D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[hawkeyefan]

So maybe there’s another way of looking at it. I’m hoping some folks who are anti-metagaming might be willing to respond to the below.

Is there any way that a person in the fictional world could know that Valindra is a

If so, could this person not somehow impart this knowledge to another person?

Are these things possible in the fictional world?

If so, can either of these people be a PC?

If not, then isn’t that in and of itself metagaming?

“PCs cannot have such knowledge because they are PCs” is a non-fictional reason for something in the fiction. No?

 

[Maxperson]

No. I'm saying there is a big difference between "isn't specifically allowed and would require a DM ruling to change" (for example, swords turning into nuclear weapons) and "isn't specifically allowed because there's nothing to suggest it's not allowed" (for example, your own inner reasoning for why you declare an action to use fire on trolls.). You are categorizing those two things as the same.

They are in facet both in the category of "Things the game does not explicitly allow or deny." Whether they carry equal weight in that category is a different thing.

While you're at it, report Crimson for using the same insult, ok?

I must have missed where he used that against me personally. It's not my job to report insults used against other people. It's the job of those being insulted to do that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Nope. They didn't alter the world. They were incorrect in their assumptions about the world.

(This does again raise the point that one difference between the two camps is probably in how we view "truth" in the game world. The anti-metagamers in general seem to have a p.o.v. where there is some kind of objective truth to the world that the characters are then experiencing, whereas the other camp seem to have an approach where nothing really exists until it is experienced. An example is how Max allows or even encourages extensive world-building up to the point the campaign starts, and then it is fixed.)

I am fine with the quantum setting approach where things that are not observed are not really set in stone. However, sometimes I might want certain things to be in certain way and I am not going to alter them to thwart metagaming and I am sure I am already far more flexible with my handling of the 'truth' of the setting than an average GM. And regardless of whether we are calling it 'changing' or 'creating' facts about the setting, you're approach grants stupid characters this power and to me that is an absurd result.

What I find absurd is the expectation that you can run a game in a well-documented world while expecting that nobody will know anything about that world. Again, problem of their own making.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to, just that it runs into problems, for which anti-metagaming seems to be the solution, but that in turn creates other problems.

It is not a problem if people are able to differentiate between themselves and their characters. Every character not having perfect knowledge of the setting hardly is a difficult concept to grasp. Even newbies get this super easily, as basically everybody understands that a character in a book or a movie doesn't have all the same information that the viewer or an author might have.

So without any proof you would decide you can't trust them, and not play with them?

How do you generally decide whether to trust people and how you determine whether they're lying to you? Do your friends routinely lie to you? These are not gaming questions, these are social interaction questions, this is really beyond the scope of this thread.

I realize you think the GM should be able to decide that, but you state it as if it's truth. Can you point to any passages, even any evidence, that the rules assign this power to the GM?

Note again that in the old passage that even remotely relates to this, the section on metagame thinking, the advice is to ask players questions, or set up situations that defy their expectations. What it does NOT say is that the GM can overrule the players.

Has the GM the power to decide facts about the setting and are the characters part of that setting? If the GM, decides that in the setting all elves are blue, then they are blue, including possible player character elves. If the GM decides that a certain thing is not generally known, then it is not. If the GM decides that the setting has certain tech-level then the people in that setting cannot just start to operate at a higher tech level.

Oh. Well that's just a problem of imagination then. Many of us keep saying...repeatedly...that we find this playstyle to be very believable. If you don't find it believable, you probably shouldn't use it.

For my part, when players pretend to flail around trying to stop trolls from regenerating, even though they know perfectly well what to do, I don't find that very believable.

We were talking about using real world understanding of technology in a low-tech setting, not the trolls. No one really cares about the troll, they're a stupid problem.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So maybe there’s another way of looking at it. I’m hoping some folks who are anti-metagaming might be willing to respond to the below.

Is there any way that a person in the fictional world could know that Valindra is a

If so, could this person not somehow impart this knowledge to another person?

Are these things possible in the fictional world?

If so, can either of these people be a PC?

If not, then isn’t that in and of itself metagaming?

“PCs cannot have such knowledge because they are PCs” is a non-fictional reason for something in the fiction. No?

I am really not terribly familiar with FR, so I actually have no clue how common knowledge Valindra being a lich is. Like is she a famous person and famous for being a lich? Or is her being a lich some sort of secret that only very few people know? In any case, the player probably should have just said to the GM: 'Does that name ring any bells, can I roll history or something?'

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am really not terribly familiar with FR, so I actually have no clue how common knowledge Valindra being a lich is. Like is she a famous person and famous for being a lich? Or is her being a lich some sort of secret that only very few people know? In any case, the player probably should have just said to the GM: 'Does that name ring any bells, can I roll history or something?'

