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

[pemerton]

You're thinking of it from the perspective a book that's already completed, and the players are reading it. They don't know what's to come, but the DM is the author, so he knows. But I think that an RPG is more like a book that's still being written rather than a book that's still being read.

Well, clearly an RPG can be more like a book that's still being read. A lot of RPGing seems to take this form, as best I can tell.

But I agree with you that RPGing is better when it is approached through the lens of group authorship as much as group audience. I think that brings out what is strong in RPGing (the collective creation) while reducing the impact of what is weak in RPGing (producing stories that are objectively good for a critical audience tends to require skilled authorship and skilled editing, whereas RPGing tends to be by amateurs, and the format doesn't provide for much editing).

This is a point that I, and some other posters, have been making for a long time.

 

[pemerton]

Do you disagree that "there is no statement of any universal metagame ban"?

I think it is strongly implied by the whole playing within the limits of your character.

Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that there is a universal metagame ban and that players are told to cooperate so as to make the game work? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, a lot of this may happen at character generation. This may apply to many games, and 5E as presented does expect for a background to be selected when the character is created. But, there's no reason you can't let's say allow a player to delay the choice and then select his background at some point during play. This would allow for our spontaneous noble example. Or some other twist depending on how it's deployed. The advantage of this method is that the DM would perhaps be at least somewhat prepared because he'd be expecting a choice of some sort.

And the player would also be aware of the choice and could play to it if desired.

Maybe. Depends on the game and what happens. Maybe it's a tragedy like Oedipus. The character starts out with a lot, and falls. Blades in the Dark pretty much assumes that the characters are doomed and it's just a matter of time until they're either killed by another faction or forced into retirement due to trauma.

Never played it, but I hear Call of Cthulhu has a similar inevitability to it.

Mine don't, so this is a bit surprising to me, yeah. Do you DM for kids? I could see this being an issue with younger players or newer players, but I always got the impression you're playing with a long standing group, so I'd be surprised by that kind of thing, absolutely.

And because it's a long-standing group I know exactly what I have: one player in particular who will push for any in-fiction advantage he can get (though at times they all will to some extent); and other players who will be resentful should this squeaky-wheeling get someone any extra grease.

My means of shutting some of this down is to make backgrounds (other than the most basic ones) random.

The author may or may not know something like that all along. You're thinking of it from the perspective a book that's already completed, and the players are reading it. They don't know what's to come, but the DM is the author, so he knows. But I think that an RPG is more like a book that's still being written rather than a book that's still being read.

Even when a book's still being written the author almost certainly has some clue as to what makes each significant character tick and a bare-bones idea about its background. As Aragorn has come up as an example I'll use him: at what point did JRRT decide Aragorn would be a hidden king? (my guess is it came pretty early on, before pen was seriously put to paper)

There's no reason that something like this can't come up during play. Now, my advocacy for this is not a blanket statement that anything can be decided at any time. I think if a player wanted to try and introduce something like this spontaneously, then he and the DM need to look at what's been established, and figure out how it could be so. There may be a case where it's not possible based on what's been established. I'm not saying that this kind of thing needs to always be approved.

The sense I'm getting from some in here is that yes, it always has to be approved if the system allows it.

It's more that when others say it can't be done, I like to ask "why not?"

As do I, but on this issue I answered the 'why not?' question about 35 years ago.

No, but it's not surprising to hear you say that!

I personally don't mind them that much. I'd prefer to avoid them where possible, but it's impossible not to have some come up. Usually, they're my own fault. I've learned to accept it, and the best thing to do is not actually retcon something, but to just correct it. Just acknowledge the error and then move on rather than try to explain how the error wasn't actually an error.

But, I don't think that retcons are as necessary to make things like the spontaneous noble work. Because when this is revealed, you immediately think of the questions relating to "how could this be so?"

How could this be so is only one of the questions that will arise, however, and probably the easiest to answer.

Much harder if not impossible to answer is the question "What would have happened differently in the fiction had this been known all along, at least by that PC's player and the DM?"; and that's always the very first question that leaps to my mind. And the problem is that if anything would or even might have happened differently in the fiction then what actually did happen has just been rendered invalid, along with everything since that might have been affected by this initial difference (an in-fiction butterfly effect, as it were). Put another way, it retroactively causes those sessions to have been largely a waste of everyone's time at the table; wich I think we can all agree is hardly a desirable outcome.

