Can your players know too much?

[Gold Roger]

With all the players I've had that after years of playing haven't aquired the PHB or even bothered to read its most basic parts (or even memorize those they've been told at least once per session), yeah, I'm thankful for players with a basic grasp of the rules and a few choice suplements.

 

[igavskoga]

I don't think its so much a question of Players knowing NO rules OR players knowing ALL rules.

Players knowing everything in the PHB is perfectly fine. Indeed, familiarity with the PHB is obligatory IMO. Without familiarity with the PHB you get all these issues that people raised with slowdowns and whatnot associated with a player not sufficiently knowing the foundation required for a savvy player.

I think the grey area of contention meant by this thread is the extent of knowledge *outside* the basic rules found in the PHB. At least that's what I got from reading through so far.

Assuming a basic foundation of at least familiarity with the PHB - how much beyond that is too much? Is there too much?

As a long-time DM I struggle constantly with how to maintain a bit of the wonder that slowly dwindles over time. I can completely understand that sentiment. On the other hand, I make almost as much of a hobby out of collecting and reading the books as I do out of running games - I can completely empathize with that side of things as well.

I make sure my players know, up front, what kind of house rules and system changes there are to abilities, classes, chargen, etc. This falls under the previously mentioned PHB familiarity and something all players need to be familiar with in order to make for a smooth play experience.

On the other hand, if I toss in some class levels or tweak stats and abilities of the NPCs in an encounter, I feel no obligation to warn players. Its my job to present an interesting and engaging challenge for them to overcome. Its not my job to give them a crib sheet to the test two nights before.

Happily I've only ever run into one player who was bound and determined to harass me whenenver I deviated from the RAW on my side of the screen. Thankfully he was the flexible sort and, once we'd talked it over a bit, he settled in quite nicely after a session or two and had himself a blast.

I'd also have to concur with the opinion that it is less what they know and more how they put that knowledge to use. I find discrete rules monkies to be an invaluable resource, regardless of whether I'm a PC or DM. I find players who use that knowledge as a club to bludgeon out whatever advantage they can to be very aggrivating whether I'm playing or DMing.

 

[el-remmen]

It is not about how much they know, it is about how they use what they do know, and whether they know the difference between knowing something and being right about something.

An experienced DM can foster a sense of mystery without obfuscating rules, but when it comes down to it, it is in the hands of the players to maintain it.

I think this issue is more of a social issue than a rules knowledge issue. In my groups we have different people with differing abilities of retention and focus, and so we help each other. People look up spells for each other, remind each other of things, and generally only stop the game to question a ruling when it seems especially glaring to them - and only then if it really matters, and usually even then, they will approach me after the game and ask.

But that is the culture of game I have tried to develop in my group. Are we all always 100% like that? Of course, not - but we all have that in mind as an ideal, so it is easy to get back in that head if we start to slip.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Yep, that would be a player attitude issue, not a system/GM style issue.

 

[Aaron L]

Everyone I game with DMs his own game sometimes, and has since 1E, so we all know the rules.

It doesn't diminish our enjoyment of the game at all. I can't imagine how not knowing the rules would increase our fun. I don't recall the game becoming any less fun once I read the DMG.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Yep, the best games are those where the players sit down clueless to how things work, ignorant of monsters and thier effects, and just "do".

I totally agree with you (and I've started other threads on this same topic). I far prefer games where players base their decisions off of what should work in-genre than on the mechanics of the game. In truth I want the rules to be more or less "invisible."

This is hard to do for two reasons. It requires a shared understanding of the genre you're playing, which is harder to do than a shared understanding of the rules. It also can slow down the game if the players try to act in ways that the rules don't allow, although this doesn't happen if the players uderstand the genre and the rules properly support the genre.

 

[tx7321]

Aaron wrote: "Everyone I game with DMs his own game sometimes, and has since 1E, so we all know the rules.

It doesn't diminish our enjoyment of the game at all. I can't imagine how not knowing the rules would increase our fun. I don't recall the game becoming any less fun once I read the DMG."


Were in the same boat. About half our players are also DMs, and we all still have fun. But I think this might be easier in AD&D, due to the tables. Its role 1 die and no calculations.

 

[takyris]

See, on the flip-side, there's the player who wants to make a cool acrobaticic guy who scales mountains... and then is unhappy when his character can't make an ordinary leap that the fighter can make, because the DM who made that PC (or who made the rules) didn't make that PC a very good jumper despite the whole "acrobatic" thing that was that guy's core character concept.

Or, just as bad, if the DM decides to wing it, ruleswise, then everyone can jump across the chasm, even if being acrobatic isn't part of their character concept, because the DM wants people to get across the chasm.

Sure, it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but that's what a bad version of the type of game you seem to want looks like, just as you're describing the bad version of a typical 3rd Edition game.

