What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?

[Guest 6801328]

Yep.

Now, go through the thread, and check - how many times have you actually been accused, explicitly? How many times can you quote someone as saying *you* do a thing you don't actually do, and have said you don't do? Leave out all cases where they are speaking in general, or about a person who is not you.

150 posts? No thanks. But if you tabulate all those posts I'd love to see the results.

XML or JSON format, please.

 

[iserith]

Here, I think, is the fundamental issue:

You state "The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge..."

But Shouldn't the character be the suite of options?

If Gary is playing Plunk, half-orc barbarian with muscles the size of mountains and a brain the size of a pea, should Gary really be employing higher level strategic planning in social and exploration challenges?

By choosing Plunk and his suite of abilities/options, Gary has decided how he wishes to interact with the game. That's the player being challenged through the character.

In my view, "should" is a problematic word in a imaginary world of sword and sorcery based on childhood games of make-believe. For every "should" you can come up with, I can come up with a whole lot more "could's," "might's," "may's," and "can's" to explain anything, anytime. That's the beauty of games based on imagination.

The game, and here I'm referring to D&D 5e (if not other games), sets no limits on whether an action declaration is valid or not. It tasks the DM with judging the outcome of that action. But it's otherwise up to the player to determine how the character acts and thinks and what it says.

If the DM wants Gary to portray Plunk in a particular way, perhaps according to Plunk's personal characteristics, the incentive the DM has for that is Inspiration. The decisions Gary has to make in a challenge in order to earn that Inspiration may raise or lower the difficulty of the challenge. But make no mistake, Gary is the one being challenged whether he's taking advantage of Plunk's character options or not.

What Plunk "should" do is nothing the DM ever needs to worry about in my view, provided Gary is otherwise making choices that are fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story. And if someone is the sort of person who is not having fun because Gary is not making decisions according to what that person thinks a low-Intelligence barbarian is capable of thinking, saying, and doing, then it might be worth examining if the problem is someone other than Gary.

 

[Mort]

In my view, "should" is a problematic word in a imaginary world of sword and sorcery based on childhood games of make-believe. For every "should" you can come up with, I can come up with a whole lot more "could's," "might's," "may's," and "can's" to explain anything, anytime. That's the beauty of games based on imagination.

You didn't actually answer the question.

The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?

The game, and here I'm referring to D&D 5e (if not other games), sets no limits on whether an action declaration is valid or not. It tasks the DM with judging the outcome of that action. But it's otherwise up to the player to determine how the character acts and thinks and what it says.

That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235. A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.

If the DM wants Gary to portray Plunk in a particular way, perhaps according to Plunk's personal characteristics, the incentive the DM has for that is Inspiration. The decisions Gary has to make in a challenge in order to earn that Inspiration may raise or lower the difficulty of the challenge. But make no mistake, Gary is the one being challenged whether he's taking advantage of Plunk's character options or not.

What Plunk "should" do is nothing the DM ever needs to worry about in my view, provided Gary is otherwise making choices that are fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story. And if someone is the sort of person who is not having fun because Gary is not making decisions according to what that person thinks a low-Intelligence barbarian is capable of thinking, saying, and doing, then it might be worth examining if the problem is someone other than Gary.

Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.

 

[Guest 6801328]

You didn't actually answer the question.

The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?

What do you mean by "going outside those options"? The game provides for adding or subtracting an ability modifier from skill checks and saving throws. There's no other rule for playing a "dumb" (or weak, or uncharismatic, etc.) character.

That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235. A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.

The problem with quoting that rule is that 'metagaming' carries a lot of definitions and connotations, depending on who you ask. The part I bolded is entirely your subjective interpretation.

Here, this is how the passage you are invoking describes metagaming:

For example, a player might say, " The DM wouldn't throw such a powerful monster at us!" or you might hear, " The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door- let's search it again!"

In other words, absolutely nothing related to how mental attributes should be roleplayed. They are using a specific, and entirely different, definition of 'metagaming'.

Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.

