D&D 5E (2014) player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

Maybe it would be helpful to Crimson to acknowledge that, yes, it can certainly be awkward if you, the DM, were expecting the high priest of Hyperion's identity to be a secret, and it turns out one of the players knows the secret, and either acts on it or blurts it out to the others.*
Well, if we are talking about information that is actually in the setting book, I would not rely it to be a secret to the players, and would not hinge a mystery on it. I would just expect the players to pretend their characters don't know it.

But the traditional solution to that, which is enforcing a "no metagaming" rule, has been very dissatisfying to many of us, for many years. What we've found is that a set of DMing tools (e.g., don't overly rely on secrets, switch things up occasionally so players won't rely on their own knowledge, etc.) not only avoids those problems, but turns out to result in smoother play with more immersive roleplaying.
I think we actually agree on one central thing. That secrets are better if they are real secrets and experiencing them is more immersive that way. I just don't really feel to conclude from this that the divide between OOC and IC knowlege needs to be eliminated. Pretending not to know who the Prime Minister of Thay* is on that my character doesn't know how to make gunpowder really, really do not seem like immense strains to immersion for me. It is really not the same thing than playing a murder mystery where my character doesn't know the murdered but I as a player do.

*Although....just to play Devil's Advocate...if pretending to be ignorant is good roleplaying, wouldn't you want to give the others the opportunity to roleplay also? If it's so easy to separate player knowledge and character knowledge, why not share away? Heck, why not share the whole module and then say, "Ok, now let's roleplay!" I'm being facetious, but also illustrating that pretending to be ignorant is not the same as, nor as fun as, actually being ignorant.
I mean you could do that. It is perfectly possible. It would probably be somewhat less fun that without knowing the module before, but it is perfectly deable.

* (I have now said this so many times that if I would ever run a FR game there now definitely would be the Prime Minister of Thay.)
 

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Considering this is how I rule when I DM, and when I play in a game someone else is DMing I abide by their local rulings regarding lore and checks to know it, the assertion that this is rules lawyering to attempt to bypass a rule holds no water.

What’s actually going on here is that you think about checks in a different way than I do. The idea that a particular piece of lore “would require a history check to know” doesn’t compute with the way I DM. At my table, checks are made only to resolve actions with uncertain outcomes in the moment. There is no outcome that objectively requires a check to succeed, checks are tools I employ to help resolve uncertainty in the outcome of tasks. There’s no “players who succeed on a DC20 history check know (whatever)” floating out there on its own waiting for a player to ask to make a check or me to tell them to make it. If a player wants to draw on their character’s memory, education, logic, or deductive reasoning to achieve a goal, they describe an action and I will resolve it in the moment, setting a DC and calling for a check only if I determine it is necessary to resolve uncertainty in the outcome.
Sorry, I still don't get this. Seems like a distinction without a difference to me. Who determines whether something is uncertain and what the Dc to resolve it is? The GM presumably. I really don't see how this is in practice any different than what I said. So there is this ancient seal. Who determines whether it is 'uncertain' whether the characters recognise what it is when they examine it?
 

I think we actually agree on one central thing. That secrets are better if they are real secrets and experiencing them is more immersive that way. I just don't really feel to conclude from this that the divide between OOC and IC knowlege needs to be eliminated.

Bear in mind we're not talking about eliminating the divide in practice. We're just talking about leaving it to the players, instead of trying to enforce a mandatory divide.

The situations you describe (e.g. a player with a module) doesn't actually happen. Players often (even usually?) will pretend to not know stuff, either because there are others at the table, or because they think it will lead to something more fun, or whatever. And sometimes they'll just act on their knowledge, and that's fine, too.
 

Sorry, I still don't get this. Seems like a distinction without a difference to me. Who determines whether something is uncertain and what the Dc to resolve it is? The GM presumably. I really don't see how this is in practice any different than what I said. So there is this ancient seal. Who determines whether it is 'uncertain' whether the characters recognise what it is when they examine it?

At that moment? Nobody does.

If a player just says, "I recognize that seal! It's..." and goes on to narrate what they think it signifies, no action has been declared, so the DM has nothing to adjudicate. The DM can just smile and say nothing. (EDIT: I suppose the declared action is to say something out loud. Maybe if they were trying to be silent that would require a Stealth check, or require a roll to overcome a silence spell, or something else.).

If, on the other hand, the player wants to declare an action to try to decipher it's meaning, they can do so, and now the DM has something to adjudicate. (Quite possibly giving them false information if they fail a roll.)

