So i'm DMIng a online campaign with several first time players and one of the story hooks I'm planning on using is having our rogue have a contact reach out for a private meeting to do a little lore dump and quest hook for the rogue. when we get to that point should I A: pull the rogue into a different discord channel and play the scene out letting them decide what information they do or do not want to share with the group keeping them all in the dark or B: have the chat in the same channel and explain to the other players that while they might know what's going on their characters would not.
It is a CoS campaign and the rogues contact is more of a side quest than anything major.
When I’ve run in person scenes like this, I’ve been known to pull the player into another room. It’s extra fun when I tell them “bring dice” the whole table gets nervous. But when I do, I make sure to keep it quick, no more than a couple minutes. But that’s only for really important stuff, or if I’m feeling dramatic. Most of the time, I just trust the players to go along with it, and act like their characters don’t know.
Over discord, it will really depend on the group. Will you be able to get their attention again easily if you step out of the channel and back in?
When I’ve run in person scenes like this, I’ve been known to pull the player into another room. It’s extra fun when I tell them “bring dice” the whole table gets nervous. But when I do, I make sure to keep it quick, no more than a couple minutes. But that’s only for really important stuff, or if I’m feeling dramatic. Most of the time, I just trust the players to go along with it, and act like their characters don’t know.
Over discord, it will really depend on the group. Will you be able to get their attention again easily if you step out of the channel and back in?
We did this on occasion when we played AD&D years ago, pulling a single player aside in another room it was quite fun for the rest of the group to wonder what was going on
But now I think it would be absolutely fine to just run it for the whole group and just remind the others that their characters don’t know this info. My DM has run it this way and it’s worked out fine. But we are all adults with experience.
Whenever the rogue scouts ahead, do you pull the player into a different room to play out the scouting? Or when a character is rendered unconscious, are they told to leave the table and sit in the unconscious room until revived? Does the party ever separate, requiring you as a DM to furnish the players with an AirBnB with enough rooms so that each player can play through their scene with you on their own?
This is the same thing.
Compartmentalized elements of play do have their place, but I wouldn't use the group's collective game time to resolve or play out side issues with the rest of the group left in suspense. When I was a lot younger I thought it would be a cool gimmick and tried it out in a situation with the characters captured, but when the player and I returned, the group's attention was now on some conversation not at all engaged with the game and so GM cat herding had to take place, and it was my fault. Nowadays I'm much more considerate of everyone else's time investment (are players going to want to keep showing up at your game if they know they're going to have this sort of idle time). Basically, if the situation can't be worked out or played through outside the group session or handled through a quick delivery or exchange of notes, play it at the table.
Coincidentally, I had just played a game where, to paraphrase Robert Downey Jr., I was a dude (me, the player) who was playing a dude (the PC) pretending to be another dude (the PCs cover identity through which the other PCs were introduced). It was fun, and had a great scene where the cards were laid out, but the GM and I didn't go away in session to so my character could get his "additional agenda" or anything like that. Rather we chatted on Discord the day before starting with a "would it be cool if you're character did...." and we chatted through what info the character had that the other characters wouldn't and how to run this side agenda while respecting the other players. And the other players really dug it. If we disappeared for 15 minutes to do it, it'd have less of an effect, plus also indicate now my character knows something they don't so sort of the wrong sort of meta.
Midnightplat’s story reminded me of another trick. If you don’t have time to work it out beforehand, you can pass notes. If you know something is going to happen, like a character is going to get a message or if there’s some piece of information they would know, you can have it pre-written. If not, jot it down quickly and hand it over to the correct player. Fun side benefit, you can occasionally pass a note that says “Nothing, just messing with everyone.” Give that one to the player who meta games a lot, then when you pass a note to someone else, they’re wondering if it’s real, or a fake one. It can help keep people on their toes. Granted it’s a bit of playing mind games, but for done groups, it’s pretty fun. And this being modern times, you could text or DM a player, if you don’t want to hand write it.
