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

[AbdulAlhazred]

If one of the PCs legitimately knows about troll vulnerabilities then one would hope she'd tell the rest of us before we die. But if none of them know then none of them know, and it's on us as players to play accordingly even if it means running our PCs into a ditch.

A few problems arise:

First we have the known knowns, that's easy, the PC knows it, and the players know that the PC knows it, like 'how to swing a sword'. Even then the player probably doesn't know the thing itself, so we run into the problem of being able to describe doing it, or even exactly what the results are. Still, no meta-gaming seems to arise here.

Second we have the known unknowns, this is fairly easy in the sense of we just don't know, the PC and the player will find out through play, dungeon exploration at work.

Third we have the unknown knowns, and this seems to be where we are stuck now, which is that we don't even know that there is something for the character TO know, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know it, just that the player (and maybe the GM) are ignorant of the existence of such a fact. This would be where "does the player know about the town?" arise.

Then we have the unknown unknowns, most everything falls into this category, nobody even knows the knowledge exists. Since the world is so 'thin' in description this is most stuff.

In any of those cases the player might have the knowledge, and/or the PC might, but given that we don't generally know what PCs do or do not know, as general facts, you can never rule out, nor can a player be accused of meta-gaming, for trying to establish some sort of knowledge.

To reduce this to concrete, if my PC meets a troll, and I know to fight trolls with fire, why is it unfair for me to assume my PC has this knowledge? Why is it fair for me to assume he does not? This is arbitrary. Not only is it arbitrary, but it is a situation rife with bias, the player wants his character to know and act, the GM may not! What is better about one vs the other having the authority here?

This is why I think a lot of narrative focus games have it good, this sort of question doesn't really arise in the same way. The focus isn't on imagining that a certain character exists in a certain way that is deemed 'the proper way', but instead on telling a story. If it is an interesting story for the PC to fight the troll with fire, then he does, and it works. If not, well, maybe it doesn't work, or maybe he just doesn't do it because the player isn't trying to 'win', he's trying to participate in a drama about what happens. Thus in DW this kind of thing wouldn't be an issue, for instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

My own 4e hack also allows for this, by the expenditure of your Inspiration (basically taking a bad turn based on some attribute of your character, but potentially deferred). You could, for instance, simply decide that you DO have enough water, because you thought to bring it along. Maybe the axle will fall off your wagon, but that's just all the more fun and drama

 

[pemerton]

In games, preclusion does not equate to inclusion.

The qualification "in games" is redundant. Preclusion does not equate to inclusion in any circumstance.

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.

This is self-contradictory - they're not a puzzle, they're just something to work out so as to better succeed in the game!

Nobody is forcing a player to alienate himself from his character. There is no alienation at all.

Playing my character as ignorant of something that I, the player, am not ignorant of is a textbook example of alienation!

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.

You played with Gygax and co?

The only player posting in this thread who played D&D back in the mid-70s, as far as I know, is [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. What you are describing is not "the earluy days of D&D" - it's the sort of "world simulationist" style that emerged in the late 70s and which, at that time, would be especially associated with systems like RQ and C&S.

AbdulAlhazred has posted that it's hard to know what was going on and how early GMs (including Gygax and Arneson) were reconciling wargamng with being a character. My own view is that nothing in their game texts, in the scoring rules for the tournament modules, in accounts of tournament play, etc suggests that players were expected to pretend their PCs were ignorant of monster vulnerabilities that the players themselves knew. And this is reinforced by such things as the Moldvay Basic rulebook (p B3) instructing new players to read the Monster chapter.

The bottom line is that it's impossible to engage in "skilled play" when you're deliberately holding back from taking what you know to be the skilled decision.

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?

I would not say that a player inputing their knowledge of trolls into their characters is metagaming anymore than a player inputting their knowledge about apple pie to thermodynamics in their characters entails metagaming. Trolls are part of the world that the characters inhabit.

Adding to what Aldarc said: metagame thinking, according to the 4e DMG, is to make in-character decisions that treat the game as a game. This can also be called a form of "breaking the 4th wall". Imputing knowledge to my PC isn't doing this - it's simply a part of PC building.

I could play my PC as ignorant of what a crossbow is, if I wanted to, but not doing so is not metagaming. Likewise for trolls. (This is another thing that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has elaborated on not far upthread.)

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.

Alternatively, from p 9 of the 4e PHB: "Through your character you can interact with the game world in any way you want."

If the PC grew up near the Troll Moors or had an uncle who was a troll hunter, it would be reasonable. If the PC grew up in the middle of a desert, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it wouldn't be reasonable.

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."

<snip>

The DM decides what information the PC knows due to his backstory. It's 4e RAW.

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.

