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

[Thomas Shey]

I'd be hard pressed to pin it down. There are some big blunt objects versions that annoy me, but for the most part I expect people to know mechanics and how they're going to apply in regard to their characters and use that knowledge. I don't normally run pre-generated modules/adventures so that's a non-issue. When it comes to monster stats, if I don't want someone to make decisions with those in mind I either conceal what would tell them what the monster is, change the monster, or use original monsters.

 

[el-remmen]

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.

Yes. Whenever I read the comic I think, "This is an interesting comic book to read but is not the kind of gaming I want to do."

 

[Cadence]

I'm hoping that you meant that this is your experience. Because for myself, that doesn't affect my "immersion" at all. I could care less how other players make their decisions.

That one feels like sometimes I don't care about a lot of things (who knows what the player has worked out with the DM in advance), but sliding down the slippery slope I can imagine things that would bother me. (I realize there are others on here who wouldn't care even for this).

***: The party arrives in a new town they haven't been to before and stops at a mid-range inn..

DM: "The barkeep seems friendly and asks 'What can I get y'all to drink? Just had some new Ale brought in yesterday from the Clangbeard Brewery."

Player 1 with a Fighter: "I attack the barkeep with my sword, trying to behead them"

DM and Rest of Party OOC: "!?!?!?"

Player 1 OOC:: "What? I read this before, they're an evil priest with no useful information."

Rest of Party: "We think he just murdered someone in cold blood so we pile on to attempt to knock him out to see if he's mind controlled or something."

Should be fun at the trial later.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That one feels like sometimes I don't care about a lot of things (who knows what the player has worked out with the DM in advance), but sliding down the slippery slope I can imagine things that would bother me. (I realize there are others on here who wouldn't care even for this).

***: The party arrives in a new town they haven't been to before and stops at a mid-range inn..

DM: "The barkeep seems friendly and asks 'What can I get y'all to drink? Just had some new Ale brought in yesterday from the Clangbeard Brewery."

Player 1 with a Fighter: "I attack the barkeep with my sword, trying to behead them"

DM and Rest of Party OOC: "!?!?!?"

Player 1 OOC:: "What? I read this before, they're an evil priest with no useful information."

Rest of Party: "We think he just murdered someone in cold blood so we pile on to attempt to knock him out to see if he's mind controlled or something."

Should be fun at the trial later.

Right. This is another great example of why metagaming itself isn't usually the problem.

If the company walks into a bar, and one of them attacks and kills the bartender, it's probably going to be disruptive to the game, as you point out with the trial comment. Does it really matter why the player chose that action? It's just an all-around bad decision.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That one feels like sometimes I don't care about a lot of things (who knows what the player has worked out with the DM in advance), but sliding down the slippery slope I can imagine things that would bother me. (I realize there are others on here who wouldn't care even for this).

***: The party arrives in a new town they haven't been to before and stops at a mid-range inn..

DM: "The barkeep seems friendly and asks 'What can I get y'all to drink? Just had some new Ale brought in yesterday from the Clangbeard Brewery."

Player 1 with a Fighter: "I attack the barkeep with my sword, trying to behead them"

DM and Rest of Party OOC: "!?!?!?"

Player 1 OOC:: "What? I read this before, they're an evil priest with no useful information."

Rest of Party: "We think he just murdered someone in cold blood so we pile on to attempt to knock him out to see if he's mind controlled or something."

Should be fun at the trial later.

The GM is not beholden to the prep -- this isn't the cultist bartender, that one comes in later in the day. So sorry, you murdered someone.

Foreknowledge is fine, but you really should take actions to validate your assumptions, whatever they are, or you run the risk of consequences you didn't anticipate. Like assuming that these trolls are affected by fire, when they have thick reddish hides and live in a volcano.

 

[Jack Daniel]

But the one that really...really gets me is the "Sudden Rush." That mysterious and sudden need of PCs to rush to the place where something is happening despite not knowing that something is happening there. One PC is talking to an NPC...and miraculously the entire party suddenly and mysteriously needs to be there...for no particular reason. Or some PC spots something interesting...and miraculously the entire party suddenly and mysteriously needs to be there...for no particular reason.

