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

[Guest 6801328]

That wouldn't happen and you know it. We've had this discussion before. Take your disingenuous BS elsewhere.

Giving orders now? The guy who claims to not be a control freak?

Anyway, it should be pretty obvious that this specific scenario was meant as a parody. And true parodies (as opposed to simple ridicule) are meant to illustrate a truth. Tthe 'truth' in this case, which is illustrated by Aaron's two examples, is that your policing of metagaming absolutely requires you to make subjective judgments about the inner thoughts of your players. You are responding to your perceptions of player motivation, instead of simply to the actions they declare for their characters. And sometimes you will be wrong.

But contemplate this: once information is known, the decision to not act on it as much an instance of the sort of metagaming you so despise as is the decision to act on it.

Got that? Inaction is as much 'metagaming' as action.

If I know there's a secret door, and thus I don't tell the DM I'm searching for secret doors, I am metagaming. Because if I didn't know anything I might have decided to search for secret doors in that spot. There's literally no way to avoid metagaming. I cannot truly be 'in character' because I have information my character doesn't.

Your solution at that point is to dictate what 'being in character' means. "Your character would do X." And you seem to be defining 'X' exclusively as "something that doesn't benefit your character." Which is fine, if that's what you like. But that's not better roleplaying, or morally superior, or anything else. That's just how you prefer to play.

But bear in mind that you are pruning from the decision tree any number of good contributions to the story, just because you consider them to be based on knowledge the character shouldn't have.

Here's another hypothetical scenario in which I'd love to know what you'd do: let's say one of your players has already run through an adventure, and you let him participate as long as he doesn't "metagame". The party gets to a point where there's a trap, but for whatever reasons nobody has moved to that spot. So the player who knows about the trap thinks the game would be more exciting if somebody triggered the trap and decides to "take one for the team": he describes a completely plausible reason why he would move to where the trap is, and he falls in. EDIT: Oh, and none of the other players know that he has run this adventure before. Only the DM knows.

Do you allow it?

 

[Guest 6801328]

If you metagame deliberately however, regardless of the semantics and excuses you try to hide behind in order to do so, then you are a bad roleplayer, a cheat, and you might as well wear a T-shirt telling everyone you care more about 'winning' than contributing to a group's fun and enjoyment...

Can I ask you about the same scenario that I described above for Max, about the guy who intentionally falls into the trap?

Is that ok, or not?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...you need practice in keeping what your character knows and what you know separate...

That's kind of hard to do when you end up in situations like I have; I ignore what I know as an experienced DM and come up with what I think my character would do given a situation, and the DM insists I'm doing something wrong because he has decided that the only acceptable proof of "separate" knowledge is if I choose actions for my character that he knows I know aren't smart given the situation the character is in.

Character is holding a flaming implement that can easily be improvised as a weapon and is attacked by a monster he knows nothing about? It's "metagaming" if I have the character actually use it because the DM thinks I am choosing that action because I know the monster is a troll. And if the definition of "metagaming" is being applied consistently, the DM has just "metagamed" against me because he's using knowledge my character doesn't have to decide what my character is allowed to do... so I have to actively engage in this definition of "metagaming" and choose my action along the lines of "Okay, so I know that's a troll so fire or acid would be a good idea... I guess I'll do [insert something I know won't be as helpful, but is of equally unknown effectiveness from my character's point of view]".

Because, for some reason, it's only "metagaming" if it isn't serving to make circumstances artificially more difficult for the character.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jasper]

FrogReaver….My issue as a player is: Who are you to say what my character knows or doesn't know? Maybe I've been to this area before. Maybe I met a man that told me about trolls and fire..
Dm. Because you told me your background was a hermit raised by your granny in the backwoods of Alabama and the only monster you heard of were the evil red elephant and sissy orange and blue tiger. And you hunted giant bull frogs for dinner until the evil red elephant ran over your grandma on Christmas day 2016. And today is now Valentines day 2017 and the only bar you been in has been the Yawning porthole.
Dm. So give me an investigation with check DC 10.
Frog reaver, “ 9”
DM, “ok just roll at disadvantage for the rest of the combat.”
Now if your pc is fifth level and had some off days partying and sleeping in towns I will lower the dc which may still mean you were not paying attention.
DM, “ investigation dc 2”
Frogreaver “1 with -1 stat = 0”
Dm, “ you are confused. You have gotten troll and toll mixed up. You are reaching for a gold piece when this ugly guy swings at you.”

In other editions I did have monster knowledge checks and you could research monsters. I do like 5E where monster knowledge can be reduce to a DC x roll. That way when Total Recall Arnold starts quoting Volo’s monster manual, I can just call for a roll and then allow Arnold to continue.