There is no such rule in 4e D&D.

The text you quote from p 11 of the 4e DMG advises the GM, in some circumstances, to provide a player with information. It doesn't instruct the GM, either expressly or by implication, to regulate what a player decides his/her PC knows.

The fact that you read it the latter way, and assert a GM's unilateral authority to decide what is or isn't reasonable for a PC to know, appearrs to demonstate a desire, as GM, to dominate the fiction and to tell the players how to play their PCs and how to approach the game. That's fine if that's what you and your table enjoy, but (i) there is little support for it in the 4e rules taxt, and (ii) surely it can't be surprising that some other posters would look at that and see "Mother may I" and railroading.

 

[pemerton]

if I were running such an encounter (and I'd like to stress that I personally don't like this hypothetical b/c I've never run a game where Trolls were outside of "common knowledge"), it would likely go something like this:

As the GM I would not tell the players that they were fighting a troll. They would only know what the characters can see, ie "a large greenish humanoid with long arms and sparse stringy hair" or something similar. Even if the players assume it is a troll, it might not be, it could be some sort of mutant ogre or hobgoblin. The key points are that (A) the characters don't recognize what the creature is and (B) the players don't know for certain what it is.

If the players go ahead and assume that it is a troll, and use that metagame knowledge to immediately attack with fire, I'd stop the game ask why their character would do that, and only allow it if the player could convince me that this is what the character would naturally do, and not based on the player's knowledge.

<snip>

Otherwise if they proceed into combat in what is a normal fashion for the group. Then after a few turns they will learn that the creature is healing very rapidly. I'd probably also tell anyone with any form of "magical sensitivity" to know that the healing doesn't seem to be magical.

With that knowledge the players might think, "what would my character do?" The answer might be:
1) "We should run as we can't hurt this thing! Maybe back in town we can find someone that has encountered such a beast and can tell us what it is and how to beat it."
2) "Maybe we can try to deal damage faster than it can heal."
3) "Maybe a different types of damage might prevent it from healing. Fire and Acid scar the flesh so that might work!"

<snip>

3 is probably going to work for most characters that don't see a better option.

But what is chosen and the exact reasons why are up to the player, and what they think that their character would be likely to do. That's good roleplaying.

I'd ask the player to justify their action. Based on that I might agree, or ask for a roll ("Sure you've read a lot, but was THIS creature in those books?"), or say no ("You character is an illiterate barbarian that spent your first 20 years as a slave... but you somehow read a book that tells you the weakness to this rare creature that has never been seen before in this kingdom?").

<snip>

I'm just pointing out what I would do IF a situation came up where I felt the player was using metagame knowledge to have their character act in a way that was not consistent with what the character knows.

Why is it metagame knowledge? If the PC recognises the creature as a troll, and knows that it is vulnerable to fire, then this is just the player playing his/her character.

To me, your number (3) seems rather contrived. The player is not reasoning what would my character think? The player is reasoning what story can I tell about my character to license the use of fire to attack this troll? That doesn't seem like roleplaying at all, because it's not first-person in-character reasoning, but rather third-person how can I satisfy the expectations of the GM and table reasoning.

It actually reminds me of the following remark by Eero Tuovinen:

nstead of only having to worry about expressing his character and making decisions for him, the player is thrust into a position of authorship: he has to make decisions that are not predicated on the best interests of his character, but on the best interests of the story itself. . . .

I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship.​

This is the alienation that I mentioned about in response to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: the method that you describe, which seems like a version of what Maxperson is also putting forward, requires the player to subordinate playing as one's character and pursuing the character's interests to what does my table regard as a sufficient basis for a character to recognise the vulnerability of a troll to fire. To me, the second thing seems quite unappealing, even insipid.

 

[pemerton]

Are you saying when you DM you have no parameters or limits at all?

I consider myself a pretty lenient DM when it comes to backstory, but I'm not so sure that I have no limits, probably because I cannot think of each and every possible backstory variation.

Also, let's say a player came up to me and requested to play an ancient dragon who for some reason was True Polymorphed into a 20 year old girl. The girl is suffering from a serious case of amnesia so she does not recall her true nature. All she knows is that she ages slowly, has knowledge of the draconic language and magic seems incredibly familiar and easy to grasp (hence her class being a Sorcerer, Draconic Bloodline). At times visions or lore about the cosmos, history, artifacts and the like bleed into her conscious mind.
Her sudden revelations scare and intrigue her, and those who know her refer to her as old beyond her years. I'd easily say yes to all that.

