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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 457208" data-attributes="member: 5328">Good point, which I'd like to reinforce with an example.(This example is not from a D&D campaign, but from a campaign in a modern setting, which you could imagine might occur in a D20 Modern adventure.)Our characters were the partners in a firm of private detectives. We had a McGuffin (a videotape containing evidence against a wicked politician), and unbeknownst to any other character my character had made a copy and hidden it in a bus-terminal locker. The bad guys kidnapped our client, and offered to swap her for the tape: we met in a large shopping mall to make the exchange. But during the exchange a third force intervened, a large gunfight ensued, the PCs were widely separated, and my character was captured by the third force, who took him to an hotel and questioned him. The character didn't answer, so the third force sent some of their people off to search his apartment. While they were away and his guard weakened my character tried to escape and to signal his colleagues and the police, but failed on all counts. But he did discover that he was being held in Room 666 of the Airport Hilton.This was known to all the players but not to their characters. The other players were in a bit of a bind, because they needed the second tape to force a change of the situation, but their characters didn't even know it existed, let alone where my character had hidden the key to the locker.Now, if the other characters had gone to the Hilton with shotguns and kicked in the door of room 666 that would have made for a bad story, because those characters had no reason to do that. That would have been a bad use of out-of-character knowledge. And if they had just looked on top of the ornamental cornice of the public library (where my character had stashed the locker key) it would have been almost as bad. Nevertheless, one player saved the situation entirely by an acceptable use of OOC knowledge.Knowing that the bad guys were going to search my character's apartment he made an excuse for his character to go there. ("I'll go to Armstrong's place to make sure he's not actually there but unable to answer the 'phone.") That gave the GM an opportunity to have his character surprise the bad guys and give the rest of the party a re-entry into the adventure (which he could have refused had he wanted to). Use of OOC knowledge saved that adventure.My rule for use of OOC knowledge is that I only let it guide me to actions that my character might reasonably undertake in the circumstances, and that I only use it to make story offers to the GM that the GM can turn down if he or she has other ideas for the adventure.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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