D&D 1E 5e Play, 1e Play, and the Immersive Experience

[Guest 6801328]

I don't think I ever said I was for or against your character not knowing something you know. If you are playing and you run into a puzzle set on a chess table, then by all means, you should be trying to solve the puzzle hopefully and not intentionally playing poorly because your character "doesn't know chess". This is metagaming only to the extent that the player is meta but by role playing this to the extreme and for all intents and purposes "being" your character (trying to solve the puzzle yourself even though you personally are not the one solving the puzzle) you have momentarily immersed yourself in the narrative with no rules in sight.

Then there is another way: You see a chess table puzzle and you say "my character has an INT of 18, can I make a knowledge check to see what I might know about this?". Or the DM invites you to make the knowledge check. Rules in, roleplay out.

I was DMing an encounter a few months back and the party was up against a pretty tough customer. Did they discuss the events in the narrative, or did they discuss the fact that if player A withdraws the creature will get an attack of opportunity but the player withdrawing has a high armor class, wasting his reaction when Player B does something that only a reaction could mitigate (it was such gibberish I might have my terms wrong). Just take a guess which discussion I had the pleasure of listening to. Rules, not roleplaying; metagaming to actually remove you from the narrative and instead boil it down to a math problem.

It sounds to me like you're playing with the wrong people but blaming it on the wrong system.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So, I will try one final time. The only way I can make sense of what you are saying is that you believe the term "metagaming" is a bad thing, you believe that metagaming includes understand the rules for the game that you are playing, and you have some how constructed this edifice to effectively define everything you do as "not metagaming." Which seems ... effortful?

You seem earnest in your intent, so I won't take this as the insult it would appear to be, were it coming from anyone else. Yes, I consider meta-gaming to be a bad thing, and I think it's weird that anyone would disagree with that (but I'm used to it by now). I do not believe that understanding the rules of the game requires anyone to meta-game, because the rules of the game (at least, the rules that the player would ever interact with) are effectively observable to the character. They see the outcome of those rules, whenever they look at the world around them. It does not require any effort, for me to view the rules in this way; it makes perfect sense to me, and I've been doing it since the late nineties.

1. This is a game that we are playing. We are agreed on that, right? Regardless of the exact nature of the "game," it still requires "rules" that we, the players, are aware of in order to play. Even if it's just something as basic as "You need to roll that funny looking dice to see if your character hit the bad bad man."

Right.

2. The game happens to portray a different world, one that doesn't exist. While the whole "gamist/simulationist debate" was tired by 1980, I think that all people agree that D&D, as a game, and as a role playing game, does not "simulate" any kind of imagined reality, but rather makes some approximations, most of which are chosen for fun and gamist reasons. In other words, the design of a D&D world isn't meant to mimic any reality with fidelity, but is supposed to be a game that can be played.

It's hard to pinpoint D&D on any sort of GNS graph, because it varies so wildly between editions. I would posit that both 2E and 3E are closer to the S pole than other editions are, and that the approximations are actually reasonable, given certain assumptions (where the DM is there to adjudicate in situations where those assumptions no longer hold).

3. Okay, but what about your climbing question? So, here's the thing; even if we accept that our reality (with our advanced knowledge of statistics etc. and science) maps on to this imagined game world, repeated studies show that we humans are TERRIBLE at understanding both our own capabilities as well as consequences and limitations. Over time, we do get better at things we do, which leads to ...

Are you honestly telling me that you can't look at a wall, and even begin to guess at whether or not you could try to climb it? That seems a little disingenuous. People may be terrible at guessing, but they have something to go by. They aren't entirely clueless.

So I guess my question is- why does this matter to you? I am trying to understand why this matters to you. So using your favorite example of falling, in the magical gamist world we have created, falling does limited damage compared to heroes' hit points. So let's say there is a 1000' foot chasm. You, Saelorn, happen to know that the fall can cause no more than 20d6 damage (max. 120, average 70).

