That is exactly what the scenario was, and I was not unclear it stating it. And yet, you seem believe that I was doing something that you would in fact have a problem with.
That's why when I asked I said, "I'd have to know more detail about this if I were the DM," and, "Given that my assumptions about your story are true ...".
But if you had already said you were tending fire before you even knew a troll was going to attack, I don't have a problem with it. I am less prone to be bothered by players using creatures weaknesses against them when it's unclear if their characters knew about them, anyway, because they can always say, "I heard about trolls and to use fire against them from an old guy in a tavern once."
For me it becomes a problem when a pattern emerges of a player who is always using meta-game knowledge and always looking for an angle. The water trap example was the more egregious example of meta-gaming, in my mind.
This makes it sound like you are expecting the challenges to be of a "gotcha" nature, because these "edges" aren't actually edges in any other case.
Well in a sense all "challenges" are somewhat of a "gotcha" in a certain sense, because they are challenges. They are conflicts in the narrative, that the heroes need to overcome. But they are not "gotchas" in the sense that I as a DM am trying to make the characters fail. That's not my goal as a DM at all. I am trying to tell a story along with the players. To tell a good story, you need conflict. So there are monsters, traps, dungeons, etc. I like it when they overcome the challenges. That makes for a good story. But they are playing characters in a story, so they should know what their character knows, and they shouldn't give their characters an edge based on knowledge the character wouldn't know (like what kind of trap they are about to encounter).
We've established the following A) A completely inexperienced player could come up with the same thing for their character to do; B) this is literally the first time I'd ever been in a scenario involving a campfire so there is no "normally wouldn't" that can be established; and C) this is actually what I would normally do if my character is attacked while tending a fire and the monster attacking isn't clearly going to be less affected by fire. So your claim that I am using a weakness against it in a very unlikely way is entirely without any basis in logic.
Hold on a second, you are making some big jumps in assumptions here. First we established that an inexperienced player could come up with throwing a firery log at the troll not knowing the troll's weakness, sure. But it still wouldn't be very likely they would do that. All I said is, if they did, I would know it wan't meta-gaming because, according to the scenario you presented, you said I knew, 100 percent certain, that they didn't know anything about trolls beforehand. So obviously in that case it couldn't be meta-gaming no matter what they did.
But if you did it, based on the conversation we've had so far and the way you seem to like to play, knowing that you did know a troll's weakness, I would highly suspect you chose that action because you know they have a weakness to fire. Especially if i knew you were prone to use meta-knowledge in other instances. Now in this particular case, if you had said before the troll attacked, that you were messing around with the fire, then I would let you do it and wouldn't make an issue out of it. I still think you did it precisely because you personally knew their weakness, but like I said, the troll example isn't the biggest offense of meta-knowledge to me, so I would let it go, especially if you had mentioned ahead of time you were tending the fire, messing around with the logs and whatnot.
Like I said, the water trap is a better example of something no one would just randomly do by chance just before they encountered the trap That's much more obviously getting an edge by meta-gaming.
I'm just role-playing (doing what I believe my character would do given the situation the character is in and the knowledge the character possesses).
You are trying to force me to meta-game (do something because of what I know as a player).
Where do you come up with this? No, I am nor forcing you to something because of what you know as a player. I am trying to get your character to only act according to the things he knows. If he doesn't know something, he shouldn't made decisions that would require him to know something he clearly doesn't. Would your character know there was a water trap? Not if the DM didn't tell you anything about it. Would your character know there was an old man talking to the rogue? Not if all your character saw was a person in a hood.
How do you not at least register that making me do something different because of what I know is using knowledge my character doesn't have?
Because it has to be knowledge your
character knows, not knowledge that
you personally know. How does that not register with you? It's your character that's dealing with the traps in the dungeon, not you. It's fine if you know the knowledge, as long as your character does, too. And if your character does know it, you would by default know it. For example, if you roll high enough on perception or investigation, and the DM tells you that you can tell a water trap is ahead, then both your character and you as the player know it. But what really matters is what your character knows. If you know it (because you overheard the DM tell another character who was there hours before your character), but your character doesn't know it, but you play it as though he does, then that's meta-gaming, and that's a problem. Again, how does that not register?
One example of not playing in good faith: Putting a water trap in a dungeon and insisting there is literally zero evidence that a character has that would justify precautionary casting of water breathing. "Gotcha" challenges are bad-faith play.
Well, look, that's for your DM to decide. If I were DM'ing, I there would be some kind of perception or investigation check. But you might fail it, and in that case you wouldn't know it was there. But your argument is that you somehow knew to cast water breathing even though you wouldn't know it was there. And we know you cast it (in this example) because you saw the exchange the other player's character had with the trap hours before your character got there. That's the problem.
