Elder-Basilisk
First Post
This topic comes around every now and then so I've come to have a pretty firm opinion: a lot of so-called metagaming is simply the way characters would react to and understand the world around them.
For instance, characters know that people can almost always back a little bit away and escape from melee for long enough to get a spell off or shift/circle to a more advantageous position without taking risks. So it's not metagaming to expect foes to take 5' steps.
Characters also know that, most enemies can take advantage of one opening (AoO) but aren't quick enough to take advantage of two openings in quick succession. So, it's not metagaming to see that a companion has distracted the ogre (eaten the AoO as we say it in my group) and take that opportunity to slip inside his reach.
Nor is it metagaming to think that most experienced warriors who carry reach weapons are the quick kind of people who can take advantage of more than one opportunity. After all, fighters are proficient in a wide variety of weapons and know their strengths and weaknesses. The fighter who chose to wield a greatsword may well have done so because "my reflexes aren't good enough to take advantage of the reach a glaive affords." Consequently, it stands to reason that an experienced warrior who wields a glaive probably has good enough reflexes to make the most out of his weapon--otherwise, he'd be using a greatsword too.
Similarly, in 3.0, characters would know that Shield is one of the most common and effective defensive spells and that it's probably reasonable to assume that any arcane caster who had an opportunity to prepare for combat has one active. (And in 3.0, characters with much experience or any spellcraft would probably also know that the caster can't move the shield quickly enough to guard both sides of him and act accordingly).
Characters would probably also know that priests and other humanoids wearing heavy armor tend to have poor reflexes (at least for dodging fireballs), and that backstabbing low-life scum and dirty-fighting swashbucklers (rogues) tend to be weak willed and vulnerable to death magic/poison. (Exactly what class an NPC is ought to be discerned from external clues--he's casting spells in armor and wearing a holy symbol; he's not wearing any armor and fighting with his fists; when Wiglaf turned his back on that guy, he caught a glancing blow right on his kidney--that guy is obviously fighting dirty (sneak attacks); that guy managed to contort his body like a circus acrobat and completely avoid all of the effects of the fireball; that guy is wearing light armor and fighting with a rapier but he's depending upon skill (specialization) or powerful lunges (power attacks) rather than dirty tactics for damage, etc. That way, PCs can make an educated guess but don't know for sure whether they're targetting a rogue with the Phantasmal Killer or they just aimed it at a dex based fighter).
Similarly, even though hit points are an abstraction of luck, "Bruce Willis damage" (scrapes and bruises that don't significantly impact capability but slow a combatant down and make future life threatening injuries more likely), mild concussions, and life-theatening injuries, I think it's reasonable for PCs to know and make decisions based upon their hit point totals. A lot of what the abstraction represents (stamina, scrapes, bruises, etc) are things that a character ought to know. (They're also directly detectable by magic (Status) so characters obviously have the necessary concepts to know precisely how injured a person is--even if they don't think of it in terms of "hit points").
Those are all features of the campaign world that people would notice and draw conclusions from based on their past experiences and observations. . . and what they've heard from others.
The rest of this is something I've posted before elsewhere but it seems germane to this discussion. The campaign specific information is related to the Living Greyhawk campaign but seems to be consistent with most worlds constructed according to the assumptions of the implied setting (monsters exist and are common enough to form a significant portions (30-60% in a mixed wilderness/city/dungeon game) of PC encounters, the DMG NPC level tables give an accurate description of the makeup of communities, etc.)
There seem to be two main contentions in the "PCs don't know anything
about any monsters camp"--That firsthand information is rare and that
secondhand information is unreliable.
1. that monsters are rare things that most commoners have never
encountered and that PCs have only encountered a few of.
This seems to be wholly erroneous to me with regard to adventurers.
