D&D General DMs: where's your metagaming line?

[el-remmen]

In my mind, it is only metagaming if you can't come up with a decent in-game reason for doing / thinking whatever it is your character is doing / thinking regardless of what the actual reason is.

 

[Campbell]

In my experience metagaming is never bad because it's metagaming. They can often be bad for other reasons, but never really because players realize they are playing a game. Using knowledge of a scenario you have played through before is wrong because you are spoiling the experience for someone else. Rushing to where the action is can be wrong, but not because metagaming. It's often wrong because you are taking the narrative spotlight away from another player's character. It is just as wrong to do so if your character is physically there as if they are not.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What's my metagaming line?

When the players create PCs, and the PCs then sit down and create their own PCs to play a role-playing game. That's a bridge too far.

 

[el-remmen]

What's my metagaming line?

When the players create PCs, and the PCs then sit down and create their own PCs to play a role-playing game. That's a bridge too far.

That sounds like DIE, Kieron Gillen's RPG based on his comic series of the same name.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Rushing to where the action is can be wrong, but not because metagaming. It's often wrong because you are taking the narrative spotlight away from another player's character. It is just as wrong to do so if your character is physically there as if they are not.

This is spot on. The rushing thing isn't a problem (when it's a problem) "because it's metagaming", as illustrated by your point that you can do the same thing even if your character is already present. Rather, it's a problem because it can spoil an interesting narrative. But sometimes it won't. And it just takes judgment to know which is which.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That sounds like DIE, Kieron Gillen's RPG based on his comic series of the same name.

Just looked it up -

We played Die, the ‘Goth Jumanji’ game fueling Kieron Gillen’s new RPG comic book

Gillen combines high fantasy and a midlife crisis, and makes you desperately want to play it

www.polygon.com

I'm sure this is for some people! But you ever look at something, and say to yourself ... "Self, that's really clever. Great idea! But it sounds so much more fun to think about than to ... experience."

Kind of like John Cage's 4'33". Great concept! Yeah, I get it.

 

[Mallus]

Gillen’s Die is fantastic. It goes some really unexpected places.

 

[cmad1977]

I don’t bother. Meta gaming isn’t a thing. When it “is” it’s a symptom of a different problem.

 

[iserith]

I tend to add a lot of elements to published adventures as well so the problem of having a player read the adventure will spoil only some of it. What I found reading this was that this slides into the thread of DM cheating from a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure how many DMs who thought that altering the adventure at the table was wrong would be ok with it once they found out that the player read the adventure. Is now moving the secret door from the throne to under the table wrong during play. How about changing if for next week since I know a player read the adventure?

For my part, I think anything can be changed that hasn't yet been established in some way in the setting. Though in practice, there's never been an occasion where I've had to change something in this fashion, since I don't really care about "metagaming." I've even had a lot of experience with players replaying my adventures multiple times. It's just never a problem.

I only have a minor problem with some of what is called metagamming. There might be a battle on the grid and the PCs see a monster run off into a side hall. The players may see the map and showing the tunnel loop around back of them- so the metagame that the monster is circling them instead of going for more monsters or fleeing. The PCs break up in town and one of the m is about to get into a fight and the others want to happen to be walking by.

I'm not sure I understand this particular problem. How are they able to see the map? It looks like you're suggesting they haven't been to the area to which the monster is fleeing yet, but they have knowledge of the map?

 

[overgeeked]

Metagaming doesn't really bother me. I think it's silly to expect people to make bad decisions in some weird attempt to pretend not to know things that they, in fact, know.

That’s a literal description of what roleplaying is. Pretending they do / don’t know stuff they actually don’t / do. I don’t know magic, but my character does. I don’t know how to ride a horse, but my character does. I know how to make gunpowder, but my character doesn’t. I know the game stats, strength, and weaknesses for most of the monsters, but my character doesn’t. Roleplaying literally is that thing you think is silly.