DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?

[Legatus Legionis]

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[doctorbadwolf]

But otherwise yes, this is one instance where I don't hesitate to step in and smack things down. Ditto with players making suggestions for what other players' PCs should do when the suggesting player has no PC in the neighbourhood and thus no way of knowing the situation; this is something I've had to get rather nasty about in days of old.

Why would you want to get “nasty” with a friend over OOC conversation in a game?

 

[Fenris-77]

When people step outside the boundaries of the table conventions for personal gain (even if they didn't mean to) you need to step on it. It's not about friends, it's about nipping that shizz in the bud before it gets out of hand. The table conventions are sacred and the game (any TTRPG) doesn't work without them.

 

[Lanefan]

There's a pretty big difference between "I'm bringing personal issues into the game" metagaming and "I'm prioritizing moving the plot over character immersion" metagaming. The first is bad, and the second is good.

I agree there's a difference between these but I disagree when you say one type is good.

If the plot comes to a standstill for a session because players spend that session in in-character conversation or discussion about something in the game-world (in the game I play in, these days the topic would probably be the place and uses of Necromancers and undead) then so what?

 

[Fenris-77]

The so what is entirely about table enjoyment. If your players are having fun then fine, very cool. If it's one drama queen leading the charge then less so.

 

[Tallifer]

There's a pretty big difference between "I'm bringing personal issues into the game" metagaming and "I'm prioritizing moving the plot over character immersion" metagaming. The first is bad, and the second is good.

Indeed. It irritates me when a player keeps pretending not to know something because another player did explicitly parrot a word-for-word repetition of the information which was already shared openly at the table. It drives me up the wall when a player will insist on acting in the most foolish way possible because "no one told me" even when the dungeon master says "yes, X told Y all about it when he got back... do you still want to do that?"

 

[Lanefan]

The point of an RPG is to engage with the world as our character does, as though it was a real place, and not just a story. That's the unique thing, which distinguishes an RPG from any other type of game.

I largely agree with this.

Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.

But I don't as largely agree with this, because it's quite possible - very possible - to operate on story logic and still be fully in-character.

It simply means the character has connected the dots and figured out what's going on*, and is acting on that basis. Not always that hard to do provided that a) the character is halfway intelligent and b) the DM provides enough in-fiction clues (or "dots") to allow a pattern to emerge that the character can work out and then follow.

* - or thinks it has; only time will tell if it's right or not.

 

[Lanefan]

You are practicing full immersion roleplaying, which is a type of roleplaying. Most other players practice other types of roleplaying.

Now here I'll ask: how many have even tried full-immersion RP?

For me, full-immersion is kind of like a holy grail - it's out there somewhere, and now and then I almost see it in the distance, but I've yet to be able to achieve it other than for a few fleeting moments at a time now and then.

That said, I've never really done any LARP, where from what I gather full immersion is somewhat easier.

 

[Fenris-77]

Full Immersion is a myth, there's no such thing. There are certainly levels of immersion, some of them quite deep, but we never get to escape the fact that the character is an avatar of the player.

 

[Lanefan]

I hope that any well-adjusted adult here, which may already be asking too much from people, could recognize here that the problem is not metagaming, but personal issues between Bob and the Speaker. Bob and the Speaker should handle this between themselves like adults. But in no way is the actual problem here metagaming. It's the personal lives of the players. So we should probably stop pretending like metagaming is the disease rather than a mere symptom. IME, metagaming is almost always the symptom of an underlying problem at the table rather than the actual problem itself.

Yes, and when you can't cure the root problem all you're left with is to suppress the symptoms as best you can.

It's not my place to sort out any out-of-game problems between Bob and the Speaker. If they're both friends of mine outside the game, I could try; but even then in the end it's their headache to deal with as they see fit.

It is, however, my place to sort out what happens at the table I'm running; which means whatever's going on between them out-of-game is, as far as I can manage it, not going to be allowed to influence what happens in the fiction of my game.