D&D 5E How to deal with Metagaming as a player?

[machineelf]

You are answering your own question as this paragraph progresses. Because your players can never know if/when your sensibilities will be tread upon and the stinkeye launched. They must walk on eggshells, constantly ready to have to defend themselves from accusations of being a filthy metagamer should they choose to take an action that fails your unwritten, or to use your own word "nuanced", smell test.

You keep framing my position as though my "sensibilities" are at odds with my players' preferences. They are not. I'm not sure why you concluded that. We agree on the nature of our role-playing experience and what we want out of it. And I am not always the DM. We are happy with how we play. And yes, if a person came into our group and started meta-gaming, it would rub all of us the wrong way. That's why it might be important for groups to talk about these kinds of things and their expectations before they get going.

You also seem to frame this as though this issue is unique to me and I'm the only one who has opinions on it. There is a long history of role-players who frown upon heavy meta-gaming. We are not a small minority.

 

[Bawylie]

Because "metagaming" has a pretty clear definition. You may disagree. But I'll post this wikipedia definition, which I think nails it: "In role-playing games, metagaming is an "out of character" action where a player's character makes use of knowledge that the player is aware of but that the character is not meant to be aware of. Metagaming while taking part in relatively competitive games, or those with a more serious tone, is typically not well received, because a character played by a metagamer does not act in a way that reflects the character's in-game experiences and back-story." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_(role-playing_games)

I think most people understand that definition, even if they disagree on whether it's a bad thing or not. It's odd to me that some people are arguing that the definition of meta-gaming is vague, when I don't find it to be vague at all. (Again, let me say for clarity, we cannot eliminate every forms of metagaming, and some "meta-game thinking" is necessary, like when I roll a dice, I know I am dealing with game mechanics. That's fine. That's not really what we are talking about.)

So metagaming isn't always inconsiderate, but it can be. Let's say a sage privately tells another character that there is a genie's lamp hidden in a secret place in a dungeon room. You have to look in the exact right place to find it. that player keeps that knowledge to himself so he can grab the lamp when he gets to that room. And then let's say I decide, well I'm just going to happen to look in this particular place "by chance," and well what would you know, I found a genie's lamp!

No one's going to buy the argument, like Aaron tries to make in this thread, that it was just by chance you happened to look in that place. And yes it's inconsiderate to use that knowledge, which your character wouldn't have had, to grab the lamp before anyone else could. (Whether the other player should have kept the lamp location a secret from the rest of the group is a wholly different discussion and not germane to the point at hand).

I don't think it's vague. I think it's wrong. And I think it's wrapped-up too much in a restrictive definition of role-play.

But, as you've pointed out, it's well-known and commonly used. It's literally used like the word literally.




-Brad

 

[machineelf]

I don't think it's vague. I think it's wrong. And I think it's wrapped-up too much in a restrictive definition of role-play.

But, as you've pointed out, it's well-known and commonly used. It's literally used like the word literally.




-Brad

Well, I'm not going to try to argue my points any further because I think we've mostly talked this thing through for now, but I am genuinely curious how you would handle the last example I posited, where only one character was told the secret location of a genie lamp, and a different player "just happened" to look in the extremely unlikely place where the lamp was hidden to claim it first, even though there was no way that character would have had that knowledge.

What would you do, if anything, about that. Would you consider it a form of meta-gaming, or not? Would you think that the first player was treated unfairly when he role-played according to an unspoken rule of what characters know and don't know, when the other player simply ignored that and decided to use the meta-knowledge to his advantage? Again, this is not a challenge; I am interested in what you'd think of that.

 

[Corwin]

What would you do, if anything, about that.

I would like to answer that. *My* group wouldn't have that problem because we are like-minded players who enjoy a similar playstyle. So no one would snatch up the genie lamp first through bad faith play.

 

[iserith]

There are a lot of role-players like me who have thoughts on meta-gaming and frown on it. Just because you and your table-mates don't care about it, doesn't mean other people don't. And I don't force my players to abstain from meta-gaming. We all agree that we don't want to do it, and we try not to. I don't have to force them to play that way, that's the way they want to play. They want to take on roles, develop deep character backstories, and adhere to the knowledge their character has and doesn't have. Lot's of other table-top RPGers feel the same way.

You cut off the important part of the sentence in the post of mine you quoted. I will bold it for you:

I doubt anybody would really care about your preferences with regard to "metagaming" if you didn't claim that the way other people play isn't roleplaying because they don't care about "metagaming."

Which you then double down on here:

Cool. Like I said, you and you're group play how you want, and me and my group will play how we want. But let's not pretend that meta-gaming isn't a thing, or that there isn't a ton of history of history behind it. For many, me included, meta-gaming is simply the other side of the coin to roleplaying. And while for you, role-playing is nothing more than "I'm a fighter and that's my role," as though you're playing a board game and you are the smasher role, while someone else is the healer role.

To many other people (and I would argue, historically when it comes to D&D) role-playing is more than that; you are not only a fighter, you are Adran Steelblade, dwarf fighter from Sundabar, who's father was killed when an orc horde invaded. Now he chooses to explore the wider world that he hasn't experienced, killing any orc that gets in his way ... etc, etc. For us, role-playing is crafting a character, with specific experiences he/she brings to the table. That also means, if Adran Steelblade wasn't present when Talbar the rogue drowned in the water trap in the dungeon, and now the trap is reset, then there is no way to know (outside of good perception) for Adran to know the water trap exists in the first place.

