D&D 5E I reject your reality and substitute my own!

[Flamestrike]

Just narrate progress combined with a setback after a failed check - "Yep, you find a trap alright, and that clicking noise is a clear sign that it has been set in motion - what do you do?"

The stage is set for "metagaming" often because of how the DM adjudicates. If the DM doesn't do that, there will be less of it (if that's something the group cares about).

Could do that as well I suppose.

Nothing wrong with rolling in secret, or calling for checks when there is nothing to be found either.

Heck sometimes I call for a check for no other reason than when the players are talking amongst themselves. I pretend to look up a result, feign a look of concern, and then glance back up at the table and ask for formation or something.

That gets them back on point pretty darn quickly.

 

[Oofta]

Could do that as well I suppose.

Nothing wrong with rolling in secret, or calling for checks when there is nothing to be found either.

Heck sometimes I call for a check for no other reason than when the players are talking amongst themselves. I pretend to look up a result, feign a look of concern, and then glance back up at the table and ask for formation or something.

That gets them back on point pretty darn quickly.

Got to admit, every once in a great while I call for rolls just to make people paranoid. Of course I've also asked people to join me in another room with a D20 and their character sheet and tell them there's absolutely nothing wrong.

Paranoia can be a good thing.

 

[iserith]

Could do that as well I suppose.

Nothing wrong with rolling in secret, or calling for checks when there is nothing to be found either.

Heck sometimes I call for a check for no other reason than when the players are talking amongst themselves. I pretend to look up a result, feign a look of concern, and then glance back up at the table and ask for formation or something.

That gets them back on point pretty darn quickly.

I think the dice games can impact the level of trust in the DM, so I don't do it. I prefer the dice to resolve uncertainty, not create it. The DMG also cautions against overusing some of these tricks.

 

[Flamestrike]

I think the dice games can impact the level of trust in the DM, so I don't do it.

Not at all. Such tricks are expected.

If a player is going to lose trust in a DM because he's trying to either minimize metagaming (rolls in secret for the player) or because the player assumes the DM is rolling for nothing simply to stop table talk and get the players back into the game (both of which are entirely valid goals) then that player is the one with the problem, not the DM.

Your DM isnt out to get you. It's not an adversarial system. He's there to challenge and entertain you, in a collaborative manner.

That includes keeping you guessing at times!

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not at all. Such tricks are expected.

If a player is going to lose trust in a DM because he's trying to either minimize metagaming (rolls in secret for the player) or because the player assumes the DM is rolling for nothing simply to stop table talk and get the players back into the game (both of which are entirely valid goals) then that player is the one with the problem, not the DM.

Your DM isnt out to get you. It's not an adversarial system. He's there to challenge and entertain you, in a collaborative manner.

That includes keeping you guessing at times!

Rather bluntly, this is a crutch, and it's actually adversarial to boot. If the GM is doing things at their whim to players just to make them paranoid or waste resources or maintain uncertainty, that's absolutely adversarial -- there's no reason to do it for the sake of the game. And that gets to the crutch part -- if you need these tricks to keep up tension or interest, then it's because your game isn't doing it on it's own. Up your game.

Take caring about metagaming. This is absolutely adversarial. The player wants to play his character his way, and the GM is deciding that they want that character played a different way. This is directly about control over the character, and not in a cooperative manner. It's who gets to say what that character can do in any given moment -- the player has to receive GM permission to play their character their way. And it's entirely avoidable -- just don't build scenes where the scene depends on the players pretending they don't know things! Don't present trolls as a dangerous encounter that hinges on the players having to pretend to not use fire. Use trolls, absolutely, but don't make them a gimmick monster where pretending to not know the gimmick is important. Instead, put them in a place where their gimmick is reinforced by the location -- like being underwater (harder to use fire) or in a gas-filled cave, where use of fire is dangerous, or just change the gimmick. Metagaming is always going to be the fault of the GM for designing a scene where it's important to pretend you don't know things for the GM's idea to work to the GM's satisfaction. Note it's all about the GM, there, not the game or the players.