(side note: this is also why allowing PCs access to any sort of controllable time travel is a Bad Idea; I learned this one the hard way a few campaigns back)

How can you not do anything with it? It's something that kind of needs to be addressed, no?

Yes, by informing the player that it's far too late to be making a past-fiction-altering decision like that. However, if one must insist on allowing it, then...

Let's imagine an alternate world where this came up in one of your games and you decide to go with it....I don't think you're as clueless about how to deal with it as you seem to claim. You ask questions.
- Why was this not revealed till now? Seems like maybe there would be an interesting answer there.
- Why didn't the nobles of the last city we visited recognize the character? Possibly a mundane reason like they've never met, or perhaps just a case of context, or maybe the character was disguised. Or maybe there's another interesting answer here....maybe it involves magic, or a curse, or something like that.
- Why not let the other PCs know before now? Come up with a reason that works.

All of these can be done provided a) the answer to a preceding question "WHY is this being revealed now?" passes muster (e.g. it's not being done just to gain some immediate advantage either in the fiction or at the table) and b) there's no obvious place where knowledge of this by either the PC's player or DM would or could have had any impact on what has gone before in the played fiction.

Get past those - which ain't easy - and yes, then we're into exactly the questions you ask here. But it's point b) where most such things will run aground, unless the campaign has only just started.

No retcons are necessary. this is simply new information that doesn't actually contradict the past.

Do you see how this kind of thing may excite players or GMs?

As a GM it sure wouldn't excite me if I didn't know about it ahead of time as now I have to stop and think about any point b) headaches this is going to cause.

As a player the excitement comes from having made the decision back at char-gen and then roleplaying keeping it secret (I've done this numerous times - played a character with some hidden but very significant thing to it e.g. a hidden class); but the GM would always be in on it. There'd be no excitement in just coming up with it on the spur of the moment and dropping it in like a bombshell - unless my goal is to be an asshat and disrupt things.

But what's the difference? At the table I mean. You're not sitting there actually counting out the minutes and then at minute ten the players say "we've waited long enough". You just say "the hour passes, and the scout doesn't return. What do you do?" Boom. Get to the fun.

Sure (other than potential interruptons e.g. wandering monsters), that's how it'd go - with one exception: I'd first ask if they do anything while she's gone other than just wait. For all I know they might want to send another scout off in a different direction... If nothing, then I'd say OK, the hour's up and she's not come back - what now?

(side story: I'm reminded of a party I once played in that had serious - and justified - trust issues: four (!) hidden assassins, all operating independently, in a party of seven. We sent out a scout to check a castle they were supposed to be infiltrating; then another PC* stealthily followed the first scout to make sure she didn't turn us in, then another followed the follower (same reason), and a fourth followed the lot (I think hoping to knock off one of the other three). So, four characters - all assassins - out sneaking around while the remaining three waited behind...for a few minutes, until they decided to go around, knock on the castle's front door, and warn the occupants of the approaching sneaks before hightailing it to the woods never to be seen again. End of party.....)

* - I think this one was my PC; it was 30 years ago and my memory's a bit fuzzy. Either that or I was the third sneak.

What? The players absolutely know.

My position is that they shouldn't, and that their knowledge would thus equal that of their PCs.

And if they do know, it's still on them to play as if they don't.

And the characters know that she didn't return......so I don't think it would be at all odd that they'd want to try and see what happened to her. Again, the players are concerned, and the characters would likewise be concerned.....so there's really no metagaming going on. Sure, if we want to really examine it, the players may be thinking of revenge while the characters are thinking of finding out what happened and hopefully helping their friend....but ultimately it's all leading to the same thing: moving forward.

Why would you not let them find this out? Why would a DM ever steer the game away from such a potentially dramatic moment?

I'm really not getting your point at all here.

Quite a bit of the drama is in the not knowing, and in the steps taken to try to find out, and in the possible consequences of so doing.

 

[Lanefan]

My comment really was intended as rhetorical humour. But given you've offered a literal reply: why would one expect any given party of characters to be a representative sample of the gameworld society as a whole? Society as a whole, in the typical fantasy game, is farmers and pastoralists. But in my experience very few players player farmers or herders.

