D&D 5E Player challange Vs Character challange (Metagaming)

[Ristamar]

Are you sure about that? D&D was being played long before there were any knowledge skills for characters. When were exploring dungeons in B/X I don't recall having access to the skill or knowledge of a fictional character to provide useful information. The characters had the skills to fight, cast spells, and other physical adventuring tasks that the player might not possess but that was expressed in our odds of success when rolling to hit or something similar.

Figuring out puzzles, how to avoid traps, parleying with violent monsters and negotiating with NPCs was all up to the player. Thus players who had learned from experience were better at these aspects of play regardless of character level. If you think about it, that was the entire reason tournament play was popular. Teams of players competing against each other playing the same pre-generated characters in the same scenarios. If only character skill and knowledge mattered what would be the point of tournament play? It was a test of overall player skill.

If the game is a story light hack'n'slash style game with little NPC interation, I suppose it is possible to run an all "player skill" game, though I would more accurately describe that as player skill activating character skill, hence my objection to the wording. For example, rolls to Find Traps or detect Secret Doors are essentially character skills prompted by the player, as are any rolled attempts to influence NPC attitudes. Additionally, the PCs almost always have character knowledge they can lean on, often informed by the DM during the course of play, despite any official knowledge skills or non-weapon proficiencies. The way in which that information is prompted is largely semantic as long as the results are consistent.

 

[Bawylie]

SO what about you, do you let players take out of game knowledge into the game? How far can they push it before they are cheating?

I was at a weekend retreat last month and ran the same scenario for two different groups. The first time was with children, the second time with adults, for the most part. And both times I drew small crowds of spectators.

Now the first game went swimmingly and all was well.

The second time though, we had an incident. One of the spectators from the 1st session played in the second session. He knew everything from having watched it already - and he was NOT the problem. Yes he did use knowledge his character wouldn't have. No I didn't care.

At the start of these things, I tell the players that their immersion is their own responsibility and that I will do nothing to enforce any player/character knowledge barrier. I don't care, and policing it takes more time than it's worth.

No, the problem came from a spectator who watched the 1st game, and then tried to tell the players what do do while spectating the second game.

Now, while it is (in my view) your responsibility to decide for yourself how much metagaming you want to do at my table, I have a problem with someone else making that decision for you. In this case, the spectator was adversely impinging on the players' agency by backseat driving and ruining surprises. (This is a bit like someone not playing poker looking into the players hands and shouting what the cards are).

Bad deal. So I asked him to either keep quiet or excuse himself, because he was ruining whatever sense of discovery the players might have wanted for themselves.

This was rough on him, but he piped down. He had to - he's my son.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yea, let me say there is some amount of overlap you can't help but have. How ever I have had some glareing issues in the past...


As a PC I watched a guy come up with a brilliant idea, in 3.0 dragon mag had an alchemical item called powdered water. Using it he made bombs and guns... because a small amount of powder+drop of water made lots of water, if you held it under pressure it would do what expanding gas does in the real world... it was awesome he did the math out of game on how much pressure the expansion would cause and how different materials in the real world would hold up... and in game he was a high int wizard with ranks in engineering and alchemy (I think that was a craft)... then when that campaign ended we made up new characters and he was a high dex rogue and wanted to do it again, and the DM said "No, that was your last character, you can't do that again..." and he got mad.

a much worse example was the door from heck... I was running a game at a friends house and I had a demon gate that would not open unless you sacrificed something to it (didn't have to be another PC but the magic mouth asked for that first). One of the PCs said "Hey look he put all of his effort into mapping and brining minis he wont get to use unless we get past it... so lets just sit here until he lets us by." and 3 of the 5 other PCs thought that was a great idea... just sit and waste time because the DM desgined the dungeon and would want to use it so no need to find away around it...