I used to care about metagaming. Then I stopped, and just changed my challenges to just not rely on metagaming not happening. Do you know what happened? It wasn't a glut of dirty metagaming, it was just a better game where I had less to worry about because I was no longer policing my players for metagaming. My game got, in all ways, better.

 

[iserith]

Not at all. Such tricks are expected.

If a player is going to lose trust in a DM because he's trying to either minimize metagaming (rolls in secret for the player) or because the player assumes the DM is rolling for nothing simply to stop table talk and get the players back into the game (both of which are entirely valid goals) then that player is the one with the problem, not the DM.

Your DM isnt out to get you. It's not an adversarial system. He's there to challenge and entertain you, in a collaborative manner.

That includes keeping you guessing at times!

Such tricks shouldn't be expected at my table. They are unnecessary in my view. The DM can set the stage for "metagaming" - if the group even cares about this - to be unreliable or impossible very easily without resorting to dice games. Some of which even the DMG says should not be overused. Personally I don't think it's any of my business how a player makes a decision for his or her character, but neither am I going to regularly create situations where there is a gap between player and character knowledge since I'll adjudicate as above as needed.

 

[jgsugden]

Which requires metagaming.

Yes and no - you have to think as a PC without the knowledge and do your best, with integrity, to try to play it out accordingly.

If there's a difference in thinking, it's considered. The Troll example comes up, here -- how long do I have to pretend to not know I need to use fire before I can do it?

You know. Your PC doesn't. When can they make the conclusion? When they have a reason to do so.

In my game: PCs meet a troll for the first time. I have them roll a knowledge check to see what lore their PCs know. Let's say they all get horrible results. Nobody knows the troll's regeneration triggers on acid/fire. They fight it and 'kill' it only to see it get back up as nobody used fire or acid. They knock it down again and keep hacking it apart to keep it from regenerating. They do medicine/investigation/knowledge rolls to figure it out. Nope. Horrible. They may need to run and do some research.

A new player can go straight to fire -- they don't know, but they can do this and it's not a problem. If a veteran player does this, the metagame argument shows up. So, the veteran player is expected to distort the play space by intentionally avoiding fire because they know it's the right answer.

That depends upon the relationship between player and DM. If the player has evidenced integrity, and tells me that they think they'd try fire, I'd allow it. If the player has shown a lack of integrity with a history of metagaming, I would say that they rolled their knowledge checks and failed ... so no, they should not use fire.

So, metagaming occurs.

Rolling dice and saying "you don't know" when there's an obvious failure on the die directly causes metagaming problems. You can skip this by not doing this and actually applying a consequence on a failure that resolves the question.

People talk about this as an inevitable problem, but in my experience, it is only inevitable with problem players. When we have a mutual goal of honoring the fiction, it resolves itself and the story is preserved.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes and no - you have to think as a PC without the knowledge and do your best, with integrity, to try to play it out accordingly.

This is just the definition of the issue we're talking about. If this is an argument, it's circular -- metagaming is defined as this and doing this is metagaming. Cool, I don't think anyone is confused here, and we're right back at the start.

You know. Your PC doesn't.

How do you know my PC doesn't? Uncle Bob, renowned troll slayer, told him all about it while bouncing him on his good knee and complaining that his missing one doesn't grow back like a troll's.

This is the problem with this assertion -- it's the GM telling the players what their characters can and can't know and can and can't do based on this. It's the GM playing the character for the player, and doing so not for the betterment of the game, but the preservation of the GM's expected outcomes.

When can they make the conclusion? When they have a reason to do so.

Cool, I have reason immediately because I find pretending to not know things to be hella tedious and frustrating. Since this is a fun activity, we should avoid this stuff, right?

