A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

Sadras said:

Practically (in play) after the first round of attacks and only after some have hit (this is important), the DM could/should give the players a chance to roll an Intelligence check to figure out something with regards to the beast's vulnerability or they could just Say Yes and provide the information since the gotcha moment of the puzzle has been passed.

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So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?

I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.

pemerton said:

If you know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but are pretending that your PC does not, when does it become natural to try fire? Players who are actually ignorant of the trolls' vulnerability, but whose PCs are engaged in combat with trolls, will try various stuff to try and beat the trolls - including, pehaps, fire.

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Yup, which is why I stated:

sd_jasper said:

Well, assuming I am running a game where (1) there are trolls, (2) trolls and their weaknesses are not common knowledge to whatever civilization that the PCs are part of, and (3) the party hasn't previously run into trolls and learned all about them, then...

First, any PCs with the appropriate skill can roll to see if the recognize the troll. If they roll well, then I tell them they know what they are dealing with, what the weaknesses are, etc.

If they fail the skill roll, then I let them know they see "Large green humanoids" that they cannot identify. It is up to the PCs what happens next. I rarely ambush my players, so there is a good chance that if they are running into a new monster, they will have options to avoid or retreat. Maybe they decide to go back to town and research it. But, assuming they have somehow got themselves into a combat situation, then after a few rounds it will be clear that the creature they are battling has incredible regenerative capabilities. What happens then, again depends on the players. I would probably allow the players to say that they try to burn it, because trying fire is a pretty common thing no matter what the actual weakness might be. Or I might give a simple intelligence or perception check, that could give them some clue ("You notice that the creature is shying away from your torch even when it attacks"). Or they might just run away (again to try and research).

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pemerton said:

If you already know the puzzle, how do you work this out? Actors who portray characters solving puzzles to which the actors already know the answer are following a script, and contrive their response. But how is a player in a RPG supposed to do this?

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You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?

sd_jasper said:

Yup, which is why I stated:

You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?

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But what player can say that they know the entirety of their character’s knowledge? That’s the issue.

pemerton said:

So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?

I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.

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Some people enjoy the rolls and enjoy seeing how that leads to things playing out. this isn't what I generally like but I've played with enough people who like it to see that it is a real playstyle difference. I see it all the time with investigation adventures. The difference between wanting to simulate Sherlock Holmes and wanting to be in Sherlock Holmes' shoes, solving the mysteries. He interest isn't in having the player skill tested, it is in having a system that enables them to realize the character they want to create.

I think a recent eye opener for me....in the form of a game rule that reminded me things don’t have to be the way I expect them to be....was the use of Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. The game doesn’t really make a difference between actions in the present and those in the past.

Players can call for a flashback and take an action at some earlier point in the fiction. They cannot undo what’s been established, but they can introduce some past action that makes them better prepared to deal with a current threat or complication.

The more complicated the action, the higher the cost in Stress, a valuable and finite PC resource in the game.

This opens up such a new avenue of play that’s really exciting.

pemerton said:

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.​

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."

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It is thinking about the game as a game. By going outside of the character to his own knowledge of the monster books, he is treating the game as a game, rather than remaining in the game world and just using the PC's more limited knowledge of things. Then he metagames that into the PC's world with some sort of weak justification like his uncle told him about it.

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.

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No. While most of the behaviors are ones that might spoil the game for others, not all of them are. The explorer gaining advantage does not equate to spoiling the game for others. It can just as easily just be about him gaining an unfair advantage over the for himself. Similarly, the slayer rushing past social and skill encounters is about him, not the others as they don't have to rush past them.

pemerton said:

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).

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Nice Red Herring. Sure, using fire is something the character would have knowledge of. Knowing the trolls weakness to fire is not something the character is guaranteed to have knowledge of.

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.

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Skill at strategy. Skill at not forgetting to search for traps. Things like that is the skill improvement he was talking about. He very clearly said "or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of." You can try to avoid those words by hiding behind, "Well this is the way we did it back then," but I'm not going to be swayed by your personal playstyle. His words are his words, and they are very clear.

[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.

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It's utterly irrelevant if that's the opposite of "skilled play" since I corrected your very clearly in my response to you when you asked if I would let my PC die, stating in no uncertain terms that I would not and then explaining to you how I would not. I have a hard time believing that this misstatement by you is an accident. So let me be clear again. Nowhere did I say that it's good roleplay to let your PC be killed by a troll. Full stop.

