Help me, fellow gamers! You're my only hope!

[Mouseferatu]

I have a confession to make.

I don't know exactly when it happened. I don't know exactly why it happened, though I have theories. But at some point, over the last five years, I've become that guy.

You know, that guy? The one who can't help but metagame, even when people--including himself--are trying to get into the scene. The one who, even though he trusts the DM and knows the DM knows the rules and is trying to provide a good time, can't help make a snide comment like "Uh, you do know what level we are, right?" when he sees minis on the board that might appear to be an unusually high EL. The guy who, when the DM gives a real cool description of the monster's blood flowing backwards, and its wounds closing, doesn't say, "Cool!" or even utter an in-character "Oh, crap!" but instead says "Wow, I hope that's fast healing, not regeneration."

That guy. I hate that guy. And yet, somehow, I've become that guy.

I don't do it deliberately, and sometimes I catch myself. But more often than not, I blurt it out without even realizing I'm doing it, and only then recognize the fact that I've totally broken character and mood--not just for me, but for everyone, since not everyone else in the group thinks mechanics-first.

It's not what I want out of a gaming experience, and it's the sort of thing that drives me nuts when I'm DMing. I want to get into character. I want to react to the monsters as my character would. I want to make decisions based on my character's personality, not based on what my meta-knowledge says is the wisest/most tactically sound option. I want to describe combat at least somewhat cinematically, rather than boiling everything down to the numbers before I even pick up the D20.

And I used to. Not 100%, of course. I'm not an amateur thespian. I don't RP to explore deep-seated personality issues. It's a game, and I treat it as such. But it's a game where character and story are major parts, where the numbers are supposed to be the means, not the ends. And somewhere in the last few years, I've forgotten how to do that (at least as a player, as opposed to a DM).

Maybe it's because I'm so used to dealing with the rules, since I work in the industry, that that's all I think about now? I don't know. But I don't want to play this way. It bugs my friends, and it bugs me.

I'm hoping the fact that I've become aware of this will help me fight it, but I'd like advice from others. Those of you know really, really know the rules well... How do you keep from thinking almost purely on a meta level? How do you make yourself see the monsters your character is facing, rather than the CR and SR and DR?

How do you train yourselves to look past the numbers?

 

[Rystil Arden]

From countless time spent GMing and tinkering, I find I'm unable to get past this completely unless I play totally ignorant, which I can do fairly easily if that's what I set out to do ("Wow, that dragon is the most amazing thing I've ever seen! Still, I'm more impressed by that story you told of that water-bulette, what did you call it--a shark?"--Desert-dwelling PC of mine). So what I tend to do is play either a character that has cause to be totally ignorant or a character with very high knowledge skills who has cause to know lots of the tidbits about monsters anyway. It is very very hard for me to find a happy medium, so I'd be interested in hearing what other people have to say about it.

 

[Ceresco]

I have a confession to make.

I don't know exactly when it happened. I don't know exactly why it happened, though I have theories. But at some point, over the last five years, I've become that guy.

I'm hoping the fact that I've become aware of this will help me fight it, but I'd like advice from others. Those of you know really, really know the rules well... How do you keep from thinking almost purely on a meta level? How do you make yourself see the monsters your character is facing, rather than the CR and SR and DR?

Recognizing you have a problem is the first step.

Honestly, it's difficult when you think in mechanics all the time. Your brain has become trained to think in mechanics when dealing with rpgs. Now you have to learn to switch that part of your brain off when you're the player.

Respectfully,

Edward Kopp

 

[Mark]

How do you train yourselves to look past the numbers?

Get someone to run a system you do not know and do not learn it in advance, just rely on the facilitator/GM/DM to hande all of the rules. Do this a few times per year. It is very refreshing, in a literal sense.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Honestly?

I write fiction based on D&D (although not "rolled out encounters" - That would be counter-productive) Feel free to check it out. I have some free stories up on ENWorld. See my sig.

One thing about writing fiction is that it forces me to look past the rules and back into the game for the plot and story. When I'm writing I learn to care less about whether it is fast healing or regeneration and more about what that ability means for the story, the plot, the characters, and potentially the homebrew world I write about: Enigmatica. Writing helps me think story/plot/adventure and not class/abilities/feats.

I've heard that reading well-written fiction does it for some people. However, I've personally found that reading fiction only encourages me to disect the author's characters. But if I write the fiction myself, it brings me away from the mechanics and teaches my mind to not be "that guy."

I hope this helps, but I realize this is not up everyone's alley. Oh - and as always - feel free to check out my sig. FWIW.

 

[Particle_Man]

You could look over some of the cool indie games like Don't Rest Your Head and Dogs in the Vinyard. Not to play, necessarily, but to put your head in a different headspace for when you play D&D.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The DM can help here, by creating his own monsters, spells, magic items, PrCs, etc. Gets the mystery back.

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

I don't do it deliberately, and sometimes I catch myself. But more often than not, I blurt it out without even realizing I'm doing it, and only then recognize the fact that I've totally broken character and mood--not just for me, but for everyone, since not everyone else in the group thinks mechanics-first.

It's not what I want out of a gaming experience...

Yeah, rules mastery.
Do you ever find yourself automatically calculating odds of success and predicting probabilities of outcomes too, like C3-PO in the asteroid field?

I am an analytical person, so much so that I find myself doing it automatically. It drives some of my friends nuts.

Anyway, its to be expected as a game designer.


What you need is simple: a new game.


Any fun game, as long as it has different mechanics and a different setting. What has happened is you now have gained a learned, ingrained pattern and habit of analytic thinking about the game, due to massive immersion, and you won't be able suppress this.

Well, I suppose you could retrain yourself out of this thinking in a manner corresponding to how you trained yourself into it, but how realistic is that really, if you are playing it?



This is why I dislike rules mastery do a large degree. It is important for designers, but can absolutely destroy the fun of the game. Its no longer a matter of mystery and excitement. Its a matter of decisions and probabilities. Creative problem solving can mitigate this to a degree, but not fundamentally change it.

Best wishes.

 

[jdrakeh]

Get someone to run a system you do not know and do not learn it in advance, just rely on the facilitator/GM/DM to hande all of the rules. Do this a few times per year. It is very refreshing, in a literal sense.

I agree with Mark's advice wholeheartedly. As a longtime GM and part-time freelancer, the most fun I have playing today is definitely when I have no first-hand experience with the system. I've had great fun with The Undiscovered, The Chronicles of Ramlar, Fifth Cycle, etc -- small-press stuff that is, for me, completely new when I sit down at the table. Each such campaign is like roleplaying for the first time all over again

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I don't agree that you need a new system to play with to break you of this habit. That won't help when you're playing D&D, and I'm not convinced it will help regardless. I think there are two main ways to take care of the issue. First, awareness of the issue will go along ways towards resolving it. You might want to ask one of the people you game with (or even the whole group) to call you on it when you do it. Secondly, come up with "in-character" ways of describing the things that come up in game that you refer to, and refer to them in those ways. It's OK to realize through mechanics that something is more powerful than you, or can regenerate its own wounds - skilled characters would notice these things too. Try to figure out how the character would refer to those instances, and then train yourself to talk in that way. You won't be perfect at first, or even maybe ever, but you can impact the amount that it occurs.