It really depends on the group. Personally, I like to know what my character doesn't know because it can be fun to lean into that. Actually keeping players out of the loop prevents them from the opportunity roleplaying that they're out of the loop, if that makes sense. We've had a lot of fun playing clueless/oblivious scenes. Also, I'm just not a fan of the mind games. I'm here to play D&D, not poker. I have found that too much of the "tricking the players" metagaming distracts players from the actual game - they are trying to figure out what the DM is doing rather than what's going on in the story.
When playing online especially, it's easier to just do any player-specific roleplay outside of the normal session. Having most of the party sitting around twiddling their thumbs isn't all that fun.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'll always pull a player into a private chat for things that the others can't know. From there it's up to the player to decide to share. My players are fine with it and understand it so that they don't meta game.
It's rare that it happens. But my players understand and appreciate it. It allows the character to have control with what they want to share with the others.
There are a few different ways to handle a player’s solo mission. Each has their benefits and drawbacks, and each can be used in different circumstances. Your task, as DM, is to look at a number of factors - interest of the party, interest in the side quest, how much metagaming your players do, how much would the meta knowledge spoil long-term fun/storytelling, how long the situation might take (including how efficient the solo player is at the game), how important is the event to the campaign itself, etc. Those are all factors you must balance in the heat of the moment, and no one can really tell you the right answer.
Generally speaking, here are your options and some benefits and drawbacks to each:
1. The Breakout Session - you and the player go into your own room or private audio chat. This is the best way to protect lots of information from other players, but has the drawback of being boring for everyone else who is just twiddling their thumbs.
Personally, I only use this mechanism very rarely and only for very big things, and for things where it would be impossible not to metagame (ex. Party influencing an election in favor of candidate A; one player is doing something that would reveal candidate A is not what she seems).
By keeping its usage very rare and only for major, campaign-defining moments, this mitigates some of the boredom issues—if and when I do it, the gravity of that breakout session can captivate the other players and hold their attention with rampant speculation.
2. The Whisper/DM - a short, whispered conversation at table or a conversation via private online chats/text messages. This is great for secretly communicating rapid-fire information in a secure way. Ideally, this should be limited to something that a few quick sentences back and forth can achieve, otherwise it might become a bit tedious or unwieldy. This has true downside of not letting the solo player live out the full roleplay of their situation, so is not the best option for something that might be very important to that player.
3. The Between Session - doing the event between sessions. This is great because it does not distract from other players’ time, but has the flaw of doing things out of order. That can make it difficult for campaign critical information - things which might define a character or their actions later in that campaign. It can be very effective for things which might be important to a character, but not too important to a campaign - conversations with an NPC romance, a Warlock patron or Cleric’s deity, a personal side quest, shopping, etc. Basically ask yourself “if I say ‘okay, we can do that between sessions’ will that disrupt the narrative all that much?”
One thing you also can do - combine the between session with a whisper. Rapid fire convey the critical information that the party member might need for the session, then flesh out everything that happened around that information later.
4. Just do it at table. This can be useful if players are interested in what the person is doing solo, or it is important (but not a major spoiler warranting a breakout session), or it will be pretty quick. Problems can arise if people get bored or if you do it too often with the same player, making others feel like they are being left out.
Overall, think about your options and make gut decisions. You’ll get a few wrong, a few right, and eventually learn enough about your playgroup to get a feel for what should be used when.
Really depends on how much "private" content you are going for; Like If you are having a shortish conversation then pulling them aside is a good way to build atmosphere and do something special for the specific player(s). If it's something that doesn't require secrecy per se (Like them sneaking into a place to do a thing) then it can be entertaining for other players to listen in and watch.
Ammusingly, I had one session in I'cath where one of my players was stuck in rotten I'cath while the other players were in "perfect" I'cath and from the perspective of the one player it seemed the other players were asleep, and so he spent much of the session in a private room trying to wake up the other players, slowly suceeding while the other players kept having weird sensations or such as he shook them, slapped them, put their hand in water...
For something longer and more involved you should probably run a separate session.
Good luck with informin the players about what is happening in another room and not expect them to do something. I especially like the adventure where the players are sleeping in their individual rooms at an Inn. You tell one character he is awaken by and attacked. Then the next thing you know the other players are saying they are going to wake up and start helping. You can say that they are sleep and don't hear anything, but they just respond that they wake up to go check on them.
