How much can you play without metagaming?

[Rackhir]

One of the basic problems with "metagaming" is that while DMs seem quite keen on "Your character wouldn't know that", they rarely spend much time on "This is what your character DOES know".

Think of all the things you have never personally encountered, but know quite a bit about. I have never served in the military, but know quite a bit about what ships, planes, tanks etc... are in service and what their weapons are and basic knowledge of the performace of the hardware and weapons.

Having a fighter "know" that a skeleton is resistant to cutting/thrusting weapons, but not to crushing weapons, seems to me like the kind of thing that pretty much anyone headed into the "adventuring professions" would have learned one way or another (mentor, stories, dusty tomes etc...).

Also it is no more outlandish that a character would have that sort of knowledge than the fact that I know you don't really want to try and bring down an F-22 with radar guided missiles.

If it's a unique creature that appeared in this month's dragon and a player starts spouting off it's stats and weaknesses, yah that's metagaming. Knowing that Demons and Devils are vunerable to holy weapons or Trolls are vunerable to fire strikes me as being basic knowledge. When you are headed into a profession like adventuring, it would be folly to not know at least a bit about any likely opponents.

The only way I could see justifying a lack of "basic" monster knowledge, is if you had a situation something like that at the begining of many fantasy stories, where some ancient evil is returning after many millenia and the chain of knowledge has broken down leaving only fragmentary information about the "evil ones". Even then some knowledge would have persisted, if perhaps only in the form of warning to children not to do X Y or Z as Monster A would come and eat them.

On an established world where such things are an ongoing, common occurance like Greyhawk or especially Forgotten Realms. Denying them that kind of knowledge is just silly.

 

[Magic Missile]

"with a swing of his sword, he tries to cleave you in half, but thanks to your quickness you partially avoid the blow and get only a scratch on your left arm...".

Which is very nice, but how on earth do you know how many hp's to cross off your sheet?

Seriously though, I would be slowly driven mad if every time a dice was rolled there was a lengthy monologue... stick to something quick. "He grazes your arm with his claws, causing 4 damage."

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Metagaming: (Character upon encountering a troll for the first time): "Who has acid flasks? I cast Burning hands!"

I allow knowledge/Int checks for things like that. Its possible for a character to have read/heard it somewhere, so I think its good to give them at least a chance.

 

[Centaur]

I agree with Rackhirm, adventureers are larger than life heroes who are expected to rise above the commone man and be able to deal with the horrors of the wilderness.

Such common things as knowing to use fire or acid on a troll would quite likey be known by the local farmers, so it would definetly be known by a wizard who has actualy learned burning hands.

Likewise, even if you assume that the fighter has never aquired the knowledge that Skeletons are vulnerable to blunt and resistant to slashing and peircing weapons, a little common sense just looking at the thing a two year old would know that smashing it would work better.

On the otherhand, if you are running a lowmagic campaign were most monsters are things of legend and are just comming back into the world (like a game I am involved in now) then it is entirely possible that certain pieces of knowlege would be unknown to the general populace and maybe even the PC's. But once the Trolls get back up for the second time, or when the arrows keep flying straight through the skeletons, they are bound to try something different!

IMC, I try to mix a little description in here and there when it is waranted, but large combats call for a short description at the begginging and then a lot of game speak once the fight is underway as they can take between 1 to 3 hours and there is no sense in making take longer, just to describe how artfully things are done... But I try to inject a few descriptions here and there were appropriate.

 

[Ashtal]

I guess the combat thing of HP/damage descriptors is mostly related to how much combat you do - if a session or campaign is very heavy into the combat, you can only describe so many cuts/scrapes/blows/breaks/etc before you run out of ideas and every body part has a scar.

 

[Piratecat]

We have a running joke in Sagiro's game when discussing how badly we're hurt; "On a random scale from 1 to, say, 73, I'd be about 39 points injured."

We almost always describe blows in combat. It goes quickly, and adds to the game.

 

[Arc]

I'm falling into the 'guilty, but trying not to' camp of metagaming. At the beginning of my play, I got consistently shafted when dividing up treasure after a kill. So, instead of simply saying 'that sounds nice', I started writing down all the items that were there, then giving a quick glance at the DMG to check the prices. Of course, if someone had a legitimate reason for an item, I would never argue, but when the excess to be sold came up for grabs, I would always get the good stuff. After a while (and one instance where I made off with roughly 6 million gp market value of items, in a 22nd level epic game), I stopped doing it, but I still had the DMG tables and pricing guides mostly memorized.

Now, I tend to compute the entire loot list in my head, come up with an approximate share guide in my head, and if the group wants, help make sure that everyone gets his or her due. It's still metagaming, but it cuts down the time required to split loot from 15-20 minutes down to roughly 5.

For the most part, I (and the rest of the group) only metagame when it's going to make the game more fun for everyone. Though if I figure out the subtle hints the DM is dropping about a necromancer coming up soon, my character is going to be leaving town with a mace

 

[Arc]

Meant to hit edit, not quote.

 

[clark411]

It's been mentioned above is worth repeating: If I see my character sheet, I'm probably metagaming.

Metathought is simply a part of the game- because games that are completely devoid of it either fail in the mechanics (as the DM fudges non stop to keep people going without their awareness of their HP, AC, attack capabilities etc) or they are very brief (I charge the foe, unaware that I've got 4 HP left). Even with descriptions, it's really hard to consistantly put into words things like this.. "You feel, with all the battles you have won, that you're running out of luck?" "You believe yourself capable of taking one more solid hit from an opponent of average strength with a nonmagical longsword?" =) /humor off

In terms of knowing what trolls are vulnerable to etc, I figure- if I know what these mythological beasts are harmed by, there's little doubt an adventurer dealing with them would know what hurt them. Them knowing Trolls hate Fire is simple... however the moment they start talking about how Green Slaad are immune to sonic attacks, we know we're pushing the boundries of the "Hey Buddy, make a Knowledge [The Planes] roll" area.

 

[tetsujin28]

In my 26+ years of gaming, it's just never seemed like a problem. And it's cured in a lot of ways by skills like Know: Dungeoneering and the like.