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

[Charlaquin]

And then you should easily understand why I don't like players just using their OOC knowledge for information that is governed by the knowledge skills in D&D.

I can absolutely understand why you don’t like it. And if you don’t like it, creating a table rule against it makes sense.

 

[Charlaquin]

Granted, it makes little sense that people in the setting didn't figure it out sooner. Same doesn't apply to Leia though. And regardless, that is still something I feel certainly would be highly inappropriate without confirming it with the GM first.

Personally I think seeking such confirmation in-character, by taking steps to verify assumptions, is preferable to confirming with the DM out of character. At least in the context of D&D 5e.

If you're playing in a setting that appears in films or books and the game takes place in an earlier point in time, the characters simply cannot declare to be prescient and know all that before it happens. That would be blatantly absurd.

Unless prescience is a thing in the setting, of course. But yeah, different games have different concerns and need different rules to address them. Game rules against relying on knowledge of future events seems much more pertinent to me in a game set in a historical flashpoint in an established fictional franchise make much more sense than I think such rules do in a D&D 5e context.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I can absolutely understand why you don’t like it. And if you don’t like it, creating a table rule against it makes sense.

I haven't played (an official) Cthulhu game for a while. Does it have an explicit rule about the players not being allowed to rely on their OOC mythos knowledge or is it just implicit by there being rules for the character's mythos knowledge in the game?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Personally I think seeking such confirmation in-character, by taking steps to verify assumptions, is preferable to confirming with the DM out of character. At least in the context of D&D 5e.

I strongly disagree (surprise!) The GM trying to play in game catch up with a player determined to use their OOC knowledge from the movies sounds like a recipe for disaster. Much easier to just state that let's not go there.

Unless prescience is a thing in the setting, of course. But yeah, different games have different concerns and need different rules to address them. Game rules against relying on knowledge of future events seems much more pertinent to me in a game set in a historical flashpoint in an established fictional franchise make much more sense than I think such rules do in a D&D 5e context.

I think this is pretty similar than the situation in OP though. That of course was way less overt, but it is similar type of a thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

I haven't played (an official) Cthulhu game for a while. Does it have an explicit rule about the players not being allowed to rely on their OOC mythos knowledge or is it just implicit by there being rules for the character's mythos knowledge in the game?

I don’t know, I’ve only played a handful of times, and like half of them were the D&D 3.5 conversion.

 

[Charlaquin]

I strongly disagree (surprise!) The GM trying to play in game catch up with a player determined to use their OOC knowledge from the movies sounds like a recipe for disaster. Much easier to just state that let's not go there.

It’s only playing catch up if the DM is invested in trying to prevent the player from using that knowledge in the first place.

I think this is pretty similar than the situation in OP though. That of course was way less overt, but it is similar type of a thing.

I think it’s a meaningfully different situation.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Certainly that just depends on the basics of the setting? If in it is an established fact about the setting that no one has ever heard of Beholders or Mind Flayers then that's that. Like perhaps in this setting they literally have not ever visited the world ever before and the player characters are the first people to ever have any contact with them. Sort of an alien invasion plot.

I haven't played (an official) Cthulhu game for a while. Does it have an explicit rule about the players not being allowed to rely on their OOC mythos knowledge or is it just implicit by there being rules for the character's mythos knowledge in the game?

I think that was the point Charlaquin was making earlier: When their group plays Call of Cthulu, there is an explicit social contract to police distinction between knowledge the characters have and knowledge the players have.
When they play D&D they do not have this in place, and thus use of OOC knowledge is fine.
Likely because it is possible to play CoC and D&D as very different games: For example if you play CoC as investigation of plots and discovery of unknowable horrors, using OOC knowledge is going to spoil some things. If you play D&D as a more casual hack & slash, its not.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It’s only playing catch up if the DM is invested in trying to prevent the player from using that knowledge in the first place.

Sure. But I think that in this specific Star Wars example it is something that a lot of people might want to prevent. Even you agreed that at least using knowledge of the future events would be crossing the line.

I think it’s a meaningfully different situation.

I really don't see why. If the thing from the OOC source is likely to be unknowable to the character, it really doesn't matter whether that was because it is a secret or whether because it has not happened yet. You certainly can come up with a fictional reason to explain having the knowledge of either if you absolutely want to.

 

[Imaculata]

But Vader being Luke's dad is explicitly a big secret in the setting (until certain point anyway) so it definitely would be highly inappropriate for some random character to know that IC. Good example.

Thanks. I think in a Starwars rpg, it would be fair to assume that every player at the table probably knows this twist. So if the DM tried to make this a big reveal, you would find yourself in a similar situation. At the odd chance that one player at the table doesn't know the twist, there is a high likelyhood someone else will blurt it out.

I think a DM is best advised not to incorporate plot twists from widely available books or movies, if they want them to be a surprise. Also, don't call your npc Shadowmantle.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Thanks. I think in a Starwars rpg, it would be fair to assume that every player at the table probably knows this twist. So if the DM tried to make this a big reveal, you would find yourself in a similar situation. At the odd chance that one player at the table doesn't know the twist, there is a high likelyhood someone else will blurt it out.

I think a DM is best advised not to incorporate plot twists from widely available books or movies, if they want them to be a surprise. Also, don't call your npc Shadowmantle.

Sure, making it a plot twist in the game would be dumb, but the GM certainly might want to have a Luke or Leia briefly appear and it would then be highly inappropriate for one character to go "So Darth Vader is your dad?" (Assuming a time point when those things were still secrets of course.)