D&D 5E Oops, Players Accidentally See Solution to Exploration Challenge

[GrahamWills]

I asked, for the KIDS ON BIKES example, what the GM should, do about a player who continually uses non-kid player knowledge to decide their character actions. I think Iserith is suggesting my second option is the one to employ:

• The GM should not play the sorts of adventures the game was designed for and instead run it only with adventures that do not depend on the players acting as kids.

I present challenges where the player's knowledge isn't going to have a major impact on the outcome or, alternatively, set it up where using such knowledge can be risky or costly.

For me, this is a step too far. The fun of playing KIDS ON BIKES is that you play, well, kids. You act like kids, you do stupid things that kids would do, and so on. If the GM is then required to set up challenges that an adult would approach exactly the same way as a kid would, it seems that is going directly against what the game is designed to do.

For me, the cost of making the GM sole responsible for meta gaming (removing all challenges where kids behave like kids and not adults) is too high. I think that if you have established that the genre requires players to act like kids, it is the players fault if they do not, in fact, act like kids.

I'm not saying it's a bad way to run for everyone, but I do think you need to acknowledge that it has very high costs and will dramatically restrict the sorts of games you can run. It might be a great choice for an old-school GM-vs-players style game (I ran such a campaign recently and we had a ton of fun doing so!) but I think that's a rarity nowadays. Now, we tend to believe that the players and GM have a shared responsibility to establish and maintain the genre and I think that's much more the default style.

 

[iserith]

I asked, for the KIDS ON BIKES example, what the GM should, do about a player who continually uses non-kid player knowledge to decide their character actions. I think Iserith is suggesting my second option is the one to employ:

• The GM should not play the sorts of adventures the game was designed for and instead run it only with adventures that do not depend on the players acting as kids.

Nope.

For me, this is a step too far. The fun of playing KIDS ON BIKES is that you play, well, kids. You act like kids, you do stupid things that kids would do, and so on. If the GM is then required to set up challenges that an adult would approach exactly the same way as a kid would, it seems that is going directly against what the game is designed to do.

For me, the cost of making the GM sole responsible for meta gaming (removing all challenges where kids behave like kids and not adults) is too high. I think that if you have established that the genre requires players to act like kids, it is the players fault if they do not, in fact, act like kids.

I'm not saying it's a bad way to run for everyone, but I do think you need to acknowledge that it has very high costs and will dramatically restrict the sorts of games you can run. It might be a great choice for an old-school GM-vs-players style game (I ran such a campaign recently and we had a ton of fun doing so!) but I think that's a rarity nowadays. Now, we tend to believe that the players and GM have a shared responsibility to establish and maintain the genre and I think that's much more the default style.

You will note I said nothing about the DM being required to do anything. In fact, my position is that you basically have to do nothing other than stop caring about it and focusing on your actual rules-prescribed role as DM, which is to adjudicate actions. You can if you want set up challenges that short circuits "metagaming." But you don't have to.

It's as simple as that.

 

[GrahamWills]

Nope.

You will note I said nothing about the DM being required to do anything. In fact, my position is that you basically have to do nothing other than stop caring about it and focusing on your actual rules-prescribed role as DM, which is to adjudicate actions. You can if you want set up challenges that short circuits "metagaming." But you don't have to.

It's as simple as that.

I guess I figured the premise of tis discussion is that meta gaming is causing a problem. So your suggestion is just to ignore the problem? I mean, obviously if it's not a problem then you don't do anything. My question is what do you do if it IS a problem? Say that some players are upset that they are playing in-genre and are annoyed that the other player isn't as it is breaking their sense of playing kids, which is what they signed up to do.

Do you still suggest the GM just ignore it? If not, is the answer to do as you suggest and stop running challenges that require kids to act like kids? I'm genuinely having a hard time working out how to make this the GM's fault.

 

[iserith]

I guess I figured the premise of tis discussion is that meta gaming is causing a problem. So your suggestion is just to ignore the problem? I mean, obviously if it's not a problem then you don't do anything. My question is what do you do if it IS a problem? Say that some players are upset that they are playing in-genre and are annoyed that the other player isn't as it is breaking their sense of playing kids, which is what they signed up to do.

