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

[iserith]

Exactly. If I use info my character doesn't have, however I've acquired it, it's my fault, not the DMs. Especially if the DM has no idea that I have the info.
Doesn't matter if it's common MM knowledge that every player knows ooc after their 1st ever Troll encounter, like Iserith accidentally seeing the map, or because I've read/run something at some prior point.

Ovinomancer specifically stated that "Metagaming" is ALWAYS the fault of the GM.
Wich is the pure naughty word.

Because while DMs can do alot, none of them can MAKE me meta-game/cheat. Only I can do that.

I agree with @Ovinomancer here. If you do not disclose that you've read the adventure to the DM, you've gone well past "metagaming" into bad faith play. Your scenario sits outside the claim that "'Metagaming' is always the fault of the GM," which I also agree with, in as far as it is the DM who sets the stage for it to happen in the first place.

 

[Mistwell]

I'd say you've moved past "metagaming" into outright bad faith play.

I don't need to do any analysis of actual play to reach this conclusion because it's plainly evident that getting a copy of the GM's secret notes, hiding that fact, and then exploiting those two secrets is in bad faith. I don't need to consider at all what your PC's goals are in any scene because you've already broken fairh when you failed to disclose you knew the adventure.

Now, if you do disclose to your DM, then it is on them, not you.

What you just said does not mesh well with your prior comment as far as I can tell:

Huh? If this is a perfectly fine result, then there's no imperative to play with PC knowledge only. If any result is acceptable so long as it's claimed as PC desires, then there's no point in arguing you should play from your PC's knowledge only -- it's just a facade.

You said previously the players tell the DM that their path is the PC's desire rather than based on Player knowledge, and then make it clear you're talking about them fibbing and it's obviously Player knowledge they're simply restating as PC knowledge.

And now you're calling that same kind of behavior not metagaming but bad faith play which is somehow different from metagaming.

Pick a position. I was originally taking your word for it when the players said it was what their PCs would do they meant that and not what the Player's would do given the knowledge the PC doesn't have. But your response at least implies they were BSing. How is that meaningfully different than what you're now calling "bad faith play"?

To me, metagaming is when "Your character acts on information that you as a player have, but that your character does not." And that definition received overwhelming support in the poll Matt Colville took on the topic.

So you can call bad faith a subset of metagaming, but I don't see how it's completely separate from it. It's information the player got from reading the module in advance of the game. The player is using that information to have his character act on that information which the character does not have. Pretty clearly metagaming, whether you want to add "bad faith metagaming" as a descriptor or not.

 

[Mistwell]

I agree with @Ovinomancer here. If you do not disclose that you've read the adventure to the DM, you've gone well past "metagaming" into bad faith play. Your scenario sits outside the claim that "'Metagaming' is always the fault of the GM," which I also agree with, in as far as it is the DM who sets the stage for it to happen in the first place.

You've basically defined metagaming to exclude any situation where the DM isn't aware of it to be able to say it's the DMs fault. Which is silly and unhelpful. Metagaming remains "Your character acts on information that you as a player have, but that your character does not." We can argue there is good metagaming, neutral metagaming, or bad metagaming. We can argue when metagaming is the DMs or Players or Nobodies fault. But, I think anything which fits in that definition of "Your character acts on information that you as a player have, but that your character does not," is in fact metagaming. And as that seems to be the definition which an overwhelming number of people use when they use that phrase, we should probably all be using it at least as common ground to discuss this topic.

Otherwise, you run into what I view you just did - redefining the term to avoid discussing these finer edge cases and just defining anything the Player did without DM knowledge as not metagaming so you don't have to consider if there is any fault on the player for metagaming.

 

[iserith]

You've basically defined metagaming to exclude any situation where the DM isn't aware of it to be able to say it's the DMs fault. Which is silly and unhelpful. Metagaming remains "Your character acts on information that you as a player have, but that your character does not." We can argue there is good metagaming, neutral metagaming, or bad metagaming. We can argue when metagaming is the DMs or Players or Nobodies fault. But, I think anything which fits in that definition of "Your character acts on information that you as a player have, but that your character does not," is in fact metagaming. And as that seems to be the definition which an overwhelming number of people use when they use that phrase, we should probably all be using it at least as common ground to discuss this topic.

