D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[hawkeyefan]

To a Narrative gamer the stakes, character bonds, win/loss conditions etc are in a sense more important than the numbers, therefore the meta knowledge doesn't lessen their character's truth.

For me, I think the abundance of information of information makes me feel as informed as my character would be. It’s not necessarily about a one for one tradeoff of information. Like I realize I may be privy to something as a player that my character would not be. But I also realize that no matter how good a GM may be, they can never provide enough information to actually simulate being there.

More information makes me feel more there.

Also… I personally feel that a player acting on a bit of player knowledge is not really the horror it’s portrayed as. I get people don’t like it… but it’s also happening no matter what. It’s part of the game. So for me… I’d rather game design accept that fact instead of working so hard to avoid it, which then often highlights the matter.

I have asked questions can't even get a simple yes or no answer. In the example of singing catching the attention of the guard from @pemerton, would the guard have appeared if the check had been successful?

I have no issues with how you play. I do not care that you have different preferences than I do. But you accuse me of not understanding.

My understanding is simple. On a failure a complication happens. The reason the guard overheard and came to investigate was because of the failure and they wouldnot have had the check succeeded. Correct?

There's nothing wrong with it even if it's not something I want to add to my game. But nobody will answer. Why not?

If you won't answer clearly yes or no, how can I understand?

Because I don’t know the answer to that. Even @pemerton may not know. Because at his table, it only played out one way.

Without the situation being committed to beforehand, there’s no “way it was supposed to go” or anything like that.

Is it possible the guard could have shown up? Sure. Do we even mention it hnless it matters in some way? Or is he just part of the background?

Why does this matter?

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's an actuality, not a technicality. If there is restricted federal land, it doesn't matter if you are a federal employee allowed onto it, it's still restricted federal land.

Metagaming doesn't cease to be metagaming just because you are allowed to do it and/or don't care about it.

Mmmkay.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have asked questions can't even get a simple yes or no answer. In the example of singing catching the attention of the guard from @pemerton, would the guard have appeared if the check had been successful?

I have no issues with how you play. I do not care that you have different preferences than I do. But you accuse me of not understanding.

My understanding is simple. On a failure a complication happens. The reason the guard overheard and came to investigate was because of the failure and they wouldnot have had the check succeeded. Correct?

There's nothing wrong with it even if it's not something I want to add to my game. But nobody will answer. Why not?

If you won't answer clearly yes or no, how can I understand?

I think the problem is, who can say what would have happened in a situation, a REAL WORLD situation, that didn't happen. Lets imagine that @pemerton rolled success. What would the GM in that game have said? He would have had a WIDE variety of options. All they would have had in common would be that they involved his character getting what he wanted. Pemerton may or may not think he has some pretty good ideas as to what would have happened, but nobody can say for certain. I guess the GM in that game, maybe?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I feels this ties back to something @AlViking said upthread, where he believed that Trad-gamers try immerse themself into the character whereas the other side treat the character as some sort of avatar.

I suspect there is some truth to that but it is not the whole story there is also:
- Trad-gamers believe immersion comes from knowledge limitation in an attempt to mimic RL in order to play a character true; whereas
- the Narrative side freely gives the meta knowledge in an attempt get it out the way, and allow the player to rather focus on the truth of the character.

A Trad-gamer is concerned with the numbers, the game prioritises the numbers, and thus meta knowledge is hurtful to immersion.
To a Narrative gamer the stakes, character bonds, win/loss conditions etc are in a sense more important than the numbers, therefore the meta knowledge doesn't lessen their character's truth.

Those that play Narrative games can please correct me, but that is how I understand it with my limited knowledge based solely on conversations here.

For @Lanefan the meta-knowledge being revealed is akin to cheating, because it is assumed a player cannot play their character true having that information, which, IMHO, is not a good reflection on the game.
It is 1 of my personal frustrations I have with D&D.

I agree with most of what you say here, but take issue with meta-knowledge being thought of as akin to cheating being a bad reflection on the game. I don't see that as anything but a personal and rather harsh judgement.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Also… I personally feel that a player acting on a bit of player knowledge is not really the horror it’s portrayed as. I get people don’t like it… but it’s also happening no matter what. It’s part of the game. So for me… I’d rather game design accept that fact instead of working so hard to avoid it, which then often highlights the matter.

Yeah, this is a very good point. Nobody is entirely in character. You are rolling dice, and listening to narration, and going around the table managing focus and there IS going to be thinking about mechanics and such as well. Now maybe @Maxperson and his group have perfected never dropping even a bit out of character, I don't know. But I agree with you very much, if it happens anyway, why not reap all the great benefits that accrue from doing it? Like, there are times when it is important to be in character, but it is kind of a 90/10 rule.

