D&D General "When I DM I do my Best to Curb Players Meta-Gaming or Using Out-of-Character Knowledge." (a poll)

[Emirikol]

I jist call it out and ask for justification.

 

[Laurefindel]

To a certain extent, I encourage metagaming rather than the other way around. The only metagaming i try to discourage is when characters seem precisely aware of what others are doing despite being separated, but even that rarely ruins the experience.

Otherwise I may be blessed with good players, but sometimes I tell them where the campaign is heading and they skillfully metagame their way into it. My games may be a bit railroad-y sometimes, but my players are usually the ones driving the train.

 

[Lanefan]

One of my great annoyances was coming up with what I thought was an awesome name for a major NPC, safety-Googling it, and finding oh yeah it's also a name of a city in Morocco, but I've never heard of it, and neither will the players, and of course, the week before the session introducing the NPC, turns out the tube (subway) was filled with billboards to "Come visit beautiful [NPC name]!", and it's nothing but smirking when he's introduced. So much for his majesty and respect!

I get around this by looking at maps and stealing names of little tiny villages rather than big cities.

Edit to add: or I'll change a letter or two e.g. Tangiers might become Tanquair.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

i do that more for ease of prep time and ease of quick kit bashing when my players pull a left turn out of no where

I used to have a little sign I would put out on the table that read,

"The Metagame will not help you."

 

[Lanefan]

For the poll, true all the way for me.

Sure there's the whole troll-v-fire issue, but for me that's not the big one; in-fiction lore can cover that if needed.

For me the headache is some players just can't help themselves from using more detailed knowledge their characters wouldn't and couldn't have in the fiction. My usual example here is when the PCs send a scout out alone and the scout gets into deadly trouble, if I run this at the table can the other players restrain themselves from having their PCs come to the rescue even though said PCs don't and can't know the scout - who otherwise isn't expected back for at least another hour - has run into problems? IME while some players can be counted on to show such restraint, enough can't that it's a problem.

Further, even if they don't mount a rescue mission then and there IME the thought processes for all players later are invariably different if they know the fate of the scout (dead, captured, hanging by a shoelace halfway down a cliff, whatever) as opposed to simply knowing she's late in returning but not knowing why.

Solution: I take the scout's player into another room and sort out the scouting trip, then I and the player return to the table and - after I ask if the rest of the party are doing anything in the meantime - either the scout comes back to report* or it doesn't.

* - a very pleasant side effect of this is it allows the scout's player to put that report into her own words, thus allowing opportunities for things to be (intentionally or otherwise) exaggerated, missed, forgotten, or misinterpreted - just like real life.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I don't mind most of the time, monster knowledge could be handled by stuff the character knows. Optimization I'm cool with.
I always use homebrewed worlds, so no knowledge they could use there. If I am using a published module, I tend to make some serious changes so even if a player has read or played it before, that info would be pretty much useless. If I am running on without much modification, I make sure that they have never played or read the thing.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Players that meta-game too much either learn to tone it down and stop being a know-it-all or they don't get invited back to play. I don't care that someone has read every Realms book ever published, their character is a level 1 fighter from the boonies and knows none of that stuff.

 

[Yora]

The metagame is where most of the playing takes place in an RPG.

 

[amethal]

If that metagaming is in the purpose of helping the table have a good time (like understanding how a system shares spotlight time, and using it to share spotlight), then I feel no need to stop it.

I strongly prefer that players not use, say, monster stat information without first establishing the character knows it first. But I rarely need to enforce that - my players seek to establish it themselves before I have to act on that.

So how did you vote?

I voted "False" since I encourage the "good" metagaming and discourage the "bad" metagaming. I assume everyone else does the same, in practice, except we all disagree on what constitutes metagaming in the first place.

I mean, if a player character has died, and the player needs to have a new character join the group, the group should do lots of due diligence, potentially interview other candidates and maybe ultimately decline to put their life in this stranger's hands, turning down the offer to join the party. (Part of me now wants to ask the player to roll up 5 new characters, and let the other players decide which one they get to play ...)

If a player new to the game forgets about one of his class abilities, and one of the other player characters may well die as a result, I have no problem with one of the other players suggesting (for example) that the new player who "has used his last healing spell" spontaneously convert one of their other spells into a healing spell - even if the PC has never seen a cleric do that before.

I also don't want to get into minutiae like "has your PC met trolls before, or heard stories/legends about trolls, or any other regenerating creatures, or is inventive/smart enough to wonder whether burning might solve the problem" so if you think your PC will use fire at this point, then I'm not going to object.

On the other hand, if you act on knowledge your character could not possibly have ("We all stop what we were doing and head over to visit Dave at the chapel, timing our arrival to coincide with the assassination attempt the DM just mentioned") then I'm not going to "strive to curb" it. I'm going to flat out disallow it.

 

[amethal]

Players that meta-game too much either learn to tone it down and stop being a know-it-all or they don't get invited back to play. I don't care that someone has read every Realms book ever published, their character is a level 1 fighter from the boonies and knows none of that stuff.

Is it the player characters who have to tone it down, or the players?

Metagaming can be hard to define, but an out-of-character comment such as "Ranulf the mayor of Triboar is actually a dwarf, not a human. I bet this (human) guy turns out to be an imposter!" isn't metagaming in my book (but could be pretty annoying).

DISCLAIMER - I know nothing about Triboar, this was a random example.