D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[Charlaquin]

How do you reconcile the goal of "staying in character" with the approach of players stopping to ask the DM what their characters know about trolls?

Not to put words in @Burnside ’s mouth, they can correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like they and their players enjoy acting out their characters’ ignorance of some subjects. Asking the DM what their characters know about trolls allows them the opportunity to determine, by ostensibly impartial means, whether or not their character has knowledge of a given subject, so that they can act out ignorance if it is determined that they don’t.

 

[Burnside]

Not to put words in @Burnside ’s mouth, they can correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like they and their players enjoy acting out their characters’ ignorance of some subjects. Asking the DM what their characters know about trolls allows them the opportunity to determine, by ostensibly impartial means, whether or not their character has knowledge of a given subject, so that they can act out ignorance if it is determined that they don’t.

This is accurate. It can be amusing to play a character who is armed with less information than you are.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I disagree. If I'm spending my time with someone, it's because I believe my time will be better spent as a result of that person's presence. As is the basis of friendship.

If my friend uses OCC knowledge, it is because he/she believes the game will be better if he/she does. I trust my friends. Obviously something was wrong with the adventure (it was boring, too obvious, etc.) or my friend has a better idea. I go with it. We have a good time.

If my friend's wrong, and his/her idea wasn't better than the written adventure, That's fine, too. People make mistakes.

If I don't trust my friend's motive, it's my fault for choosing to spend my time with that person. At least I know better and will not waste more of my time with him/her in the future.

Indeed, but most of the people I play with would be unlikely to derail an adventure because they thought their idea was better than the DM's. Given that the enjoyment and excitement of discovery is part of the fun of playing D&D, there would also be social contract issues with the other players as well for that sort of behaviour.
Hence if it did happen I would regard it as highly unusual, and not natural.

The DM certainly isn’t obligated to change things to discourage metagaming. But it’s generally a good practice if metagaming is something said DM wants to discourage.

If the DM is running a prepublished adventure, it may well be because they are not in a situation where they have the time to be able to run their own plot, or even just make significant changes to the plot. Hence why I think that level of metagaming would be regarded as at least, rude.

How do you determine how much trial and error is needed before it’s appropriate for the players to “try” fire or acid? What if that happened to be the first thing a character “tried”? That’s the thing about “separating player knowledge and character knowledge.” What you’re really doing is acting on player knowledge in order to create a facsimile of a character who lacks that knowledge.

Trust the players to put themselves in their character's shoes when it comes to deciding what their characters will do. There is no magic number of rounds required to show good faith, and if nothing else, there are knowledge checks.

(The only time I've actually been in that situation in 5e, we ended up having to kill the trolls without fire or acid, simply because we didn't have immediate access to any.)

 

[Charlaquin]

I feel like I've answered that one by explaining that I wouldn't create an encounter where a no-option failure state would arise from failing skill checks with no other in-game resources or information at hand. However, knowledge skill checks could certainly HELP the players get there quicker.

I feel like you’ve evaded the question by saying that.

Here’s the bottom line. You said:

to answer the specific troll scenario because this one HAS come up in my games: characters, including characters run by players who knew about trolls, attacked with all means at their disposal and learned, in character, by trial and error, what was effective.

What I want to know is
A.) When this occurred in your game, how did you determine that the players’ trial and error was sufficient to justify their eventual use of fire?

and

B.) Hypothetically, what would you have done if the first thing one of the players had tried in this scenario had been fire or acid?

 

[Guest 6801328]

I will generally settle for “not overtly metagaming.”

So does that mean the second attack can be with fire?

Or do they need to make one regular attack, then one attack with something other than fire (punch it with their fist, for example), and then they can use fire?

What sort of performance is required to satisfy the other people at the table that you haven't metagamed?

Maybe everybody should roll a d8, and whatever number they get, on that round they can use fire?

 

[iserith]

Perhaps I should have phrased it as "maintaining a distinction between player behavior and character behavior" or "allowing the character to remain 'in character'".

That skill check is generally part of the feedback loop at my table.

So what your feedback loop (or social contract) does is, effectively, take some amount of reasonable action declarations in context off the table until someone basically asks questions that likely result in an ability check at which point they may or may not be able to put those action declarations back on the table, depending on the result of said check. If the ability check is failed, then they have the option to play at experimentation for an undetermined amount of time before the gated action declarations are judged as acceptable. Or as @Charlaquin mentions, they can play at ignorance.

Do I have that right?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Trust the players to put themselves in their character's shoes when it comes to deciding what their characters will do.

Excellent idea!

So, if the player immediately uses fire on the troll, do you trust they have done that? Or do you suspect them of metagaming?

 

[Hriston]

Nothing, per se, but a lot if they can't figure out how to get out of the immediate situation without getting themselves cacked. A little more in-character ignorance might have led to a more timely (and dramatic) reveal. At this point, the DM might be better off doubling-down on revealing information and give the players a better assessment of their chances or of the lich's formidability in order to give them a chance to make a better, long-term choice.

Avoiding an untimely cacking seems desirable for a good story, sure, but as far as I understand about the adventure, there's nothing lethal for the party about the immediate situation whether they know about the lich or not. Personally, I'd telegraph that she's a lich as much as possible even if she wasn't an Easter egg.

 

[Burnside]

I feel like you’ve evaded the question by saying that.

Here’s the bottom line. You said:

What I want to know is
A.) When this occurred in your game, how did you determine that the players’ trial and error was sufficient to justify their eventual use of fire?

and

B.) Hypothetically, what would you have done if the first thing one of the players had tried in this scenario had been fire or acid?

Sorry, I was not intentionally avoiding the question.

A) Within a round or two, somebody hit it with a fire bolt or acid splash (I don't remember which). I was pretty confident that was going to happen, because it was the go-to attack cantrip for that character and they used it in most fights. Once that happened, I described the effect accordingly and had the troll react in the way you termed "telegraphing" the effectiveness of the attack.

B) If somebody had hit it with, say fire bolt in the first round at the top of initiative, I would have described the troll freaking out as above. Other players would likely have hit it with other stuff, and I would have described how that was less effective or how the troll was regenerating. I would then expect the characters to assemble the context clues and figure out that the fire was good.

 

[Guest 6801328]

By the way, whenever this comes up, I have to tell the story about a game I played in about '92 or '93. None of us had actually played D&D in 5+ years at the time. I threw a troll at them, and nobody used fire or acid. For so long they almost TPK'd.

Then, finally, one of them said, "Oh my god! They're trolls! We need to use fire!"

Turns out they had all forgotten. Seriously.

Afterward I had a grumpy old curmudgeon NPC say with disdain, "You're supposed to burn trolls, you know."

It became the mantra of that (short) campaign.