 

[Micah Sweet]

He... didn't say objectively. I went back over the past 15 pages ago and he never said that word. He said they needed to be firebombed mechanically, but that's a different thing.

No one ever uses the word objective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They weren't big deal changes in terms of how radical they were (abandoning the 6 stats, using a dice pool instead of a d20, no classes, etc.)

The changes were very pleasant in what they accomplished, however.

Another 4e fan talking about how it's changes weren't a big deal.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, that is really the big problem with the term. There only relationship between the daily language term and the proposed technical term appear to be that the technical term was historically thought to include the daily language phenomenon. That make the term useless in most conversations

By the way, did you see the follow up questions I edited into my previous post?

I did not. But I have now!

A follow up question - do you think you would be frustrated if a player suggested a really cool action that sort of do not make full sense given the scene you framed?

Frustrated? Probably not, unless they were really insistent about something I had heard, given it a genuine effort, and said, "No, I don't think that can work, but we could try for something similar" or the like. I'm of the opinion that in very nearly 100% of cases (like it's a one-in-a-million thing to find an exception), when a player makes a suggestion that doesn't make full sense to me as GM, it's because either there's been a communication failure on my part (e.g. I meant to say XYZ but stopped at XY without continuing to Z), a reception error on their part (e.g. they just didn't hear me when I said XYZ and thought we were still on UVW), or they went for what they thought was the "correct" way to get a thing they actually wanted, and if we drill down a bit, we can find out what thing they actually want and make that happen instead.

As noted, the only thing I would find frustrating is if I had already given a fair shake to an idea, explained why I wasn't comfortable with it, and provided alternate approaches or the like, and the player more or less said "NO, it has to be EXACTLY what I thought OR ELSE". That would be frustrating.

Or if a player find an amazing exploit in the rules that force a consequence that doesn't seem reasonable in light of the fiction to you?

If it does not seem reasonable, but is permitted by a rule--especially if it's something I personally created--I will permit it that one time, because I failed to catch the problem before it hit the table. I see that as a reasonable compromise between "I want a game that won't fall into uninteresting, degenerate strategies" and "I want players to pursue creative paths that help them achieve victory"; they get their creativity and their achieving-victory one time, as an exceptional deviation.

I've never actually had this happen with any existing rules of Dungeon World, and unintended severely bad consequences have only very rarely happened with stuff that came from me. As in, I can only think of one case off the top of my head in ~7 years of running the game.

The only power I very slightly regret giving out is that when our party Bard became a full cambion (for sincerely good reasons!), I said that one benefit thereof was that he could not be surprised. That was, on reflection, not a choice I would make again. I have agreed to abide by that, even if the limitations it places on me as GM can be a little frustrating, because (as said) consistency and honesty matter to me. If I say something is so, unless there's a very good reason, it is so.

Or if one of the players insisted in not engaging actively with the scene, as they (reasonably) don't think their character would be inspired to action?

That can be mildly frustrating, but if it genuinely is a scene where one or more characters simply have nothing whatsoever to add, then that's a failure on my part. I'm not frustrated at the player; I'm frustrated at me for doing poorly at framing scenes. Much as, for example, an old-school GM might be frustrated if they crafted a challenging, dangerous combatant with strong defenses etc. etc., but the party managed to find a cheesy (but completely rules-justified and at least fig-leaf "realistic") way to defeat that opponent in a single round, without the enemy ever getting to act at all. That is, sure, there'll be some frustration, but a good old-school GM would be frustrated at their own failure to make a truly threatening encounter, not at the players for being clever enough to outsmart their GM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I did not. But I have now!


Frustrated? Probably not, unless they were really insistent about something I had heard, given it a genuine effort, and said, "No, I don't think that can work, but we could try for something similar" or the like. I'm of the opinion that in very nearly 100% of cases (like it's a one-in-a-million thing to find an exception), when a player makes a suggestion that doesn't make full sense to me as GM, it's because either there's been a communication failure on my part (e.g. I meant to say XYZ but stopped at XY without continuing to Z), a reception error on their part (e.g. they just didn't hear me when I said XYZ and thought we were still on UVW), or they went for what they thought was the "correct" way to get a thing they actually wanted, and if we drill down a bit, we can find out what thing they actually want and make that happen instead.

As noted, the only thing I would find frustrating is if I had already given a fair shake to an idea, explained why I wasn't comfortable with it, and provided alternate approaches or the like, and the player more or less said "NO, it has to be EXACTLY what I thought OR ELSE". That would be frustrating.