But let's stick with the first case, where the player just starts narrating and never declares an action.

So now, later on in the adventure, that information suddenly becomes important. "Quick!" somebody yells, "Press the seal in the middle!" Disaster ensues.

"I thought you knew what the inscription said!"

"Um, yeah, I thought I did..."

A couple of those, and the players will stop making assumptions about what they know without confirming it somehow.

EDIT: I have this fantasy...pure fantasy, I'm sure...that finally one of these examples will click, and at least one of the traditionalists will say, "Oh....huh....now I see what you're talking about. I don't think I like that, but I understand the distinction. I'll have to think about that." After all, @Ovinomancer eventually did exactly that. But maybe I'm hoping for too much.
 
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Bear in mind we're not talking about eliminating the divide in practice. We're just talking about leaving it to the players, instead of trying to enforce a mandatory divide.

The situations you describe (e.g. a player with a module) doesn't actually happen. Players often (even usually?) will pretend to not know stuff, either because there are others at the table, or because they think it will lead to something more fun, or whatever. And sometimes they'll just act on their knowledge, and that's fine, too.
And I suspect that in practice the difference is pretty minimal, as probably in both of our games the players self-adjudicate the knowledge level of their character to reasonable and acceptable levels the vast majority of the time. I just don't think that it is at all unreasonable in some situation the GM to ask 'how would your character know that,' 'you need to roll history to know that' or even 'your character cannot know that.' This doesn't even assume any sort of wrong doing from the part of the players, sometimes it simply might be unclear to them how commonly known certain things are in the setting. The next setting I'll be using will be early bronze age one, and I expect that I might need to remind the players (and myself) occasionally that certain assumptions that apply to the standard late-medievalish D&D setting do not apply there.
 

And I suspect that in practice the difference is pretty minimal, as probably in both of our games the players self-adjudicate the knowledge level of their character to reasonable and acceptable levels the vast majority of the time. I just don't think that it is at all unreasonable in some situation the GM to ask 'how would your character know that,' 'you need to roll history to know that' or even 'your character cannot know that.' This doesn't even assume any sort of wrong doing from the part of the players, sometimes it simply might be unclear to them how commonly known certain things are in the setting. The next setting I'll be using will be early bronze age one, and I expect that I might need to remind the players (and myself) occasionally that certain assumptions that apply to the standard late-medievalish D&D setting do not apply there.

I get that, but I prefer to try to always leave it to the players, for the same reason that I don't like it when my wife straddles the centerline of the road when "you can see far enough for it to be safe". It raises the question of where exactly the threshold is, and different people might have different ideas about where it should be, and how close to it to get, which leads to problems. It is just more clear and absolute to say, "Stay on your side of the road" and "Don't dictate to players what is in their character's heads."
 

I just don't think that it is at all unreasonable in some situation the GM to ask 'how would your character know that,' 'you need to roll history to know that' or even 'your character cannot know that.'

I might ask "How would your character know that?" (in so many words) if I'm trying to solicit them to explain what the character is drawing upon when recalling lore since that helps me decide whether the action is a success, a failure, or some kind of roll is appropriate. But I could never ask them that as a challenge to establishing something their character thinks, nor tell them their character can't think something. That's not the DM's role.
 

Sorry, I still don't get this. Seems like a distinction without a difference to me. Who determines whether something is uncertain and what the Dc to resolve it is? The GM presumably. I really don't see how this is in practice any different than what I said. So there is this ancient seal. Who determines whether it is 'uncertain' whether the characters recognise what it is when they examine it?
Assuming I’m the DM, I do. But I determine it in the moment based on the action declared. Rather than an objective DC20 History to learn that it’s the seal of king whatshisname and he worked with demons, floating there, independent of any action declarations, I will evaluate each goal and approach independently for chance of success, chance of failure, consequences for failure, and for difficulty if it has all of the above. In the previous post, the three different example actions I provided might all have different difficulties and yield different information.

The character who said they would think back to their time studying with the Dwarven smiths of madeupname (approach) to try and remember if they’ve seen that symbol before (goal) might, for example, succeed automatically if the seal was crafted by that group. You studied with them, you’ve definitely seen it, no chance of that approach failing at that goal. You learn that it is indeed the seal of king whatshisname.

