D&D 5E Polymorph is a bad de-buff spell

[iserith]

Look, I get it. I'm totally behind of the idea of not policing the players. But, by the same token, there are limits. For the same reason that I don't try to create gunpowder in your game, or use Major Creation to create white phosphorous or a nuclear bomb, everyone at the table is somewhat responsible for trying to keep things in the realm of plausible.

Please explain what isn't plausible about an Int-1 toad, panicked by the raging battle around it, leaping into the path of danger, accidentally killing itself in the process.

 

[Iry]

Most people who actively think about it do so because they think it's not roleplaying.

I'm definitely in favor of positive metagaming. Choosing to bite at one of the plot hooks, deciding to become friends with party members, making sure to share the spotlight, etc? All things I welcome and encourage at any of the tables I participate in. The happy compromise that exists between being true to your character + making sure everyone at the table has a fun time.

 

[Iry]

So, to be clear, this has absolutely nothing to do with how reasonable the act is in the context of the fiction. It has everything to do with the player's state of mind or what his or her motivations are?

Condensing my quote blocks to this part, since they are all related to this point.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how reasonable the act is. A skilled DM or Player can make almost anything sound reasonable within the context of the fiction.

It has everything to do with the state of mind of every person at the table at the moment the intentional frog suicide is announced. If nobody cares, then it is not disruptive. This is probably the kind of group you come from (speculating). If it is disruptive to the majority of people at the table then it becomes a problem. This is the kind of group I come from.

 

[Seramus]

I actually think it's the other way around now - this "metagaming" position is an old one and I see less and less of it these days, based on the many games I join or run with random players. I think that's good for the hobby as a whole. I'm hoping that conversations like these help that along.

My experience has been the opposite. Approaching it like a game first and a roleplaying experience second was pretty dominant when the red box came out. As time passed I’ve seen more and more care being put into the roleplaying side. Sometimes things went too far, to the point where players were being disruptive with their roleplaying at the expense of fun at the table. But more than ever before, I’m seeing a happy compromise that leans to neither extreme.

And I think that’s a really good place for D&D to be going in the future.

 

[iserith]

Condensing my quote blocks to this part, since they are all related to this point.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how reasonable the act is. A skilled DM or Player can make almost anything sound reasonable within the context of the fiction.

It has everything to do with the state of mind of every person at the table at the moment the intentional frog suicide is announced. If nobody cares, then it is not disruptive. This is probably the kind of group you come from (speculating). If it is disruptive to the majority of people at the table then it becomes a problem. This is the kind of group I come from.

The question that remains is why the motivation of the player is disruptive to some, if the fiction is otherwise reasonable. At least, it remains a mystery to me.

 

[Iry]

The question that remains is why the motivation of the player is disruptive to some, if the fiction is otherwise reasonable. At least, it remains a mystery to me.

Because they have emotions and preferences that are different from your own.

...

I wanted to write something longer about social upbringings and cultures, etc. But in the end, this is about accepting diversity over a grand unified theory of metagaming.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It has everything to do with the state of mind of every person at the table at the moment the intentional frog suicide is announced. If nobody cares, then it is not disruptive. This is probably the kind of group you come from (speculating). If it is disruptive to the majority of people at the table then it becomes a problem. This is the kind of group I come from.

See, I don't get this. At all. I *think* you are saying that the suicide frog is disruptive because it's so far out of the bounds of the expected that the only explanation for it happening is that another player is metagaming. (If I've got that wrong, please correct me.)

And yet...this is occurring in a world with floating castles, plane-shifting brain eaters, time stop magic, demon invasions, and rapiers. You, and the character you play, are totally willing to accept just about any crazy fiction. And yet somehow a suicidal frog is a bridge too far.

So let's approach this from another angle. Your characters enter dungeon room, and there on the floor is a large frog. Just as you are about to inspect this frog, the DM says that it leaps at your sword, and impales itself.

Is your immersion blown? Or do you assume there's some explanation for this that only the DM understands? I'm assuming the latter. (Again, if not, please correct me.)

