A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess it depends if the BBEG plans are widely obvious in the setting, or they are inside the Gm notes.

I'd say go with DW's Discern Reality Move to find out (risking an unexpected twist in case of failure) or with any Strategy skill check.

If the game involves high level Pcs deeply rooted in the setting, why not having a new hi-lev Pc being the Good Twin/Brother/Former Comrade of the Evil Boss? I mean, what's the problem?

I'd go further and say this kind of thing is GOLD. I am thrilled when a player takes this sort of initiative. There are like 1000 awesome things I can do with this as a GM! And another 1000 the player can do as well, it is so cool. I'm guessing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] feels roughly the same way, its possible to frame a LOT of different scenes off of this sort of relationship and knowledge. Quite dramatic ones, and probably quite interesting to the player who would think of this background.

 

[pemerton]

I'd go further and say this kind of thing is GOLD. I am thrilled when a player takes this sort of initiative. There are like 1000 awesome things I can do with this as a GM! And another 1000 the player can do as well, it is so cool. I'm guessing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] feels roughly the same way, its possible to frame a LOT of different scenes off of this sort of relationship and knowledge. Quite dramatic ones, and probably quite interesting to the player who would think of this background.

Well, I've posted from time-to-time about my Burning Wheel game where one PC's main goal was to redeem his balrog-possessed brother.

In my current Traveller game, the initial patron was the friend of one PC, the (one-off, James Bond-ish) lover of another, and the fencing rival of a third.

To me, good RPGing requires that the PCs be clearly embedded in the setting and situation - that's where the player lines of engagement, and the GM twists of the knife, come from.

 

[Sadras]

So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?

This is how I imagine I would be running it in Lanefan's or Maxperson's preferred style. It is not a question of better play, it is about authenticity of character, internal consistency for the table, limiting/nullifying the metagame.

That is not to say that @hawkeyefan's example is not a valid way of introducing fiction or in any way not authentic, but in a game where the players have limited say in terms of setting backstory or introducing fiction that kind input would have to be cleared with the DM.

I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.

You're right it is not a gotcha moment for the players, but for the characters.

 

[pemerton]

I think a recent eye opener for me....in the form of a game rule that reminded me things don’t have to be the way I expect them to be....was the use of Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. The game doesn’t really make a difference between actions in the present and those in the past.

Players can call for a flashback and take an action at some earlier point in the fiction. They cannot undo what’s been established, but they can introduce some past action that makes them better prepared to deal with a current threat or complication.

The more complicated the action, the higher the cost in Stress, a valuable and finite PC resource in the game.

This opens up such a new avenue of play that’s really exciting.

I remember suggesting this back c 2009 as a way of using Diplomacy or Streetwise to contribute to a secret/magic door skill challenge in 4e - I spoke with a [sage/prophet/secretive-purveyor-of-arcane-knowledge/etc], who taught me some passwords in one of the ancient tongues. My recollection is that some posters found it a controversial suggestion.

4e doesn't have a Stress resource, but the GM could certainly set a higher difficulty for such an action declaration to reflect the degree of fortuity involved in the posited preparation having now paid off.

 

[pemerton]

If you already know the puzzle, how do you work this out? Actors who portray characters solving puzzles to which the actors already know the answer are following a script, and contrive their response. But how is a player in a RPG supposed to do this?

You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?

OK, let me try it another way: what do you anticipate as a likely outcome to this inquiry?

We're talking about a very specific context of inquiry here: the PC is in a combat, declaring combat-type actions (including attacks in most cases); the PC almost certainly knows that fire is a viable attack form; the player knows that fire is a required attack form.

When, and under what conditions, is the player entitled to decide that his/her PC uses fire?

if the PC is from the middle of the desert and has spent his whole life there, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it's pretty certain that he won't have knowledge of trolls based on his background. If he doesn't have some sort of skill or play experience that could give him knowledge of trolls, the DM should rule that he doesn't know about them.

This may be how you run your games, but it is not how the 4e rulebooks state the game is to be run. Establishing the PC background is a player function, not a GM function. If a player wants to play a PC who deviates from what would be normal, that's the player's prerogative (obviously subject to table consensus around genre, good taste and the like, but knowledge that trolls are vulnerable to fire isn't going to cross those sorts of boundaries!).

And as one consequence of that, the GM has no authority to rule that a PC doesn't know about trolls. That's for the player to decide. (Of course if the player is ignorant of trolls, then s/he can't write knowledge of them into his/her PC background for the obvious reason that s/he has no knowledge to write in. That's when monster knowledge checks come into play.)

It is thinking about the game as a game. By going outside of the character to his own knowledge of the monster books, he is treating the game as a game, rather than remaining in the game world and just using the PC's more limited knowledge of things.

But you're begging the question here, by assuming the PC doesn't know. Whereas the point I'm making (building on [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s earlier post) is that there is nothing in the game rules that precludes the character having the knowledge.

