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

[Guest 6801328]

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.

/sigh

No, I didn't. (And I think you know that, but I'm going to treat your comment as if it weren't intentionally disingenuous.)

It's called a 'thought experiment'.

The thing we are discussing in this thread is the situation where everybody knows the secret, and everybody else knows that everybody knows, even if their characters do not. The question is: is there anything wrong with having their character solve it? No lying involved; just different interpretations of roleplaying.

What I tried to demonstrate with the thought experiment was to show that if 'metagaming' of this sort bothers us, we're really taking offense at the internal thoughts of the players, not the actions of the characters.

 

[Corwin]

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.

But some people seem to *want* their players to lie. To lie about otherwise knowing something by acting like they don't.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But some people seem to *want* their players to lie. To lie about otherwise knowing something by acting like they don't.

I hadn't thought of this, and honestly it's a specious argument, but it's also a great retort to Ovinomancer if he really wants to go down that path.

If you know the secret, and are pretending that your character does not, then you are lying to me. Filthy liar.

 

[Imaculata]

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.

Hang on just a second there. YOU said that your definition of metagaming was bad, and he agreed.
Is he not allowed to agree on that? Look at this discussion! We're up to 90 pages already!

Lets try and be reasonable here.

 

[Maxperson]

Hang on just a second there. YOU said that your definition of metagaming was bad, and he agreed.
Is he not allowed to agree on that? Look at this discussion! We're up to 90 pages already!

Lets try and be reasonable here.

You know that's not what I meant. If you didn't, then you also need to learn what context is and how to use it.

 

[Corwin]

You know that's not what I meant. If you didn't, then you also need to learn what context is and how to use it.

Oh, context, you rascally debil, you! The bane of all of us, it would appear!!!

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Agreed.

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.

Right.

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.

Not exactly. Let's use another example that doesn't involve thought processes. What if the new player beat the BBEG with lucky critical right at the moment needed to save the party from utter destruction. That would be awesome! Now a few months later he says that he really rolled a 3. What bothers us is that it's cheating.

With the example above, it's not the internal thoughts, but rather that the motivation was to cheat the game. Cheating robs the game of meaning and deprives the group of genuine victory or defeat.

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".

That's how cheating always works, though. It only really has the negative impact when discovered. It's like a rot under the wood of a healthy looking tree. So long as it's not discovered, we can all admire how beautiful and strong the tree is. If the rot is discovered, it is always bad and often kills the tree. It doesn't matter if the source of the rot are die rolls or internal motivations, rot is rot.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I hadn't thought of this, and honestly it's a specious argument, but it's also a great retort to Ovinomancer if he really wants to go down that path.

If you know the secret, and are pretending that your character does not, then you are lying to me. Filthy liar.

No, it's not. There's a difference between pretending to be someone you're not within the game and misrepresenting yourself as a player to the other players. However you pretend in the game, that's not lying. Telling the other players and the DM that you've never done this adventure before, and then getting lauded for your play in figuring out the puzzles, but then later telling everyone that you lied is very much not the same thing as pretending to be a character. Everyone is aware of the latter before, during, and after, and it's the point of getting together to play a role playing game. But, at no time, does that activity excuse intentional misrepresentation to the other players about you as a player.

One would think this would be obvious.

 

[Maxperson]

I hadn't thought of this, and honestly it's a specious argument, but it's also a great retort to Ovinomancer if he really wants to go down that path.

If you know the secret, and are pretending that your character does not, then you are lying to me. Filthy liar.

That's not the case, though. The player is not being asked to pretend he doesn't know. He's being asked to roleplay the character who doesn't know as if the character doesn't know, which is not a lie in any way, shape or form.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh, context, you rascally debil, you! The bane of all of us, it would appear!!!

No. Just the bane of a few disingenuous posters.