So if we're still on the same page, what we have is this: when the DM introduces a suicidal frog it's fine, because crazy, bizarre things happen in this fantasy world, and this is pretty much the least of them. But when the player who is polymorphed into a frog does the suicidal thing, it's immersion-breaking metagaming because:
a) You know that according to the rules of the game the player can't introduce bizarre new magic on his own volition
b) You also know that according to the rules of the game this action would help him escape from a polymorph spell

See where I'm going with this? It becomes immersion-breaking for you because you are applying the "rules of the game" to the narrative scene. Your character, ignorant of the difference between DM-actions and player-actions, would take this totally in stride. It's the player who is bothered by it.

Thus it is metagame thinking that lets it be disruptive. A truly immersed player wouldn't notice.

My experience has been the opposite. Approaching it like a game first and a roleplaying experience second was pretty dominant when the red box came out. As time passed I’ve seen more and more care being put into the roleplaying side. Sometimes things went too far, to the point where players were being disruptive with their roleplaying at the expense of fun at the table. But more than ever before, I’m seeing a happy compromise that leans to neither extreme.

And I think that’s a really good place for D&D to be going in the future.

Are you staking out a position here that the kind of "metagaming" Iry and others don't like and "roleplaying" are opposites, and/or mutually exclusive? I know some people (@Saelorn for example) have a very, very narrow definition of roleplaying in which, they claim, using player knowledge is forbidden. But that's not the only, or even the most fun & interesting (imo) form of playing a role.

 

[iserith]

Because they have emotions and preferences that are different from your own.

I used to hold those preferences though and, after some considerable thought on them, I decided the problem was that I was allowing my fun to be threatened by how other people made decisions regardless of the reasonableness of the decision in context. I can't control how other people make decisions and, frankly, I shouldn't want to. Upon that realization, I stepped away from that way of playing right then and there. After all, if the toad jumping under the bard's boot and being squished makes sense in context, then why should I care that the player did that to gain an advantage? It's a cool outcome and I should be happy that it happened. I should not let why that person did that spoil my fun. At least, that's the conclusion I drew some years ago.

 

[Iry]

See, I don't get this. At all. I *think* you are saying that the suicide frog is disruptive because it's so far out of the bounds of the expected that the only explanation for it happening is that another player is metagaming. (If I've got that wrong, please correct me.)

The player intentionally trying to kill their character without reasonable explanation is disruptive. In this case, reasonable explanation might be the pre-game conversation about retiring the character to introduce a new one, and an unreasonable explanation (by the standards of our table) would be trying to escape a polymorph without the characters knowing anything about polymorph.

Is your immersion blown? Or do you assume there's some explanation for this that only the DM understands? I'm assuming the latter. (Again, if not, please correct me.)

Depends on context, but generally that would be fine. The players are going to have a large amount of 'trust' that the slapstick is going somewhere or has some foreshadowed meaning. But they don't generally enjoy slapstick, so morale may lower if it happens repeatedly over the course of a couple months without any kind of narrative pay-off.

See where I'm going with this? It becomes immersion-breaking for you because you are applying the "rules of the game" to the narrative scene. Your character, ignorant of the difference between DM-actions and player-actions, would take this totally in stride. It's the player who is bothered by it.

Thus it is metagame thinking that lets it be disruptive. A truly immersed player wouldn't notice.

I actually don't see where you are going with this. What I keep hearing is, "It's because you dislike chocolate that you have a bad time whenever you eat chocolate." but I could be totally misunderstanding you.

 

[iserith]

My experience has been the opposite. Approaching it like a game first and a roleplaying experience second was pretty dominant when the red box came out. As time passed I’ve seen more and more care being put into the roleplaying side. Sometimes things went too far, to the point where players were being disruptive with their roleplaying at the expense of fun at the table. But more than ever before, I’m seeing a happy compromise that leans to neither extreme.

And I think that’s a really good place for D&D to be going in the future.

It really depends on what you mean by "roleplaying" here in my view. A player playing a fighter that runs around the dungeon killing goblins is roleplaying as far as I'm concerned. He or she is playing a role, deciding what the character does, thinks, and says. If while playing the role of the goblin-killing fighter the player decides to take an action based on the most advantageous thing the fighter can do in context, he or she is still roleplaying.