I haven't kept an exhaustive list of what my main PC has encountered
over his 11 levels but it covers a lot of ground: zombies, ghouls, ghasts, ghast clerics, xvarts, rats, dire rats, wererats, crocodiles, will'o'the'wisps, rogues, evil priests, rocs (well a nest), dragons, Assassin Vines, strange plant creatures, gelatinous cubes, Lemures, Erynies, Bone devils, hellcats, arcane archers, rangers, fighters, blood golems,
elder elementals, animated objects, flesh golems, stone golems, ether
spitters, ether hulks, trolls, umber hulks, ethernaughts, Abishai (2
different varieties), medusae, spectres, spinagons, kytons, evil wizards, evil sorcerors, half-fiends of all varieties, fiendish monsters of all varieties, anarchic animals, dire bears, orcs (with
various classes, Achierai, shocker lizards, lizardfolk, troglodites,
werewolves, werewolverines, quaggoth, kobolds, etc. And those were
probably only ten or twelve sessions.
Most adventurers have a LOT of first-hand information.
The contention isn't much better with regard to commoners. The majority of the nations of the Flaanesse have just emerged from the Greyhawk wars. Since the wars were fought largely by armies of commoners--volunteer and conscripted--on the sides of the good and neutral nations against opposing forces that included large amounts of
humanoids, demons, and undead (in the aftermath, they are said to form
a significant fraction of Almor's population), it stands to reason
that a lot of commoners remember their military experiences and have some firsthand knowledge of such things. Even those regions that were largely uninvolved usually have some experience with marauding monsters. In the Duchy of Urnst, for instance--hardly a hotspot of invasions and trouble in the Flaanesse--there have been entire villages enslaved by gnolls, large sections overrun by orcs and their allies, half-fiends and strange monsters in the middle of major cities (including a behir in a marketplace), and lots of other strangeness. In the Pale, there have been invasions by armies of trolls, evil priests masquerading as carnival masters--complete with imperfectly designed skeleton servitors--and herds of hippogriffs ithin a day's travel of major cities. In nearly every region, Achierai have been seen gobbling commoners on city streets, were-creatures have disrupted
various festivals, and the walking dead have clawed their way out of the crypts of heironean knights. Now, it's unlikely that the common folk of these regions know a lot about ALL of these creatures but to suggest that they are wholly ignorant of them (99% of them have never seen an X) or that they're unlikely to believe in them is to ignore three years worth of modules to the contrary as well as the written histories of Greyhawk.
2. The second contention is that secondary testimony is as generally unreliable as a game of "telephone."
In the beginning, this contention rests upon the idea that bards are the only source of secondary information that isn't represented by knowledge skills. (I'll accept the dubious notion that any information gained through a paladin's temple training for instance ought to be reflected in knowledge skills for the moment--although I think it to
be innaccurate). This isn't true. The general activities of the adventuring class brings them into contact with other adventurers of all classes with clerics and druids who heal their wounds and remove their curses, and with wizards and clerics who buy, make, and identify their magic items.
While the campfire stories of adventurers may not be the most reliable sources of information in Oerth, fabrications are more likely to come
in the form of who was there and what he did than what happened. (Stories like "I fought off a horde of pink lobster men with a rotten mackerel and a mug of beer" are far less likely to be believed (and therefore told) than stories like "So, I held a circle of those vile werecreatures at bay until dawn with just a silver dagger. As it
became clear that the cavalry would soon arrived, their leader challenged me to single combat--I knew it was a trick but what could I do?--he hadn't reckoned on my skill though. I eviscerated him with one blow of my silver dagger and looked the rest of his minions in their beady eyes. "You can take me if you try, but the first one's going to end up like your leader there. Do you want to be the first one?" And
then I walked out of the barn--none of them dared to be the first to tangle with me." In the real world, people exaggerate the size of the fish they caught quite often but I don't think many will tell you they caught a whale with an ordinary rod or a whittled wooden hook).
In another vein, the priests who remove the PCs curses are likely to
give little bits of warning like "that guy in the cage over there is waiting to be cured of lycanthropy--carry a silver weapon if you want to avoid his fate son" or "if you eat belladonna after fighting such creatures, next time, you may not need to come to the temple of the Sun Father for healing--sure it's poisonous but not if a skilled healer administers it."