Sometimes it works other times it doesn't and can cause frustration for all invovled.
For an immediate game, any reasonably extended scene with one character risks boring the rest of the players, even more so if you try to do it privately. However, if you want to keep something private, a good alternative is to prepare a document (as appropriate to how you're playing the game) that you simply give to the player at the correct time.
So its mostly a "you're in a realm of dread and you're stuck here", "I want you to get the mcguffin so i can help you" sorta chat. the player wanted to have a special book that someone was chasing her for, but i stripped them off all there gear/belonging in session one. i want to tell her it's out there in the world and she can go find it and lore dump a bit about the world they are in.
So its mostly a "you're in a realm of dread and you're stuck here", "I want you to get the mcguffin so i can help you" sorta chat. the player wanted to have a special book that someone was chasing her for, but i stripped them off all there gear/belonging in session one. i want to tell her it's out there in the world and she can go find it and lore dump a bit about the world they are in.
It's almost always best to deliver lore dumps as documents, even if it's not to only one character.
So its mostly a "you're in a realm of dread and you're stuck here", "I want you to get the mcguffin so i can help you" sorta chat. the player wanted to have a special book that someone was chasing her for, but i stripped them off all there gear/belonging in session one. i want to tell her it's out there in the world and she can go find it and lore dump a bit about the world they are in.
It's almost always best to deliver lore dumps as documents, even if it's not to only one character.
Especially if it's something that you actually expect them to go back and reference at some point.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The other thing to remember is that as a DM you shouldn't focus too much on any one character. You might consider giving each character their own special sequence. Probably best to do this in a way that's fairly non-interactive (for example, when I ran Curse of Strahd I gave everyone a lore dump/side quest via a personal dream sequence) as that means you don't need to spend time interacting with the player outside of game, which is always time consuming and can be tricky to schedule.
The other thing to remember is that as a DM you shouldn't focus too much on any one character. You might consider giving each character their own special sequence. Probably best to do this in a way that's fairly non-interactive (for example, when I ran Curse of Strahd I gave everyone a lore dump/side quest via a personal dream sequence) as that means you don't need to spend time interacting with the player outside of game, which is always time consuming and can be tricky to schedule.
Yeah that is my over all goal, its a large group 8 total players and I want to give each of them a little side quest or tie in to one of the storylines in the module and want to start working in hooks for each of them over the next 2-3 session. The rogue (a shadar-kai) backstories is basically she found a mcguffin that's tied to the Raven queen and is on the run from someone that wants it so sending her after it and possible offering a hexblade patron as a reward. and several of my players are trying to do the dark and mysterious bit on their characters so thought having some of them get a little more secretive hooks might appeal. I series of dead drop letter for the rogue should work as well with less interruptions to the other players so maybe that is the best play for her.
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So i'm DMIng a online campaign with several first time players and one of the story hooks I'm planning on using is having our rogue have a contact reach out for a private meeting to do a little lore dump and quest hook for the rogue. when we get to that point should I A: pull the rogue into a different discord channel and play the scene out letting them decide what information they do or do not want to share with the group keeping them all in the dark or B: have the chat in the same channel and explain to the other players that while they might know what's going on their characters would not.
It is a CoS campaign and the rogues contact is more of a side quest than anything major.
When I’ve run in person scenes like this, I’ve been known to pull the player into another room. It’s extra fun when I tell them “bring dice” the whole table gets nervous. But when I do, I make sure to keep it quick, no more than a couple minutes. But that’s only for really important stuff, or if I’m feeling dramatic. Most of the time, I just trust the players to go along with it, and act like their characters don’t know.
Over discord, it will really depend on the group. Will you be able to get their attention again easily if you step out of the channel and back in?
We did this on occasion when we played AD&D years ago, pulling a single player aside in another room it was quite fun for the rest of the group to wonder what was going on
But now I think it would be absolutely fine to just run it for the whole group and just remind the others that their characters don’t know this info. My DM has run it this way and it’s worked out fine. But we are all adults with experience.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Whenever the rogue scouts ahead, do you pull the player into a different room to play out the scouting? Or when a character is rendered unconscious, are they told to leave the table and sit in the unconscious room until revived? Does the party ever separate, requiring you as a DM to furnish the players with an AirBnB with enough rooms so that each player can play through their scene with you on their own?