In my game: PCs meet a troll for the first time. I have them roll a knowledge check to see what lore their PCs know. Let's say they all get horrible results. Nobody knows the troll's regeneration triggers on acid/fire. They fight it and 'kill' it only to see it get back up as nobody used fire or acid. They knock it down again and keep hacking it apart to keep it from regenerating. They do medicine/investigation/knowledge rolls to figure it out. Nope. Horrible. They may need to run and do some research.That depends upon the relationship between player and DM. If the player has evidenced integrity, and tells me that they think they'd try fire, I'd allow it. If the player has shown a lack of integrity with a history of metagaming, I would say that they rolled their knowledge checks and failed ... so no, they should not use fire.
People talk about this as an inevitable problem, but in my experience, it is only inevitable with problem players. When we have a mutual goal of honoring the fiction, it resolves itself and the story is preserved.

Why are you dictating what the PC's know? This is absolutely the opposite of immersion -- my PC is an alien and I have to see if he knows anything about the world at any given moment. The PC is unable to be fleshed out by the player without permission of the GM. And the reason for this is that the GM is lazy and just wants the troll to be a gimmick monster and bat around the characters until he allows them to succeed. Ugh, gross. Why do we play like this? It's utterly trivial, as it a piece of cake, no real extra work, to just make scenarios that don't rely on preventing of "metagaming." Then you don't even have to worry about it, your players identify better with their characters because they aren't strange aliens, and the game world gets that much more vivid and lived in.

 

[Mort]

Rather bluntly, this is a crutch, and it's actually adversarial to boot. If the GM is doing things at their whim to players just to make them paranoid or waste resources or maintain uncertainty, that's absolutely adversarial -- there's no reason to do it for the sake of the game. And that gets to the crutch part -- if you need these tricks to keep up tension or interest, then it's because your game isn't doing it on it's own. Up your game.

Take caring about metagaming. This is absolutely adversarial. The player wants to play his character his way, and the GM is deciding that they want that character played a different way. This is directly about control over the character, and not in a cooperative manner. It's who gets to say what that character can do in any given moment -- the player has to receive GM permission to play their character their way. And it's entirely avoidable -- just don't build scenes where the scene depends on the players pretending they don't know things! Don't present trolls as a dangerous encounter that hinges on the players having to pretend to not use fire. Use trolls, absolutely, but don't make them a gimmick monster where pretending to not know the gimmick is important. Instead, put them in a place where their gimmick is reinforced by the location -- like being underwater (harder to use fire) or in a gas-filled cave, where use of fire is dangerous, or just change the gimmick. Metagaming is always going to be the fault of the GM for designing a scene where it's important to pretend you don't know things for the GM's idea to work to the GM's satisfaction. Note it's all about the GM, there, not the game or the players.

I used to care about metagaming. Then I stopped, and just changed my challenges to just not rely on metagaming not happening. Do you know what happened? It wasn't a glut of dirty metagaming, it was just a better game where I had less to worry about because I was no longer policing my players for metagaming. My game got, in all ways, better.

I'm in the same boat. I used to care about metagaming and now... I just don't. Far from impacting my game negatively, It seems to have improved it. More importantly, It's improved my enjoyment of the game (just less to worry about).

As for player knowledge, much of the time I reward player knowledge as good play. But my players (long established group) know that I'll occasionally throw a knuckleball in there and that "unverified" player knowledge is a dangerous thing to rely on.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm in the same boat. I used to care about metagaming and now... I just don't. Far from impacting my game negatively, It seems to have improved it. More importantly, It's improved my enjoyment of the game (just less to worry about).

As for player knowledge, much of the time I reward player knowledge as good play. But my players (long established group) know that I'll occasionally throw a knuckleball in there and that "unverified" player knowledge is a dangerous thing to rely on.

Absolutely! I also love moments where, for instance, in a troll encounter a player straight up deploys fire, and I ask "why do you do that," and they're entirely free to tell me why they think their character does this because there is no wrong answer. I'm not asking to police metagaming, I'm asking because it's a great moment to find out more about that character -- maybe a moment from their backstory, like Uncle Bob, or maybe they've studied trolls because their village was attacked by them, or maybe they just always go to fire first, or maybe they had a voice in their head say "use fire!" All of these things create way more interesting characters and give great hooks to lean on later. I enlist my players to help build the game, I don't require them to play how I think they should under the auspices of metagaming.