And the wizards and clerics who buy, make, and identify the PCs' items
are probably better understood as sages and small-town craftsmen than
used car salesmen. There may be some high-pressure-tacticians and liars among them but there are also most likely a lot of them who are
honest and helpful. With some of the sagacious ones, getting them to
stop (accurately) cataloguing the situations in which alchemical
silver is useful or not useful may be as much of a challenge as getting a good deal out of the used-car-salesman types is.
And, after all that, there are still the tales of bards resemble a game of telephone much less than some people seem to suppose. The often fictional writings of historical bards seems to have survived centuries fairly well. Beowulf, the Illiad, the norse sagas, etc have managed to come to us reasonably intact. The various books of greek mythology I've read tell largely the same tale as Homer and Hesiod
despite being several iterations removed from the originals (at a
minimum, they were bowdlerized summations of a translation of an
original that was pieced together from various texts and fragments).
And in those cases, we hold the information to largely be without
factual basis so there is nothing preventing later writers from taking
large liberties with things (it's not as if modern people are going to say "you can't kill a hydra like that!"--and they might just do that in Greyhawk). Admittedly, some tales have undergone significant changes since the original (the legends of King Arthur, etc) but even there, the kind of thing we're talking about seems to have remained
relatively stable--whether it was Percival, Lancealot, or Galahad who
found the grail for instance, the requirements for its discovery were
purity and faith. And whether Arthur retrieved Excalibur/Caliburn from
the stone or whether he received it from the lady of the lake, the nature of the sword remains largely constant. (And if such tales actually reflected contemporary realities, I imagine that they'd be more accurate rather than less--vampire stories differ partially
because there are no real vampires).
Also, it's worth noting that the examples of stories that changed
significantly generally did so over the course of centuries and authors took the most self-conscious liberties with them (for instance Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or The First Knight) a millenia later when they no longer believed in or cared about the degree of historical veracity in the tales. To continue with the bard analogy, generally, when bands do a cover of a modern song, they don't change it much if at all. I would imagine the same to be true in Greyhawk.
Thus, adventurers have a ton of first-hand knowledge which one
shouldn't expect to be reflected in knowledge skills and the general
populace also has a lot of first hand knowledge. That secondhand knowledge is available isn't in dispute. It's accuracy, however, is probably much higher than some people seem to expect.
For instance, characters know that people can almost always back a little bit away and escape from melee for long enough to get a spell off or shift/circle to a more advantageous position without taking risks. So it's not metagaming to expect foes to take 5' steps.
Characters also know that, most enemies can take advantage of one opening (AoO) but aren't quick enough to take advantage of two openings in quick succession. So, it's not metagaming to see that a companion has distracted the ogre (eaten the AoO as we say it in my group) and take that opportunity to slip inside his reach.
Nor is it metagaming to think that most experienced warriors who carry reach weapons are the quick kind of people who can take advantage of more than one opportunity. After all, fighters are proficient in a wide variety of weapons and know their strengths and weaknesses. The fighter who chose to wield a greatsword may well have done so because "my reflexes aren't good enough to take advantage of the reach a glaive affords." Consequently, it stands to reason that an experienced warrior who wields a glaive probably has good enough reflexes to make the most out of his weapon--otherwise, he'd be using a greatsword too.
Similarly, in 3.0, characters would know that Shield is one of the most common and effective defensive spells and that it's probably reasonable to assume that any arcane caster who had an opportunity to prepare for combat has one active. (And in 3.0, characters with much experience or any spellcraft would probably also know that the caster can't move the shield quickly enough to guard both sides of him and act accordingly).
Characters would probably also know that priests and other humanoids wearing heavy armor tend to have poor reflexes (at least for dodging fireballs), and that backstabbing low-life scum and dirty-fighting swashbucklers (rogues) tend to be weak willed and vulnerable to death magic/poison. (Exactly what class an NPC is ought to be discerned from external clues--he's casting spells in armor and wearing a holy symbol; he's not wearing any armor and fighting with his fists; when Wiglaf turned his back on that guy, he caught a glancing blow right on his kidney--that guy is obviously fighting dirty (sneak attacks); that guy managed to contort his body like a circus acrobat and completely avoid all of the effects of the fireball; that guy is wearing light armor and fighting with a rapier but he's depending upon skill (specialization) or powerful lunges (power attacks) rather than dirty tactics for damage, etc. That way, PCs can make an educated guess but don't know for sure whether they're targetting a rogue with the Phantasmal Killer or they just aimed it at a dex based fighter).
