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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7579225" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Seems like potentially a lot of effort to avoid an otherwise simple solution. I think that, as with many examples, you're assuming that the player continually does this kind of thing. He's constantly introducing new uncles that have various areas of expertise and who have imparted their knowledge on the character. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one instance, and it was an instance related to the players being uninterested in the content of play, so they help move things along. That specific example aside, I don't have a problem if the dice are used to determine such things. Maybe the uncle is introduced to the fiction as a result of a successful dice roll. I think that's the kind of emergent play that many are advocating. Why not have them create that background as you play? Why write anything down ahead of time? I genuinely mean that. I am not saying that writing a background is bad in and of itself, but rather that it has pros and cons. One of the cons seems to be it locks things in place, but the brief nature of such a background means that what's locked in place is limited. It seems arbitrary to me to hold the players to that kind of limited detail. Again, nothing wrong with writing it down, but I think allowing for additions to their background is likely a good idea. The character would, whether at full HP or 1 HP, expect a flail strike to the head by a gnoll to be a lethal blow. However, when the fighter has full HP, he will be less concerned about any individual attack. Hence, he is acting on the game mechanics, or out of fiction knowledge. Again, I don't have a problem with this. I just think it demonstrates that metagaming is present in every game, and is actually often very beneficial to play. Sure. Whether that's a bad thing or not, and whether the DM can block it, is what we're talking about. Again, I know you're coming at this from a D&D perspective, but to insist that metagaming is always cheating is where I disagree. Okay. I personally find that such backgrounds are not "better". They may offer an advantage such as more starting money, or maybe an extra skill or language or something similar. But they also often come with related drawbacks....familial obligations, established enemies, expectations of behavior, and so on. Well, this is your very specific take on HP. There are many ways to narrate HP and what they mean (and I don't want to add that topic to this debate as well), but this doesn't change the fact that the character with full HP will tend to act more decisively because he knows he's at less risk of dying. I wouldn't say it's an unfair advantage, especially since the players already have the knowledge. Rather, it's a way of reconciling that player/character knowledge discrepancy. I get the distinction you're making, but I don't think it's an unfair advantage so much as having to commit to a background detail at the time of character creation knowing it may never be relevant is more of an unfair disadvantage. Isn't it cooler to have characters whose backgrounds matter? Isn't that better for play? This is the kind of relevance that many are pointing toward. Sure, the DM can take a background element and incorporate it into the story...I do that all the time. But letting the player introduce it as it comes up ensures that it happens, and that it happens in a way the player would like to see. And it really shouldn't be a hindrance to the DM in any way....so I really don't see the issue.</blockquote>

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