GM-player Communication vs. Metagaming

[dagger]

Information or not, you start to know your players and how they play things. I have a guy who always does stupid things and I got tired long ago of trying to prevent it. He starts a lot of characters....

 

[Umbran]

As a DM i describe the scene to the players as best i can. What they choose to do with that information is up to them. If that leads to character deaths then that was the choice they made.

You sleep in the bed you make.

The bed is made by both the GM and the players, but only the players sleep in it, so so speak.

GMs often feel they've given all the required information in a way that is obvious. GMs are often incorrect in that assessment. Having some way to correct for this before it impacts the players is not unreasonable.

D&D gives you a decent way to deal with this: Intelligence, Wisdom, and relevant skill checks. If the plan is smart, let it lie. If the plan is bad, and the PCs should have all the information, but the players have missed something, run it through the dice. If they dice say no, you let it lie.

Make it clear to the players that this is what you are doing. So, at worst, they learn that their character stats are relevant, and *may* save them from utter stupidity.

 

[freeAgent]

If one of the PCs should know better based on information they've learned or been given, then I may remind them of that before they engage in acts of epic stupidity. I consider it somewhat akin to reminding a player of a rule they are misapplying.

That said, if the stupid idea is something that shouldn't be obviously a bad idea from an IC-perspective, I let them do it. For example, I let my players line up one behind another in 5' wide passageways splitting off a T-intersection after running away from a group of creatures they hadn't seen before. What they didn't know was that the creatures were going to use lightning-based attacks on them.

 

[the Jester]

The players are about to do something awfully stupid. I take a moment to consider if this is because of a failure to communicate on my part. (Or, more properly, I've been keeping tabs on their discussions, and corrected any failures as they've come up.)

If the players are in possession of all the information they should have, and they decide to go ahead, then that's their call. If a TPK results, so be it.

It is not my job as DM to "subtly inform them that their plans are taken straight from the litter-box", nor to find "an in-game solution that could save them". They get the information, and they get to decide how to act on the information. And that includes being allowed to make stupid mistakes.

This. I'll go a step further, though; not only is it not my job as DM to help the pcs avoid making mistakes, it is not my place to do so. IMHO the dm who interferes with pc decisions, unless that interference is based on in-game stuff (the players are missing something their characters know, there is a charm effect on one of them, someone has bee replaced by a doppelganger, whatever), is out of line to do so.

 

[The Shaman]

GMs often feel they've given all the required information in a way that is obvious. GMs are often incorrect in that assessment.

"Often incorrect?"

Man, I'm so tired of "blame the referee" .

 

[GSHamster]

I agree with [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]. When I DM'd (which I did most of the time) I had a vision in my head about how everything worked together. It was very detailed and everything made perfect sense to me.

Yet when I was a player, even for a good DM, it was like the story of a blind man touching an elephant. I could sense what was there, see some of the connections, but the shape of reality as a player was so much more undefined than reality as a DM.

I think most DMs gravely underestimate the amount of information that is truly being received by the players.

 

[Umbran]

"Often incorrect?"

Even on a GM-centric place like EN World, most times I see advice like the Three Clue Rule geting mentioned, someone pipes up with, "Gee, that's a good idea! I'll use that!" So, yes, I think "often" is a reasonable characterization.

Man, I'm so tired of "blame the referee" .

And I'm really tired of advice on how to fix problems being read as a blame game, and I'm tired of GMs who get defensive any time someone suggests they could do better. But you don't see me invoking the language filter over it.

This isn't about "blame". This is about identifying issues and getting them resolved before they heavily impact results in game.

 

[was]

Once, in a very great while will I step in and help the players out. Usually it's when one particular player succeeds in dragging the rest into an action that they know is stupid.

 

[Ringlerun]

The bed is made by both the GM and the players, but only the players sleep in it, so so speak.

Not true. The GM also must sleep in the bed he makes. If from mis-communication the players are killed most likely the game is then dead. And all the hard work put into creating the game from the GM is wasted.

GMs often feel they've given all the required information in a way that is obvious. GMs are often incorrect in that assessment. Having some way to correct for this before it impacts the players is not unreasonable.

Never said it wasnt. But its also up to the players to ask questions and to clarify information. It should not be left up to the GM to think for the players.

D&D gives you a decent way to deal with this: Intelligence, Wisdom, and relevant skill checks. If the plan is smart, let it lie. If the plan is bad, and the PCs should have all the information, but the players have missed something, run it through the dice. If they dice say no, you let it lie.

Make it clear to the players that this is what you are doing. So, at worst, they learn that their character stats are relevant, and *may* save them from utter stupidity.

Not everyone plays D&D, and not all game systems have intelligence as a stat and rarely do they have wisdom. A roll vs a stat should never save a player from their own stupidity. It will just lead to players relying on the dice to think for them. Players should be actively participating and writing information down. So the chances of missed or forgotten information is kept to a minimum.

 

[Janx]

Even on a GM-centric place like EN World, most times I see advice like the Three Clue Rule geting mentioned, someone pipes up with, "Gee, that's a good idea! I'll use that!" So, yes, I think "often" is a reasonable characterization.



And I'm really tired of advice on how to fix problems being read as a blame game, and I'm tired of GMs who get defensive any time someone suggests they could do better. But you don't see me invoking the language filter over it.

This isn't about "blame". This is about identifying issues and getting them resolved before they heavily impact results in game.

I agree with Umbran.

I write software for a living, and when it comes to bugs, the most annoying personality type is the developer who doesn't believe his code is broken and gets offended. It takes extra work and coddling to protect their ego, just to get them to open their bloody code and SEE where the bug COULD be.

I find that it is a far better stance to take to assume that you have made a mistake when a problem is raised and to investigate and be prepared to correct it or pass the problem on to the next responsible party if you find you are not at fault.

I stand by the "it's my fault until proven otherwise" style because it makes me much easier to work with, and gets me more forgiveness when it is discovered that I have actually screwed up.

Owning the fault doesn't mean you're bad at your job. It simply means that you are the starting point for verifying and resolving the problem. It's not like a major crime to describe the dungeon room, have the players ask something stupid, only to discover that something you said wasn't clear to the players and needed to be restated a different way so they could better frame the scene.