This is the same thing.
Compartmentalized elements of play do have their place, but I wouldn't use the group's collective game time to resolve or play out side issues with the rest of the group left in suspense. When I was a lot younger I thought it would be a cool gimmick and tried it out in a situation with the characters captured, but when the player and I returned, the group's attention was now on some conversation not at all engaged with the game and so GM cat herding had to take place, and it was my fault. Nowadays I'm much more considerate of everyone else's time investment (are players going to want to keep showing up at your game if they know they're going to have this sort of idle time). Basically, if the situation can't be worked out or played through outside the group session or handled through a quick delivery or exchange of notes, play it at the table.
Coincidentally, I had just played a game where, to paraphrase Robert Downey Jr., I was a dude (me, the player) who was playing a dude (the PC) pretending to be another dude (the PCs cover identity through which the other PCs were introduced). It was fun, and had a great scene where the cards were laid out, but the GM and I didn't go away in session to so my character could get his "additional agenda" or anything like that. Rather we chatted on Discord the day before starting with a "would it be cool if you're character did...." and we chatted through what info the character had that the other characters wouldn't and how to run this side agenda while respecting the other players. And the other players really dug it. If we disappeared for 15 minutes to do it, it'd have less of an effect, plus also indicate now my character knows something they don't so sort of the wrong sort of meta.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Midnightplat’s story reminded me of another trick. If you don’t have time to work it out beforehand, you can pass notes. If you know something is going to happen, like a character is going to get a message or if there’s some piece of information they would know, you can have it pre-written. If not, jot it down quickly and hand it over to the correct player.
Fun side benefit, you can occasionally pass a note that says “Nothing, just messing with everyone.” Give that one to the player who meta games a lot, then when you pass a note to someone else, they’re wondering if it’s real, or a fake one. It can help keep people on their toes. Granted it’s a bit of playing mind games, but for done groups, it’s pretty fun.
And this being modern times, you could text or DM a player, if you don’t want to hand write it.
It really depends on the group. Personally, I like to know what my character doesn't know because it can be fun to lean into that. Actually keeping players out of the loop prevents them from the opportunity roleplaying that they're out of the loop, if that makes sense. We've had a lot of fun playing clueless/oblivious scenes. Also, I'm just not a fan of the mind games. I'm here to play D&D, not poker. I have found that too much of the "tricking the players" metagaming distracts players from the actual game - they are trying to figure out what the DM is doing rather than what's going on in the story.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
When playing online especially, it's easier to just do any player-specific roleplay outside of the normal session. Having most of the party sitting around twiddling their thumbs isn't all that fun.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'll always pull a player into a private chat for things that the others can't know. From there it's up to the player to decide to share. My players are fine with it and understand it so that they don't meta game.
It's rare that it happens. But my players understand and appreciate it. It allows the character to have control with what they want to share with the others.
Which, with meta gaming, they could not do.
I would do it privately and let the player relay the information to them in whatever way they want to.
Too much private RP is going to be boring for the rest of the party. But in moderation it can be useful.
There are a few different ways to handle a player’s solo mission. Each has their benefits and drawbacks, and each can be used in different circumstances. Your task, as DM, is to look at a number of factors - interest of the party, interest in the side quest, how much metagaming your players do, how much would the meta knowledge spoil long-term fun/storytelling, how long the situation might take (including how efficient the solo player is at the game), how important is the event to the campaign itself, etc. Those are all factors you must balance in the heat of the moment, and no one can really tell you the right answer.
Generally speaking, here are your options and some benefits and drawbacks to each:
1. The Breakout Session - you and the player go into your own room or private audio chat. This is the best way to protect lots of information from other players, but has the drawback of being boring for everyone else who is just twiddling their thumbs.
Personally, I only use this mechanism very rarely and only for very big things, and for things where it would be impossible not to metagame (ex. Party influencing an election in favor of candidate A; one player is doing something that would reveal candidate A is not what she seems).
By keeping its usage very rare and only for major, campaign-defining moments, this mitigates some of the boredom issues—if and when I do it, the gravity of that breakout session can captivate the other players and hold their attention with rampant speculation.