I like having PCs know how far they can jump. I know how far I can jump -- how far is easy, how far is difficult, and how far is impossible. The PCs should know the same.

DMs who don't want PCs to know things that they should logically know by a simple observation of how their world works (the barbarian can break down a door in about half the time it takes the ranger) often have that attitude because they've had bad experiences with players -- or because they have a story they want to tell, and darn the rules for trying to stop them (or let the players get around it). Not all -- some groups just don't want to get bogged down in heavier rulesets -- but hey, I've played with old-school first edition guys playing third edition for the first time, and they kept acting like my rogue was going to pick their pockets despite the fact that IN CHARACTER, all they saw was a guy in leather armor with a quarterstaff and shortsword.

So I'd say that players making bad assumptions based on out-of-character information did not magically begin with 3rd Edition, and I haven't seen it get worse because of 3rd Edition.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I don't think its so much a question of Players knowing NO rules OR players knowing ALL rules.

<snip>

I agree with this 100%.

 

[T. Foster]

I know the core AD&D 1E rules backward and forward, probably better than anyone else in my play group (definitely better than the 1E newbies, probably better than most/all of the 1E veterans too). This isn't intentional "rules lawyering," it's just a natural consequence of having a good memory for this kind of trivia and having played the game off-and-on for 20+ years (more than 2/3 the total amount of time I've been alive!).

As a DM it's nice that I know the rules better than the players, because it leads them to trust my judgment and rarely question my rulings (because when they do -- usually about the specific effects of a spell, magic item, or class/race ability -- the rules almost always back me up). This is freeing because, ironically, it actually lets me get away with following the rules less strictly -- in the heat of play I don't often think about how something works in the RAW, I think about what makes sense in the specific context and matches the spirit (if not necessarily the letter) of the rules and go with that. I'm able to get away with doing this because I don't have players constantly second-guessing me and don't feel the need to "justify" my decisions. Sometimes my ruling is probably harsher that what a strict reading of the RAW would say, sometimes it's more generous -- in the end I suspect it all balances out pretty much even.

As a player (which is what I've been for most of the last 18 months) it's a little tougher, because 1) I as a player know much more than my character "should" (about the stats and special abilities of monsters, mostly), and 2) I can tell whenever the DM deviates from the RAW. My approach is usually to keep quiet about both of these. In combat I won't typically have my character make deliberately "bad" decisions (attacking a gargoyle with non-magical weapon, casting a sleep spell at a monster I know has more than 4 HD, etc.), but I also won't speak up to stop the other players from doing so -- I don't want to spoil the fun of discovery for the newbie players by, for instance, telling them to use fire against a troll before they've had a chance to see its regeneration power in action (I suppose this is a DM-ly sort of attitude, and in this regard I'm running my character like a semi-NPC -- in a group of all-veteran players where it was expected everyone else knew the rules as well as I do I'd probably approach things a bit more pro-actively (I'm a firm non-believer in separating "player knowledge" from "character knowledge," but I am a believer in not crapping on the other players' enjoyment of the game...)).

With other rules-stuff I take the attitude that anything the DM is changing deliberately is his prerogative as DM and I won't argue with him (even if I would have done it differently were I in his chair). Things that I think the DM is getting "wrong" unintentionally (misreading or forgetting a rule) I'll let slide too, unless it comes up naturally (which it occasionally does -- the DM will sometimes ask "am I handling this right?" in which case I'll tell him if he's not). Yeah I could be a real pain in the DM's ass about rules-stuff, but I choose not to because doing so wouldn't make the game any more fun for me or for anyone else either. Yeah I sometimes wish that the DM either knew the rules a bit better or just chose to follow them a bit more closely, but as a player I don't consider it my place to make a stink over it, I just make a mental note that when it's my turn in the DM chair I'll try to do things differently.

It's perhaps worth emphasizing that since the game in question is 1E AD&D, all of these "rules issues" really only center around a pretty narrow range of areas -- combat, spell and magic item effects, and class/race abilities, mostly. For everything else I'm perfectly happy having the DM ad hoc something without either one of us having any "rules" to fall back on. When I'm a player and I want my character to do something not covered by "the rules" I'm much happier having him make something up and tell me the result than expect me (the player) to know the rules covering it. Likewise when I'm DM and a player comes up with something not covered by the rules I'm happier having the freedom to make something up that feels appropriate than to have the player have some predetermined expectation for how it should be resolved that might not jive with my intentions.

That's one of the big reasons I prefer 1E over 3E, as both player and DM -- as a player I don't want the burden of being expected to know the rules (I want that to be the DM's job), and as a DM I don't want the spectre of the player's rules expectations hanging over my head (I want the freedom to make stuff up on the spot without second-guessing). I'm sure neither of these is impossible to achieve in 3E if the other parties (DM in the one case, players in the other) are sympathetic, but in my experience it's been easier to achieve in 1E. IMO, YMMV, etc.