the worst example "I will grind..." so I have one game I have run in 2e, 3e, 3.5, gurps, and 4e. It was a fun set up and something has stoped us from running until the end every time. The first time it was based on pure 'gotcha suprise' but sine 1 PC has been in every single one of the games and we talk about it, the 'gotcha' is way more telegraphed now.
any way so the 4e game. it was the worst (the edition was not a good one for the scenario) and we had a player who had heard of this world and idea but had never played it. here is the set up... long ago there was this incursion from cathulu like 'outside the universe' evil, and these druids and gods worked togather and repeled it with the help of 5 artifact swords (each emboding part of the natural world) twice since then similar incursions have happened, when it does the swords come out and stop it... but for some reason the swords were lost 3,000 years ago... and around level 3 or 4 the PCs find out that the incursion is happening again. They find the swords are all locked at these key places making a grid with ley lines, and each one is protected by guardians, and you have to fight through 5 dungeons to unlock them... pretty straight forward... except it's a trap. What has been struck from history is that 3,000 years ago praxton the godkiller raised an army to slay the gods and the god of magic sacrificed herself and 100 of her followers using the swords to lock him away, and remove all traces of him from history (even from other gods) so as they collect each sword the prison holding him is weakning, and there is no way for them to know... so when they grab the 3rd sword they let him out. He takes some tiem and rebuilds his strength, and when they beat one bad guy the big worse guy is at full strength... OK so by now all the players know "grab 3rd sword epic level threat gets free" and there characters only know "We need the 5 swords or as many as we can get"... so this new player after looking at the frist two swords says "Hey wait, they are just +5 cool items, we could remake them if we were high enough level... so instead of getting them, why don't we go back to hunt some orcs grind XP...then we can win never letting praxton Out...."
this turned into multi huge debates. We actuall went 3 weeks just talking about it instead of playing because he didn't understand why it was a bad idea...

edit: that fight didn't end the campaign, about 2 months later when 2 of the 5 PCs had to drop out because of a difficult pregnancy did it... some how it is the campaign I can't get to end

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My only opposition to meta-gaming is when a player has played a module or adventure I'm running and didn't tell me, or after me asking went and read it. But I've played with the same guys for a long lone time so we don't run into that issue. I don't re-run adventures for the same group without pretty much rewriting it.

Using knowledge like "Trolls need fire", "don't touch spheres of annihilation", "Vampires drain levels", I expect them to use that.

 

[Ristamar]

Yea, let me say there is some amount of overlap you can't help but have. How ever I have had some glareing issues in the past...

Those sound like more like bad player issues than meta game problems, particularly the Demon Gate scenario. Holding the adventure hostage via inaction in hopes that the DM will acquiesce is beyond childish.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Those sound like more like bad player issues than meta game problems, particularly the Demon Gate scenario. Holding the adventure hostage via inaction in hopes that the DM will acquiesce is beyond childish.

oh yes... that was the least bad of meta gaming and the most bad of childish jerk I'm glade isn't living in my state anymore...

 

[ExploderWizard]

a much worse example was the door from heck... I was running a game at a friends house and I had a demon gate that would not open unless you sacrificed something to it (didn't have to be another PC but the magic mouth asked for that first). One of the PCs said "Hey look he put all of his effort into mapping and brining minis he wont get to use unless we get past it... so lets just sit here until he lets us by." and 3 of the 5 other PCs thought that was a great idea... just sit and waste time because the DM desgined the dungeon and would want to use it so no need to find away around it...

CRACK!!! A bolt of lightning springs forth from the door vaporizing the character belonging to the idiot who suggested waiting. " SACRIFICE ACCEPTED" says the magic mouth calmly as the door swings open.

 

[Sunseeker]

CRACK!!! A bolt of lightning springs forth from the door vaporizing the character belonging to the idiot who suggested waiting. " SACRIFICE ACCEPTED" says the magic mouth calmly as the door swings open.

Eh, I think that'd be a rather jerk move, but I'd be just as happy to say "okay you know what the door wants, you don't want to provide it, so who else wants to DM?"

 

[Shirebrok]

Meh, I don't mind players bringing "outside knowledge" into the game, as long as they provide interesting fiction to build upon their character or the game world along with it. Maybe I'll even get to use that some time later.

Once in Lost Mine of Phandelver, the party's Rogue went ahead to scout what he figured out to be the campsite of a Red Wizard, but he was concerned about whether or not his character knew what a Red Wizard was.
I told him it didn't change anything to the encounter at hand whether or not he knew, and if he elected to know, he could give just a bit of justification for it.
He preferred not to, which is fine by me. But really would have liked to get a reason for him knowing this. Something like "They had approached my clan to make a 'deal' for our mines a few years back, but we drove them back." That's something I could have used in a future adventure, with an easy tie-in to the character's background.
But I digress. I apologize; I like mining ideas from my players.

So, yeah. Fiction comes first. Provide some good fiction and you're good to bring in outside knowledge at my table.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Eh, I think that'd be a rather jerk move, but I'd be just as happy to say "okay you know what the door wants, you don't want to provide it, so who else wants to DM?"

that was what I went with... well I started by going to mcdonalds on a food run while the PCs talked it over, then after we eat I said "well that's it I guess either make up new characters to play the quest, or somone else run..."