But the player would be checking with me, the DM, to see if their concept does not cause conflict with the setting, the possible campaigns/storylines and the rest of the table. That is still seeking approval from the DM and thus falls within your understanding of MMI

This is all about PC building, and how the player and the GM's conceptions of the shared fiction are to be integrated. Should the GM yield to the player? Should the player yield to the GM? Different systems make different suggestions, and different tables operationalise those suggestions in different ways.

But it doesn't tell us anyting about whether the GM is entitled to direct a player to pretend to be ignorant of something that s/he knows. Nor whether that makes for good play. In the troll case, insisting that the player not act on his/her knowledge is insisting that the player deliberately declare what s/he knows to be suboptimal attack actions. Which is, in my view, pretty weird in general, and especially in a game that makes players succeeding in combat challenges a fairly big part of play.

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).

I said it's a bad action declaration because it is deliberately choosing something which the player knows to be suboptimal. It's the opposite of good wargaming/"skilled play".

 

[pemerton]

Another way to look at it is: why do we trust the GM to make a rational judgment call, but not the player? Everyone seems to assume the GM will make a principled call and abdicate accordingly, but that the player is just somehow trying to scheme a "win" out of things. Can't a player be reasonable?

I would push this further, at least in the troll case.

How does it count as a win to be allowed to use fire vs a troll if you already know that that's how one beats trolls? In his/her first ever troll encounter, a player wins by figuring out to use fire. It's impossible to replicate that win (short of a bout of amnesia or similar). Future encounters with trolls don't provide any opportunity for such a win. It's just a particular instance of the general point that's puzzles, riddles etc are one-off things (again, subject to forgetfulness).

If the DM have the authority over what a player character knows, can they declare that a PC knows something even if the player believes that their PC shouldn't or doesn't?

This relates back to p 11 of the 4e DMG, about the GM possibly providing knowledge on the basis of the background that a player has established for his/her PC. I think it is taken for granted that if the player doesn't want it, the GM shouldn't do it - it is intended as a way of making the background "useful or important" (p 11), not a burden.

Of course, using failure results to do such things might be a different kettle of fish, depending how open the table is to that sort of thing. (4e doesn't encourage this in the way that - say - Burning Wheel does, but it doesn't preclude it either.)

It's a pretty drastic change to the game. Or at least, it seems like it is. The players in my Blades in the Dark game are all long time D&D players, and the concept blew their minds.

<snip>

This is a different approach than the more procedural aspect of the typical D&D game. I think you'd have to adjust a D&D game a bit to allow for this kind of option.

In the context of 4e I don't think much adjustment is required. 4e isn't really a "procedural" game in the way that (say) Moldvay Basic and other versions of classic D&D are.

The obvious "worry" is that players use this sort of thing to establish fictional grouinding for any old action declaration that they like, so that the GM's framing ceases to be relevant or constraining. And the "solution" to that worry is to take the players' fiction seriously, and use it to hang complications on - especially when declared checks fail.

And a final comment about 4e methods:

it invalidates the skills and backgrounds involving monster lore. Instead of a wizard being able to draw upon his knowledge of arcane lore to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a Flesh Golem are, now the skill would be useless, because a successful check would just reveal that they are very often different.

With respect, that does not seem very imaginative. Why could a successful check not notice the tell-tale sign on this particular creature that it is vulnerable to such-and-such?

This is not new RPG tech. 4e does not preclude the use of Monster Knowledge checks against unique creatures. And Burning Wheel handles the Folklore skill, used to learn wards against the living dead, in something like this way also.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The only player posting in this thread who played D&D back in the mid-70s, as far as I know, is @AbdulAlhazred. What you are describing is not "the early days of D&D" - it's the sort of "world simulationist" style that emerged in the late 70s and which, at that time, would be especially associated with systems like RQ and C&S.

AbdulAlhazred has posted that it's hard to know what was going on and how early GMs (including Gygax and Arneson) were reconciling wargamng with being a character. My own view is that nothing in their game texts, in the scoring rules for the tournament modules, in accounts of tournament play, etc suggests that players were expected to pretend their PCs were ignorant of monster vulnerabilities that the players themselves knew. And this is reinforced by such things as the Moldvay Basic rulebook (p B3) instructing new players to read the Monster chapter.

The bottom line is that it's impossible to engage in "skilled play" when you're deliberately holding back from taking what you know to be the skilled decision.

I agree. While I don't know what the original intent or practice was in Wisconsin in the mid 70's WRT player knowledge I suspect that things like the nature and characteristics of magic items, monsters, and well-known traps and such was not really considered something you'd normally hold against a player for mining in a game with a PC who didn't obviously know the information. First of all there's no way to know what they don't know, and in OD&D there wasn't any mechanics to even TRY to solve that (albeit it still leaves your issues with how you resolve the difference in knowledge in terms of action declarations even if you DO have such a mechanic).

