D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[Lanefan]

Problem is - you've just TOLD a player what their PC thought and how they should act.

Not quite. You've told them what they don't know and that actions can't be taken based on this knowledge they don't have.

To some groups THAT is a significantly bigger sin than metagaming.

In my view the bigger sin is letting players act as if their characters were quasi-omniscient.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not even close.

Do you somehow catalogue everything each PC knows?

How do you decide what they do or don’t know?

 

[Lanefan]

No, I don't.

Which seems very inconsistent with your assertions in other posts e.g. this one...

certainly don't try to avoid it, but certain ways that I go about DMing disincentivize it or remove the conditions for it happening

...that you try not to present opportunities to metagame.

When you-as-DM allow, say, split groups to be played with the non-present characters' players still there and observing you're handing them an opportunity to metagame like hors-d'ouveres on a silver platter. IME very few can restrain themselves from taking a bite.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In my own case at least, this is very much not a one-to-one correlation.

I keep the players in the dark about what their characters don't know. I try my best to enlighten them about what their characters do know. Fudging doesn't enter into it.

But it may. The players can’t be sure!

 

[iserith]

Not quite. You've told them what they don't know and that actions can't be taken based on this knowledge they don't have.

I don't need to know that trolls are vulnerable to fire to throw fire at one.

Now extrapolate that to all other kinds of actions likely to come up in a typical game.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Now, as the "Director", I--the DM--yell,

That pretty much sums it up for me.

 

[iserith]

Which seems very inconsistent with your assertions in other posts e.g. this one...

...that you try not to present opportunities to metagame.

When you-as-DM allow, say, split groups to be played with the non-present characters' players still there and observing you're handing them an opportunity to metagame like hors-d'ouveres on a silver platter. IME very few can restrain themselves from taking a bite.

Where you're going wrong is that you believe the certain ways I mention are specifically to curtail "metagaming," which they are not. That it also does that is simply a side-effect which I raise here as solutions to some of the problems posters are reporting. As well, you have to imagine that part of this is simply not making it my business why a player makes a given decision for their character. That's up to them, not me, and I have no say in it. So they can take a big ol' bite if they want. That's not my concern, but it is their risk.

 

[J.Quondam]

When a GM says a PC can't "know" something, does that GM also say when that PC can't suspect, imagine, believe, intuit, remember or guess something? If so, what's the algorithm that GM uses to determine precisely which cogitations originate from the player and which from the PC?

 

[Maxperson]

There’s a difference between an exploitable weakness of the kind I was talking about, and just special abilities.

Not one that matters when it comes to metagaming. Metagaming knowledge of a weakness is cheating, and so is metagaming knowledge of darkvision or an ankheg's acid spit to your advantage.

Cheating = cheating.

No, that’s not what I said at all. I said I use trolls myself, right? I just don’t worry if players know about the fire vulnerability. If i want such a vulnerability to be meaningful… some kind of “we need to find the silver bullet” type scenario, then I’m not gonna choose something the players all know.

I'm not into adversarial DMing. I'm not going to alter something just to get around metagame cheating.

That’s just as metagamey as acting on the knowledge.

Not without perverting the meaning of metagaming. Metagaming is having the PC act on out of character knowledge.

How do you even play?

Very well and easily.

Like, if the players are facing a dragon and someone says “don’t bunch up… spread out!” do you call timeout and ask how he knows to do that?

Nope. Dragons' breath weapons are common knowledge. Knowing that a red dragon is fire wouldn't be. If in doubt, there are skills, backgrounds, prior game play, etc. that can be used to figure out what the PC knows.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In my view the bigger sin is letting players act as if their characters were quasi-omniscient.

But it’s hilarious when they act as if their characters are quasi-omniscient but it turns out they aren’t because you design your own monsters.