D&D 5E Do you DM?

[Coroc]

Other thread prompted me to wonder something. Pretty self-explanatory poll.

For some types of campaign I only want to be DM in our current group (e.g. greyhawk/DS/Ravenloft) , for others I prefer to be a player (FR,Eberron). That is because I use mostly old official stuff (partially modded heavily and converted to 5e), but others in my group did buy the 5e stuff.

I got profound background knowledge on several campaign worlds, on some so much, that I would often have no fun as a player.

 

[Stoutstien]

You see, when I started, players picking up the modules and reading them was considered cheating. Now dismissing a module as "flawed" because the designer hasn't spent extra time in development and balance to have multiple aspects for everything so that even a cheating player is entertained (though they still will know the multiple parts, so they can still cheat).

Sorry, I do not accept your assertion that it is the module that is flawed because cheating players exist.

I don't think you intentionally called every GM that has ran, or at least read, published campaign material a cheater if they happen to fall into a non GM role for a game. That's part of the consequences for being a GM.
A former GM sitting down at a game that's going to run a published campaign have a few options. They could restrict their play style and become a pseudo players/dmpc. they could work with the person running the game to make sure that key elements are changed. They could not play.

Now there are two other main occurrences where players knowledge of publish campaigns that get labeled as cheating a lot. The first is the unintentional knowledge. Thanks to the Internet it's really hard to keep secret about published games from affecting gameplay. it doesn't take a genius to realize that a Cleric could be a good idea in a curse of strahd campaign. would taking the campaign into consideration at all when making a character be considered cheating?

The second case is when a player attentionally go seeking information to the extent of maybe purchasing and reading a campaign that they know they're going to be in. Obviously cheating correct? Not quite. Unless the person in question has a disorder in which compulsive cheating is a symptom there's always a reason why they do this. The two biggest ones are what I like to call the once bitten twice shy and the completionist.
Some players carry over negative experiences from other table into new games. If a player has bent anytime with a DM who runs games with a tight Gap for error with deadly consequences then they're going to start seeking out advantages to counteract that. This is also one of the big driving factors of why players make very fine tuned PCs. Min/max or munchkin. The most common reaction for the DM is to ratchet again.
The completionist is something it's really hard for some grasp. Basically this person does not get any pleasure from Discovery or tension. They enjoy completing games. You can always find these players by saying that you're going to run a completely open-ended campaign with no direction and their eyes gloss over. I believe there's a lot more of this style player now than in the past because of influences from other entertainment and game sources. I don't play a lot of video games at all but I don't wear their existence and most of them now have a way of tracking completion.

I almost forgot the players who simply just enjoy reading the campaign books. It's a valid option. They fall in line with the DMs who also read them.

so while it's very easy for someone to shout that every player that plays differently is cheating it doesn't address the issue.

 

[Blue]

However, if people pick up a module and read it, because they like reading this sort of thing, and it is before the campaign has been publicly announced, or before they join the group, how is that cheating? Just play as if you were the DM and had to run a character: Let the others make most of the decisions and only base your reactions off of what the characters know.

The person I was respondign to explicitly was saying that meta-gaming was okay and the fault of the game element for being known - so they were actively using their knowledge from the module.

What you describe isn't cheating. It's the good practice of keeping in-game and out-of-game knowledge separate.

 

[Stoutstien]

The person I was respondign to explicitly was saying that meta-gaming was okay and the fault of the game element for being known - so they were actively using their knowledge from the module.

What you describe isn't cheating. It's the good practice of keeping in-game and out-of-game knowledge separate.

A player self-regulating their divide of what they know / what their character knows is a completely different subject than a DM relying on that point being constant to maintain campaign cohesion.

 

[prabe]

A player self-regulating their divide of what they know / what their character knows is a completely different subject than a DM relying on that point being constant to maintain campaign cohesion.

And there's a difference between reading an adventure you have no expectations of playing (not DMing) because it's what you do, and reading an adventure because you have an expectation of playing it. The latter is what @Blue is describing as "cheating" (and I agree), the former is not.

EDIT: At least, I think that's what @Blue is saying; I'm willing to be corrected, here.

 

[Stoutstien]

And there's a difference between reading an adventure you have no expectations of playing (not DMing) because it's what you do, and reading an adventure because you have an expectation of playing it. The latter is what @Blue is describing as "cheating" (and I agree), the former is not.

EDIT: At least, I think that's what @Blue is saying; I'm willing to be corrected, here.

As I was discussing above, very few people 'cheat' for the sake of it. There is a contributing factor somewhere that if addressed avoids the issue all together. Sometimes that involves players/DMs finding others who have similar styles of play but it's not the only answer.

 

[prabe]

As I was discussing above, very few people 'cheat' for the sake of it. There is a contributing factor somewhere that if addressed avoids the issue all together. Sometimes that involves players/DMs finding others who have similar styles of play but it's not the only answer.

Fair enough. I get no pleasure from reading published adventures (they make no sense on the page to me), less than that from playing through them (my characters end up feeling like bundles of stats and nothing more), and even less than that from running them (they make no sense, I feel as though I'm trying to drag the players through the adventure, everything feels like pure statistics, I feel as though I have no input). I'm thinking about if a player somehow looked at my notes when I'm running, and knew where things were and what things were percolating in the background; it would feel like cheating to me, definitely some sort of bad behavior. Then again, I think cheating for advantage in RPGs is ... at least a temptation, if you think winning is a thing. It seems as though maybe I think it's at least a little more common than you do.

 

[Blue]

I don't think you intentionally called every GM that has ran, or at least read, published campaign material a cheater if they happen to fall into a non GM role for a game. That's part of the consequences for being a GM.

You are correct. The context of what we were talking about was meta-gaming. I only called the people who used the knowledge of the module in-character cheaters. If someone keeps out-of-game knowledge out of the game, that's fine.

And I will continue to do so. If you meta-game, that is use knowledge of a module you have for whatever reason that your character would not, then you are cheating.

 

[Blue]

As I was discussing above, very few people 'cheat' for the sake of it. There is a contributing factor somewhere that if addressed avoids the issue all together. Sometimes that involves players/DMs finding others who have similar styles of play but it's not the only answer.

It doesn't matter why they cheat - D&D is a group game, and one person knowing all the answers, how to solve the puzzles, the secrets of encounters, or doing things such as your "completionist" argument where they must find everything, affects the rest of the group as well.

You can do that behavior all you want in solo games like CPRGs if that is what brings you pleasure, but selfishly ruining things for others for it is not acceptable.

 

[Stoutstien]

Fair enough. I get no pleasure from reading published adventures (they make no sense on the page to me), less than that from playing through them (my characters end up feeling like bundles of stats and nothing more), and even less than that from running them (they make no sense, I feel as though I'm trying to drag the players through the adventure, everything feels like pure statistics, I feel as though I have no input). I'm thinking about if a player somehow looked at my notes when I'm running, and knew where things were and what things were percolating in the background; it would feel like cheating to me, definitely some sort of bad behavior. Then again, I think cheating for advantage in RPGs is ... at least a temptation, if you think winning is a thing. It seems as though maybe I think it's at least a little more common than you do.

Looking for an edge is human nature. When that edge turns to cheating is subjective. I try to avoid maintaining tension based on player ignorance because it never works out well. It takes very little effort on my part to prevent player knowledge from interfering with the game compared to policing it.

I don't have to worry about players reading my notes. English is my second language and short hand in Ukrainian is beyond a secret code.