DEFINITELY I am sure there was a lot of 'practice' which was considered purely player skill and which it was expected you would play. I can remember we learned to listen at doors, and then we learned to SMELL at the doors, and to listen using a cup (to avoid the ear seekers), and then to slide things under the bottom edge of the door to find traps and such, etc. We even codified this into a standard door practice which we named "sniff and listen." Every character used this same approach, no DM would ever think to argue 'meta-game' on that, they'd have been laughed at!

Likewise you'd be considered a dolt if you didn't immediately apply a torch to the green slime when it got on your PC, that is JUST WHAT YOU DID! I would say that hitting skeletons with blunt weapons, trolls with fire, using smoke against insects, etc. all common basic 'dungeoneering' practice. That is what the game was pretty much about. If the DM wanted a unique puzzle or surprise, the sky was the limit, they didn't expect every character to start out in kindergarten. They would have all died at level 1, lol.

If you found a girdle, everyone knew it could be a girdle of masculinity to femininity. Heck, there was always that player who would try it on and just laugh if he got that curse because it was silly.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, if we want to get right down to it, virtually all of skilled play would be considered "meta-gaming". After all, you didn't just "check for traps", you detailed to the DM what exactly you were doing. There was no notion that your character wouldn't know how to check for a trap or a hidden compartment, or, conversely that your character would know anything that you didn't.

I mean, what does my 15 year old squire know about finding secret compartments in a statue? How would he possibly know? But, you had modules and adventures that specifically played to player knowledge as being part and parcel to skilled play. You were EXPECTED to roll marbles down the hallway. Why would anyone actually do this? Oh, right, because a sloped down passageway could cause you to go from one level of a dungeon to another level and the monsters would be harder to deal with.

Yeah, no metagaming going on there at all.

 

[S'mon]

Re trolls, I remember having fun playing in a 4e D&D adventure where we met a troll coming out of the water. I immediately yelled:

"It's a Scrag! They can only regenerate in water! Get it onto the land!"

I was pretty sure there was no such rule or monster in 4e, but was interested to see where the GM would go with it - he had it regenerate normally on land, which was ok. It would have been ok if he'd accepted my contribution to the 'shared fiction', too.

I think if I'm running a game in a world where troll fire regeneration is not widely known, I might require a Knowledge check - eg Nature - for a PC meeting trolls for the first time to have that info on hand. Generally though I'll just treat it as an 'everyone knows' thing - after all if I want a troll that's fire resistant but vulnerable to salt, I can always do that!

 

[Lanefan]

Right - back at it...sorry 'bout the gap there...

Why is it only damage control? Tommy decides his fighter is following in the footsteps of his uncle, and that he's heard all kinds of stories about monsters and dungeons. Why does it matter if Tommy decides this in session 0 or session 4?

Because in session 0 there's no here-and-now stakes, and no clear and obvious immediate advantage to the PC/player. In session 4 when the stakes have become serious it's a bit beyond the pale if Tommy pulls the answer out of thin air like that.

And even then it's probably not the end of the world, except that if Tommy does this once what's to stop him doing a similar thing - that his PC just happens to have the answer to a situation or puzzle or whatever - again, every time his PC is stuck but he-as-player knows the answer? And the answer is, of course, nothing; because the precedent has already been set by the DM allowing it to happen in session 4. Pretty short hop from there to outright bad-faith play.

There are any number of ways to allow for this. Perhaps she screams before she dies? Perhaps she actually holds off long enough to shout a warning? Perhaps the cleric or wizard get a weird hunch? Perhaps she leaves signs that things are all okay up to this point, and the PCs reach a point where they expect the next sign but none is to be found?

Any of those is possible, sure, given the right situation (e.g. screaming or shouting a warning is only any use if the rest of the party is still within earshot; the PCs reading signs assumes they are following and not staying put so the scout can find them when she returns). The "hunch" one is valid, but would get contrived if done too often.

But even if you don't want to go with anything like that.....wouldn't the lack of her return be enough to "justify" that the other PCs proceed with caution?

Oh, absolutely.

It's when players start talking in-character about their late companion and how they need to go back to town and find a replacement when they don't and can't even know she's dead yet and she's not due to return for another hour or so...that's when the smackdown hammer comes out.

(even worse is while she's still alive and out scouting other players won't just shut up and let her player play it out, they insist on offering suggestions or even telling her what to do when their PCs have no way of knowing any specifics of the situation at hand)

And even if you didn't want to do that....couldn't they just be cautious anyway? Do you make them proceed carelessly?

No. I ask why are they suddenly moving now when they'd agreed to wait here for at least an hour for her to get back - are they intending to abandon her? And if the answer comes back "well, she's dead" then someone's probably about to get yelled at.