2. The Whisper/DM - a short, whispered conversation at table or a conversation via private online chats/text messages. This is great for secretly communicating rapid-fire information in a secure way. Ideally, this should be limited to something that a few quick sentences back and forth can achieve, otherwise it might become a bit tedious or unwieldy. This has true downside of not letting the solo player live out the full roleplay of their situation, so is not the best option for something that might be very important to that player.
3. The Between Session - doing the event between sessions. This is great because it does not distract from other players’ time, but has the flaw of doing things out of order. That can make it difficult for campaign critical information - things which might define a character or their actions later in that campaign. It can be very effective for things which might be important to a character, but not too important to a campaign - conversations with an NPC romance, a Warlock patron or Cleric’s deity, a personal side quest, shopping, etc. Basically ask yourself “if I say ‘okay, we can do that between sessions’ will that disrupt the narrative all that much?”
One thing you also can do - combine the between session with a whisper. Rapid fire convey the critical information that the party member might need for the session, then flesh out everything that happened around that information later.
4. Just do it at table. This can be useful if players are interested in what the person is doing solo, or it is important (but not a major spoiler warranting a breakout session), or it will be pretty quick. Problems can arise if people get bored or if you do it too often with the same player, making others feel like they are being left out.
Overall, think about your options and make gut decisions. You’ll get a few wrong, a few right, and eventually learn enough about your playgroup to get a feel for what should be used when.
Really depends on how much "private" content you are going for; Like If you are having a shortish conversation then pulling them aside is a good way to build atmosphere and do something special for the specific player(s). If it's something that doesn't require secrecy per se (Like them sneaking into a place to do a thing) then it can be entertaining for other players to listen in and watch.
Ammusingly, I had one session in I'cath where one of my players was stuck in rotten I'cath while the other players were in "perfect" I'cath and from the perspective of the one player it seemed the other players were asleep, and so he spent much of the session in a private room trying to wake up the other players, slowly suceeding while the other players kept having weird sensations or such as he shook them, slapped them, put their hand in water...
For something longer and more involved you should probably run a separate session.
Good luck with informin the players about what is happening in another room and not expect them to do something. I especially like the adventure where the players are sleeping in their individual rooms at an Inn. You tell one character he is awaken by and attacked. Then the next thing you know the other players are saying they are going to wake up and start helping. You can say that they are sleep and don't hear anything, but they just respond that they wake up to go check on them.
Sometimes it works other times it doesn't and can cause frustration for all invovled.
For an immediate game, any reasonably extended scene with one character risks boring the rest of the players, even more so if you try to do it privately. However, if you want to keep something private, a good alternative is to prepare a document (as appropriate to how you're playing the game) that you simply give to the player at the correct time.
So its mostly a "you're in a realm of dread and you're stuck here", "I want you to get the mcguffin so i can help you" sorta chat. the player wanted to have a special book that someone was chasing her for, but i stripped them off all there gear/belonging in session one. i want to tell her it's out there in the world and she can go find it and lore dump a bit about the world they are in.
It's almost always best to deliver lore dumps as documents, even if it's not to only one character.
Especially if it's something that you actually expect them to go back and reference at some point.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The other thing to remember is that as a DM you shouldn't focus too much on any one character. You might consider giving each character their own special sequence. Probably best to do this in a way that's fairly non-interactive (for example, when I ran Curse of Strahd I gave everyone a lore dump/side quest via a personal dream sequence) as that means you don't need to spend time interacting with the player outside of game, which is always time consuming and can be tricky to schedule.
Yeah that is my over all goal, its a large group 8 total players and I want to give each of them a little side quest or tie in to one of the storylines in the module and want to start working in hooks for each of them over the next 2-3 session. The rogue (a shadar-kai) backstories is basically she found a mcguffin that's tied to the Raven queen and is on the run from someone that wants it so sending her after it and possible offering a hexblade patron as a reward. and several of my players are trying to do the dark and mysterious bit on their characters so thought having some of them get a little more secretive hooks might appeal. I series of dead drop letter for the rogue should work as well with less interruptions to the other players so maybe that is the best play for her.