D&D General DMs: where's your metagaming line?

[iserith]

Right. You add in just enough that’s different to make the players question their assumptions (metagaming) and to keep things interesting. You also explicitly warn them that their assumptions (metagaming) should not be counted on to be accurate. And this also happens to punish them when they rely on their assumptions (metagaming).

It’s a chicken or the egg question. Did you start doing this before you stopped worrying about metagaming or did you stop worrying about metagaming before you started doing this? Because whatever your intentions, it’s a perfect trap for stopping metagaming.

I've always made changes to monsters and modules and lore. It's just a thing that DMs do, right? Always has been the case in my experience. It has nothing to do with punishing people.

And as I've established, it doesn't actually stop "metagaming." Players may still "metagame" and it's not an issue for me. It's just their assumptions may turn out wrong sometimes.

 

[GuyBoy]

I don’t have a line on this issue.
Our group is pretty experienced and has been together for years; we operate an unwritten gaming contract to just enjoy the game and to not employ any metagame knowledge we might possess as players in order to “win” any scenario. What would be the point?

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

DM metagaming:
When the DM has this picture in his mind of a horde of skeletons that rush up to the party, and really needs to know if the wizard has any fireballs left.

(Sorry if I may be a little off topic)

 

[pickin_grinnin]

It would be difficult for my players to do much metagaming. In 40+ years of playing and GMing, I have never run a module or published adventure. I run campaigns set in worlds and settings of my own devising. I do my own statblocks for the creatures inhabiting the world, most of which are based closely on actual folklore and mythology or are wholly original. I run sandbox campaigns in "living worlds," with no preset plots or adventure paths. The players are free to pursue whatever type of adventures they want to. They can focus on fighting monsters, exploration, solving mysteries, setting up and running businesses, establishing colonies, becoming traveling merchants, or whatever other goals they want to pursue.

 

[Li Shenron]

Usually, when I talk about metagaming, I have something else in mind than reading monsters stats or even the whole adventure...

The bad metagaming for me, is when the players think in terms of "the DM has done this, so it has to be so that there is..." (add anything such as a trap, a battle or something else) despite the evidence the characters are seeing.

The most typical example is a player making a roll during exploration or investigation, getting a low dice result, and pretend to keep on trying.

The common argument goes "my character would sense that he didn't do a good job, and try again". While this might make sense under a certain approach to the rules, it almost always spells doom to the game mechanics, either making stuff irrelevant (why bothering rolling to force a door open if you can just keep trying until you get a 20?) or forcing the DM introduce more complicated rules such as increasing time cost or a chance of drawbacks. So my chosen approach is "no, your characters NEVER know what you rolled on the dice, they only know about visible results (and those are up to me)".

On the other hand I don't care if players look up the monster manual. I do change monsters often, first of all because I like rolling random HP (and I would also roll random stats if I didn't have to re-calc other stuff) and treating MM entries as "average/typical" specimens, and secondarily because sometimes I enjoy adding class levels or just bonus abilities to specific individuals.

I do get pissed off if my players read an adventure in advance after I told them we're going to play it, but if by chance they had already read it or even played it in the past, I don't even mind too much, as no 2 runs of the same adventures will ever be the same.

 

[Shiroiken]

I don't mind a certain level of metagaming. Certain things have become common lore in D&D, and they'd be fairly common knowledge to most characters from in world lore. Trolls die to fire, a medusa can turn you to stone, and red dragons breath fire would be known in tales and legends. I do object when players look up specifics to counteract effects they're currently facing. My group has 5 DMs out of 7 people, and one of the other 2 has plays in multiple games, so a lot of uncommon information is going to be known to players. With my current group, I trust them to make proper decisions, but I've played with others in the past that I've had to metagame against the metagame.

 

[tetrasodium]

Why does that bother you so much?

If a PC starts talking to an NPC, or if a PC sees something interesting, don't you want the whole party there for the interesting part? Doesn't allowing them to do so just prevent time from being wasted as the PC runs around gathering the party. "I'll go back to the other room and tell everybody that they should join me for this conversation."

And if it's a situation where there's danger (i.e., the lone PC gets into combat), and you think there should be dramatic consequences for splitting the party, interrupt the "sudden rush" by introducing new dangers. I.e., they can't rush down the hallway to join the combat, because a bunch of bad guys just filled the hallway.

The situation you quoted is one I see pretty often. Alice could go out to do something with the rest of the group not even paying attention. While out alice starts talking to a shopkeeper or random guard and everyone suddenly wants to retroactively declare they want with alice but if alice is subjected to a negative effect like a spell environmental effect trap or whatever everyone will want to claim:"I never said I went with alice, ".

I don't mind a certain level of metagaming. Certain things have become common lore in D&D, and they'd be fairly common knowledge to most characters from in world lore. Trolls die to fire, a medusa can turn you to stone, and red dragons breath fire would be known in tales and legends. I do object when players look up specifics to counteract effects they're currently facing. My group has 5 DMs out of 7 people, and one of the other 2 has plays in multiple games, so a lot of uncommon information is going to be known to players. With my current group, I trust them to make proper decisions, but I've played with others in the past that I've had to metagame against the metagame.

You can have fun salting the results of that same justification and players will have a new cool thing todo...
Bob:what do I know about medusa eith an arcana roll of x?
Gm: they don't really have any vulnerabilities or not and turn people to stone but you remember seeing a CNN play at a phiarlin scryhouse where they needed to burn the head snakes in a circle of salt to keep it from regenerating if any of her victims were stone to fleshed after killing one.they tend to keep basilisk and coctrice as pets & guards

Also bob: what does a y arcana tell me about basilisk and coctrice?
Gm: they t uh run people to stone and <rough desciption> but in the sequel to that play they were vulnerable to gold tipped arrows

Alice:I'm going to buy it a lot of salt, like ten or twenty pounds. Does that seem reasonable guys?
Dave; how much will it cost me for gold tipped arrows? I tell the Smith I'm expecting to fight coctrice and basalisk. Wow yea guess that's fair.

 

[Stoutstien]

Don't have a line personally. If something can be ruined by metagaming it deserves to be ruined

 

[Retreater]

The statement that pushed me over the line had nothing to do with looking at spell effects, monster stats, or any mechanical knowledge. It was the question directed to me (the DM): "What do you want us to do? What is the 'right' solution to this?"
That type of thinking breaks my heart, and it certainly made me question how I was presenting the game world. It showed that the world was being viewed as a game against the DM.
My group and I had to have a discussion after that.

 

[DEFCON 1]

For me, all that matters really is the story. Metagaming really only comes into play if the DM or players are worried about trying to "win"... usually related to combat and the game mechanics. But if you are comfortable having yourself "lose" in the story occasionally... the need to prevent it by trying to metagame usually disappears.