Otherwise, you run into what I view you just did - redefining the term to avoid discussing these finer edge cases and just defining anything the Player did without DM knowledge as not metagaming so you don't have to consider if there is any fault on the player for metagaming.

I'm sorry if the edge case doesn't fit neatly into the definition you've chosen. But I would say it doesn't, not without also defining "metagaming" to be bad faith play on par with not disclosing you've read the adventure to gain an advantage.

The DM runs an adventure the players have already read or played. The DM presents monsters the players have already fought without changing them in some way. These are examples of the DM setting the stage for "metagaming" to occur. It is pointing the finger in the wrong direction to blame the players for using their hard-won knowledge to engage with the adventure or fight the monster in an optimal way, particularly if specific knowledge is not a requirement to take the desired action.

 

[Hriston]

Deciding what your character does based on information other than what s/he would have is okay.

Acting deceitfully towards your friends is not okay.

See the difference?

 

[Mistwell]

I'm sorry if the edge case doesn't fit neatly into the definition you've chosen. But I would say it doesn't, not without also defining "metagaming" to be bad faith play on par with not disclosing you've read the adventure to gain an advantage.

The DM runs an adventure the players have already read or played. The DM presents monsters the players have already fought without changing them in some way. These are examples of the DM setting the stage for "metagaming" to occur. It is pointing the finger in the wrong direction to blame the players for using their hard-won knowledge to engage with the adventure or fight the monster in an optimal way, particularly if specific knowledge is not a requirement to take the desired action.

I am not the only one who chose that definition. That IS the common definition. There is no separate "bad faith" category. You can certainly have bad faith actions which are also metagaming but that doesn't make those actions "not metagaming".

The rest of your post is just more avoiding what we were talking about. If a player SECRETLY has read the adventure and acts on that player knowledge in was the character would not because the character does not have that knowledge, that is in fact metagaming. If a player sees a thread here which spoils something from an adventure and doesn't disclose that to the DM and then has their character act on that player knowledge, that is metagaming.

You don't get to redefine metagaming to simply not apply because you don't want to talk about that aspect of metagaming. Particularly since you're apt to cause confusion when talking about it - as most people accept the definition of metagaming I named, and I backed that definition up with the video where he polled a bunch of people and over 80% repeated that definition as the one they use.

 

[iserith]

I am not the only one who chose that definition. That IS the common definition. There is no separate "bad faith" category. You can certainly have bad faith actions which are also metagaming but that doesn't make those actions "not metagaming".

The rest of your post is just more avoiding what we were talking about. If a player SECRETLY has read the adventure and acts on that player knowledge in was the character would not because the character does not have that knowledge, that is in fact metagaming. If a player sees a thread here which spoils something from an adventure and doesn't disclose that to the DM and then has their character act on that player knowledge, that is metagaming.

You don't get to redefine metagaming to simply not apply because you don't want to talk about that aspect of metagaming. Particularly since you're apt to cause confusion when talking about it - as most people accept the definition of metagaming I named, and I backed that definition up with the video where he polled a bunch of people and over 80% repeated that definition as the one they use.

See @Hriston's post above.

 

[Mistwell]

Deciding what your character does based on information other than what s/he would have is okay.

I don't view it as "OK". I don't view it as "bad" but I think it's lazy role playing. If that's what you enjoy, fine. But I'd advise people to try only using character knowledge more often, as they may find that more enjoyable.

Acting deceitfully towards your friends is not okay.

See the difference?

We all agree it's not OK. What we don't agree on is if bad faith acts can also be metagaming acts. Well really I think most people agree but a small minority are quibbling because they want an absolutist "it's always the DMs fault" position and that is inconvenient when we include bad faith metagaming so they just re-define the term to not include the stuff that is inconvenient.

 

[Mistwell]

See @Hriston's post above.

See my reply to him above. Also, that was a pretty lazy reply as the post you're claiming is dealt with by his response isn't really dealt with nearly in it's entirety (it wasn't even in direct reply to that same post and is a one-sentence repetition of a prior claim).

 

[iserith]

See my reply to him above.

I'll see it and raise it that we're not redefining anything. It's simply a different issue in my view.