The topic of this thread is immersion, and that's why this matters to me. It damages my immersion, if I don't have any clue as to what might happen, because it's an unreasonable assumption for my character to not have any clue. Maybe they've never encountered a chasm this deep before, but they've surely observed the effects of falling from a couple of different heights in their lifetime, either first-hand or second-hand, and would know that longer falls mean greater injury.

The character would definitely have a working knowledge of ... however the current DM describes the effect of HP damage. If he can understand the difference between the in-game reality associated with being hit by a goblin, and being hit by a giant, then he can understand the in-game reality associated with an experienced adventurer falling 20' and not getting as injured as a novice would from the same fall.

See what I mean? It's a game- I would accept either:
a) Rolf wouldn't make the jump because that's out of character; or
b) Rolf would make the jump because it's fun and a game; BUT

Saying Rolf makes the jump because that's what Rolf has learned .... seems a bridge to far, for many reasons. I'm just not seeing how you can transfer all rules knowledge to the characters in the game?

The B option is right out, because that's meta-game thinking. You're making the decision as a player at the table, rather than from Rolf's perspective.

The A option is more reasonable, except it hinges on the fact that Rolf is making an incorrect assessment of the facts at hand. I think you're not giving Rolf enough credit, given all that he's been through and what he's seen. If it's a true fact that the greatest of heroes can survive any fall, then there would be no stories of any of them falling and dying from it. I wish I had time to give an anecdote, but unfortunately I'm in a hurry. I'll come back and finish this post, when I get a chance.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In some instances it can, I suppose; but in many others it just ends up diverting a player's thoughts from in-character to metagame considerations.

In what way? I'm sure it's possible, but what do you have in mind? I generally think that "metagaming is bad" is a bit too harsh, and called out a bit too quickly.

In terms of in-the-rectory classroom training, yes. But in the field when meeting an undead for the first time that shambles and has fleshy bits hanging off of it, how does she know whether it's a zombie or a wight or some other thing she's never heard of?

And this tangentially brings up another point: in these situations the DM really has to just visually describe the creature and stop there.

Sure, exactly. If the DM describes the scene....a rotting corpse lumbers toward you, maggots falling from it as it shuffles along the cobblestones.....the PC will have a good idea of what the creature is, and therefore a decent idea of his potential to turn or defeat it. Mechanics can help represent this knowledge.

I'm not saying the DM should narrate the DCs or scores or anything....but just that the player knowing the mechanics doesn't hurt immersion.

Me being one, if for no other reason than the loudmouths don't give the quieter players a chance to think for themselves. That, and in situations where the PCs can't see or interact with each other (e.g. someone's gone ahead scouting and the party doesn't have long-range communication) the players' lack of interaction should reflect that. (for my part, in situations like this I'll take the scout's player to another room, or do it all by note, to enforce this)

Well, sure there are table rules....generally, a player has to ask others what they think, although sometimes people offer advice unsolicited. But it's reasonable. And there are times when I will say that no one can assist, if the situation calls for it.

But I don't mind them talking out strategy and such and considering that to amount to something like "With the quickest of looks, and a slight twitch of an eyebrow, Redgar let his companions know it was time to fight, and they sprang into action."

Where that's one change I've never liked; it moves far too much of the math into my view as a player, and breaks the illusion.

In the too-short period before I started DMing and was only a player, part of the fun and mystery was that I'd roll the dice and the DM would then - after doing whatever arcane things he had to do behind that screen - tell me what I'd done. Where possible I'd like to preserve this idea rather than destroy it.

But isn't that a feeling that is doomed to not last? Most people will wind up learning a lot as they play, let alone actually reading the books or eventually DMing themselves. What then? There's no way for a player to stay in some suspended state of newb.

Yeah, THAC0 and all that - which I've never used, and still don't.

Nah....even before that, they had the matrices on the 1e Player Reference Screen. The one that had the PHB cover on it, the second printing one of Ringlerun the wizard.

 

[Lanefan]

Given the context of this thread, I wonder how much of this issue is lost in the generation gap between 1E and 2E. Because I grew into role-playing with 2E, never having touched a 1E book until years later, and everything I've said here is from "Intro to Role-playing". You stay in-character, because that's how you play; that's what role-playing is, and that's why you're here. If you didn't care about role-playing, then you'd be playing some other game instead. Meta-gaming is bad, because it's not role-playing.