First, that recommendation is in the context of the kind of metagaming they are talking about, not the sort you are talking about.

Second, notice it explicitly does not encourage the DM to say, "This is what your character thinks..." In other words, it's up to the players to decide what their character thinks. So if the player of Zord the Barbarian, with his -1 modifier to Int checks and Int saving throws, wants to come up with a good idea, that's entirely up to the player.

 

[Celebrim]

The reason I think this is because, if you accept that there is a separation of the character and the player...

I accept that there is a separation between the character and the player, because in my time as DM I have killed a lot of characters, but so far I have never killed a player.

The DM is stating what the character believes. Because the character and the player are not the same thing, when the DM does this, he's not telling the player what to think, but, rather, he's telling the player that the character believes X and the player is now somewhat expected to take that into consideration when taking further actions.

While I do accept a separation between the character and the player, as I've argued elsewhere, the mind of the player inherently projects into the game world (in a fashion that, for example, their body does not). As such, I don't see quite the same separation between telling the player what the character thinks and telling the player how to play that you are trying to draw here. I might say, "As far as you can tell, the NPC is telling the truth." I would never suggest that the player or player character actually believes the NPC, only that the player and PC have no evidence to the contrary.

The only time I will tell the player how to play is if for some reason they've lost control over their character temporarily. Then I might pass the player a note that says something like, "You've suddenly discovered your are madly in love with the fairy, and you'd never let her come to harm.", with the expectation that the player would understand, "I've been enchanted", but the player understands that the PC, by being enchanted, doesn't understand that. Most of my player's are mature enough to go with that, so that I don't have to take their PC away from them.

 

[iserith]

You didn't actually answer the question.

I did though, but I'll restate it again: The player describes what he or she wants to do. The player determines what his or her character does, thinks, and says. Those are the rules. What a character "should" do can therefore only be determined by the player. The player is not limited by what is on her or her sheet. That information is only there, in part, to resolve actions that have uncertain outcomes and a meaningful consequence of failure (as determined by the DM).

The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?

There is no limit placed by the rules on your action declarations. The player describes what he or she wants to do. The DM narrates the outcome of the adventurer's actions, sometimes calling for a roll when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.

That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235. A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.

Perhaps however you define "metagaming" or "metagame thinking" isn't how the game defines it. A lot of people drag in their ideas of what these terms mean from other games or how their older cousin taught them or whatever.

It's very clear what it means if taken on its face: Players are discouraged from making bad assumptions based on out-of-game concerns that negatively impact the game experience. It gives specific examples such as as getting their characters killed because they don't think the DM would put a deadly monster in the adventure or wasting valuable time exploring a door simply because the DM was a little wordy when describing the environment.

That is the sort of "metagame thinking" they recommend discouraging by suggesting to the players they have their characters take action in-game to assess things. It says absolutely nothing about, for example, a player of the barbarian coming up with an action that someone else at the table thinks is not suitable for a low-Intelligence barbarian.

Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.

"What does Plunk think?" Whatever Gary says Plunk thinks. But Gary is well-advised by the DMG not to have Plunk act on bad assumptions based on out-of-game information that may hurt the party or the play experience. That's all the section you are quoting means.

The DM gets to decide the outcome of an adventurer's action. He or she doesn't get to decide what sorts of actions the player of that adventure may take, nor can other players. The smart play for Gary is to have Plunk do things Plunk is good at in the event the DM calls for a roll. But the choice is up to Gary. If he wants to engage in the exploration or social interaction challenge the DM presents, he better hope the dice are on his side when the DM asks him to roll - and that perhaps he has Inspiration in his back pocket from all that excellent portrayal of the character he did earlier.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]: After 30+ years of GMing, I've discovered that if you are worried about the players metagaming, it's almost certainly the case that the fault is with you, and that then instructing the players to not metagame is simply digging your own hole deeper. The only time metagaming is poor play is when it is a symptom of some other sort of poor play (such as cheating by buying a copy of the module you are playing). Otherwise, you should really not even try to identify metagaming, much less assert GM force to prevent it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]: After 30+ years of GMing, I've discovered that if you are worried about the players metagaming, it's almost certainly the case that the fault is with you, and that then instructing the PC's to not metagame is simply digging your own hole deeper. The only time metagaming is poor play is when it is a symptom of some other sort of poor play (such as cheating by buying a copy of the module you are playing). Otherwise, you should really not even try to identify metagaming, much less assert GM force to prevent it.

