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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7734028" data-attributes="member: 5142">I would assume that the PCs are doing other actions, but the scenario in question seems to presume Stealth as an isolated action/roll, and so I subsequently treat it as such. I also thought that talking about the everything else would then shift the conversation further away from the case in question of stealthing down the hallway to the everything else. We can talk about that, and I did write about that in my original draft, before deciding that it might be extraneous. To me this is handwaving a roll that is meaningless. You are making a roll about nothing while pretending that it is something. It's handwaving, if not sugarcoating, an action with a fixed result. If there is nothing there, as per Lanefan's scenario, then there is no consequence for failing that roll. If there is no real consequence, then what is gained by a "failed" roll where there is no actual failure or consequences? It's like the dice rolling equivalent of a participation trophy. You "won" it, but so what? Also, IME, the high tension you describe is rarely, if ever, the case, either from the player-side of things or as a GM. It always feels artificial and forgettable, as it does not actually emulate tension or successfully overcoming a challenge. We can, for example, expand this case beyond Stealth and look at most skill checks. A PC is talking to an NPC. They request to make a Perusasion check even though you know that is unnecessary. They do so. But nothing is actually achieved apart from wasting everyone's time with a meaningless roll. You think that the character should know something based upon their background and skills. They choose to roll, even though you could just tell them that they know. They roll. And now you get players trained to roll for stuff their characters should know. I am not sure how that case that I described constitutes metagaming, but I am sure that you know my table, my games, and my players better than I do. They know a particular case, such as knowing that they have two guards they can see that they must sneak past. What about that is metagaming? Is a character seeing and assessing a threat metagaming in your games? If they are not rolling then it means that nothing of particular noteworthiness or challenge has transpired yet that requires a roll. That's not metagaming either nor does it teach metagaming in my experience. It teaches my sense for what a die roll is about: an action with dramatic outcomes. Metagaming, again IME, tends to follow <a href="http://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault/" target="_blank">what Angry DM describes in his blog post</a>. It more often than not represents a breach of the social contract at the table or players attempting to fix a player/GM "problem" within gameplay. Indeed, I have found that this sort of forthrightness about when to roll engenders better roleplaying and less metagaming from my players. If you think that they are being taught metagaming, then they sure as hell aren't showing it. There is less deception and more transparency. It allows for more roleplaying of what the characters are doing rather than what the players are rolling. As I said before, the PCs are competent and players generally want, on the whole, for their PCs represent competent heroes. I will ask them to describe what their players are doing. They will describe what their characters are doing, and in the case of the unknown hallway, they would likely 10 out of 10 times describe their characters as sneaking down the hallway. (And that is partially part of the meta-gaming culture of how one plays RPGs: players know that your characters should sneak down halls so their characters will often do that.) So there is not much gained there from a Stealth, even if there is a character in heavy armor, if there are no real consequences from failure or success. The tension and suspense happens, IME, when the sneaking needs to matter. There are better ways, IMHO, to handle the former and create suspense without requiring/approving a player roll over virtually nothing. You're a GM. You have the power of narration at your fingertips. You control what you can describe, and what you leave out of that description. I don't think that rolling to avoid the nameless unknown in a hallway does much to create actual suspense for players, especially if there is no real sense of what they are avoiding or the consequences of failure. Rolling to avoid the nameless unknown is simply rollplaying against a "Smarter-Than-Thou-Art" DM. Suspense, thriller, and horror is less about the in-universe characters and more about the audience. Your players are the audience, and your players care about their characters. You can exploit that by actually informing your players of a potential threat that their characters don't know. "Your character failed their Perception check." Clocks start ticking. The player thinks to herself "What did my character fail to notice?"  Or even the GM flat out saying, "Your character failed their Stealth roll, but they don't know that yet, so what does your character do." There is now a more imminent threat of the unknown introduced to the character through the player. You are welcome to call that metagaming, though I disagree, but a lot of suspense and tension comes from manipulating the dramatic and emotional boundaries between the player and their character rather than falsely pretending that these boundaries are virtually indistinguishable. This was actually some of the best advice I received about running a Call of Cthulhu or other horror game. The best way to a character's heart is through their player. That's fine so long as you don't falsely accuse me of teaching my players how to metagame.</blockquote>

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