 

[jasper]

Hmm I wonder in what basement with traps and 24 hour security iserith writes up his adventures. I also wonder what language and code he types up his adventures. Because he is over the top saying it is always the dm’s fault when a player metagames even when the player has purchase the module, or read iserith’s notes when iserith was taking out the trash.

 

[Imaculata]

Here's another hypothetical scenario in which I'd love to know what you'd do: let's say one of your players has already run through an adventure, and you let him participate as long as he doesn't "metagame". The party gets to a point where there's a trap, but for whatever reasons nobody has moved to that spot. So the player who knows about the trap thinks the game would be more exciting if somebody triggered the trap and decides to "take one for the team": he describes a completely plausible reason why he would move to where the trap is, and he falls in. EDIT: Oh, and none of the other players know that he has run this adventure before. Only the DM knows.

Do you allow it?

I had a very similar situation come up in my Call of Cthulhu campaign. Two players go up to the bedroom of the cultist priest, where he has his wife tied to the bed. One of the players ran the campaign with me before, and so he knows what is about to happen, -but he doesn´t say a word. Then as they free poor Angela, it turns out she is a vicious hungry ghoul, and all hell breaks loose.

Isn´t him pretending to not know anything about Angela being a ghoul a form of metagaming as well? In fact, the reason he joined the other player for this mission, was probably because he didn´t get to do it the previous time we ran this campaign. For the record, I was perfectly fine with this.

There is a lot of verbage on here that sounds just like the kind of rhetoric indulged in by lawyers with guilty clients trying to cloud the issue and muddy the water.

If you start off like that right out of the gate, then I think you miss the point a lot of us have been trying to make, and thats a shame. I think there's a lot to be learned from this thread, and I think you're missing out on that information.

Metagaming is in the odd case a mistake, but if it continues, it's cheating. As a player you are playing your character... not playing an entity with deity-level insider knowledge of their world which 'just happens' to be available without precedent whenever useful and of course whenever you can come up with some kind of on-the-spot story to explain it away.

There is no rule that forces the players to rely 100% on only the knowledge that their character has, and nothing else, unless that is a rule you agree on with your group. And I disagree completely that using your wits and/or knowledge as a player is not playing your character.

If you cannot roleplay without stepping over the line into metagaming, the you need practice in keeping what your character knows and what you know separate, and more experienced players and GMs could and should help you with that.

No offense, but I think this is the sort of arrogance that Iserith was referring to earlier. This stance that there are those who are experienced, and those that metagame. And thats simply not true.

If you metagame deliberately however, regardless of the semantics and excuses you try to hide behind in order to do so, then you are a bad roleplayer, a cheat, and you might as well wear a T-shirt telling everyone you care more about 'winning' than contributing to a group's fun and enjoyment...

You make the incorrect assumption that the only reason one might metagame, is to cheat. The truth of the matter is, it might not be the players that are metagaming. It might be the DM who is pointing his finger at his players, and deciding for them what their character does or does not know. Thats the problem I see here.

 

[robus]

"Don't split the party" really works wonders for party health and DM sanity it seems. A win-win situation.

 

[robus]

But more importantly, turn this around to the DM. The DM knows everything the players are doing, because he is *there at the table*. He knows the whole world, because *he is running it.* Yet it would be palpably ... jerky? Unfair? Wrong? .... for the DM to use information that an NPC should not have. This is so obvious that it goes without saying. Of course, we all recognize that even the best DMs cannot do this perfectly, but the point is that they strive for it. Because it makes the game better.

Surely you're not saying that the game can't evolve because of player choices? That an NPC that was going to deliver some bland filler text might now deliver a clue to some new interesting development because of some idea that's come into the players heads? For example in my campaign I've developed a whole new spy in the council because the players have imagined there's one there. An NPC will have evidence leading to the spy. This has happened because I as DM listened to the players discussing their theories about what's really going on.

Isn't that what's supposed to happen on the DMs side? I.e the DM is always metagaming.

 

[iserith]

Hmm I wonder in what basement with traps and 24 hour security iserith writes up his adventures. I also wonder what language and code he types up his adventures. Because he is over the top saying it is always the dm’s fault when a player metagames even when the player has purchase the module, or read iserith’s notes when iserith was taking out the trash.

I'm saying it's the DM's fault for setting the stage for "metagaming" to have an impact on the game. I've already mentioned several techniques to obviate the concern.

You might be surprised to know that some folks play my one-shot adventures several times with different characters. While sometimes foreknowledge has an impact on difficulty, if you've designed them well, then the impact is minimal.