I'm with you completely, up to here.

Call it a justification or rationalization, if that's the only way for you to make sense of it. I don't want to meta-game; I want to see the world how my character sees it. But it's a strange world that they live in, and I'm looking through a fuzzy mirror. There are some traditional game-like elements to what's going on, but if any of those game elements are not visible to my character, then I can't play that game while staying in-character. So I'm going to go ahead and give these characters the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise the game is unplayable.

"You walk into a room, the DM rolls some dice, and then you die," is not a playable game. "You try to climb the wall, the DM rolls some dice, and you die," is not a playable game. There needs to be some level of informed decision-making, if any of these choices are to be meaningful at all.
I don't take you for much of a climber (for the purposes of this post), but do you think that you could intuit your own chance of climbing a wall, just by looking at it?

Yes. Near zero. Next question?

Not as a percentage, but just as a general feeling, whether you probably can or probably cannot? Can you guess how likely you are to be injured, if you fall from that wall? Whether it's likely to require hospitalization? At the very least, if someone was cornering you against that wall, do you think you could evaluate those factors well enough to decide whether you wanted to risk trying to climb it?

Because that's all I'm looking for, here. I need enough information that I can make a semi-informed decision, instead of blindly hoping that I don't just die randomly from something that I could never have possibly foreseen.

And there's the issue.

You want to see the world through your character's eyes, and that's great; but you also want to have your character be able to think rationally and consider odds and percentages and so forth in a situation where the character's most likely (realistically) response is to panic...and that's not so great.

Seeing the world through your character's eyes has to also take into account those times when the character's eyes aren't seeing that clearly...the cornered-in-the-alley example is a fine one for this. Sometimes you just gotta go with whatever leaps to mind and hope it works out.

 

[Lanefan]

Exactly. Its literally what "skilled play" is in traditional, (not 2e AD&D) challenge-based D&D.

The idea that with each new character you play you're supposed to willfully pretend like you don't know the embedded challenge tropes of D&D and haven't operationalized rote power plays to defeat them is actually anathema to the spirit of traditional D&D.

I disagree.

"You become Falstaff the Fighter..." (quote from the 1e PH) is true no matter whether Falstaff is the first character you've ever played or the 25th. And Falstaff the 25th is in theory going to go into the field with exactly the same knowledge level as Falstaff the 1st; and to properly see the world through your character's eyes - and thus role-play your character - this needs to be reflected in how you think and play.

But somewhere along the line (I've outlined where this "somewhere along the line" is elsewhere), this became verboten as "metagaming" as intentionally derping your way around dungeon-crawling "because your character wouldn't know that" became legit roleplaying.

I'm sorry, but that is absolute rubbish.

Sorry, but the rubbish bit is where a raw 1st-level character suddenly knows as much as her 7th-level predecessor without a legitimate in-game reason for such.

"Your character wouldn't know that" is absolutely 100% valid as a DM response to a player using player knowledge that the character in the game-world couldn't have.

If the new 1st-level PC is joining a party of experienced adventurers that's different; the old hands could easily pass on what they've learned. But if Falstaff the 25th is coming in along with a whole party of fellow raw 1st-level types then player knowledge simply has to take a hike.

 

[Lanefan]

1. This is a game that we are playing. We are agreed on that, right? Regardless of the exact nature of the "game," it still requires "rules" that we, the players, are aware of in order to play. Even if it's just something as basic as "You need to roll that funny looking dice to see if your character hit the bad bad man."

Yes, in that those rules are what sets the framework for how we interface with this fictional world.

2. The game happens to portray a different world, one that doesn't exist. While the whole "gamist/simulationist debate" was tired by 1980, I think that all people agree that D&D, as a game, and as a role playing game, does not "simulate" any kind of imagined reality, but rather makes some approximations, most of which are chosen for fun and gamist reasons. In other words, the design of a D&D world isn't meant to mimic any reality with fidelity, but is supposed to be a game that can be played.

