D&D 5E How to deal with Metagaming as a player?

[Imaculata]

The thing that bothers me, is that Max keeps saying that 'thinking about the game as a game' is a bad thing, or worse yet, that it is cheating. Not only do I disagree, but I don't even see why it would be a bad thing at all.

If I decide for example, to have my warrior not use his power attack*, because I as a player suspect the monster has a high AC... why would this be bad? Because Max seems to suggest that this would be bad. His definition is all over the place, and he seems reluctant to go into detail about it. But I honestly would like to know. Would this be bad, and if so, why?

(* The Power Attack feat in 3rd edition, means you take a penalty on your attack bonus, but an equal bonus to your damage. Feel free to replace this with any 5th edition equivalent situation for the sake of argument.)

 

[Hussar]

Holy Crap. I actually just read the entire thread. It was a slow day.

It seems to me that a lot of this issue is very similar to alignment wanks that people have. And the primary issue always boils down to the same thing, the DM telling a player, "No, your character wouldn't do that".

As a DM, you have to be very, very careful with that sort of thing. Players are VERY possessive of their characters. After all, that's the only thing that they can claim any ownership over in the campaign. The DM has the entire world, and each player has only one (or maybe a couple depending on the game) character. Anytime the DM steps in like this to police the actions of the players, it requires a very soft touch.

Because, at the end of the day, you're basically telling someone else that they don't know how to play their own creation and, not only that, but you know how to play it better. Gack. No wonder players get shirty about this sort of thing.

And, IME, what generally happens is that the players simply adapt to the DM. If DM A is really hard nosed about this sort of thing, players will simply ensure that they have plausible explanations for their actions. It's no different with alignment. I saw player after player choose Chaotic Neutral as their alignment, not because they want to play anarchist characters, but, because they want to draw a line of protection around their character so the DM can't tell them, "Well, no you wouldn't do that, it's against your alignment."

I really don't think all these "strategies" to "protect" the game against meta-gaming are terribly effective. A player with half a brain can find justifications for virtually anything.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't think so. I think you have to take the passage as a whole including the specific examples to see what the writer intended. And that was in my view that "metagame thinking" is to be discouraged and curbed so the players don't create a problem for themselves like a TPK or waste valuable session time because they rely on information like how the DM usually designs encounters or writes descriptions.

"What does your character think?" Well, whatever I say he or she thinks. I'm the player and only I get to decide. I just need to make sure what my character thinks doesn't, for example, get him or her killed or waste valuable session time. It's fine then for me to say my character thinks trolls are vulnerable to fire. But it would be my fault if I acted on that assumption and it turned out badly for me because the DM changed up troll vulnerabilities. I should have done something to verify my assumptions before committing to that course of action.

That said, it's not a great passage on this matter and we could do without it entirely and my position in this thread would still stand. I'm not claiming the DMG supports the notions that engaging in "metagame thinking" is cheating, after all.

The middle paragraph above is your interpretation of that line. Someone else could easily interpret it as Max does, that you shouldn't use what you know as a player and only consider what the character knows. While this is very grey in regards to something like the weakness of trolls, it's less so in regards to using prior knowledge about this particular adventure that you as a player have previously played but your character has never been here

You're still reading that passage in a light most favorable to your interpretation and dismissing that it's also favorable to other interpretations. It really is too broad and vague to say it means only one thing. Almost like the writer knew he was dipping a toe into contested waters and wanted something that said, "hey, there's this thing," but didn't want to say, "and it's exactly this so everyone play your game this way."

 

[Maxperson]

The thing that bothers me, is that Max keeps saying that 'thinking about the game as a game' is a bad thing, or worse yet, that it is cheating. Not only do I disagree, but I don't even see why it would be a bad thing at all.

That's not accurate. I've been saying metagaming(By my definition is bad/cheating) and it's cheating unless the DM changes things so that it's not(which means that my way can't be a one true way). While my definition is one way of viewing the game as a game, I did not say that I agreed with the silly and overly broad definition that 5e gives, nor that I view all ways of thinking of the game as a game as bad or cheating. I did say that the 5e passage directing DMs to curb and avoid thinking of a game as a game meant that WotC views it as cheating.

As was pointed out, rolling the dice, tracking hit points, and other similar activities involves thinking of the game as a game. Those things are clearly not bad or cheating. 5e's overly broad definition of metagaming renders it pretty useless as a metric.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Corwin]

(my definition is bad)

I agree.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I would allow it, but I'd also allow an experienced player to randomly pick a spot to search. And no, it wouldn't both me in either case. A character wandering the world might check a spot on the wall on a hunch. The issue for me is if the player knows there is a secret door there.

They can't unring the bell, so there's no way they can randomly search that section of wall on a hunch.