Again, if that's now how you like to "role-play," then to each their own. If someone's idea of role-playing is (like a friend I know) to just roll dice and kill stuff, and who cares about meta-gaming, then go have fun. But be aware, at least, that historically role-playing in D&D was more about creating a character with backstory, and that presently a whole lot of people still like to play that way. If my players tried to play in your game, they probably wouldn't like it. And if your players tried to play in my game, they probably wouldn't like it. That's why we don't all have to play in the same group.

So I hope you can see why your posts are getting this much attention.

As to whether your players wouldn't like to play in my games, TRY ME. I'm happy to prove you wrong any day of the week. I'm easy to find on Roll20.

 

[Caliban]

Has this discussion on metagaming scared away the OP?

Possibly. It's certainly had that effect on me. Way to much "Play the right way. My way" going on.

 

[iserith]

So metagaming isn't always inconsiderate, but it can be. Let's say a sage privately tells another character that there is a genie's lamp hidden in a secret place in a dungeon room. You have to look in the exact right place to find it. that player keeps that knowledge to himself so he can grab the lamp when he gets to that room. And then let's say I decide, well I'm just going to happen to look in this particular place "by chance," and well what would you know, I found a genie's lamp!

No one's going to buy the argument, like Aaron tries to make in this thread, that it was just by chance I happened to look in that place. And yes it's inconsiderate to use that knowledge, which my character wouldn't have had, to grab the lamp before anyone else could. (Whether the other player should have kept the lamp location a secret from the rest of the group is a wholly different discussion and not germane to the point at hand).

Much like the issue of "metagaming" the weaknesses of monsters, your example highlights the true source of the problem: The DM who doesn't take simple, practically effortless steps to mitigate or eliminate it in the first place. Such as by taking the player aside or communicating through notes. No, the onus is instead placed on the players to pretend they don't know what they know because the DM couldn't be bothered to prepare and run the game in such a way that it's not an issue.

It's not even so much that I don't care about "metagaming" as it my game isn't impacted by it at all because I prepare accordingly.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm with Iserith.

I'm with you (secondhander) on:
- Don't be inconsiderate.
- All forms of RPGing are legitimate; play the way you want at your table.

Where I take offense is the "...but you're not roleplaying if you do" part.

Personally, I don't think it's a very interesting sort of roleplaying to, in effect, be told, "This is how your character would behave. Act that out for everybody else at the table." That's sort of like improv, but it's even a particularly narrow form of that because what you can act has been constrained. (Somebody...I think it might have been Saelorn...went so far as to say that wood-elves will behave certain ways. As if it's somehow written in stone how a wood-elf sees the world.)

So, sure, it's "roleplaying" to say, "Your character wouldn't know X; now act as if you don't know that."

But I find that dull. Face it, most (all?) of us are going to be really terrible improv actors. I'm sitting around a table with a bunch of dudes, snack food and paper and dice covering the table, listening to really bad acting, and I'm supposed to be "immersed"? Well, I'm not. At least, not as a result of the pretending.

However, regardless of the merits of that form of roleplaying, I will grant you that it is in conflict with "metagaming" as you call it. If the player's job is to give the outward appearance of being his character, then using out-of-game knowledge breaks that rule.

There are two other aspects to roleplaying, both of them much harder to achieve than the first sort, that I do find engaging and immersive:
- When a player has his character do something that increases my understanding of who that character is and what he/she is like. That is, something unexpected and new that makes the character portrait more rich. I don't really care if the person is "in character" when they don't have something interesting (literary?) to contribute, as long as every now and then they do something that helps bring their character to life in a meaningful way. Quality, not quantity.
- When I, the player, am feeling the same feelings as my character: fear, rage, relief, excitement...whatever. True, I'm rarely going to feel those emotions as strongly as my character, but I can at least get some of it.

Note that neither of those two aspects of roleplaying are in conflict with "metagaming". If I know that trolls burn, then no matter how convincingly I'm pretending that I don't, I'm never going to be actually worried about finding the solution. (At most I'm going to worry about how long I have to keep pretending until I can just kill the damned trolls and move on to something that involves roleplaying.) And if the player of the new character pretends to not know about trolls because his character "new", that doesn't really make that character richer for me. I already knew it was a new character. Lots of adventurers are green and don't know stuff. How is your character unique? That's what I want to know.

So, yes, if you like the improv acting sort of roleplaying, and staying "in character" is one of your goals for the game then by all means do so and enjoy it. But please stop imagining that your version is "true" or "pure" roleplaying, and that everybody else is just in it for the combat and magic items. Or, if you can't, at least lay off the denigration.

 

[iserith]

(Somebody...I think it might have been Saelorn...went so far as to say that wood-elves will behave certain ways. As if it's somehow written in stone how a wood-elf sees the world.)

Ridiculous. Obviously it's written in wood.

 

[jasper]

That's because #27,576,325,984 is "how to make a bedroll comfortable."

<maniacal DM laughter>

Since you forgot it Satryn and rolled a 9 on you con saving throw, take 1 level of exhaustion. hahahhahahhah