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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7569557" data-attributes="member: 97077">My wisdom is certainly not secret, but having been of this mindset before I do have some insights for the source of this behavior. And I have to say that judging someone's proposed actions not by their reasonableness in context, but by what I might suspect about the player's motivations, is a kind of self-defeating authoritarian creepiness that got me to stop doing this years ago (after having played that way most of my gaming life).Further, being focused on the motivations of others instead of on their action declaration is in and of itself metagame thinking, which means that for all the protestations about not wanting or desiring to reduce &quot;metagaming,&quot; the people engaged in this approach are doing it all the time. This can be mitigated by inviting like-minded people to the group, but it's still happening, especially as the mini-game of &quot;Does my character know enough about X to do Y?&quot; plays out. And, of course, right on cue, because of the dissonance going on here, people decry &quot;metagaming,&quot; deny they are doing it, while actively engaging in it.I think people need to know what this approach is really about so they can make an informed decision whether they want to keep doing it or join a group that has already adopted it as their approach. And I'm glad that in this discussion those who play this way have been so upfront with their motivations. That has heretofore not been the case as I recall.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7569557, member: 97077"] My wisdom is certainly not secret, but having been of this mindset before I do have some insights for the source of this behavior. And I have to say that judging someone's proposed actions not by their reasonableness in context, but by what I might suspect about the player's motivations, is a kind of self-defeating authoritarian creepiness that got me to stop doing this years ago (after having played that way most of my gaming life). Further, being focused on the motivations of others instead of on their action declaration is in and of itself metagame thinking, which means that for all the protestations about not wanting or desiring to reduce "metagaming," the people engaged in this approach are doing it all the time. This can be mitigated by inviting like-minded people to the group, but it's still happening, especially as the mini-game of "Does my character know enough about X to do Y?" plays out. And, of course, right on cue, because of the dissonance going on here, people decry "metagaming," deny they are doing it, while actively engaging in it. I think people need to know what this approach is really about so they can make an informed decision whether they want to keep doing it or join a group that has already adopted it as their approach. And I'm glad that in this discussion those who play this way have been so upfront with their motivations. That has heretofore not been the case as I recall. [/QUOTE]

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