If it does not seem reasonable, but is permitted by a rule--especially if it's something I personally created--I will permit it that one time, because I failed to catch the problem before it hit the table. I see that as a reasonable compromise between "I want a game that won't fall into uninteresting, degenerate strategies" and "I want players to pursue creative paths that help them achieve victory"; they get their creativity and their achieving-victory one time, as an exceptional deviation.

I've never actually had this happen with any existing rules of Dungeon World, and unintended severely bad consequences have only very rarely happened with stuff that came from me. As in, I can only think of one case off the top of my head in ~7 years of running the game.

The only power I very slightly regret giving out is that when our party Bard became a full cambion (for sincerely good reasons!), I said that one benefit thereof was that he could not be surprised. That was, on reflection, not a choice I would make again. I have agreed to abide by that, even if the limitations it places on me as GM can be a little frustrating, because (as said) consistency and honesty matter to me. If I say something is so, unless there's a very good reason, it is so.


That can be mildly frustrating, but if it genuinely is a scene where one or more characters simply have nothing whatsoever to add, then that's a failure on my part. I'm not frustrated at the player; I'm frustrated at me for doing poorly at framing scenes. Much as, for example, an old-school GM might be frustrated if they crafted a challenging, dangerous combatant with strong defenses etc. etc., but the party managed to find a cheesy (but completely rules-justified and at least fig-leaf "realistic") way to defeat that opponent in a single round, without the enemy ever getting to act at all. That is, sure, there'll be some frustration, but a good old-school GM would be frustrated at their own failure to make a truly threatening encounter, not at the players for being clever enough to outsmart their GM.

That sounds a lot like there are virtually no issues that aren't ultimately the GMs fault. With very few exceptions, the players can do no wrong in your eyes?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And, Of Course, the Big One: DMs would change things on a whim. Player "I blast the troll with a fireball, hehe". DM: "The fireball does no damage as the troll absorbs all the flames and grows and gets more powerful" Player: "Wait what? Page 11 of the rules says..." DM-"Don't care, the now super-troll attacks!!!"

This was...and is....common in a lot of games. Though you could really drop the 'cousin' part.

BUT.....um.....this is not Metagaming by any definition? Metagaming is "using knowledge that is external to the game to influence in-game decisions". So how does that have anything to do with placement of a new PC? You can say it's a Convoluted Coincidence, Hi jinks or even Shenanigans......but not Metagaming

It is absolutely metagaming. It is the insertion of an incredibly convenient captive in the very next room of the dungeon, not because that character should realistically be there, not because it is required for the game to function, but simply because it is a gameplay convenience. Doing something because it is a gameplay convenience IS metagaming--it's not metagaming knowledge, sure, but knowledge is far from the only form of metagaming. You aren't playing the game, you're playing the context which surrounds the game. Other examples of non-knowledge metagaming include the GM inserting a cleric who just happens to know the spell (or just a scroll of a specific spell) needed to break a magical effect that would otherwise screw over one of the players permanently, a player's character being demoted to "mute sidekick who doesn't contribute but fights in combats" when that player can't attend a session, or currencies like Inspiration or "luck points" that can be spent by the player (examples chosen because both appear in 5e.)

Metagaming is when anyone--GM or otherwise--plays the context surrounding the game, rather than playing the game itself. Quantum ogres (and quantum haunted houses) are two other examples of GM-specific metagaming. Likewise, the GM intentionally including out-of-context opponents which are related to the party's strengths--whether resistant to or weak to those strengths--would be an example of GM metagaming. Frex, Paladins with their Divine Smite do extra damage to fiends and undead, so if a random cluster of fiends shows up for no reason in the middle of a densely-populated city with no known fiendish incursion, that's GM metagaming to push the Paladin into the spotlight. Conversely, going back to 3rd edition rules, creating adventures chock full of undead for no reason other than to have undead, which were immune to sneak attack damage in 3rd edition, would be metagaming to take away a Rogue character's niche.

Odd, does not seem that way. Just don't count anything you don't like as "metagaming".

But people in this thread are doing that CONSTANTLY. That's my point. Some things which are metagaming, like the fact that Bob IV appears INSTANTLY when the player needs a new character to play, are glossed over by some folks (such as you) with the excuse that it's merely a "Complicated Coincidence".

I don't think metagaming is inherently bad. I think folks have good reason for disliking some of the consequences of some kinds of metagaming. But I don't see metagaming as being any more good or bad than any other element of approaching play. Some applications of it are good and useful, which means folks usually try to rationalize it as something other than metagaming. Some applications are bad and harmful, which means folks demonize them and emphasize just how horrible that means ALL metagaming is (when that isn't true).