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

[Charlaquin]

Eww, eww, eww! I would hate that so much! That is utterly antithetical for what I want from an RPG.

I’d prefer if you didn’t react with such open disgust to my play preferences, but different strokes, of course. I know the anachronistic humor being translated to more setting-appropriate equivalences is not to everyone’s taste, and I prefer it in moderation myself. Translating mechanical talk to something with meaning to the characters just seems like a practical necessity to me; the game systems are abstractions that allow us to access and interface with information that heroes in the game world would be able to, but we as players can’t. A seasoned combatant should have a good sense of how much more he can take in a fight, but we as players lack both the sense and the language for it that the characters ought to have, so we talk about HP and assume that in-fiction the characters are communicating the same information in ways that make sense to them. But, you know, if that’s not your thing, you do you.

That, however, is a good practice and I would consider that to be one sort of an anti-metagame policy.

I wouldn’t consider it anti-metagaming, as combatting metagaming is neither its intended purpose in my case, nor in my opinion would it be a very effective tool for doing so. But, I can see how it would appeal to the anti-metagaming crowd. It acts to maintain a tangible connection between the player experience and the in-fiction activity, which is generally something the anti-metagaming crowd values.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not weird at all. You've just been absolutely misunderstanding my position. Further, nothing in this ruling says anything about controlling what a PC can think or say or try. I even explicitly allow that the PC can insist on the wish, but that I will adjudicate is as failing. I've always made the distinction between policing PC thinking and action declarations and the GM's adjudication of action declarations. It's not anything new from me, here. I'm still not policing player control over the PC, or worrying about metagaming, I'm applying the rules of the game in a way that tries to support the player's intent instead of screwing them on the words. If F-14s don't exist in my world, wishing doesn't make it so. However, a PC can talk about F-14s all the want to.

When you have a chat with the player in the effect that the thing they suggest really doesn't fit the theme of the campaign, you're pretty clearly implicitly telling them what to think (or what not to think in this instance.)

 

[Imaculata]

I remember a session where my players were discussing what spells to bring for an upcoming battle. They reminded themselves that their characters wouldn't necessarily know the weaknesses and powers of monsters, but I corrected them. I straight up told them to bring whatever they wanted to bring as players. I told them to try and win this game as best they could. If they as players were expecting undead, then by all means bring anti undead spells, and we'll see if you were right. I discourage my players from separating character and player knowledge too much.

If my players had known the module I was running, and blurted out a spoiler, then so be it. Run with it, and see if you are right. I'm not going to change the fiction because you guessed it correctly, or knew the twist already. But I may have changed some things before hand. As @iserith often says: validate your assumptions ingame.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I remember a session where my players were discussing what spells to bring for an upcoming battle. They reminded themselves that their characters wouldn't necessarily know the weaknesses and powers of monsters, but I corrected them. I straight up told them to bring whatever they wanted to bring as players. I told them to try and win this game as best they could. If they as players were expecting undead, then by all means bring anti undead spells, and we'll see if you were right. I discourage my players from separating character and player knowledge too much.

That's fine, but then I would at least need an in-game justification for why the characters know the weaknesses of the monsters. (Granted, in many cases such is not hard to provide.)

 

[Imaculata]

That's fine, but then I would at least need an in-game justification for why the characters know the weaknesses of the monsters. (Granted, in many cases such is not hard to provide.)

Of course. Although it can be easily explained away by characters having heard rumors, or having read books about such things.

In regards to the original topic though, I think it was a bit of a mistake on the part of the DM to presume this twist would not be known to the players. If you want all your players to be surprised by the twist, don't use characters from the books for a twist, or change the name of the character in question.

As an aside, I don't think I would trust anyone named Shadowmantle, and I haven't even read any of these books. What a lame name btw. Is this the quality of D&D writing?

 

[Seramus]

As an aside, I don't think I would trust anyone named Shadowmantle, and I haven't even read any of these books. What a lame name btw. Is this the quality of D&D writing?

"Hrrm. Snidley Whiplash, Malificent, and Skeletor. I've got a hunch..."

 

[Charlaquin]

That's fine, but then I would at least need an in-game justification for why the characters know the weaknesses of the monsters. (Granted, in many cases such is not hard to provide.)

I’d say it’s almost always trivially easy to provide, and even when it’s not, a plausible justification is rarely hard to come up with, as long as you have a reasonably flexible sense of versimilitude. Accordingly, I just don’t consider coming up with such an explanation to be particularly important. I assume good faith on the part of the players and don’t put too much stress on coming up with justifications.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Of course. Although it can be easily explained away by characters having heard rumors, or having read books about such things.

Yep, that works fine most of the time.

In regards to the original topic though, I think it was a bit of a mistake on the part of the DM to presume this twist would not be known to the players. If you want all your players to be surprised by the twist, don't use characters from the books for a twist, or change the name of the character in question.

Sure, quite true. I still feel it would have been polite for the player to confirm whether their character had heard of her instead of just jumping to conclusion and blurting it out. But there certainly is a flaw in the setup as well.

As an aside, I don't think I would trust anyone named Shadowmantle, and I haven't even read any of these books. What a lame name btw. Is this the quality of D&D writing?

Haha! You totally need to give completely innocuous NPC edgy villain names to make the players suspicious! Meet Malicifer Darkmantle, the friendly shopkeeper!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I’d say it’s almost always trivially easy to provide, and even when it’s not, a plausible justification is rarely hard to come up with, as long as you have a reasonably flexible sense of versimilitude. Accordingly, I just don’t consider coming up with such an explanation to be particularly important. I assume good faith on the part of the players and don’t put too much stress on coming up with justifications.

I don't think it is always trivially easy. Sometimes the narrative is explicitly that the character encounter something completely unknown to them, like my 'orc' example from the earlier. Granted, if one wants to not fuss about the IC/OOC knowledge gap in such a situation then the GM can change the monsters. But not everyone always play that way. I have played in many Cthulhu games where the characters encounter eldritch lovecraftian horrors and are utterly flabbergasted by them whilst the players are Cthulhu aficionados and fully well know what they are.

 

[Imaculata]

1. Do you think I did anything wrong and how am I supposed to play this? I can't like forget that she is an evil lich.

I don't think you did anything wrong, or at least not on purpose. Blurting out that the character with the lame sinister name is a Lich, is akin to blurting out that Darthvader is a certain someone's daddy during a StarWars rpg. Spoiling this 'twist' is a shame for your DM and fellow players, but I don't presume malice on your part.

As I DM I never expect my players to separate character and player knowledge. If they as players don't trust an npc, then they are well in their right to not trust that npc as characters. Because if I did, then my players would have to act willfully ignorant and act surprised when the obvious is eventually revealed. I want my players to be actually surprised. Because if they are, then so are their characters. And they'll also be engaged by this more.

So as a DM, I see it as my duty to make my twists not quite so obvious. The villain isn't going to be called Shadowmantle, and I won't pick my twist from a book that any of my players could have read. I also throw around some red herrings, to try and prevent them from second guessing my twists. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't.