Eg if 1 in 5 PCs is a MU, that's a much higher ratio than in the population as a whole, where far fewer than 1 in 5 people is a MU. Why is that acceptable, but a similar ratio for nobles not?

Because the party is, by convention, made up of adventuring characters who are usually a minority within the overall population. And so when we look at the MU-to-fighter ratio we're only looking within the adventuring subest of the overall population.

When looking at backgrounds, however, the entire population comes into it as an adventurer can come from any background - farmer, miner, merchant, orphan, knight, jeweller, sailor, pirate, slave, and hundreds of others of which one uncommon one is nobility.

Within any given party, of course there's perhaps going to be some wild skewing of all of these ratios - maybe this time the players decided to take an all-thief party into the field and all of them happen to come from a merchanting background, and to top it off they all chose Part-Orc for their race. But over the long to very long term over many characters things should in theory move toward a representative average.

Lan-"the character who recently became my longest-serving out of all of 'em has as her previous profession: herder"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that there is a universal metagame ban and that players are told to cooperate so as to make the game work? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!

Yes, which is why I don't insist on player and-or PC co-operation within the fiction.

Sometimes it'll happen, sometimes it won't, but I don't enforce it until-unless disputes leave the fiction and move out of character.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that there is a universal metagame ban and that players are told to cooperate so as to make the game work? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!

No it isn't. You are once again building a straw man here. That isn't meta gaming at all. I don't think Maxperson has been advocating against people discussing the game during play (or rulings the GM makes). He is talking about players using out of character knowledge to inform their actions in play. A ban on that kind of meta gaming is in no way contradictory with what the text advises.

Here is the wikipedia definition:

Metagaming is a term used in role-playing games, which describes a player's use of real-life knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character's actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances. This can refer to plot information in the game such as secrets or events occurring away from the character, as well as facets of the game's mechanics such as abstract statistics or the precise limits of abilities. Metagaming is an example of "breaking character", as the character is making decisions based on information they couldn't know and thus would not make in reality.

 

[Numidius]

Even when a book's still being written the author almost certainly has some clue as to what makes each significant character tick and a bare-bones idea about its background. As Aragorn has come up as an example I'll use him: at what point did JRRT decide Aragorn would be a hidden king? (my guess is it came pretty early on, before pen was seriously put to paper)

-----

Quite a bit of the drama is in the not knowing, and in the steps taken to try to find out, and in the possible consequences of so doing.

A better analogy is serialized fiction. Conan by Howard, or the X-men by Claremont, are the first that come to mind.

---

Instead of drama, I would call it suspance, anticipation, taking risks, trepidation for the unknown.

 

[dragoner]

No it isn't.

Yes, by your own source, it is metagaming:

In role-playing games, metagaming is a term often used to describe players' use of assumed characteristics of the game. In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to but the character should not. For example, tricking Medusa to stare at a mirror when the character has never heard of Medusa and would not be aware of her petrifying stare.

For instance, a player might adjust his character's actions if the player has some foreknowledge of the long-term intentions of the gamemaster, or, more commonly, the gamemaster's tendency to have (or lack) mercy on players whose characters do things that would cause them to fail at their objectives. A player changing how they play the game based on their knowledge of the gamemaster would be metagaming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming#Role-playing_games

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, by your own source, it is metagaming:

In role-playing games, metagaming is a term often used to describe players' use of assumed characteristics of the game. In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to but the character should not. For example, tricking Medusa to stare at a mirror when the character has never heard of Medusa and would not be aware of her petrifying stare.

For instance, a player might adjust his character's actions if the player has some foreknowledge of the long-term intentions of the gamemaster, or, more commonly, the gamemaster's tendency to have (or lack) mercy on players whose characters do things that would cause them to fail at their objectives. A player changing how they play the game based on their knowledge of the gamemaster would be metagaming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming#Role-playing_games

That is not the wikipedia page i quoted. I was quoting this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_(role-playing_games)

But even so, I think that still isn't really the case. I mean they are clearly talking about things like the player taking the left passage because he knows the GM always puts traps in the right passageway. They are not talking about talking about rules disputes, giving the GM feedback, etc. To me it is just pretty obvious things are being projected onto that Runequest that don't really apply.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Just a quick bit of play that happened my last 5e session:

One of the characters has entered into the pit-fighting arena to earn a bit of money and fame, and because he's a dwarven battle-rager. Over the past few sessions, he's made a small name for himself in the amateur leagues, having won a district amateur championship tourney. He's also spent his winnings buying up minor magical enhancements to his armor, so that now it smokes on command and the eyes of his helmet glow red. Nifty effect, been fun so far, and the player is, obviously, loving this downtime sideline for his character. The character had just been invited to the pro-circuit as an opening act (ie, undercard), and the character hopes to earn a spot at the top of the card. Really, at this point, this is the WWE of pit-fighting, with characters and everything. It's been a hoot.

