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

[Oofta]

I've had a person in a game I was playing literally open the MM and start telling other people abilities, stats, weaknesses and so on. We just told him to cut it out. Fortunately he listened and didn't do it again; but it was an extreme example of metagaming that was annoying. Not only did it take the other players out of the moment, I don't want to necessarily know every detail.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Motivation isn't the issue. At-table results are.

Which simply forces the work over to the DM side, to make those changes; and after several campaigns it's only natural she's going to run out of new ideas.

"Guys, look, I can't imagine enough new stuff to keep this game going, so what you're going to need to do is that when I reuse stuff, you need to pretend it's brand new all over again. I think this will absolutely keep the fun up for me without having me do too much work. By the way, the next 12 encounters are trolls, let's see how well you pretend you don't know what's going on with trolls!"

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've had a person in a game I was playing literally open the MM and start telling other people abilities, stats, weaknesses and so on. We just told him to cut it out. Fortunately he listened and didn't do it again; but it was an extreme example of metagaming that was annoying. Not only did it take the other players out of the moment, I don't want to necessarily know every detail.

I play online. There's absolutely no way I could even know if people don't have MM's open or a search window open or are just using the VTT's compendium. And do you know how much difference that makes in my games? None. Because it's a non-issue. The challenge in my game is not based on not knowing a given monster's gimmick.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Thing is, there's also the question of how accurate that knowledge might be after numerous re-tellings.

And how accurate identification is. If I want something mysterious I don't name it.

Not to a new player.

Not to a new player who's almost never played a video game or Warhammer game.

Trolls and fire is a pretty basic example, I'll agree there. But where do you draw the line?

If, say, I throw some unusual monster from the MM into the game that has a specific weakness - a monster that I know I've never run before in my life, never mind in that campaign - and a player who's read the MM knows exactly what to do and uses that knowledge, do I-as-DM have a right to call shenanigans? (hint: the answer is "hell, yeah"; even more so if that player is not also a DM)

The way D&D is set up I can not think of a monster where this is an issue off the top of my head. I can think of puzzle monsters in other games where this would be a problem; if someone answers the Riddle of the Sphinx before it's half way through asking what goes on four legs in the morning that would be a problem. But I can't think of a single D&D monster that's hard-countered that way. There might be a couple of obscure ones but only a couple.

Knowing "Get into the anti-magic eye of the Beholder" doesn't break the Beholder as a monster. Neither does identifying a dragon's breath weapon by colour. And silver weapons for werewolves need to be carried and do less damage. Knowing may be half the battle but it's only half the battle.

And if I decide to cater to such a player* it means I might as well throw out my MM, as I now have to design every monster from scratch. To me, that's work I shouldn't have to do.

* - as opposed to simply tossing said player out of the game.

And I'm calling this a strawman.

Edit: @Oofta that I agree is ridiculous. I said it was mostly done by entitled DMs not that it was 100%

 

[Bill Zebub]

Motivation isn't the issue. At-table results are.

Yes, EXACTLY. All that matters is what happens at the table.

So if you're playing with your 6 year old niece, and you know she's never played D&D before and knows nothing about it, and she just happens to do the right thing (fire on trolls or whatever) do you get bent out of shape worrying about her motivation, or do you think that's AWESOME and cheer and have a great story to tell the next time you see your group?

So what's different about the veteran player doing the same thing. The difference is entirely in your head. There is no difference in what happens at the table, but in one case you are getting upset about what you imagine is in somebody else's head. So don't do that. (Or, I mean, do. That's up to you. I'm just illustrating why your stance is about you, not about the other player.)

Which simply forces the work over to the DM side, to make those changes; and after several campaigns it's only natural she's going to run out of new ideas.

Umm....yes, good DMing takes work. This is kind of exactly Angry DM's point: metagaming is the fault of lazy DMs.

Big difference; in that when trying to fly you're interacting with the setting's physics and thus open to game mechanics and-or DM rulings; while when just "knowing" something intrinsically you're not.

No, in both cases it's up to the DM to decide if it's true. Anything the player believes to be true can be not true, at the whim of the DM.

If I (the other player) have to roll to determine if my PC has knowledge that you've arbitrarily decided your PC has, that seems off somehow.

I'm happy to keep repeating this, but if my PC has decided he/she knows something, that doesn't make it true. The knowledge skill is used to determine whether or not something actually is true.