Similarly, even though hit points are an abstraction of luck, "Bruce Willis damage" (scrapes and bruises that don't significantly impact capability but slow a combatant down and make future life threatening injuries more likely), mild concussions, and life-theatening injuries, I think it's reasonable for PCs to know and make decisions based upon their hit point totals. A lot of what the abstraction represents (stamina, scrapes, bruises, etc) are things that a character ought to know. (They're also directly detectable by magic (Status) so characters obviously have the necessary concepts to know precisely how injured a person is--even if they don't think of it in terms of "hit points").
Those are all features of the campaign world that people would notice and draw conclusions from based on their past experiences and observations. . . and what they've heard from others.
The rest of this is something I've posted before elsewhere but it seems germane to this discussion. The campaign specific information is related to the Living Greyhawk campaign but seems to be consistent with most worlds constructed according to the assumptions of the implied setting (monsters exist and are common enough to form a significant portions (30-60% in a mixed wilderness/city/dungeon game) of PC encounters, the DMG NPC level tables give an accurate description of the makeup of communities, etc.)
There seem to be two main contentions in the "PCs don't know anything
about any monsters camp"--That firsthand information is rare and that
secondhand information is unreliable.
1. that monsters are rare things that most commoners have never
encountered and that PCs have only encountered a few of.
This seems to be wholly erroneous to me with regard to adventurers.
I haven't kept an exhaustive list of what my main PC has encountered
over his 11 levels but it covers a lot of ground: zombies, ghouls, ghasts, ghast clerics, xvarts, rats, dire rats, wererats, crocodiles, will'o'the'wisps, rogues, evil priests, rocs (well a nest), dragons, Assassin Vines, strange plant creatures, gelatinous cubes, Lemures, Erynies, Bone devils, hellcats, arcane archers, rangers, fighters, blood golems,
elder elementals, animated objects, flesh golems, stone golems, ether
spitters, ether hulks, trolls, umber hulks, ethernaughts, Abishai (2
different varieties), medusae, spectres, spinagons, kytons, evil wizards, evil sorcerors, half-fiends of all varieties, fiendish monsters of all varieties, anarchic animals, dire bears, orcs (with
various classes, Achierai, shocker lizards, lizardfolk, troglodites,
werewolves, werewolverines, quaggoth, kobolds, etc. And those were
probably only ten or twelve sessions.
Most adventurers have a LOT of first-hand information.
The contention isn't much better with regard to commoners. The majority of the nations of the Flaanesse have just emerged from the Greyhawk wars. Since the wars were fought largely by armies of commoners--volunteer and conscripted--on the sides of the good and neutral nations against opposing forces that included large amounts of
humanoids, demons, and undead (in the aftermath, they are said to form
a significant fraction of Almor's population), it stands to reason
that a lot of commoners remember their military experiences and have some firsthand knowledge of such things. Even those regions that were largely uninvolved usually have some experience with marauding monsters. In the Duchy of Urnst, for instance--hardly a hotspot of invasions and trouble in the Flaanesse--there have been entire villages enslaved by gnolls, large sections overrun by orcs and their allies, half-fiends and strange monsters in the middle of major cities (including a behir in a marketplace), and lots of other strangeness. In the Pale, there have been invasions by armies of trolls, evil priests masquerading as carnival masters--complete with imperfectly designed skeleton servitors--and herds of hippogriffs ithin a day's travel of major cities. In nearly every region, Achierai have been seen gobbling commoners on city streets, were-creatures have disrupted
various festivals, and the walking dead have clawed their way out of the crypts of heironean knights. Now, it's unlikely that the common folk of these regions know a lot about ALL of these creatures but to suggest that they are wholly ignorant of them (99% of them have never seen an X) or that they're unlikely to believe in them is to ignore three years worth of modules to the contrary as well as the written histories of Greyhawk.