Fully agree.

The word 'immersion' falls into a similar category. Usually when either word is used it means the speaker/writer has a subjective preference for how RPGs get played, but they want their opinion to sound like objective truth.

 

[Monayuris]

Well, you now have a good example of why I can't agree with [MENTION=6859536]Monayuris[/MENTION] when he proposes its not possible to challenge the character, only the player. Monayuris assumes that character generation is even a thing in which the player has agency. It may well not be.

I think before we start dealing with the range of complexity that can be found in a game like 5e, we need to have a solid understanding of the difference between "challenging a player" and "challenging a character". I think my "Choose your Own Adventure" example is simple enough that we can clearly see the two challenges are distinctive in character. One depends entirely on player choice. One involves no player choice. In most situations there will be some mixture of player choice and mechanical resolution, but we can imagine a spectrum and in most cases decide whether the challenge is more like player choice only, more like mechanical resolution only, or lying in a fuzzy area between that so that the best description is "both".

Both is probably more typical in a full fledged PnP RPG, in that most propositions involve adopting a strategy and then making some doubtful proposition which is resolved by a fortune mechanic. But, as my early examples with the locked door show, it's possible to find pure examples in play.

I'm not sure how it is possible to create a character without player agency.

Again, even in the most strictest hard coded mechanic-heavy games. It is always the player who chooses to implement the abilities of the character. I guess if you want a game where only the character is challenged, you would end up with a pretty boring game.

I imagine it would work like this:
DM: You enter a room. It is DC 15
Player: My character rolled 18!
DM: You solved the room... next room..

Perhaps reducto ad absurdum, but it is what I think of when I see a lot of modern D&D game play. When, as a DM, you describe a room and you just allow a skill roll, you are boiling your game down to this. Every time you allow a player to just make an investigation check or whatever, you are just running through the above; but just with more words and flowery descriptions... but the end result is just that.

 

[Mort]

What do you mean by "going outside those options"? The game provides for adding or subtracting an ability modifier from skill checks and saving throws. There's no other rule for playing a "dumb" (or weak, or uncharismatic, etc.) character.

I mean when a player consistently uses knowledge his character really shouldn't have.

And there are rules. The DM can expressly call for ability/skill checks. If for example a player consistently points out weaknesses of monsters his character really shouldn't know, or uses knowledge of history (as an example) the character couldn't possibly know, the DM can curb that.

But if the DM allows the player to play however they want on mental stats, the DM is favoring players who design characters a certain way.

The problem with quoting that rule is that 'metagaming' carries a lot of definitions and connotations, depending on who you ask. The part I bolded is entirely your subjective interpretation.

Here, this is how the passage you are invoking describes metagaming:


In other words, absolutely nothing related to how mental attributes should be roleplayed. They are using a specific, and entirely different, definition of 'metagaming'.

Using out our character knowledge to aid play is in no way subjective, it's metagaming.

First, that recommendation is in the context of the kind of metagaming they are talking about, not the sort you are talking about.

Second, notice it explicitly does not encourage the DM to say, "This is what your character thinks..." In other words, it's up to the players to decide what their character thinks. So if the player of Zord the Barbarian, with his -1 modifier to Int checks and Int saving throws, wants to come up with a good idea, that's entirely up to the player.

I never said the DM should tell the player what to think - but to discourage using out of character knowledge in playing the game.

The problem is self correcting if the DM calls for checks to essentially keep the player honest. But, while it's a long, long thread, I get the impression those checks don't see a lot of play at certain tables, certainly not in the examples provided.