Adventure Modules featuring Metagaming

[justanobody]

Orc and Pi?

(It had to be said.)


RC

Now go stand in the corner for 3 minutes.

 

[Tewligan]

There are hundreds of ways to use Pi in a D&D adventure and make it fit with the world and setting/time you are playing in.

"The roper hands you a tape measure, pencil, and a piece of scrap paper and demands that you tell him the area of the circular chamber - or else he'll devour you!"
"Again?! Guys, I knew we should've passed on the Tomb of Mathematics!"

 

[Korgoth]

Every single one of them ever always ever.

All role playing games require metagaming. Combat: the player makes tactical decisions. A smart or savvy character should be better than most players at this; some players will be better at it than their characters should be.

Also, you get plenty of time to make your decisions. Most people don't get that kind of time to think about how they escape from the exploding space ship, whether to "zig" or "zag" when under fully automatic fire, or to judge whether they will probably make the jump over the pit (the player knowing the exact dimensions and the character merely eyeballing it).

Also, hazard avoidance. Several tribals are trying to stab you with spears; most spear tips are painted red but one is smeared with feces. Your character might be inclined to avoid the red tips thinking those warriors elite... but you know to have your character avoid the polluted spear, because unlike your character you know about the germ theory of disease. Same reason you don't have your character drink out from poop-filled stagnant pools.

Those are just a few examples off the top of my head. All role playing games are replete with metagaming. Why? Because the character doesn't exist and is purely imaginary. So he can't think for himself, what with his not existing and all.

Yet another reason why people should embrace metagaming and challenge the players rather than the characters. The players are the ones who showed up to play. Dave exists. Tharg the barbarian doesn't exist. Dave gets to have fun. Tharg doesn't have fun because he doesn't exist. Dave is the guy I try to challenge, because unlike Tharg Dave actually exists.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Those are just a few examples off the top of my head. All role playing games are replete with metagaming. Why? Because the character doesn't exist and is purely imaginary. So he can't think for himself, what with his not existing and all.

Nooooooooooooo. My character doesn't exist? You killed my fantasy.

Yeah, giving the player something to do besides rolling dice makes perfect sense I'm with you. Its one reason I kind of like the Pendragon system. No mental stats-the character's smarts and common sense must come from the player.

 

[radferth]

I think many of you have a much more expansive view of what consitutes metagaming than I do. All of the following is very YMMV:

1) Mere use of player knowledge is not necessarily metagaming. I like to play as medieval a game as possible, but trying to eliminate every single anachronistic idea just becomes pedantic. Plus, most players see their characters as their alter-egos, not just a dramatic role they are playing. Some folks above seem to imply that anything less that total role-playing is metagaming.

2) Real-world and real-language "anachronisms" are not metagaming. They may not be desirable, but taking the position Common Tongue = English, or just using English as shorthand for common, is not metagaming per se.

3) Combat, or any other abstracted subsystem, will have a bit of metagaming by nature. (4e combat has too much for my personal taste.) Metagaming in combat only raises the red flag if the players (or DM) do things that would be tactically stupid in the world the game simulates, but take advantage of rules loopholes, e.g. carrying a bag of rats to have something to hit to activate certain powers.

Metagaming is when the players use the knowledge that they are in a game to their advantage. When they push ahead when wounded because they think the DM won't kill them. When they look up the stats of their foe to decide on tactics. When they attack an NPC based on how the DM usually presents villains. A module would be metagamey if it required the players to use these tactics. I can't think of any off the top of my head that flat out require it, but many that encourage it. Much as I love Tomb of Horrors, it definitely requires you to think in terms of "What trap would Gygax put here" in order to survive.

 

[Mark]

But roleplaying games aren't about thinking for yourself. They are about rolling a die to see if your character can successfully think, right?

 

[justanobody]

"The roper hands you a tape measure, pencil, and a piece of scrap paper and demands that you tell him the area of the circular chamber - or else he'll devour you!"
"Again?! Guys, I knew we should've passed on the Tomb of Mathematics!"

Of course, because you couldn't just have a round room where the characters need but walk form the edge of the circle to the center of the room in a straight line to illustrate an understanding of Pi.

Pi(r^2)

Or walk to the center of the room and take a 90 degre angle to either side to find an exit.

Wow a puzzle involving metagaming that even Euclid from 300 BC can solve, but a D&D PC who can summon the power of the gods with an INT rated higher than Euclid would have been cannot figure it out.

You challenged the players with something that was metagame as in not in the rules, but real world knowledge, but they can solve it with the characters by just understanding it.

Say the room had been given a passcode to tell you Pi was involved in a series of riddles where you ended up with 3.14 before entering the room.

There is so little metagame in there that it shouldn't be able to get int he way, unless you play in a world so devoid of science and simple math to not even have buildings founded on Euclidean principles where nobody would have any understanding of Pi.

HELL! Make the riddle even easier, by having the PCs find a square pie before finding the round room!

 

[Korgoth]

"The roper hands you a tape measure, pencil, and a piece of scrap paper and demands that you tell him the area of the circular chamber - or else he'll devour you!"
"Again?! Guys, I knew we should've passed on the Tomb of Mathematics!"

I'm going to have to think of how to put something like this into my Jakalla Underworld.

Except I'll have to make it tougher! My group is lousy with graduate degrees. Time to revisit the GRE, biotches!

 

[GlaziusF]

We had one of a different sort playing KOTS in 4E recently. There was a creature (Irontooth) that had an ability that didn't really come from anywhere that we could tell. The metagame approach came from the fact that, to be effective, a party had to approach the problem with meta-knowledge of video game boss "stages" to understand how to achieve victory.

That knowledge was only gained in-game by trying and failing, similar to failing at a level of Mario Bros. and realizing what needs to be done on the next run through.

The next group of characters was armed with this "knowledge" and the encounter went smoothly.

Actually every monster has one or more relevant "knowledge" checks, and if the PCs nail one of them they get an idea of what a monster's powers are.

So if Irontooth is natural, anybody nailing a Nature check knows what he does and when.