You seem to be assuming that there are only three ways a PC can know something:

(1) The GM tells the player that the PC knows it;

(2) The player succeeds on a knowledge check;

(3) The PC comes to know it through the actual events of play.​

But there is no such rule in 4e. The player can decide that his/her PC knows about trolls, can establish some suitable backstory if desired/appropriate, and then deploy that knowledge. None of which involves thinking about the game as a game - it just involves PC building and action declaration.

Because one is all about unfair advantages and the other is not. If the player waits until he is right in front of a hydra to tell me that his uncle was a hydra hunter, that's really hinky.

And here, again, we see something that seems to me completely pointless: if you want a hydra (or whatever) to be a puzzle for your players, then choose a monster that will in fact be puzzling for them.

The idea that solving a puzzle by using one's knowledge of the solution should count as an unfair advantage makes no sense. That's exactly how people solve puzzles! And getting the players to pretend to be puzzled when in fact they're not just seems utterly pointless - insipid, even.

It is not a question of better play, it is about authenticity of character, internal consistency for the table, limiting/nullifying the metagame.

Metagame is a red herring. There's no metagaming in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC. That's just PC building. And if, in fact, my PC knows about trolls or hydras (be that from an uncle, or reading a book, or divine revelation, or whatever) then there is no inauthenticity in playing my PC as acting on such knowledge - in fact it would be inauthentic to do otherwise!

There are two main things that distinguish a RPG - even classic, dungeoncrawling D&D - from a standard wargame. One is that the players can play the fiction directly. The other, arguably most important, is that the players each play a single "figure" (to use the old-fashioned terminology) or character, and engage the game from the perspective of that character.

Forcing a player to alienate him-/herself from the character, and having the play of the character be mediated through the GM's decision about what the character might or might not know and do, seems to completely undercut the main thing that makes RPGing different from playing a boardgame.

 

[Sadras]

Metagame is a red herring. There's no metagaming in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC. That's just PC building. And if, in fact, my PC knows about trolls or hydras (be that from an uncle, or reading a book, or divine revelation, or whatever) then there is no inauthenticity in playing my PC as acting on such knowledge - in fact it would be inauthentic to do otherwise!

I agree with you, the example presented by Hawkeyefan is PC building but that is only if you accept that style of play where players may introduce fiction in that way.

Let us take another example....

1st level character, straight-out-of-a-village, finds a shard. As a player (and previous DM) s/he recognises the tell-tale signs that this shard is the Rod of 7 Parts. Did his/her fisherman uncle tell him/her about that? or was it a Solar's visit that informed the character of the Rod, its description, all its abilities and drawbacks?

You're arguing if it is player knowledge the character has knowledge of it too, right? So there is no limit, especially for those who have DMed.

 

[pemerton]

1st level character, straight-out-of-a-village, finds a shard. As a player (and previous DM) s/he recognises the tell-tale signs that this shard is the Rod of 7 Parts. Did his/her fisherman uncle tell him/her about that? or was it a Solar's visit that informed the character of the Rod, its description, all its abilities and drawbacks?

You're arguing if it is player knowledge the character has knowledge of it too, right? So there is no limit, especially for those who have DMed.

Well, I'm saying that - in 4e - the player can impute his/her knowledge to the PC. Not that s/he has to. In your shard example, if the player wants to play his/her PC as ignorant that seems much easier than in the troll case (because there's no bad action declaration s/he's making when s/he knows what a good one would be).

But if the player wants to play his/her PC as knowing, then sure. In my 4e game when the PCs found a sword which had some-or-other backstory (I'm not recalling all the details at present), there was enough there that one player suspected it was the Sword of Kas, and confirmed that knowledge when his PC took damage from handling it (because his PC had an affiliation with Vecna).

To my mind part of the point of using the Sword of Kas or the Rod of Seven Parts is that players will recognise and enjoy them!

Conversely, if you want to use a shard whose character is secret from the PCs, then I think you should use something which is secret from the players. That's how people do dungeons - they don't normally recycle the same dungeons over and over but expect their players to pretend not to recognise them. Why handle monsters, magic items, etc any differently?

As I've posted upthread, this is why Gygax had those long lists of traps and magic items and monsters: those early D&D players kept generating new content precisely so they could use puzzles and secrets in their games. They didn't recycle the same stuff and then ask their players to pretend not to recognise it!

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I don't think we disagree on this. I was just describing a particular style of play.
Can this style of play lead to dangerous character situations (troll example) requiring what some might describe as a disconnect to occur? Sure.

As for what Gygax intended, I leave that for the experts who new him, played with him and have read much of what he has written, I'm in no position to comment on that.

 

[Maxperson]

This may be how you run your games, but it is not how the 4e rulebooks state the game is to be run. Establishing the PC background is a player function, not a GM function. If a player wants to play a PC who deviates from what would be normal, that's the player's prerogative (obviously subject to table consensus around genre, good taste and the like, but knowledge that trolls are vulnerable to fire isn't going to cross those sorts of boundaries!).

And as one consequence of that, the GM has no authority to rule that a PC doesn't know about trolls. That's for the player to decide. (Of course if the player is ignorant of trolls, then s/he can't write knowledge of them into his/her PC background for the obvious reason that s/he has no knowledge to write in. That's when monster knowledge checks come into play.)