"All people" do not agree on this.

The rules are there to as far as possible help us interpret, and - yes - simulate, the fictional reality of the game world. Sometimes this simulation gets partially sacrificed on the altar of playability, but trying to keep these instances to a minimum is a worthy goal.

So I guess my question is- why does this matter to you? I am trying to understand why this matters to you. So using your favorite example of falling, in the magical gamist world we have created, falling does limited damage compared to heroes' hit points. So let's say there is a 1000' foot chasm. You, Saelorn, happen to know that the fall can cause no more than 20d6 damage (max. 120, average 70).

Your character, Rolf the Unwashed (Barbarian!) is 20th level, with no Constitution bonus (REASONS) and has 145 hit points. He needs to get down in a hurry, so he just jumps and takes the damage.

And here you've hit - probably intentionally - a bug in the rules from all editions: falling damage is crap.

Now, is this because Rolf knows that in his world, falls kill people, except that falls beyond 200' or so stop hurting so bad, and he can certainly survive it, because Rolf has become powerful by, um, killing lots of things ... and that power means he is no longer hurts as badly by gravity and ....

See what I mean? It's a game- I would accept either:
a) Rolf wouldn't make the jump because that's out of character; or
b) Rolf would make the jump because it's fun and a game; BUT

Saying Rolf makes the jump because that's what Rolf has learned .... seems a bridge to far, for many reasons. I'm just not seeing how you can transfer all rules knowledge to the characters in the game?

I would accept - and expect - Rolf wouldn't make the jump because rules be damned, it's gonna kill him dead. (and as DM I'd point this out before he did anything so stupid)

 

[Lanefan]

In what way? I'm sure it's possible, but what do you have in mind? I generally think that "metagaming is bad" is a bit too harsh, and called out a bit too quickly.

Perhaps, but it's a much better starting point than the other option: 'metagaming is good'.

Sure, exactly. If the DM describes the scene....a rotting corpse lumbers toward you, maggots falling from it as it shuffles along the cobblestones.....the PC will have a good idea of what the creature is

Will she, though?

This corpse as described could be a zombie, or a wight, or one of various other undead types, or something of the DM's own creation. She won't be able to narrow it down until after she and-or her allies have interacted with it.

and therefore a decent idea of his potential to turn or defeat it. Mechanics can help represent this knowledge.

Only if she's a) seen such things before, and b) is willing to maybe incorrectly assume this is the same thing again.

Well, sure there are table rules....generally, a player has to ask others what they think, although sometimes people offer advice unsolicited. But it's reasonable. And there are times when I will say that no one can assist, if the situation calls for it.

Around here it got to the point where if someone suggested an action for a character not their own the suggested action was immediately banned, even if it was the best option, just to stop people from jumping the gun and not letting other players think for themselves.

But I don't mind them talking out strategy and such and considering that to amount to something like "With the quickest of looks, and a slight twitch of an eyebrow, Redgar let his companions know it was time to fight, and they sprang into action."

Sure. This comes under pre-battle planning and-or SOP determination, and is fine.

It's when a player whose PC doesn't and can't know the situation starts making suggestions as to what another PC should do that the problems arise.

But isn't that a feeling that is doomed to not last? Most people will wind up learning a lot as they play, let alone actually reading the books or eventually DMing themselves. What then? There's no way for a player to stay in some suspended state of newb.

Actually to some extent there is, but it requires some work on the DM side on tweaking the math and changing up the assumed states sucvh that the numbers and math in the game I DM don't agree with the numbers and math in the game that I play.

I've got players who flat-out don't want to know what goes on behind the screen and get annoyed when I start talking about it.

Nah....even before that, they had the matrices on the 1e Player Reference Screen. The one that had the PHB cover on it, the second printing one of Ringlerun the wizard.

None of us here ever got that screen. Good thing, too.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The game world is not our real world, but it is a world that could be real. Things work differently there, because they follow the local laws of nature rather than real-world laws, but the laws that they do follow are consistent. That's the minimum consideration for any fictional world, whether in a game or novel. If you cross that line, then it stops being fantasy and starts being a fairy tale.

