Immersion/metagame are two contradictory thinking at once.
Reminded me of Orwell's doublethink. Infer what you will from the quote, you talking about acting. Rpg btw is not like acting on a script
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A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life
Reminded me of Orwell's doublethink. Infer what you will from the quote, you talking about acting. Rpg btw is not like acting on a script
Sadras
Legend
I feel about bards the way [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] feels about Paladins.
You must love the last page of most Asterix books
Here is the passage about "metagame thinking" (DMG p 15). It says nothing about knowledge of trolls:
Players get the best enjoyment when they preserve the willing suspension of disbelief. A roleplaying game’s premise is that it is an experience of fictional people in a fictional world.
Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like a character in a movie knowing he’s in a movie and acting accordingly. "This dragon must be a few levels higher than we are," a player might say. "The DM wouldn’t throw such a tough monster at us!" Or you might hear, "The read aloud text spent a lot of time on that door - let’s search it again!"
Discourage this by giving players a gentle verbal reminder: "But what do your characters think?" Or, you could curb metagame thinking by asking for Perception checks when there’s nothing to see, or setting up an encounter that is much higher level than the characters are. Just make sure to give them a way to avoid it or retreat.
Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like a character in a movie knowing he’s in a movie and acting accordingly. "This dragon must be a few levels higher than we are," a player might say. "The DM wouldn’t throw such a tough monster at us!" Or you might hear, "The read aloud text spent a lot of time on that door - let’s search it again!"
Discourage this by giving players a gentle verbal reminder: "But what do your characters think?" Or, you could curb metagame thinking by asking for Perception checks when there’s nothing to see, or setting up an encounter that is much higher level than the characters are. Just make sure to give them a way to avoid it or retreat.
A player deciding that his/her PC uses fire against a troll isn't "thinking about the game as a game". It's thinking about the ficiton - in particular, the in-fiction weakness of the troll. If the GM asks "What is your character thinking?", the answer would be "That this troll is vulnerable to fire."
(Also: a "gentle verbal reminder" is not a permission to the GM to gate player action declarations behind knowledge checks.)
And if you look at the discussion of player types, each has a "Be sure that the X doesn't . . ." followed by a list of possible player behaviours that might spoil the game for the other players. In the case of the explorer, this says "Be sure the explorer doesn't . . . se knowledge of the game world to his own advantage." The "his" here contrasts with the playing group as a whole. An "explorer" who uses knowledge of trolls' vulnerabilities to beat a troll isn't engaging in disruptive behaviour to his (purely personal) advantage.
I'm not sure how you envisage this working.
It's pretty clear in 4e who has authority over what aspects of the fiction. There can be borderline cases - if a player writes up some backstory which includes the introduction of some NPCs into the fiction, and then one of these backstory NPCs is introduced into play by the GM, who has authority over that NPC - player or GM? In practice my view is that it's wise for the GM to (at least) take the players' opinion seriously, rather than just run roughshod over some player-authored backstory.
But that's not what's going on in your case, where - at least as I take it - the BBEG is a NPC who has been introduced into the fiction by the GM, not the player.
If a player declares, I use to know Z and Z's secret plan is such-and-such, and Z is a NPC known by the table to be under the GM's control - which is what I take it you are positing when you refer to a BBEG - then the GM is free to just ignore this. Because the player has no authority to tell the GM how to play a GM-controlled NPC. If Z is a NPC who was introduced into the fiction by the GM, then the GM is also entitled to deny the player's posited connection between the PC and Z, although whether that would be good or bad GMing will depend almost completely on context. And obviously a GM might accept the player's stipulation as stating a truth about the PC's beliefs - eg by deciding that Z changed his/her mind, or lied to and manipulated his/her childhood friend.
Likewise, the fact that a player knows about trolls and fires, and plays his/her PC as having the same knowledge, doesn't have any implications for what monsters the GM can use. Eg the GM is free to use fire-immune trolls if s/he wants. But this doesn't stop a player establishing what his/her PC believes about trolls.
4e is a tightly-designed game. It doesn't assume that (1) the GM will use puzzles to which (2) the players know the answers but which (3) the players must pretend they don't know in the play of the game. Because that - to be frank - is terrible design!