So, then, last session, another character tried to improve his status with one of the city Factions (this is a Sigil based game), the Fraternity of Order, but was stymied by a previous association with the Xaosects (imagine trying to get in good with the DA while having a record with some radical terrorists and you won't be far off). Some rolls were failed, so the Fraternity wasn't very friendly and set a task of bringing a notorious criminal to justice. Some more investigation, and the party heads off to apprehend a foul murderer hiding in the Hive (very bad neighborhood) with his gang.

Things go very, very, badly for the party. On them, they split up and ran all over the place, alerting the entire gang almost at once while being unable to provide support. Sigh. But, one of the things that the gang had was a pro-level pit-fighter named Maul, known for his, wait for it, use of a maul. Hey, I'm not winning awards, here. So, as soon as he was woken up by the commotion, and after hearing the barbarian character's warcry he's popularized with his pit-fighting persona ("TIME FOR HUGS!!!" -- he wears spiked armor, so...), Maul ran out and issued a challenge. Well, the barbarian failed to overcome Maul (he was already beat up by a group of thugs), and the entire party also went down with him (he was already the last one standing, did I mention they split up going four separate ways?).

Enter one of my few houserules of this game -- your character can only die if you say so. No one said so, so the second half of that comes in which is "I get to do something bad to you in exchange." So, what I did to the barbarian player was to have Maul take the barbarian's magical greataxe, which will now be used in the pit as a prop. The barbarian's player is over-the-moon about this. Sure, he's lost a nice magic item, and his character's reputation has suffered a bad blow (and also he was generally robbed by the gang), but he now has a full up WWE style nemesis. I've actually never once had a player so damn happy he lost a fight (and gear, and rep). This outcome alone has made this experimental houserule worth it's metaphorical weight in gold.

The other characters have similar bad things -- the ex-Illithid-thrall will be finding out he volunteered to become a thrall (I don't know why, but that's something the player will really chew on), the Grave cleric has become haunted, and the Warforged rogue has... met his maker.

And the amount of this planned before the game? None. Well, I had a few good city-slums maps and it was a simple matter to build up a criminal gang from stock NPCs (some bandits, some thugs, an assassin for the murder, a few scouts for lookouts, and a gladiator for the, well, gladiator). I let the players lead with ideas and used checks to determine outcomes. I did set DCs, but I have a handly, public chart for DCs for dealing with NPCs of various dispositions, and the player looking to get in with the Fraternity knew they were unfriendly (due to the outcome of a failed roll to improve relations with the Xaosects leading to a bender and a vague recollection that something went very badly wrong), so he knew going in it would be a uphill battle.

So, for me, I've tried to use say yes or roll the dice a bit (it's still 5e, so it will fight you if you go too far with this) for the player's downtime* goals. I'm also using fail-forward techniques to generate new circumstances. Another example for this was the barbarian's attempt to find out more about his out-of-the-ring nemesis, the man(?) who had his clan and his mentor slaughtered. I introduced a complication in a previous mission (the party recovers things as a means of making money) as being caused by his nemesis, so he was looking for him. Three checks were made, two failed, so I introduced that the nemesis was no longer in Sigil, that people were scared of crossing him, and that the nemesis was looking for information about an artifact that the party was also tracking. None of this was anything the player really wanted to hear, but it was useful information nonetheless.

/ramble



*I'm using a downtime phase of 1 game week with a few very broad activities that I have some general rules for adjudication, in this case the player attempted to Improve Relations with a faction, which is set of three checks depending on what's being specifically attempted. There's results for failing none, one, or two or more checks (essentially, you get everything you wanted, you get some of what you wanted but at a cost, and things don't go your way and you've made it worse). I'm trying sets of three checks for things to generate a more granular outcome than a single pass/fail check.