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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SableWyvern" data-source="post: 72660" data-attributes="member: 1008">I have found a very simple answer to player knowledge vs character knowledge in this respect.At the start of every campaign, I tell my players that their characters "know" everything about monsters that they know as players.This knowledge would be derived from tales, second, third, fourth etc... hand reports, study, whatever.I then point out that the Monster Manual (or whatever equivalent book, depending on the system in use) is not being used rote in the campaign. Just because a "standard" vampire is destroyed by sunlight doesn't mean that is necessarily true in every campaign.Frex, in my last major campaign, everyone pretty much knew that vampires were never out during the day - which was sort of very close to the truth. In actuality, for a vampire in that campaign, it was always night. They never saw the sun. If anyone touched a vampire, they too would not see the sun for the duration of the contact. Vampires themselves tended to stay indoors during daylight hours in order to maintain the facade.In order for this techique to be effective, you don't need to make wholesale changes. Just a few glaring exceptions to the standard are enough to keep players from metagaming. Frex, when they find out that troll regeneration is hampered by cold instead of fire, that vampires can go out during the day and that drow become fair-skinned after a few days under the sun, they will know that while their folklore type knowledge is often useful, it is far from infallible, and excessive faith in their system-knowledge may end very painfully.Once your players have come to understand that this is how your campaigns work, it is even possible to run a "canon" campaign, where every critter is as the published version. Your players will still be unwilling to metagame - because they don't know that their player knowledge, in this particualar campaign, is actually correct.The one situation where this system won't work is where the campaign is set in a published world that the DM wishes to run "by the books". (I don't have any ideas for that situation, because I always run home-brew campaigns). In any other circumstance, I find that it actually adds to the depth of the campaign, giving folklore and myth a real effect that is incredibly easy to implement.</blockquote>

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