D&D General Has the meaning of "roleplaying" changed since 1e?

[Mannahnin]

It's not about coming up with good ideas. It's announcing to the table that "This is an X, therefore it's immunities are Y and it has legendary actions A, B and C and it recharges attack D on a 5 or 6". It's "We go down the left corridor and the third room where we find a chest. We'll have to disable the trap first, but there's really cool loot in there. Then we can go to...".

If, as a DM, I think killing trolls with fire with common knowledge (it is in my campaigns) then it is. If I think you have no possible way to know a marilith when you see it, you don't. If your PC has no way of knowing exact position of every creature on the board even though I've left the minis on the table then you don't get to use the knowledge of mini location to cast that fireball so that it only hits enemies.

It's about at my table I want to assume the role of the PC and interact with the world as the PC the best I can. I want my players to make a reasonable effort to do the same because it's the expectation several people at the table have. If you and yours don't care then it's not an issue.

But metagaming CAN be about coming up with good ideas. Again, there are multiple definitions in discussion here.

The example with the Intellect Devourer and Protection from Evil is a good one. It's a legitimately ambiguous case. Would the character reasonably know that or not? How do we decide? The DM in the real world situation was unable to decide and kicked the decision back to the player, who was trying to be a good doobie and aware of his own conflict of interest. So how do we choose in a situation like that? Do we just always default to assuming the character is ignorant? Does that actually make the game more fun?

Other posters have pointed out that "metagaming" is not only defined as "using game knowledge the character would not reasonably possess", but "thinking and making decisions about the game itself, outside ways your character could", like making action decisions based on the initiative order. There's no way your character could know what the initiative order is, but unless we do before-initiative action declaration, there's no way for the players to avoid using metagame knowledge in planning their turn & actions.

 

[Hussar]

See, @Lyxen, I think the mistake you are making is thinking that 3e took power from the DM and gave it to the players. It didn't. The players were still beholden to the rules. It took the power from the DM, and then wrapped it up in the rules to standardize answers. The player still had no way of changing the rules. They could challenge a DM's interpretation of the rules, but, that was about it. And, frankly, since the rules were pretty solid, there really wasn't a whole lot to challenge.

What it did though was hold the DM to a much higher standard. You can't really get away with "Roll High" as a means of task resolution in 3e because there really was a rule for everything. And, a DM who was used to just winging it and using the "roll high" method of resolving things suddenly found that the players weren't all that interested in the Calvinball approach to gaming.

I imagine it came as quite a shock to a LOT of DM's who suddenly were expected to actually learn the rules of the game they were running.

 

[Mannahnin]

It's exactly that, as I mentioned, I am sure it was not the intent at all, but the end result was a multitude of rules and options spread across a multitude of books, often conflicting, and the mass of information meant that apart from very special people, it was much too easy to make assumption and defend one's viewpoint even in front of a GM's ruling. Combined with the 3e attitude towards players which, again, had the very best intent of empowering them, it generated a lot of trouble at tables, and created a different balance at the table, where the DM was no longer really in charge. In some cases, it was a good thing, but in others, it was really bad.

Got it.

I was more fortunate, in that my experiences were more like Hussar's. The standardization and rules cleanup made our games run more smoothly. The players and DMs trusted each other, and the DMs were able to rely on the rules-lawyer-types to HELP the game run by being quick with a rules reference when it was needed.

 

[Hussar]

But metagaming CAN be about coming up with good ideas. Again, there are multiple definitions in discussion here.

The example with the Intellect Devourer and Protection from Evil is a good one. It's a legitimately ambiguous case. Would the character reasonably know that or not? How do we decide? The DM in the real world situation was unable to decide and kicked the decision back to the player, who was trying to be a good doobie and aware of his own conflict of interest. So how do we choose in a situation like that? Do we just always default to assuming the character is ignorant? Does that actually make the game more fun?

Other posters have pointed out that "metagaming" is not only defined as "using game knowledge the character would not reasonably possess", but "thinking and making decisions about the game itself, outside ways your character could", like making action decisions based on the initiative order. There's no way your character could know what the initiative order is, but unless we do before-initiative action declaration, there's no way for the players to avoid using metagame knowledge in planning their turn & actions.

And, I'd point out, that several DM's here have simply punted on the issue as well. So, it's not like my DM was any sort of outlier here. "Oh, you decide" isn't exactly the answer I was looking for when I asked the question, for exactly the reason you outline - I can't be unbiased here. There is a very clear conflict of interest. Yet, despite that, several DM's have punted it right back to me. That doesn't really help.

 

[Oofta]

But metagaming CAN be about coming up with good ideas. Again, there are multiple definitions in discussion here.