Do you still suggest the GM just ignore it? If not, is the answer to do as you suggest and stop running challenges that require kids to act like kids? I'm genuinely having a hard time working out how to make this the GM's fault.

That it's a problem is because the DM (or other players) have decided it's a problem. This is truly a manufactured issue that many of us came to accept because that's how we learned to play. But it simply doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny. It can be hard to let go of it though, especially if we grew up on some DM's "no metagaming" policy, but once you can let it go, I haven't found a single person who wants to go back to it.

To answer what I think is your central question, if someone has agreed to abide by certain genre conventions and is not holding to their agreement, that is a different issue. I can, for example, stick to the genre conventions by way of description while still "metagaming," especially as many actions do not need to have specific knowledge as a prerequisite to taking them. My character doesn't have to know how troll regeneration works to lob a fire bolt at it. As a player, I do know. So here I'm "metagaming," right? But I'm also sticking to genre. So what is your obligation here as DM? I'm clearly "metagaming," yet it's not unreasonable for my character to cast fire bolt at monsters. I would say the obligation is the same as the rules say: Adjudicate the action, then move on.

 

[uzirath]

Each group probably has a different sensibility here, but most groups I've played with recently would certainly hold a player to account if they were regularly bringing character-inappropriate information to the table. I remember a fantasy game a few years ago where a player continually tried to do anachronistic things (like inventing gunpowder). There was no in-fiction reason for why his character would know anything about black powder (or chemistry in general). He was new to gaming. One of the other players chatted with him and explained that a typical D&D-style roleplaying game wasn't like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The idea was to pretend that you are your character, solving problems with your character's knowledge and skills. They had a great conversation about how the lines there can be quite fuzzy. Ultimately, though, the new player got it and began playing his character in a fashion that was more compatible with group expectations. The DM wasn't involved. She could easily have handled things by saying that the laws of chemistry don't work the same way in this world, but the conversation seemed more direct and efficient.

I'm not saying that it can't be fun to play Connecticut Yankee style. I've done that too. (I've even done it in a time travel scenario where it made sense on all levels.) In a typical D&D game, I'd say that style feels more true to old-school, Gygaxian play. That's generally how my group played AD&D back in the early '80s. The DM used all of his real-world knowledge to devise devious traps and tricks. The players were expected to use all their knowledge to outsmart them. Metagaming was celebrated.

 

[iserith]

Each group probably has a different sensibility here, but most groups I've played with recently would certainly hold a player to account if they were regularly bringing character-inappropriate information to the table. I remember a fantasy game a few years ago where a player continually tried to do anachronistic things (like inventing gunpowder). There was no in-fiction reason for why his character would know anything about black powder (or chemistry in general). He was new to gaming. One of the other players chatted with him and explained that a typical D&D-style roleplaying game wasn't like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The idea was to pretend that you are your character, solving problems with your character's knowledge and skills. They had a great conversation about how the lines there can be quite fuzzy. Ultimately, though, the new player got it and began playing his character in a fashion that was more compatible with group expectations. The DM wasn't involved. She could easily have handled things by saying that the laws of chemistry don't work the same way in this world, but the conversation seemed more direct and efficient.

I'm not saying that it can't be fun to play Connecticut Yankee style. I've done that too. (I've even done it in a time travel scenario where it made sense on all levels.) In a typical D&D game, I'd say that style feels more true to old-school, Gygaxian play. That's generally how my group played AD&D back in the early '80s. The DM used all of his real-world knowledge to devise devious traps and tricks. The players were expected to use all their knowledge to outsmart them. Metagaming was celebrated.

Taking D&D as a whole, I would not say that gun powder or even laser pistols are out of the realm of possibility. Certainly those appeared in some form or another in various official adventures as I recall. They just might not be a thing in a particular DM's setting. To that end, if the DM just narrates the results of actions like trying to make gun powder as failure, then there's really no issue here in my view. The player is tasked with establishing what his or her character thinks, does, and says. The DM determines the result, sometimes relying on the dice. There's nothing in D&D 5e that requires players to pass their actions through some kind of filter related to character knowledge. That's something people have added, then labeled not doing that a sin, often without examining their own culpability.