Perhaps in your other games, but not in D&D. In D&D the DM absolutely has the authority to rule that the PC does not know about trolls. The following is from 4e on backgrounds. Note how it puts what information the PC knows due to his background in the hands of the DM, not the player.

"Invent situations where their backgrounds are useful. Let the character who was raised by a blacksmith charm some important information out of the baroness’s blacksmith—or notice an important fact about how a metal lock was forged.Give the characters important information they know because of their past history, such as the location of a particular shrine or magical location that appears in the lore of their original homeland."

But you're begging the question here, by assuming the PC doesn't know. Whereas the point I'm making (building on @hawkeyefan's earlier post) is that there is nothing in the game rules that precludes the character having the knowledge.

In games, preclusion does not equate to inclusion. In D&D if the game doesn't explicitly give the player an ability to do something, the player does not have that ability unless the DM grants it.

But there is no such rule in 4e. The player can decide that his/her PC knows about trolls, can establish some suitable backstory if desired/appropriate, and then deploy that knowledge. None of which involves thinking about the game as a game - it just involves PC building and action declaration.

There is. I just quoted it above. The DM decides what information the PC knows due to his backstory. It's 4e RAW.

And here, again, we see something that seems to me completely pointless: if you want a hydra (or whatever) to be a puzzle for your players, then choose a monster that will in fact be puzzling for them.

That's because you don't get my playstyle. That's okay. Everyone is entitled to enjoy their own favorite playstyles and we aren't required to understand the playstyles of others. You've repeatedly demonstrated that lack of understanding in the various threads here. It's why you get what my playstyle is about wrong so often.

The idea that solving a puzzle by using one's knowledge of the solution should count as an unfair advantage makes no sense. That's exactly how people solve puzzles! And getting the players to pretend to be puzzled when in fact they're not just seems utterly pointless - insipid, even.

Monster weaknesses aren't a puzzle to solve. They exist to give the PC an advantage if the PC can find out about them and then take advantage of them.

There's no metagaming in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC.

So now you're claiming that the very definition of metagaming is not metagaming?

There are two main things that distinguish a RPG - even classic, dungeoncrawling D&D - from a standard wargame. One is that the players can play the fiction directly. The other, arguably most important, is that the players each play a single "figure" (to use the old-fashioned terminology) or character, and engage the game from the perspective of that character.

Forcing a player to alienate him-/herself from the character, and having the play of the character be mediated through the GM's decision about what the character might or might not know and do, seems to completely undercut the main thing that makes RPGing different from playing a boardgame.

And here you are again demonstrating that you do not understand the playstyle. Nobody is forcing a player to alienate himself from his character. There is no alienation at all.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I'm saying that - in 4e - the player can impute his/her knowledge to the PC. Not that s/he has to. In your shard example, if the player wants to play his/her PC as ignorant that seems much easier than in the troll case (because there's no bad action declaration s/he's making when s/he knows what a good one would be).

There's no "bad action declaration" involved with roleplaying a PC who doesn't know about trolls as not knowing about trolls, either. The idea that such roleplaying decisions are "bad action declaration" is gamist behavior(thinking about the game as a game, otherwise known as metagaming).

But if the player wants to play his/her PC as knowing, then sure. In my 4e game when the PCs found a sword which had some-or-other backstory (I'm not recalling all the details at present), there was enough there that one player suspected it was the Sword of Kas, and confirmed that knowledge when his PC took damage from handling it (because his PC had an affiliation with Vecna).

And for your games that's fine since you allow it, but D&D(even 4e) doesn't automatically let the player decide what the PC knows due to backstory. It explicitly puts that into the hands of the DM.

To my mind part of the point of using the Sword of Kas or the Rod of Seven Parts is that players will recognise and enjoy them!

Conversely, if you want to use a shard whose character is secret from the PCs, then I think you should use something which is secret from the players. That's how people do dungeons - they don't normally recycle the same dungeons over and over but expect their players to pretend not to recognise them. Why handle monsters, magic items, etc any differently?

You don't understand why, because you don't understand the playstyle. You like something different, so your mind has difficulty wrapping itself around the idea that other people can and do enjoy other things.

As I've posted upthread, this is why Gygax had those long lists of traps and magic items and monsters: those early D&D players kept generating new content precisely so they could use puzzles and secrets in their games. They didn't recycle the same stuff and then ask their players to pretend not to recognise it!

Yes, they absolutely recycled monsters and items and expect players to pretend not to recognize them. I know, because I played in several different games that did that. Not one DM ever said it was okay to metagame. Not only player I played with back in 1e and 2e thought it was okay to metagame. Gygax himself in his quotes which I have quoted in this thread said not to do it. And your assumptions that "skilled play" entails metagaming is not born out by the rest of the quotes in the DMG. Skilled play is just the player becoming better at playing. i.e. learning to search for traps after being killed by a few of them, not splitting the party after dying a few times that way, etc.