2. The second contention is that secondary testimony is as generally unreliable as a game of "telephone."
In the beginning, this contention rests upon the idea that bards are the only source of secondary information that isn't represented by knowledge skills. (I'll accept the dubious notion that any information gained through a paladin's temple training for instance ought to be reflected in knowledge skills for the moment--although I think it to
be innaccurate). This isn't true. The general activities of the adventuring class brings them into contact with other adventurers of all classes with clerics and druids who heal their wounds and remove their curses, and with wizards and clerics who buy, make, and identify their magic items.
While the campfire stories of adventurers may not be the most reliable sources of information in Oerth, fabrications are more likely to come
in the form of who was there and what he did than what happened. (Stories like "I fought off a horde of pink lobster men with a rotten mackerel and a mug of beer" are far less likely to be believed (and therefore told) than stories like "So, I held a circle of those vile werecreatures at bay until dawn with just a silver dagger. As it
became clear that the cavalry would soon arrived, their leader challenged me to single combat--I knew it was a trick but what could I do?--he hadn't reckoned on my skill though. I eviscerated him with one blow of my silver dagger and looked the rest of his minions in their beady eyes. "You can take me if you try, but the first one's going to end up like your leader there. Do you want to be the first one?" And
then I walked out of the barn--none of them dared to be the first to tangle with me." In the real world, people exaggerate the size of the fish they caught quite often but I don't think many will tell you they caught a whale with an ordinary rod or a whittled wooden hook).
In another vein, the priests who remove the PCs curses are likely to
give little bits of warning like "that guy in the cage over there is waiting to be cured of lycanthropy--carry a silver weapon if you want to avoid his fate son" or "if you eat belladonna after fighting such creatures, next time, you may not need to come to the temple of the Sun Father for healing--sure it's poisonous but not if a skilled healer administers it."
And the wizards and clerics who buy, make, and identify the PCs' items
are probably better understood as sages and small-town craftsmen than
used car salesmen. There may be some high-pressure-tacticians and liars among them but there are also most likely a lot of them who are
honest and helpful. With some of the sagacious ones, getting them to
stop (accurately) cataloguing the situations in which alchemical
silver is useful or not useful may be as much of a challenge as getting a good deal out of the used-car-salesman types is.
And, after all that, there are still the tales of bards resemble a game of telephone much less than some people seem to suppose. The often fictional writings of historical bards seems to have survived centuries fairly well. Beowulf, the Illiad, the norse sagas, etc have managed to come to us reasonably intact. The various books of greek mythology I've read tell largely the same tale as Homer and Hesiod
despite being several iterations removed from the originals (at a
minimum, they were bowdlerized summations of a translation of an
original that was pieced together from various texts and fragments).
And in those cases, we hold the information to largely be without
factual basis so there is nothing preventing later writers from taking
large liberties with things (it's not as if modern people are going to say "you can't kill a hydra like that!"--and they might just do that in Greyhawk). Admittedly, some tales have undergone significant changes since the original (the legends of King Arthur, etc) but even there, the kind of thing we're talking about seems to have remained
relatively stable--whether it was Percival, Lancealot, or Galahad who
found the grail for instance, the requirements for its discovery were
purity and faith. And whether Arthur retrieved Excalibur/Caliburn from
the stone or whether he received it from the lady of the lake, the nature of the sword remains largely constant. (And if such tales actually reflected contemporary realities, I imagine that they'd be more accurate rather than less--vampire stories differ partially
because there are no real vampires).
Also, it's worth noting that the examples of stories that changed
significantly generally did so over the course of centuries and authors took the most self-conscious liberties with them (for instance Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or The First Knight) a millenia later when they no longer believed in or cared about the degree of historical veracity in the tales. To continue with the bard analogy, generally, when bands do a cover of a modern song, they don't change it much if at all. I would imagine the same to be true in Greyhawk.
Thus, adventurers have a ton of first-hand knowledge which one
shouldn't expect to be reflected in knowledge skills and the general
populace also has a lot of first hand knowledge. That secondhand knowledge is available isn't in dispute. It's accuracy, however, is probably much higher than some people seem to expect.