Doesn't matter how famous she is, the chain still holds -- is it possible?

If it is possible, why can't a player declare their PC thinks this?

Really, this whole thing seems to boil down not to the information being unavailable, but the assumption that such things must hide behind a roll authorized by the GM rather than be in the ambit of the player. In 5e, I, as GM, do not have authority to adjudicate what the player tells me their PC thinks. So, I shouldn't assume more authority and tell the player that what their PC thinks is gated by me. What's true in the world is already entirely up to me; I don't need to also take authority over the PC as well.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Doesn't matter how famous she is, the chain still holds -- is it possible?

If it is possible, why can't a player declare their PC thinks this?

Really, this whole thing seems to boil down not to the information being unavailable, but the assumption that such things must hide behind a roll authorized by the GM rather than be in the ambit of the player. In 5e, I, as GM, do not have authority to adjudicate what the player tells me their PC thinks. So, I shouldn't assume more authority and tell the player that what their PC thinks is gated by me. What's true in the world is already entirely up to me; I don't need to also take authority over the PC as well.

Anything is 'possible' in fiction so that is a too vague. But whether the character has heard of this lich is a fact about the world, thus ultimately for the GM to decide. And players are supposed to play their characters as consistent people in the setting and just deciding out of the blue to think that a random person is a lich with no clue or knowledge is not that. (Unless this is something related to the character's established personality. They of course can be paranoid and think every person they meet is some sort of monster in disguise, but this was not the case here.)

 

[billd91]

So maybe there’s another way of looking at it. I’m hoping some folks who are anti-metagaming might be willing to respond to the below.

Is there any way that a person in the fictional world could know that Valindra is a

If so, could this person not somehow impart this knowledge to another person?

Are these things possible in the fictional world?

If so, can either of these people be a PC?

If not, then isn’t that in and of itself metagaming?

“PCs cannot have such knowledge because they are PCs” is a non-fictional reason for something in the fiction. No?

Looking at the Forgotten Realms fandom wiki, there are a number of ways a PC could potentially know who she is - but the knowledge is pretty specialized considering her membership in secretive organizations and adventures in weird places, and some of which were a century ago. But the chances of her being known to players is relatively high, having appeared in 3 computer games and something like 5 novels as well as a comic book - though apparently not as a lich in all of those outings.

But ultimately, it's a bit like drawing a line between 3rd person omniscience and 1st person perspective. The authors offer up a certain amount of omniscience in their books. But not every character is privvy to it. And that's why I think the player should have pulled the DM aside when they realized they recognized the NPC to hash out what they might or might not actually know.

 

[Guest 6801328]

We were talking about using real world understanding of technology in a low-tech setting, not the trolls. No one really cares about the troll, they're a stupid problem.

Oh, I agree! But some people in this thread seem to think that the trolls are a very serious problem, and that if people use fire on them without trying indeterminate number of other things first (we can't seem to get a clear answer on what that number is) that they are somehow breaking a very important but nevertheless undocumented rule.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Anything is 'possible' in fiction so that is a too vague. But whether the character has heard of this lich is a fact about the world, thus ultimately for the GM to decide.

Again, where is that written?

I know, I know...you're going to dismiss that question as needless sophistry. But as long as you keep stating things like this as if they are objective facts, and saying/implying that people who don't agree with you are bad players or dumb* or whatever, then I'm going to ask you to defend your assertions.

Do you want to have a house rule where the GM gets to decide what characters know? Go for it. It's a very traditional way to play, so it's not like it's completely out in left field.

But please stop pretending as if you are playing by official rules, and the rest of us are not.

*No, nobody has actually accused us of being 'dumb', but that's the unspoken implication of things like, "If you can't tell the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge..."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Oh, I agree! But some people in this thread seem to think that the trolls are a very serious problem, and that if people use fire on them without trying indeterminate number of other things first (we can't seem to get a clear answer on what that number is) that they are somehow breaking a very important but nevertheless undocumented rule.

Well, trolls are a problem in theory. If for some reason the trolls are uncommon in the setting or the characters for some other reason cannot reasonably have knowledge of them and the characters do not normally use fire as part of their attacks (like they're not a caster with fire spells or something,) then yes, the characters shouldn't jump on using fire on the trolls as that simply is not a think a person in the setting with that amount of knowledge would do. But this would be a stupid way to set up things on the GMs part so in practice this should not come up in the first place. As I have said many times, a mystery that is a mystery only for the characters and not to the players is generally is not a good idea and this troll example would definitely fall into that category.