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

[iserith]

So? If we’re talking universal truths here everything you’ve said up to this point is equally invalid. If you want to go that route feel free to ignore what I say from now on and I’ll happily do the same for you.

What I've said by and large is supported by the actual rules of the game. Legacy thinking on "metagaming" on which your social contract is based not.

(Where something is my opinion and not well-supported by the game, I preface this with "in my view" or "as I see it" or other words to that effect.)

Got it. You’re cool with your players cheating. understood.

It would only be cheating through the lens of your social contract. But thank you for reinforcing my earlier point about this being more of an identity that has to be defended than a playstyle. That is just perfect.

yet allowing your cormyrian fighter who’s never even met a lich, is barely literate, and doesn’t know the first thing about elves know everything about this one just by her name is role playing. Yeah. Sure.

It is by definition roleplaying. PHB, page 185: "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks." So yeah, a player saying his or her character thinks an NPC is a lich is roleplaying. Asking the DM if the character knows anything about this NPC is not. It's an extra step added by a social contract.

That said, the character doesn't actually know the NPC is a lich. The character just thinks that. He or she might be right, but might instead be wrong. To find out, the player is going to have to have the character takes additional steps which may include recalling lore or making deductions, which may call for an ability check. As it turns out, this appears to be what the OP's group did.

Wrong.

5e SRD:History Skill - D&D Wiki

www.dandwiki.com

5e SRD:Arcana Skill - D&D Wiki

www.dandwiki.com

5e SRD:Nature Skill - D&D Wiki

www.dandwiki.com

5e SRD:Religion Skill - D&D Wiki

www.dandwiki.com

Hey look kids! Knowledge checks!

Nope. Those are ability checks the DM uses to resolve tasks undertaken by the character when the task has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. Asking the DM what your character knows isn't an action and thus cannot be adjudicated with an ability check. It's a sidebar in the metagame that is a better fit for D&D 3e or D&D 4e which is where the term "knowledge check" comes from. If you try to find that term in D&D 5e, you'll come up wanting.

So as can be seen here, there's just a lot of legacy ideas and approaches that get dragged from one game into another without anyone ever questioning its relevance in the new game. I find that makes for a less than stellar game experience.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

so if the player reads the entire module and uses it to bypass bad things and go for the good stuff only do you reward them there too?

In that case, I did a poor job deciding who to invite to my game.

 

[Burnside]

I can see that, provided the module is sufficiently dynamic and the players play different characters and make different choices. The card reading element in various adaptations of Ravenloft, for instance, are specifically meant to increase the module’s replayability.

Regarding that specifically - I do find that card reading makes the module more replayable for me a as a DM, running it for different groups. But it wouldn't make it sufficiently replayable for me as a player.

FWIW, I have never run through the same adventure twice as a player, and have never run an adventure as a DM for a player who has already played it.

 

[iserith]

It feels like there are lots of character goals and personality drivers that don't necessarily help staying alive or maximize XP and treasure. I had a character fall in to essentially adopting a child at one point because there was no other way I saw of effectively dealing with the situation. I don't think it helped us stay alive, and it was kind of anti-treasure in the sense of the expenditures involved to care for them while the party was dungeon crawling. I can imagine a character with a particular hatred deciding to wipe out a room of something dangerous with little treasure, even if it doesn't advance the goal.

Sure, players engage in play that works against the goal of staying alive and gathering XP and treasure. But if a player did nothing but those things - as is being surmised of a "metagaming" player with knowledge of the adventure - I would not care because that's what they are being incentivized to do even if they didn't have knowledge of the adventure. (Your examples might also be incentivized by way of Inspiration.)

Does this imply that handing the players a map with all the traps, hazards, secret doors, and monsters keyed to specific locations at the beginning of every adventure shouldn't change anything meaningfully for an adventure scenario that (you think) is well designed?

The only thing it would change is, perhaps, the effectiveness of the PCs in reducing the difficulty of the challenges. The pace may also be quicker. And if dice are involved, as they frequently are, there's no guarantee difficulty will be reduced or pace will quicken. In terms of achieving the goals of play - everyone having fun and creating an exciting, memorable story by playing - there's really no issue here.

 

[MikalC]

Nope. Those are ability checks the DM uses to resolve tasks undertaken by the character when the task has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.

hmmm... such as learning the weaknesses of an enemy who keeps coming back after you think you killed it, for example?

Asking the DM what your character knows isn't an action and thus cannot be adjudicated with an ability check.

except that’s exactly what those skills do.

So as can be seen here, there's just a lot of legacy ideas and approaches that get dragged from one game into another without anyone ever questioning its relevance in the new game. I find that makes for a less than stellar game experience.

nah the less than stellar game experience comes from dms who can’t be bothered to do even the bare minimum to actually create a good game experience that rewards in game skills and abilities and turns the game into magic tea party.

feel free to reply if you want, but I’m not going to be paying attention to you going forward.

 

[Bawylie]

nah the less than stellar game experience comes from dms who can’t be bothered to do even the bare minimum to actually create a good game experience that rewards in game skills and abilities and turns the game into magic tea party.

The game in which you pretend to be an elf is magic tea party.

 

[iserith]

hmmm... such as learning the weaknesses of an enemy who keeps coming back after you think you killed it, for example?

I don't know what you mean here.

except that’s exactly what those skills do.

Nope. Ability checks, which may or may not have a skill proficiency added to them, resolve tasks undertaken by the characters. Asking the DM a question in the metagame about what the character knows is not a task undertaken by the character and thus cannot be resolved with an ability check. It is not a player stating how the character is thinking, acting, or talking and is thus not roleplaying.

nah the less than stellar game experience comes from dms who can’t be bothered to do even the bare minimum to actually create a good game experience that rewards in game skills and abilities and turns the game into magic tea party.

feel free to reply if you want, but I’m not going to be paying attention to you going forward.

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people here who has actually taken meaningful steps as DM to ensure that the "metagaming" posters like yourself don't like doesn't impact my game. And that's because I read the DMG and did what it said to do - remind players that bad assumptions can lead to bad outcomes, so it's smart play to verify your assumptions before acting on them. Then I change up lore or monsters from time to time to reinforce that incentive. I do this as opposed to setting up a social contract that requires players to engage in the metagame with the DM before they can determine which action declarations are valid and which ones are not.

 

[MikalC]

The game in which you pretend to be an elf is magic tea party.

except it’s not because rpgs have these things called rules, ya see.

but hey, thanks for contributing nothing to the discussion

 

[Guest 6801328]

hey look-one of the single most used sentences said by players to defend their jerkish and disruptive behaviors.

I’m on my phone so can’t easily grab all the quotes, but every time we have this debate, the main criticism seems to be a fear that jerks will abuse the freedom.

But why play with jerks?

@MikalC: a few posts ago your response to my satire about apps and pizza was that I wouldn’t be invited back. Obviously.

So, if somebody responds to “meta gaming is ok” by reading the module and sharing all the secrets, don’t invite that person back? At least you know he’s a jerk. If you ban meta gaming, the jerk might still read the module. They just won’t tell you.

Jerks can spoil any game, regardless of table rules or social contract. So I don’t really accept the jerk argument as valid, in this debate or any other.

 

[Guest 6801328]

but hey, thanks for contributing nothing to the discussion

AND you are getting out-of-line.

@Bawlie is one of the most respectful, least confrontational members of this community.