The example with the Intellect Devourer and Protection from Evil is a good one. It's a legitimately ambiguous case. Would the character reasonably know that or not? How do we decide? The DM in the real world situation was unable to decide and kicked the decision back to the player, who was trying to be a good doobie and aware of his own conflict of interest. So how do we choose in a situation like that? Do we just always default to assuming the character is ignorant? Does that actually make the game more fun?

To repeat what I said before: the DM should have made a call. Yes, no, it's uncertain to resolve it using a standard check.

Other posters have pointed out that "metagaming" is not only defined as "using game knowledge the character would not reasonably possess", but "thinking and making decisions about the game itself, outside ways your character could", like making action decisions based on the initiative order. There's no way your character could know what the initiative order is, but unless we do before-initiative action declaration, there's no way for the players to avoid using metagame knowledge in planning their turn & actions.

I don't think understanding how the game mechanics work is metagaming. I don't remember anyone making anything like "knowing initiative order is metagaming" on this thread. If they did, please point it out because I would disagree. If not, stop constructing strawmen.

 

[Lyxen]

I will again refer you to the 1e DMG section on listening at doors. It's a pretty good example.

I've been looking at it, but honestly, I have trouble seeing how adversarial it is. It does not promote conflict. I agree it is a bit harsh and once can sense the potential irritation of DMs with players insisting to listen for hours at doors, but how does it promote conflict of the kind that we are discussing, I'm not sure.

Here's the text: "In addition to the simple exercise of observation, many times characters will desire to listen, ear pressed to a portal, prior to opening and entering. This requires a special check, in secret, by you to determine if any sound is heard. Because of this, continual listening becomes a great bother to the DM. While ear seekers will tend to discourage some, most players will insist on having their characters listen at doors at every pretense. First, make certain that you explain to players that all headgear must be removed in order to listen. Those wearing helmets will probably have to remove a mail coif and padded cap as well, don’t forget. The party must also be absolutely silent, and listening will take at least one round."

Does it really promote Player vs. DM conflict ? You tell me.

 

[Maxperson]

Here's another example: imagine that you are playing in an adventure that you've run as the DM. This DM knows that, and said, "Cool, just don't give anything away. The other players don't have to know." So at some point you find yourself with a binary choice, between "good" and "bad" options. It's too late: you're already metagaming. Because even if you take the bad choice, to avoid giving anything away, you're making that decision not as your character, but as the player.

This is wrong. You are looking at the situation as your character and deciding what your character would truly know or do and doing it. Whether you end up doing the "good" or "bad" option, you are doing it as your character and have decided it as your character. Just like you would have done had you never played through that adventure before.

So, I realize some people use "metagame" specifically and narrowly to mean "using knowledge the player has but the character doesn't (or wouldn't, whatever that means)" and sometimes even "...to gain advantage." But really it just means that you are using what you know about the game, not the story, to make decisions. (Which is why I claim you are, by definition, in the metagame if you are accusing other people of metagaming.). And it's unavoidable; we all do it.

Only the DM needs to view it that way, though, and he can't ever be entirely immersed and in character due to the requirements of running the game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

We played in-character using character motivations, speaking in character, making decision that made sense to the character even if the player knew it wasn't the best idea. It was not "I'm a wizard". I don't know why you refuse to accept that not everyone played like you did.

Weird. I've been arguing consistently that people played in all kinds of ways from the very beginning. My response to you was to say that roleplaying is much broader than whatever it was you did (and I don't really care what that was), so let's not narrow the term roleplaying down to your specific set of preferences. This, at no point, even gets close to saying that you didn't roleplay -- it's literally saying that what you did was, but so was a lot of other things, so claiming you were roleplaying doesn't actually exclude much at all -- taking the wizard class was sufficient for roleplaying, so more than this certainly is.

So, what this comes across as is a strange attempt to gaslight and accuse me of doing what I was cautioning against.

 

[Lyxen]

I was more fortunate, in that my experiences were more like Hussar's. The standardization and rules cleanup made our games run more smoothly. The players and DMs trusted each other, and the DMs were able to rely on the rules-lawyer-types to HELP the game run by being quick with a rules reference when it was needed.

Oh, I agree that the standardisation helped a lot, and was really fantastic compared to the mess that 2e was in terms of rules (the settings were great though). But you were probably lucky that your ruleskeepers (Where I don't use "powergamer" in a negative sense, for me "ruleslawyer" is really negative) were not interested in biasing the system for themselves. We had some like this, but it's the ones of the other kind which were an absolute pain, much more than in AD&D where, at least, the DM could shut them up to advance the game if it went on too much.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Even the Basic set tells you exactly, under the heading "what is role playing ?", on the very first page of the rule book, which definition was in use at the time, and it includes playacting, sorry: "That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine."

So once more, it is very precise since the very beginnings of the game, and specified by the game designers as the intent of the game.

Yup. I'm playing a wizard, so I'm pretending to be one in the game. This is sufficient. What you're doing is reading more into this and adding things you like to the definition that aren't required by it.