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

[Charlaquin]

How would you handle a low intelligence character played by a player who is Googling everything during the game? At some point, just saying "this what what my character thinks" (and being defacto omniscient) is too much

I wouldn’t be particularly bothered. First of all, I don’t restrict what characters are allowed to know, or do, based on their Intelligence stat. A low Intelligence will mean you are less likely to succeed at actions with uncertain outcomes that draw on logic, memory, or deductive reasoning. That’s penalty enough in my opinion, no need to police what the character can think or do based on their stats.

As for googling things during the game... I don’t know about you, but I’ve run games on roll20 before, and roll20 has a built-in database that anyone can just search at any time. It doesn’t ruin the game. Besides, it’s a risky move to assume that whatever information you find on Google is going to be accurate to this game. I use a lot of homebrew monsters and put my own spin on published adventures, so far from making your character omniscient, relying on google would be more likely to make your character come across as the archetypal know-it-all who’s regularly just wrong about the “facts” they spout.

And on top of all that, I still don’t see it as a big deal even if the player could look everything up. If my monster, encounter, adventure, or campaign is trivialized by the player having foreknowledge of it, then it wasn’t designed well enough. In my opinion, anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t know why some people think of it as adversarial. I guess if your premise is that it has to be done in order to counter cheating, that would make sense.

Because, if the players have decided to use out of character knowledge to make the encounters easier and I have to in direct opposition to that decision, up the power level of the encounters, I am engaging in an adversarial act.

Whereas I see the policing of others’ role playing in the first place as adversarial, but the switching up of monster stats makes the game more fun, because it keeps me, the player, guessing.

There is no policing. I expect there to be no metagaming, so the players don't metagame. No policing necessary.

 

[Charlaquin]

Because, if the players have decided to use out of character knowledge to make the encounters easier and I have to in direct opposition to that decision, up the power level of the encounters, I am engaging in an adversarial act.

My point was that you don’t really have to up the difficulty of encounters that much. Again, a troll is difficult to fight because it regenerates unless you hit it with a particular type of damage, which forces the players to use tactics they might not otherwise use. Knowing what damage type to use doesn’t obviate the need to change your tactics against a troll.

 

[iserith]

My point was that you don’t really have to up the difficulty of encounters that much.

Or even at all. Some players will use their knowledge and skill in defeating trolls to the challenge and some won't. It's really none of the DM's concern. And as you say, it may require a change in tactics anyway.

The difficulty of any challenge is impacted by player decisions and luck. This is normal.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Because, if the players have decided to use out of character knowledge to make the encounters easier and I have to in direct opposition to that decision, up the power level of the encounters, I am engaging in an adversarial act.

I agree that sounds contentious. But it already became adversarial when you all agreed to a "no player knowledge" house-rule, and they broke that agreement. Right?

There is no policing. I expect there to be no metagaming, so the players don't metagame. No policing necessary.

So I guess you don't have to worry about it becoming adversarial.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is a truly bizarre discussion.

The character is not the player. The bloody point of roleplaying is to play a character who is not you. They have their own personality, they have access to different information than the player. The character in the setting doesn't know that they're a character in the game, they haven't read the monster manual, they have not read the associated trash novels. And this really not as much as making things too easy or 'cheating' than attempting to portray this fictional person coherently an believably and withing the accepted parentheses of the setting. I am utterly flabbergasted that there seems to be any confusion about this matter.

Now one thing I agree with though is that often actually not knowing is more fun than just pretending not to know. It is not that pretending not to know is hard, it is barely an inconvenience; it just isn't that engaging. You can of course easily do it for more trivial details, but if the drama hinges on mystery or revelation it works much better if the players actually don't know. This is one reason I prefer to make my own setting and often change how monsters and metaphysics work (though the biggest reason is that I just like to fiddle with such things.)

 

[Charlaquin]

This is a truly bizarre discussion.

