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

[Cadence]

I'm not sure where my line is exactly.

One I think would be clearly over a line for me is if a DM says they'd like to run a module and the players say it sounds cool and have never seen that one, and then one of them reads the module, doesn't tell the DM they did so, and plays it like a video game where they know all the cheat codes to avoid everything. I'm not sure if that's a metagaming line or a betrayal of trust line or what.

I wonder if most of the metagame things that hypothetically bother me go away if Int and Wis aren't used to describe IQ and common sense; the hi/low target flips on rolls where the character wouldn't know the result (you rolled a 2... so you know you either really failed or really succeeded, but not which one), and if something is done to keep the game moving briskly (to give less time to think of metagame things or look stuff up).

Are the things players do a lot less meta-gamey than what some DMs or modules do? Is there anything more metagame than some random monster tables - how the heck are those Ogres randomly getting in to different areas of White Plume Mountain?!?!

It feels like some people offended by metagaming are annoyed because it breaks immersion or whatnot... but the things that annoy them are a lot less blatant than how hit points and armor class and.... etc. work. 13th ages length of a day for recharge (that has nothing to do with day/night/resting) drives me up a wall as a player.

 

[turnip_farmer]

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.

This I find a bit odd.

Metagaming doesn't really bother me. I think it's silly to expect people to make bad decisions in some weird attempt to pretend not to know things that they, in fact, know.

But if I had to pick a line I guess it would be 'if I'm running a pre written adventure, don't read it'.

I've had players say to me 'oh yeah, I've read that, but it's okay. I won't metagame' but what on earth does that even mean? Do you just pretend not to know that Alice the barmaid is really a chaos cultist? How do you decide at what point you have received enough information that you stop pretending and 'figure it out'.

 

[payn]

Reading the monster manual is fine. Reading an adventure module I was running beforehand would not be appreciated.

The only metagame issue I had was with awarding experience. My players engaged in this mini game of trying to math out the best outcomes instead of what naturally came to them as characters in a story. So, I moved to milestone leveling and that cleared right up.

 

[jgsugden]

Metagaming is discouraged. I ask players to separate the fiction the player experiences from the knowledge of the player. This is mostly a problem when their character has setting specific lore that they know that their PC should not, as I have elements in place that reduce the benefit of using out of character game information. There are still game rule related metagaming, or scenario specific (their PC doesn't know a monster is there, but the party does, and yet they decide to be sneaky for no reason....), but when it happens we just pause, provide credible challenge to the metagaming, and then resolve the disagreement on what is known. It is usually not a problem.

I make the book based metagaming issues easier by placing a very commonly available book into my game world - Librum Magicum (yes, I did come up with that name when I was under 10). It essentially has all of the PHB spells, DMG items, and MM monsters in it. Anyone proficient in an intelligence skill can open up the PHB, MM or DMG anytime they want... It is essentially the 'Gray's Anatomy' (the book, not the TV series) of my world. If you have a formal education, you've read it.

However, I caution the players that the thing they see may not be exactly like the books. I change things up - a lot. I give humanoids shaped monsters different gear, I introduce different subraces of creatures (I have 30 different chimeras), I have thousands of homebrew spells, etc... Over half of the magic items players find are homebrew. When they go to the great magical markets of the world I thumb through my collections of items from the past 40 years and spend half the session smiling as I remember when prior parties found the items I reveal to the players...

This allows players an easier line to separate when they should and should not use player knowledge. They get to use much of their player knowledge, in character, but know not to trust all of it - and they still get to explore a lot of new stuff like their characters would.

I do not use pre-published materials often, and when I do I a.) Do not announce it, b.) Change it to make it less recognizable, and c.) Always include a poison pill.

What is a poison pill? Something that PCs will not encounter unless they read the module and go looking for it because they "know" it is there ... despite me having removed all clues that would point to it. And, when they find it ... it is not the bounty that is described in the book, but something that will make them regret their cheating. Cursed magic items, etc...

 

[billd91]

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.

If they're able to spin that with in-character justifications, that's actually the metagaming I prefer - sussing out how things should work from a narrative structure perspective. For example, if they figure a secret door should be somewhere based on what I've described to them or because they've figured something out about the NPC and how I've written them, then I'm perfectly OK with that. I may not even bother with them rolling the check because they've figured it out on their own (at least, when they're right).

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)".

I'm not a huge fan of that attitude either. But I think that's different from players figuring out where the narrative beat/gimmick would most likely be and then acting on them.

 

[Mallus]

Don't read the module I told you I was running in front of me.

 

[Aldarc]

IMHO, trying to define the line is always a lost cause. I do distinguish between 'metagaming' and 'cheating,' as I don't think they are the same thing, and I am more concerned with the latter than the former, which I see as a non-issue.

 

[Lyxen]

Reading the monster manual is fine.

And when players are also DMs, it's sometimes hard to separate the knowledge. But there is a difference between knowing a monster and looking it up specifically for a given session.

Reading an adventure module I was running beforehand would not be appreciated.

That, for me, is beyond simple metagaming, it is more in the "cheating" zone.

 

[Jmarso]

I've got a few metagaming pet peeves both as a DM and player, but they are relatively minor to my enjoyment of the game.

1. Players who try to react or base decisions on things happening when their character isn't actually present.
2. "There won't be an ogre behind that door because we're only 1st level and the DM wouldn't do that to us."
3. Players who state something like 'my character is guarding the eastern door,' but when something interesting happens in the northern room, suddenly he's 'just there.' (Reference 1.)

And so on. Much of it can be mitigated by the DM stepping in and saying no when it happens.

I've been playing for so long that there are a lot of published adventures I've played before. If it happens that I find myself in a group running an adventure I've seen (or even run as a DM), I definitely take 'a back seat' and not be a party mover/shaker. I'm more DM than player at heart, although I do love to just kick back and play, and in those circumstances I find I'm sort of a mental ally to the DM and try not to screw things up for him/her. In fact, when playing I sometimes have to bite my tongue when a fellow player suggests something preposterous to the DM as a course of action, or wants to 'role-play' past a failed roll, etc. (The classic- player rolled a 2 and wants to 'try again' to find that secret door he knows is there because he read the module beforehand.)

I think it helps to play with other people who have experience DMing games. Once you've had the full experience from both sides of the table, there is some mutual respect and understanding that people who only play don't necessarily have. Running a game is an entirely different animal than playing in one.

 

[aco175]

I don't change a great deal, just the odd thing on a monster from time to time to suit the challenge or maybe some details in a module because I think it makes the module structure better. It should be noted that neither this, nor my reveal to the players that I do make changes sometimes, actually prevent "metagaming." The players are free to have their characters do whatever they want. Maybe their "metagaming" will pay off. Maybe it won't. So the smart play is to have your character do stuff in the context of the game to verify that assumption. That this is true (and the players know it is) doesn't mean the players will actually engage in smart play though.

I tend to add a lot of elements to published adventures as well so the problem of having a player read the adventure will spoil only some of it. What I found reading this was that this slides into the thread of DM cheating from a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure how many DMs who thought that altering the adventure at the table was wrong would be ok with it once they found out that the player read the adventure. Is now moving the secret door from the throne to under the table wrong during play. How about changing if for next week since I know a player read the adventure?

I only have a minor problem with some of what is called metagamming. There might be a battle on the grid and the PCs see a monster run off into a side hall. The players may see the map and showing the tunnel loop around back of them- so the metagame that the monster is circling them instead of going for more monsters or fleeing. The PCs break up in town and one of the m is about to get into a fight and the others want to happen to be walking by.