Aldarc said:

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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You are trying to set this in terms of the DM always saying "yes" or "no," when the reality is that the DM will very rarely be saying "yes" or "no." Circumstances around the PC, his skills, background, etc. will all factor into whether not the PC knows, doesn't know, or might know. For example, if the PC is from the middle of the desert and has spent his whole life there, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it's pretty certain that he won't have knowledge of trolls based on his background. If he doesn't have some sort of skill or play experience that could give him knowledge of trolls, the DM should rule that he doesn't know about them. On the other hand, if the PC is from a town right next to the Troll Moors, it's going to be certain that he will know about them, regardless of what skills he might have. Unless there is crystal clear information like that, and it won't be that clear the vast majority of the time, the DM will call for a roll since the outcome is uncertain. Calling for a roll is not the DM saying "yes" or "no," so there is no "Mother May I possible." A few occasional instances of "yes" or "no" doesn't come close to rising to the level of "Mother May I."

hawkeyefan said:

Two things.

1) If a player, at the time of character generation or session 0, says that he has an adventuring uncle in whose footsteps he's following, and that he was raised hearing stories of the uncle's exploits, how would you handle that? Would you allow such a character the option to know about a monster vulnerability? Would you require a check, but lower the DC compared to another character possibly knowing it?

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So the first thing I would do upon getting that background is figure out what level the uncle is. A level 5 adventurer uncle will have far less monsters encountered and learned about than a level 15 adventurer uncle. Then I would look at the area of the world the uncle adventured in and what monsters would be commonly encountered up to his level. For those monsters, yes the PC would get a check and I would treat it similar to having a knowledge skill. The DC would be the same as someone who didn't have the background, but had the appropriate skill.

What if D&D 5E actually addressed this specifically in the rules? They don't; it's left entirely up to the DM (and/or players, depending). But let's say that Session 0 resulted in a very loose sketch of each PC. They have a their Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, and their Background, but no other details. The rest is to be filled in during the course of play.

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I ask my players for a written background so that I have an idea about their PCs. It's not all encompassing, but it gives a pretty good general idea of what they might know or not know. They can add in more details later, but only with respect to something they've put into their background. For example, they can add a limp to their uncle received by a raging owlbear later on, so long as the adventurer uncle was in the original background. They can't just keep adding in new uncles to suit their desires.

2) Do players in your game ever act with a mind to their current HP and/or other resources? I mean, does the Fighter get more cautious when his HP get lower? Does he try to save his single use abilities like Second Wind and Action Surge for when they are truly needed?

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The players know about the HPs and other resources, but the character does not. The character would be aware that he is tiring and getting bruised up, slowing him down and/or making him more sloppy, which is more likely to get him killed, but he won't know that he dropped from 30 hit points to 10. The player is the only one to know about something like second wind. A character isn't going to be able to just trigger a second wind at will. Second winds come when they come in the game world, but outside of that the player is choosing. Since metagaming is having the character act on player knowledge about something the character wouldn't know about, none of that is metagaming.

Everyone involved knows you're playing a game. It's meant to be played. Why pretend that's not happening?

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Bringing out of character knowledge into the game is where metagaming happens.

hawkeyefan said:

So when a player creates a character, they can't select something that has some kind of advantage? Like being of a noble family, so they start with more coin....that kind of thing. No one gets to do that? Because I think almost every character in my game has exactly that kind of thing going on....some kind of perk based on their background. These are baked into 5E but we also go a step or two beyond that.

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In my game players can pick any common background. If they want a chance for something better like nobility, they can roll for it and if they get lucky, they are a noble or come from a family of wealthy merchants, with all the advantages that come with that. However, if they roll, they can also end up a street urchin, which comes with less money than normal. It's up to them if they want to chance it.

This is not my point....sure, people may know they're hurt. But no one would ever rush into a fight thinking "it'll be at least 10 or 12 hits before I'm down!" But Fighters do exactly that when they have full HP.

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No they don't. The first half of hit point loss never even touches the PC at all. A 100 hit point fighter would have to be at 50 hit points before he takes even a scratch or bruise. Then it takes hitting 0 before any major wound happens, and that's all it takes for a high level fighter to potentially die. One hit. The other "hits" aren't really hits. They're close calls that the character isn't aware of as hits.

Why is it only damage control? Tommy decides his fighter is following in the footsteps of his uncle, and that he's heard all kinds of stories about monsters and dungeons. Why does it matter if Tommy decides this in session 0 or session 4?

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Because one is all about unfair advantages and the other is not. If the player waits until he is right in front of a hydra to tell me that his uncle was a hydra hunter, that's really hinky. Setting it up in advance, though, doesn't guarantee the player that it will ever be useful as the PC might not encounter a hydra. It's just a background piece that may or may not be useful. Personally, I like bringing bits of PC backgrounds into the game. I've found it makes the players happy when it happens and it's fun to surprise them with something like that.