D&D General [Poll] Metagame justifications for in-character behavior

[Lanefan]

I'd say there's a narrative disjunction between "ghouls aren't known to be a big problem in the world" and "we run into them all the damned time." I'm not inclined to insist the players be the ones to patch it.

I liken it to what once happened to me in one of the very few really big M:tG tournaments I ever entered: it was a Vintage tournament at GenCon with some big prize or other, and I'd come up with one of those half-cocked either-it-works-or-it-crashes-hard deck ideas.

There were at least a few hundred people in this tournament; and to no surprise at all I lost my first three rounds then bailed. I was up against the same general deck-build idea in all three games and thought to myself "this deck must be the flavour of the month". Imagine my surprise when the tourney organizers later published deck-type stats and I saw that there were only four of those deck builds in the whole damn tourney - and I'd played against three of them!

That's how ghouls are in this game world - the thing there's not many of but of which we-as-PCs meet a disproportionate amount.

 

[Oofta]

I do my best to limit my use of metagame knowledge. I voted "rarely" because it's practically unavoidable.

Outside of a zoo, I've never seen a lion. But I still know a fair amount about them. I assume PCs know what a troll is and how to fight them even if they've never encountered one before. If the monster is more rare, I may ask for a check because it's uncertain. In other cases a creature is unheard of and, no, I don't want the player looking up details in the MM and reading off the stat block.

 

[Weiley31]

I would like to assume that an Adventurer would know exactly what a Troll's fire/acid weakness is or what purpose a Lich's Phylactery serves based upon stories heard in a tavern of heroes or perhaps via way of legends/tall tales passed around by a campfire when traveling on a road.

And not because I grew up playing video games, watching shows, and other things from my actual life.

Now if I'm playing as a Disney Princess style character with a Disney Princess style background, then yeah, I'm probably gonna be clueless that Trolls can regen or a Lich doesn't really die unless you destroy that damn Phylactery. Or super unique bosses/foes or what not, yeah then there's no info to go by.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Ask your non-gaming friends how you kill a vampire. I bet a LOT of them know some tricks.

And that’s in a world in which vampires don’t exist.

 

[James Gasik]

Ask your non-gaming friends how you kill a vampire. I bet a LOT of them know some tricks.

And that’s in a world in which vampires don’t exist.

However, it might not do them any good, because...

Our Vampires Are Different - TV Tropes

A Sub-Trope of Our Monsters Are Different. This one deals with everyone's favorite undead bloodsuckers. The purpose of vampires in the story varies quite widely. They may serve as the Big Bad or as a metaphor for something, be it addiction or …

tvtropes.org

 

[Bill Zebub]

However, it might not do them any good, because...

Our Vampires Are Different - TV Tropes

A Sub-Trope of Our Monsters Are Different. This one deals with everyone's favorite undead bloodsuckers. The purpose of vampires in the story varies quite widely. They may serve as the Big Bad or as a metaphor for something, be it addiction or …

tvtropes.org

Right. Exactly. If you (the DM) think players shouldn’t know stuff like this, change it.

 

[Hriston]

Whenever you're not playing in actor stance.

 

[Umbran]

Pretty straightforward: when is it okay to use a metagame justification for an in-character behavior?

Not all metagaming is made equal.

We play games with our fellow real-world people. Those people matter. Changing character behavior because real-world people matter is fine, as far as I am concerned.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I voted 'Often'. Not because I think we should or shouldn't do it-- I make no moral judgements on the behavior-- but rather because I don't think it is possible NOT to do it.

D&D is a game, and we all know the game rules. Anything that occurs within the fiction that is going to be represented via game rules therefore has us players using our knowledge of said rules to impact how the game plays out.

The only reason why I didn't say "Always" is because there will be times at certain tables when game rules won't apply to a situation and a player might genuinely react on instinct while in the head of their character. Can't give any examples of that... but I'm not willing to dismiss it out of hand.

 

[Jer]

So, I have to go with the "it depends" answer because, well, it depends (so I marked "Sometimes" as a compromise).

Because this kind of metagaming:

Another example, as referenced in that other thread, would be a character preparing for their new wizard employer to betray them, because they know their DM likes "sudden face-heel turn" drama.

I welcome and hope my players do because it keeps me from falling into ruts. When one of my players says in the first 10 minutes of a mystery being introduced "Oh, I bet the Swamp Creature is Old Man Withers in disguise scaring people away from his property because its time for another Scooby game" and I look at my notes and see that they're right, I know I've fallen into a rut and I need to be shaken out of it. (I think sometimes my players will kindly say things like that to let me know without having to openly criticize me because they're too polite to say "is this another darn X plot? Haven't we had enough of those?")

A third example would be a spellcaster preparing a whole bunch of undead-fighting spells (out of the many other spells they could prepare) solely because they overheard the DM telling a non-player observer that there would be undead in the next adventure.

This one, on the other hand, I'd in theory have a problem with. In theory because I don't have any players like this, but this sounds like a player who thinks they're "getting away with something" and so even though I don't actually care about their use of out of game knowledge per se, I do care that they think they have to be secretive about it.

OTOH - if they said "Hey I heard Jer tell his wife that he's breaking out all of his undead minis this week so be ready for it" to the whole group I'd have much less of a problem with it. At least the player is a) letting me know he heard and doesn't think he's putting one over on me and allowing me to make tweaks to my plans to adjust to the undead no longer being a surprise and b) sharing with the group rather than thinking that knowledge gives him some kind of "advantage" by keeping it to himself.