The player who said they thought back to their study of Dwarven history (approach) to try and remember any details about king whatshisname (goal) might have read that, or might not have, and I could allow progresss with a setback on a failure, so I might call for an Intelligence check - DC 10 if this king guy is well recorded, DC 15 if he’s a bit obscure, DC 20 if information about him is obscured or hidden. I might even scaffold different bits of that information to the different DCs, with failure perhaps meaning that the character has read the name before, but doesn’t recall any pertinent details.

The player who said they would study the seal (approach) to look for any symbols influenced by Infernal (goal) might fail if none of the symbols on the seal are influenced by infernal, as there would be no chance of the approach succeeding in accomplishing the goal. (Maybe indicating that the detail about king whatshisname working with demons is not accurate to this adventure).

These are all examples I’m pulling out of thin air, of course. To give more confident rulings I would need more context. But the point is, there’s no objective check that exists independently of the characters’ actions. What you might learn and if you need to make a check to learn it depends entirely on the task you describe; what you’re trying to achieve and how.
 
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At that moment? Nobody does.

If a player just says, "I recognize that seal! It's..." and goes on to narrate what they think it signifies, no action has been declared, so the DM has nothing to adjudicate. The DM can just smile and say nothing. (EDIT: I suppose the declared action is to say something out loud. Maybe if they were trying to be silent that would require a Stealth check, or require a roll to overcome a silence spell, or something else.).

If, on the other hand, the player wants to declare an action to try to decipher it's meaning, they can do so, and now the DM has something to adjudicate. (Quite possibly giving them false information if they fail a roll.)
Right. But lets assume that one player invested in knowledge skills and and onether just used their OOC knowledge? You don't think that gaining the knowledge via OOC means thus negating the need for the skill would in this instance be unfair to the player who invested resource in the skill?

But let's stick with the first case, where the player just starts narrating and never declares an action.

So now, later on in the adventure, that information suddenly becomes important. "Quick!" somebody yells, "Press the seal in the middle!" Disaster ensues.

"I thought you knew what the inscription said!"

"Um, yeah, I thought I did..."

A couple of those, and the players will stop making assumptions about what they know without confirming it somehow.
This actually confuses me. Sure, you can do that. Like how in the Valindra example a lot of people suggested that once they kill 'the lich' it turns out it was just an innocent elf with the same name. But this implies that you would actually want to discourage metagaming and I really don't believe in trying to 'educate' players in roundabout way in the game. If I don't wan them to do something (like use meta knowledge) I just tell them that instead pretending to be OK with it and then later punishing them for it in the game.

EDIT: I have this fantasy...pure fantasy, I'm sure...that finally one of these examples will click, and at least one of the traditionalists will say, "Oh....huh....now I see what you're talking about. I don't think I like that, but I understand the distinction. I'll have to think about that." After all, @Ovinomancer eventually did exactly that. But maybe I'm hoping for too much.
I kinda get it, but if I want to freeform then I will freeform and not have some weird hybrid where there is a DM and rules which can be ignored in certain situations if the player feels like it.
 

Right. But lets assume that one player invested in knowledge skills and and onether just used their OOC knowledge? You don't think that gaining the knowledge via OOC means thus negating the need for the skill would in this instance be unfair to the player who invested resource in the skill?

You don't need a "skill" to recall lore in the first place. An ability check would only be called for if there was an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. The DM could decide you just recall it. Or not.

A player who establishes that the character thinks a certain fact is true may or may not be correct. This character and another character who has the relevant skill proficiencies may both try to recall lore to verify that fact. The character with the investment in those skill proficiencies will tend to better than the one who doesn't, if the DM calls for a check.

This actually confuses me. Sure, you can do that. Like how in the Valindra example a lot of people suggested that once they kill 'the lich' it turns out it was just an innocent elf with the same name. But this implies that you would actually want to discourage metagaming and I really don't believe in trying to 'educate' players in roundabout way in the game. If I don't wan them to do something (like use meta knowledge) I just tell them that instead pretending to be OK with it and then later punishing them for it in the game.

One doesn't need to care about "metagaming" to change lore and monsters from time to time. I change them to better suit the challenges I want to present, not to thwart "metagaming." It just so happens it does that. Which, again, raises the question as to why people who are concerned about "metagaming" don't do it.

I kinda get it, but if I want to freeform then I will freeform and not have some weird hybrid where there is a DM and rules which can be ignored in certain situations if the player feels like it.

Which rules are being ignored? We've already established through direct quotation that a group's stance on "metagaming" is a table rule, not a rule.
 

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