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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6756250" data-attributes="member: 6701872">That is BS - you can't actually measure the difference in the players' enjoyment between you taking that in-character action because of what you know out of character, and you taking that in-character action for a different reason.You can measure that the players' had their fun interrupted by arguing about why you were doing what you were doing, or measure that they didn't have much fun because of the action taken (no matter your reason for taking it).Um... you realize that "blatantly metagaming" is only possible if people observing are actually already convinced that metagaming exists, right?In a group of players that had never heard of metagaming, or a group of players that had absolutely no idea what the dice rolls were, your example of the Malkavian saying "that guy at the door is some badass lupine or a methuselah or soemthing" and another character reacting by saying "Nope, that's goofy as a duck in pudding, I don't believe it," does not have the same "don't do that, dude, not cool," result.People being bothered by something doesn't mean they aren't inventing it just to be bothered by it.The commonality of the monster is irrelevant - if a character can guess, or just luck-into exploiting the weakness (i.e. they just happened to be talking about months of the year or the phonetic alphabet and said "november" in earshot of a clickclick, or they decided to shocking grasp some unheard of but lightning-vulnerable creature) then it is either fine for those actions to have happened no matter why the player was choosing them rather than something else, or you are policing the thoughts of your players.And as for the "you failed to notice the ambush and are preparing for it anyway" example, the vast majority of those fall not into the players choosing actions the characters can't possibly think are appropriate in the given situation but into the DM leaving it up to the players to interpret what failing whatever check actually meant so they are thinking they definitely know enough to prepare for danger in a general sense even though they have no idea a specific danger is or isn't present, while the DM instead thinks that they made it clear to the players that they not only don't know a specific danger is present but that they are sure there are no dangers present specific or otherwise.And then there are a super-rare few instances that the DM has actually got their players on the same page as to what is and isn't apparent to the characters by proper framing and understood descriptions, and the player with some knowledge that his character couldn't possibly have goes ahead and cheats.But that is literally only when it's actually impossible to even guess at the information needed for a particular action - which most DM's concerned with metagaming far overestimate the frequency of, like when they complain about someone using fire when they haven't identified their foe as a troll and trolls as vulnerable to fire, or when someone sees a scary looking statue and decides to smash it with something even though they have no idea what a gargoyle is (which someone could choose to do just because the statue looks freaking and art with eyes always seems to "follow you" around the room).You are likely mis-judging what is or isn't "information that his character can not possibly have or guess at," if you think that what you are talking about is what I am noting there.</blockquote>

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