Using fire to attack a troll is not an action that a character would have no knowledge of. Heck, the class table in the AD&D PHB even lists whether or not each class can use flaming oil (all can except monks).
I'm telling you how the game was actually played, in the skilled play paradigm, at the time Gygax was writing his rules. It was taken for granted that players improved their knowledge of the game over time. That was an aspect of what skilled play meant. In that respect, it was a form of wargaming.
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], upthread, following the logic of your (that is, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s) preferences, said that it woudl be good roleplaying to let your PC be killed by a troll rather than rely on your knowledge that a troll is vulnerable to fire. That's the opposite of skilled play as Gygax describes it. Playing the game your and Lanefan's way will not mean that the PCs of more experienced players are more successful as adventurers, because - if the game is played your and Lanefan's way - then an experienced player will deliberately not draw upon his/her experience in playing his/her PC.
What you and Lanefan are advocating is an approach to play that I would say had its first express system support in RuenQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery, in the late 70s. No doubt people were playing D&D that way in that time also, but in doing so they were disregarding Gygax's advice, not following it.
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jonesy
A Wicked Kendragon
I'm not sure why you aren't sure how I envisage this working. It's called talking. The player talks to the DM, and together they determine whether a certain, shall we say fine print, in a characters backstory is set up, and whether that works for the story in question. There's no 'roughshod' implied, and taking something seriously doesn't mean it has to be agreed with or accepted into the gameworld, if there is a clear disagreement with what the player wants to inject into the world and the world itself as setup by the DM.
I was using an extreme example of a backstory fine print to try and illustrate why it's alway good for DM to go through the character backstories (together with the players) to ensure that everyone is on same page as to what kind of a world they are playing in.
A player writing in advance knowledge of enemy weakness into a characters backstory is fine if such a thing works within the particular world, but what if the world in question has no such knowledge? What if in this particular world knowledge of the weaknesses of trolls is secret, because no trolls have been seen or heard for hundreds or thousands of years? Where did the knowledge come from in such a case?
Understand that I'm not saying that the player categorically can't do such a thing. I'm saying it needs be discussed with the DM.
This part I can't parse at all. I honestly don't know what you're saying here. The sentence structure is confusing.
Aldarc
Legend
So who gets to determine what "actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of"? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a town? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge of basic math? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a troll's weakness?
If the answer is 'yes,' then we are indeed engaging the sort of degenerate play that leads to Mother-May-I scenarios, because I am passively participating in a game where my character's knowledge and experiences requires permission from the DM. My own character's head space and history becomes a Schrödinger's Box of knowledge. Is knowledge of a troll's weakness there or not? My character's cognitive capacity is being determined entirely by the capricious dispensations of the DM. At this point, I would indeed be better off just letting the DM roleplay my character in my stead.
I personally think that there is a difference of categories between a player operating their PC with knowledge about what's behind Door #1 vs. Door #2 and a player who believes that it's reasonable that their player character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire. If you genuinely believe that your character is ignorant of a troll's vulnerablities then you are certainly free to roleplay your player character with ignorance (and die, as per Lanefan) while other players roleplay their characters with cognizance.
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Sadras
Legend
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Aldarc
Legend
But the point is that you can method roleplay that your characters are cognizant of troll vulnerabilities. The idea that they must method roleplay from a (DM) predetermined position of ignorance or be accused of "cheating" is the point of contention.
Imagine that we were students in a college course and the class professor presumed that we should all be ignorant about a subject matter, no matter how obscure that they may regard it, and they subsequently penalized us for having and exercising prior knowledge of the material. Why should my choices be restricted to going through the motions of feigning ignorance (largely for the sake of the professor's ego) or be penalized for having acquired prior knowledge in my experiences? And yet this is the scenario that we are facing.
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This part I can't parse at all. I honestly don't know what you're saying here. The sentence structure is confusing.
It means 4e does not assume orwellian doublethink
No, but I do think they are related skills. Acting, improve, and even writing are similar to what I consider good roleplaying. They all require you to get "into the mind" of someone else. To make actions and statements seem natural even when they are not natural to you.
I, the player, am always aware that an RPG is just a game and that nothing that happens in that game really matters. But if I were to have my character act with knowledge that they were not real and the whole world was fiction, well I don't think that it would end up much fun for anyone.
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