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

I just found it nice/interesting that "running, not paying attention to what's ahead of him" didn't mean the character was oblivious to the world. Just that they had a large penalty.

Yeah, that's part and parcel to the speed/pace and traveling rules. It's the trade-off against taking longer to get from point A to point B with no penalty to passive Perception. My group in Friday's game opted for fast pace while traveling because they were in a rush to meet a deadline. Luckily they didn't have any wandering monster results with lurking monsters. Instead they got an ettin who was not trying to hide itself to gain surprise.
 

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Yeah, but think how satisfying it would be to have a TPK because nobody broke character to exploit player knowledge.

It feels like it would also be unsatisfying if it was a modified monster subject to something else, and the party died before they got around to trying the right thing.

I'd hope in either case the DM would leave the players a way out (and some signs they might want to take it). Running my 10yo and some of his friends through the game for the first time, it feels like there will be lots of things they won't know the first time.
 

@iserith has the right of the example being one for how ad/dis interact, but if we're going to look at it as a possible conflict in advice for application of passive checks, it's very simply resolved by stepping back a bit. A check is only called for by the GM if the action taken has an uncertain outcome and a meaning consequence of failure. This applies to passive checks as well. In this example, the GM in question made the call to ask for a check and determined that a passive check was appropriate given the duration of the action in question. Done.
 

Monsters with weaknesses, resistances, etc. are not designed around the assumption that players won’t take advantage of those things. On the contrary.

Er, if they were designed for the players to make them useless, they wouldn't exist. There would be no point to them.
 

Yeah, but think how satisfying it would be to have a TPK because nobody broke character to exploit player knowledge. People say you can't "win" at D&D, but this might qualify.

"Remember the time we roleplayed so masterfully that we died to the regenerating troll?"
That was a Strawman of my argument. An amusing one, too.
 

As for the topic in the OP, I was once, as @Elfcrusher notes, very much in the "anti-metagaming" camp. I used quotes because I no longer think that metagaming, as discussed in this thread, is a real thing rather than a crutch. Let me explain this -- metagaming is almost always only a problem when it occurs in a way that renders the GM's prepared plotline or the GM's intended gimmick moot. Look to trolls, for example. Pretending to not know that trolls are harmed by fire or acid is only done to preserve the gimmick of the troll's regeneration. It's a crutch to make encounters more difficult instead of doing the work (which is minimal) to present a challenging encounter that doesn't depend on the gimmick. Likewise, if you use a known character from a setting, expecting players to ignore any knowledge of this they may have just so the GM can push through their intended plot point is lazy. It's trivial to both design encounters that don't function on known gimmicks (use a new one, or don't use one at all) and it's trivial to avoid requiring known information be denied players so that the plot functions (if you're into that).

"Metagaming" is actually a metagame tool used to force play to align with the GM's expectations. I stopped caring about it altogether and changed how I approached scene framing and encounter design and it's absolutely zero problem whatsoever. I had (he's stopped playing with us for out of game reasons, life happens) a player who I used to watch like a hawk because I thought he "metagamed." And he did. But, then I realized that was my fault, I could design so that it didn't matter, and the issue disappeared altogether. I don't even really custom build monsters all to often, and then only because I need something I can't find to fill a niche, and my encounters are tougher and more interesting. I will never, ever again expect a player to ignore things they know. If they want to play that their character doesn't know, that's awesome. If they don't, that's also awesome, because nothing in my game will hinge on that knowledge.

Finally, to address the comment upthread (I'm being lazy and not looking for it, apologies) that asked what happens if a player starts using real world knowledge about sciencey and tech things in game, creating gunpowder being a given example -- that's, again, entirely a problem created by the GM. Your world doesn't have to have gunpowder, or have gunpowder that works at all like the real world. Or it's magic. Frankly, this is a trivial problem, and really an opportunity to work with that player to create an interesting sideline where they create gunpowder. If it's a continuous problem, or violently against the premise of the game, then it's not even an in-game problem -- you need to take this out-of-game and deal with it as real people. Again, if this is actually a problem, it's entirely the fault of the GM.
 


As for the topic in the OP, I was once, as @Elfcrusher notes, very much in the "anti-metagaming" camp. I used quotes because I no longer think that metagaming, as discussed in this thread, is a real thing rather than a crutch. Let me explain this -- metagaming is almost always only a problem when it occurs in a way that renders the GM's prepared plotline or the GM's intended gimmick moot. Look to trolls, for example. Pretending to not know that trolls are harmed by fire or acid is only done to preserve the gimmick of the troll's regeneration. It's a crutch to make encounters more difficult instead of doing the work (which is minimal) to present a challenging encounter that doesn't depend on the gimmick. Likewise, if you use a known character from a setting, expecting players to ignore any knowledge of this they may have just so the GM can push through their intended plot point is lazy. It's trivial to both design encounters that don't function on known gimmicks (use a new one, or don't use one at all) and it's trivial to avoid requiring known information be denied players so that the plot functions (if you're into that).

You make a lot of assumptions that just aren't true for me and my group, and probably many other groups out there. We enjoy roleplaying our characters with the knowledge that they would have. It's not about making trolls harder or easier for us, though using metagame knowledge does make encounters much easier. It's simply about roleplaying the way we like to, and the way the game assumes encounters. If they wanted all the encounters to be fought as if they had no resistances and immunities, they wouldn't give them those things. Those things don't exist only for the new players that don't know about them.
 



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