Question: What's the difference between a player who decides their character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, and the player who decides that the combination to the safe they just found is 38-17-45?
Answer: Absolutely nothing. In both cases the DM decides whether or not what the player believes is actually true.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Does 4e and 5e expand on the general class of fighter, thief, mage, cleric from the 1e/2e days? 4e had terms like striker, controller, and brute and 5e expands on backgrounds so your Pc can be more a folk hero over a rogue or mage. I'm not sure how these terms and expansion of background adds to roleplay.

Yes ... and no.

The big thing that's changed is that 4e and 5e both make you pick a background and pick a subclass. Picking a background basically improves the characterisation's floor and provides inspiration; almost every D&D character has come from somewhere. It does give some inspiration but its effects are minor unless people are throwing round Inspiration like water.

Subclasses on the other hand are huge - or they are simply a better implementation of 2e's kits, depending what you are looking at. An AD&D fighter is a character skilled at swinging sharpened pieces of metal hard and fast . A 5e fighter on the other hand has a subclass - are they very skilled and fast (champion), tacticians (battlemaster), arcane archers, psychic warriors, and more, which makes you think about who your character is. The Paladin is better in many ways; the AD&D Paladin was a devoted and empowered warrior to the cause of Lawful Good; by contrast the 5e Paladin is a devoted and empowered warrior but has a range of causes (with the Oath of Devotion being close to the classic paladin but there are about ten other canon oaths including the Oath of the Crown and the Oath of Glory).

 

[Lanefan]

It seems while the definition of roleplaying might not have changed much since 1e, the definition - and, sadly, the level of acceptance - of metagaming sure has.

In the 1e era the MM and DMG were flat-out considered to be off limits to players (it even says so in the DMG!); and players reading those books and then using that info during play were almost universally frowned upon, or worse.

Now, it seems in some circles it's anything goes; that it's acceptable - or even expected - to use whatever info you-as-player have access to, regardless where it came from. Perhaps this is a natural outgrowth of WotC-era editions pushing more and more game mechanics player-side, I don't know; but it has a bad smell.

 

[Neonchameleon]

In this case, the action points directly and doubtlessly to the motivation.

This is an assumption of bad faith.

And in effect giving your character an extra skill/ability along the lines of "Knowledge: Monsters" for free.

Which means if I, as another player, have put a feat or skill points or any other char-gen resource into giving my character that same ability I'd have every right to feel a bit pissed off.

Now this is fascinating. An old school DM who is saying that player skill should absolutely not be a thing.

And no knowing what monsters are and some of their weaknesses doesn't cover everything the knowledge skills do.

In my view the bolded is and always has been the baseline default, not the exception.

And the bolded "we prefer where all of our characters have a level of knowledge that is like that of the first D&D characters we ever had" means that I have several years of tabletop Warhammer plus the knowledge of numerous computer games to fall back on. And as I've mentioned in other threads most computer roleplaying games can trace their ancestry back to D&D, frequently through numerous routes. I played Might and Magic games with their creatures like Beholders before I ever played D&D, and hordes of people have played Final Fantasy or Bioware games before D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It seems while the definition of roleplaying might not have changed much since 1e, the definition - and, sadly, the level of acceptance - of metagaming sure has.

In the 1e era the MM and DMG were flat-out considered to be off limits to players (it even says so in the DMG!); and players reading those books and then using that info during play were almost universally frowned upon, or worse.

Like I said, the opposition to metagaming appears to be down to DM entitlement.

I've mentioned in the past that at every D&D 4e table I played at had at least three different players who were regular DMs at the table. 5e it's normally been two.

The actively bad advice you cite in the DMG means that it is impossible for the DM to take a break or a range of people to see whether they enjoy DMing or can bring things to the table. It has rightly been placed in the trash.

 

[overgeeked]

It seems while the definition of roleplaying might not have changed much since 1e, the definition - and, sadly, the level of acceptance - of metagaming sure has.

In the 1e era the MM and DMG were flat-out considered to be off limits to players (it even says so in the DMG!); and players reading those books and then using that info during play were almost universally frowned upon, or worse.

Now, it seems in some circles it's anything goes; that it's acceptable - or even expected - to use whatever info you-as-player have access to, regardless where it came from. Perhaps this is a natural outgrowth of WotC-era editions pushing more and more game mechanics player-side, I don't know; but it has a bad smell.

Some players just want to win. They don't care about anything else. Any edge, any advantage, any thing is fair game. I don't get why you'd want to play an RPG like that, like a wargame or boardgame, but they do. And they'll argue about it until they're blue in the face.

The DMG and MM are not player resources. Don't read them. Any knowledge you have of the game should be compartmentalized. Play your character, not your 40 years of gaming knowledge. If you insist on playing this RPG like it's a boardgame or a wargame, go find another table.