Ok, good. Now I want to unpack that a little bit. Let's refer to the secret door as "the secret", because this applies to any of the examples we've been discussing.

First, I think we can agree that if anybody at the table doesn't know a secret they should be given a chance to discover it themselves. Spoiling genuine problem solving for others is not cool.

But let's take the case where everybody else at the table knows the secret, for whatever reason. The newbie happens to stumble across the answer on his first try, without any in-game knowledge. We're fine with that. It seems improbable, but we easily rationalize why he might have taken that course of action. It doesn't feel impossible or implausible because, well, it happened.

Now magine that a few months later you're talking to the newbie and you mention that story, and he laughs and says, "Oh, I was totally pulling your leg. I've been playing D&D forever; I knew right where that secret door was."

So he actually cheated, right? I know I would be a little bit annoyed; I won't pretend that wouldn't bother me.

But why? The fact that it didn't bother you or me when we thought he was uninformed means that his actions didn't actually impact our enjoyment of the game. What bothers us is not the in-game actions of the character, but the internal thoughts of the player.

Sure, we can hypothesize about what else might have happened if he hadn't revealed the secret and say, "By his actions he eliminated other possible pathways that might have been enjoyable." (But remember, as specified above, everybody else knows where the secret door is, so somebody else having the joy of discovery is not one of those possible pathways.) But the reality is that when we were ignorant of his thoughts we enjoyed playing, and it was only when we learned what he was thinking that we felt "cheated".

It seems to me that somebody else's internal thoughts shouldn't have any bearing on our own enjoyment of the game. All that should matter is what they do. And thus anything we can accept and rationalize from an uninformed newbie should be equally acceptable from a savvy veteran.

EDIT:

Ok, apparently I need to be very explicit about the point being made here. I'll try to use short words.

If everybody at the table knows the secret, and everybody knows that everybody else knows, then solving it with an invented, in-game rationale is not lying.

We've established that it's not the action of solving the puzzle that some find offensive, it's what's going on in the head of the other player.

Don't worry about what's going on in their head; care only about what the character does.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The middle paragraph above is your interpretation of that line. Someone else could easily interpret it as Max does, that you shouldn't use what you know as a player and only consider what the character knows. While this is very grey in regards to something like the weakness of trolls, it's less so in regards to using prior knowledge about this particular adventure that you as a player have previously played but your character has never been here

You're still reading that passage in a light most favorable to your interpretation and dismissing that it's also favorable to other interpretations. It really is too broad and vague to say it means only one thing. Almost like the writer knew he was dipping a toe into contested waters and wanted something that said, "hey, there's this thing," but didn't want to say, "and it's exactly this so everyone play your game this way."

Actually, nevermind. I'm tired of arguing he-said/she-said.

 

[Maxperson]

I agree.

I'm glad you agree with me that by my definition, metagaming is bad for the game. I know you couldn't possibly be acting like an immature child and taking that out of context.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok, good. Now I want to unpack that a little bit. Let's refer to the secret door as "the secret", because this applies to any of the examples we've been discussing.

First, I think we can agree that if anybody at the table doesn't know a secret they should be given a chance to discover it themselves. Spoiling genuine problem solving for others is not cool.

But let's take the case where everybody else at the table knows the secret, for whatever reason. The newbie happens to stumble across the answer on his first try, without any in-game knowledge. We're fine with that. It seems improbable, but we easily rationalize why he might have taken that course of action. It doesn't feel impossible or implausible because, well, it happened.

Now magine that a few months later you're talking to the newbie and you mention that story, and he laughs and says, "Oh, I was totally pulling your leg. I've been playing D&D forever; I knew right where that secret door was."

So he actually cheated, right? I know I would be a little bit annoyed; I won't pretend that wouldn't bother me.

But why? The fact that it didn't bother you or me when we thought he was uninformed means that his actions didn't actually impact our enjoyment of the game. What bothers us is not the in-game actions of the character, but the internal thoughts of the player.

Sure, we can hypothesize about what else might have happened if he hadn't revealed the secret and say, "By his actions he eliminated other possible pathways that might have been enjoyable." (But remember, as specified above, everybody else knows where the secret door is, so somebody else having the joy of discovery is not one of those possible pathways.) But the reality is that when we were ignorant of his thoughts we enjoyed playing, and it was only when we learned what he was thinking that we felt "cheated".

It seems to me that somebody else's internal thoughts shouldn't have any bearing on our own enjoyment of the game. All that should matter is what they do. And thus anything we can accept and rationalize from an uninformed newbie should be equally acceptable from a savvy veteran.

Okay, but you just said we should enjoy playing with people that lie because we enjoyed the lie just fine before we knew it was a lie. I might just have to disagree.