70s and 80s, which is where I saw it most commonly.

The only time we were truly adversarial was during a battle against invading Saracens. We were all wargamers. We pulled a few stunts the DM didn't expect because of out-of-game meetings. We effectively won the battle because of that and became heroes of the realm.

Adversarial doesn't have to be toxic.

 

[Blue]

Sure, anything that doesn't interact with the world, go ahead.

There are even memes of the DM saying "play among yourselves", it's not an unknown thing at all. I've done that when the party is split, taking one group to do something and having the other side play among themselves.

But yeah, realistic characters with relationships with others made this common in at least one of my groups back when. Great way to flesh out characters and their interactions while still leaving the session for advancing the adventure.

The internet has made this even easier. In discord I set up for a superhero game, one of the players requested a "text channel", where the characters had an in-game group text going and would chat at various times. One of my players took that for a supers game she was running, but she would occasionally also post to it as a particular mentor NPC who was also in the chat in-world so that's a bit of a subversion.

 

[rem24601]

in one of my past groups, if the characters were planning a heist or something like that, we would meet up outside of the standard game session without the GM, so we could plan things out, figuring out what each character's roles and tasks in the action would be. we learned, the hard way, that if we did that in front of the GM, he would alter his initial set up, the one we had researched extensively, so we knew what we were facing, SPECIFICALLY to thwart each character.
saying "yeah, they had been working on these upgrades to security for a while now, they decided to implement them tonight, sucks to be you."
the first time we accepted it as bad luck on our part. after that we saw it as him being an adversarial dick, who had to "win the game" at any cost.

 

[coralwave]

my players regularly do this on our Discord channel, they'd hop into the voice channel and hammer out plans, trade routes, troop allocation etc. and come to me with the whole thing planned

Personally, I love it, means they're invested and less playtime is relegated to logistics

 

[el-remmen]

I’ve had games where this happens. I wish it happened more in my current ones.

 

[John Dallman]

We learned, the hard way, that if we did that in front of the GM, he would alter his initial set up, the one we had researched extensively, so we knew what we were facing, SPECIFICALLY to thwart each character.
saying "yeah, they had been working on these upgrades to security for a while now, they decided to implement them tonight, sucks to be you."

I don't do that deliberately, but unconscious bias is a thing, so I'm happy if the players plan outside sessions, and do anything else that doesn't require GM decisions.

Giving feedback on player's plans before they start to implement them is tricky. I'll happily remind them of things the characters can perceive, or could not fail to be aware of, but if they wilfully ignore things they know, that's up to them. I treasure the memory of the occasion the plan was so ludicrous that I couldn't help giving feedback by lying on the floor laughing. They were mettled by this, and made the plan work.

 

[MNblockhead]

I would love it if that happened with my players. But we are all busy with jobs and family. I have some players who are interested in having e-mail back and forth with me regarding downtime activities etc. But generally they are only engaging with the game when we are playing it. In the OPs example, I would especially appreciate the players getting together outside of game to do that planning, rather than taking up live game time on it. I mean, how long was that conversation in the coffee shop? How fun would it have been to spend the same amount of time having that conversation in a 4-6 hour game session?

But I also wouldn't mind if during a session, the players discussed tactics for an upcoming battle outside of my hearing (within reasonable time limits). In game, they generally do their planning and discussion on the main discord channel. They could go into a private channel without me, but I guess it doesn't feel worth the hassle and perhaps they feel it breaks the sense of playing together. But I wouldn't mind if they did. I like a bit of "friendly adversarial" play. I don't think of it as me versus them, but I'm running the antagonists. The antagonists want to win and I will try to run them that way, in accordance with their abilities, personalities, etc.

If the players planned outside my hearing, I think it would benefit me in two ways.

(1) It makes it easier for me to play hard but fair. There have been times where I haven't had the enemies take certain actions just because it seemed to much like I was metagaming. If the players knew I had NO idea what their plan was, yet the NPCs do something that effectively thwarts their plan, that no becomes an interesting complication rather than feeling like the DM is metagaming.

(2) I enjoy a surprise. If the players come up with some clever way to address a threat, I love it, even if it negates what would otherwise have been a difficult encounter, puzzle, or other complication. Hearing them talk about their plans can be fun when they come up with cool ideas, but it isn't the same as being surprised or caught of guard with a clever plan.

The DM is a player as well. Not just a processing engine for the game system. I think a bit of friendly adversarial play and fire-walling between GM and players makes me feel more like a player in the game.