I don't consider that to be metagaming so much as it's just annoying "That Guy" behavior. I had one player for a good number of years who was in that habit, always trying to mysteriously "teleport" his PC into every social interaction scene, even if his character was explicitly on the other side of a large city. He just always had to be involved, and never really managed to take the hint that he was basically spotlight-hogging and annoying the other players.

But apart from that — a problem player using brazenly impossible out-of-character knowledge to be disruptive — I would imagine that my tolerance for metagaming is considerably higher than most. I almost never run modules. I don't care if the players are familiar with monster statistics. In fact, I don't even bother to keep monster hit dice, hit points, Armor Classes, or other numbers secret during combat encounters. And I generally prefer it when players treat their characters as avatars rather than personas, because I want them immersed in the scenario, not their character.

IMO, worrying overmuch about metagaming is a symptom of wanting the players to focus on simulating the personality of Grumpy Dwarf #726, and prioritzing that over wanting the players to experience the feeling of being on an adventure.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't consider that to be metagaming so much as it's just annoying "That Guy" behavior. I had one player for a good number of years who was in that habit, always trying to mysteriously "teleport" his PC into ever social interaction scene, even if his character was explicitly on the other side of a large city. He just always had to be involved, and never really managed to take the hint that he was basically spotlight-hogging and annoying the other players.

And as somebody noted up thread, players who hog the spotlight tend to do that even when they are already on scene. So it's not the teleporting that's the problem.

...I generally prefer it when players treat their characters as avatars rather than personas, because I want them immersed in the scenario, not their character.

IMO, worrying overmuch about metagaming is a symptom of wanting the players to focus on simulating the personality of Grumpy Dwarf #726, and prioritzing that over wanting the players to experience the feeling of being on an adventure.

This is along the lines of what I was trying to describe with my distinction (from another thread) between performative and experiential roleplaying.

 

[R_J_K75]

What I caution players about, however, is that I change things from time to time and that it's smart play to verify their assumptions in-game before acting on them.

I do caution players that I use a lot of custom monsters and when running modules, I modify them, so acting on information you think you know but haven’t taken steps to confirm in-game is risky.

These quotes remind me of a comment Elminster made in one of the Elminsters Ecologies books. IDR it verbatim but it read something to the effect of, "If you go hunting a great green wyrm, you better make sure its green first".

Personally I mod things in play so I dont care if the players read any books they like. I run games that even at 1st level characters have a rudimentary knowledge of most common monsters, spells etc. Where I do draw the line is when a player tries to act on knowledge that their character absolutely wouldnt know. It happens very little but when it does I say no, your character wouldnt know that.

 

[Charlaquin]

These quotes remind me of a comment Elminster made in one of the Elminsters Ecologies books. IDR it verbatim but it read something to the effect of, "If you go hunting a great green wyrm, you better make sure its green first".

Personally I mod things in play so I dont care if the players read any books they like. I run games that even at 1st level characters have a rudimentary knowledge of most common monsters, spells etc. Where I do draw the line is when a player tries to act on knowledge that their character absolutely wouldnt know. It happens very little but when it does I say no, your character wouldnt know that.

That’s reasonable. Personally, I don’t draw the line there on the basis that, just because the character doesn’t know something, doesn’t mean they couldn’t incidentally act in a way that someone who did know that thing would. Take the troll and fire example because it’s easy (and assume that for whatever reason, the character absolutely wouldn’t know about trolls being weak to fire). Not knowing trolls are weak to fire doesn’t actually prevent someone from attacking one with fire. You can argue that they “wouldn’t think to do that,” but the character might not be motivated by a desire to exploit the monster’s weakness in the first place. I can imagine all sorts of reasons you might try to kill a monster with fire, whether you know that will be more effective than usual or not. Therefore, any argument that the character “wouldn’t” do it has to rely on doubting the player’s word as to their character’s motivations, and relying on past behavior to establish precedent. And that’s just not the kind of game I want to be playing.

Perhaps it would be better to say I do draw a line somewhere: at telling the player their reasoning for their character’s actions is invalid. “Your character wouldn’t” is a hard line at my table. No one gets to tell a player what their character would or wouldn’t do but the player themselves.

 

[iserith]

Where I do draw the line is when a player tries to act on knowledge that their character absolutely wouldnt know. It happens very little but when it does I say no, your character wouldnt know that.

I can't think of a single instance where I would do this. I would say that players are free to have their characters think whatever the player establishes. It just might be that they are wrong.