So, if a story doesn't follow consistent laws, it becomes... part of an ancient and immensely popular genre which exercises the imagination and wonder of audiences precisely by challenging mundane rule-based thinking, and into which the father of modern fantasy has categorized modern fantasy?

I do not think you are effectively selling your position that consistent laws are a "minimum consideration".

 

[hawkeyefan]

I disagree.

"You become Falstaff the Fighter..." (quote from the 1e PH) is true no matter whether Falstaff is the first character you've ever played or the 25th. And Falstaff the 25th is in theory going to go into the field with exactly the same knowledge level as Falstaff the 1st; and to properly see the world through your character's eyes - and thus role-play your character - this needs to be reflected in how you think and play.

Why? How is it immersive to imagine that every single 1st level character has the exact same level of knowledge? None of them have heard about zombies or trolls? None have seen some in action (even if they were unable to do anything about it)?

So Falstaff and Redgar are the same in every way and this helps you with immersion?

Sorry, but the rubbish bit is where a raw 1st-level character suddenly knows as much as her 7th-level predecessor without a legitimate in-game reason for such.

"Your character wouldn't know that" is absolutely 100% valid as a DM response to a player using player knowledge that the character in the game-world couldn't have.

"My Uncle Milo told me you have to burn trolls! Get the torches ready!!!!" Simple.

The character not knowing something is perfectly fine at times. But at others, it's just silly. Because the issue is that no matter what you do, the player is acting on the knowledge that trolls die by fire.

In one game, player knowledge is simply accepted and so if the encounter has nothing more to it than "guess the monster's weakness" then it can mercifully end early. The knowledge can be justified through any means such as the uncle example given above.

In the other game, the players actively engage with their meta-knowledge, but in a reverse way. They try to imagine how quickly their characters would draw the conclusion that trolls die by fire. So every round, they clumsily plod through an encounter that they know the trick of, but which they pretend not to. Metagaming is so much more involved in this scenario. At what point is it "okay" for the characters to somehow discover the secret?

One is peeling a band-aid off quickly, and the other is slooooowly peeling it away so that you feel.....every.....single......bit.

If the new 1st-level PC is joining a party of experienced adventurers that's different; the old hands could easily pass on what they've learned. But if Falstaff the 25th is coming in along with a whole party of fellow raw 1st-level types then player knowledge simply has to take a hike.

It can't take a hike.

Perhaps, but it's a much better starting point than the other option: 'metagaming is good'.

I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good thing. More that it's simply unavoidable, so it's better to harness it and put it to use in ways that you can, just like anything else that's in the DM's toolbox.

Will she, though?

This corpse as described could be a zombie, or a wight, or one of various other undead types, or something of the DM's own creation. She won't be able to narrow it down until after she and-or her allies have interacted with it.

Only if she's a) seen such things before, and b) is willing to maybe incorrectly assume this is the same thing again.

Based on that description, she can certainly narrow it down. A wight is intelligent and typically armed. It wouldn't be shuffling and moaning.

And the DM may also allow some kind of knowledge check (usually a Religion check) to try and determine what the creature is. However, I don't think that this should be a major obstacle for even a novice cleric. "A shambling, animated corpse" is pretty much the exact description of a zombie. The player likely knows what it is based solely on the description. Why make that different for their character? Isn't it preferable for immersion's sake to have the player and the character "thinking" along the same lines?

Around here it got to the point where if someone suggested an action for a character not their own the suggested action was immediately banned, even if it was the best option, just to stop people from jumping the gun and not letting other players think for themselves.

Sure. This comes under pre-battle planning and-or SOP determination, and is fine.

It's when a player whose PC doesn't and can't know the situation starts making suggestions as to what another PC should do that the problems arise.

So you ban actions based on things that happen outside the game? That's the very definition of metagaming, isn't it?

As for another player giving advice....meh. Can't the PC in question think "I wonder what Falstaff would do in this situaiton..."? And there you go. Again, this is where a little metagame action can fill in for character knowledge and intuition.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*