The character is not the player. The bloody point of roleplaying is to play a character who is not you. They have their own personality, they have access to different information than the player. The character in the setting doesn't know that they're a character in the game, they haven't read the monster manual, they have not read the associated trash novels. And this really not as much as making things too easy or 'cheating' than attempting to portray this fictional person coherently an believably and withing the accepted parentheses of the setting. I am utterly flabbergasted that there seems to be any confusion about this matter.

I don’t think anyone is confused about whether or not the player and the character are the same. I think there is merely a difference of opinion as to whether or not it’s the DM’s place to tell a player what their character “would” or “wouldn’t” do.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is a truly bizarre discussion.

The character is not the player. The bloody point of roleplaying is to play a character who is not you. They have their own personality, they have access to different information than the player. The character in the setting doesn't know that they're a character in the game, they haven't read the monster manual, they have not read the associated trash novels. And this really not as much as making things too easy or 'cheating' than attempting to portray this fictional person coherently an believably and withing the accepted parentheses of the setting. I am utterly flabbergasted that there seems to be any confusion about this matter.

Now one thing I agree with though is that often actually not knowing is more fun than just pretending not to know. It is not that pretending not to know is hard, it is barely an inconvenience; it just isn't that engaging. You can of course easily do it for more trivial details, but if the drama hinges on mystery or revelation it works much better if the players actually don't know. This is one reason I prefer to make my own setting and often change how monsters and metaphysics work (though the biggest reason is that I just like to fiddle with such things.)

Can I play a character who's uncle told them about trolls, or who survived a caravan ambush thanks to some quick thinking caravan guards?

Can I play a character who learned the name of a lich through some backstory?

Here's the think, when a player declares an action that appears to leverage out of character knowledge, I think we'll both ask, "and how does your character know that?" The difference is that you'll ask it because you are policing the play of the character and I'll ask it because I want the player to add to their character with a new story which I can then leverage in play. So, if you face trolls and the player pulls out a torch, you might ask because it appears to be metagaming and you want to prevent that -- because trolls are a harder challenge if everyone faffs about a bit. I'll ask because I'd like to hear why this character knows to use fire against trolls -- it evokes more character from them and makes the player present a fuller character in play. So, yeah, if the point is to play a character who isn't you, I get that in droves because I ask my players questions to find out more about their characters and don't just try to restrict play because "mah trollz!"

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

How so more than anything else in the game? The DM's job is to present challenging, interesting encounters. If the players know that (for example...) trolls regenerate unless they take fire damage, and the DM knows they know that, why is it suddenly "adversarial" to switch things up? Or to use more trolls, if you believe that knowledge negates the challenge?

I believe that their games, as well as my own are more cooperative between players and DM, where it is the characters who oppose the DM's challenges and both players and DM have fun playing them though them, even if characters may end up failing and dying.
Compared with that, the DM matching wits more directly against the players' OOC knowledge in the game is more . . . adversarial.

If on game night an extra few people showed up, you'd make the encounters harder, right? Is that "adversarial"?

Nope. That's part of ensuring a more fun experience for everyone. Adding more monsters to retain encounter challenge is much easier than trying to retain the thrill players get as their characters discover something.

Yeah. Again, if your table all agrees to play with that house-rule, then it makes sense to enforce it consistently. Otherwise why have the house-rule?

(Although...improvising on the fly is "scrambling", but policing player action declarations on the fly is not?)

Generally, if I have to police player's character action declarations, it is because they have tried to do something obviously against the house rules. Often the "No PvP" or "No inappropriate behaviour" houserules. Picking up and policing that sort of thing on the fly can be pretty simple, although I do indeed try to enforce the house rules consistently.

Sure. If that feels like extra work to you, I can see why you wouldn't want to do it.

It does indeed "feel" like extra work to me.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I don’t think anyone is confused about whether or not the player and the character are the same. I think there is merely a difference of opinion as to whether or not it’s the DM’s place to tell a player what their character “would” or “wouldn’t” do.

Indeed. It isn't whether "the character is the player". It is whether a character's knowledge should reflect that of the player who did read the monster manual.
It is part of a DM's job to tell a player if their behaviour is inappropriate and their character would not do something. There is discussion where a suitable place to draw the line in terms of allowing characters to act on player knowledge is appropriate.