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

[pemerton]

I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen a game that does away with PC side HP altogether, and abstracts the party's cohesion as a clock, that's simply set at the start and ticked up with each round and/or enemy action. There's probably an interesting answer to the healing problem in there somewhere.

Torchbearer 2e is close to this.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Unless of course you just take it literally.

Even then… it’s a pretty crappy defense since the player is the person who made the character.

 

[Thomas Shey]

i mean, 'that's what my character would do' is generally seen as a very distinct thing from playing the character true, the line of 'TWMCWD' is a stereotypical one used as a deflection and defence for just being a massive disruptive ass in play and 'justifying' it on their character's personality.

Though occasionally when the tone is such, it can be a resigned acknowledgment that you're stuck between playing your character true to them and being disruptive to the game as a whole, sometimes an acknowledgment of you making a mistake in character nature design, sometimes suggesting events have kind of forced you into a corner.

Its one of the reasons if I was to decide to play a character in Deep-IC/immersive mode these days I'd be very careful in deciding what they were like with the nature of the campaign and social dynamics of the group in mind.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Even then… it’s a pretty crappy defense since the player is the person who made the character.

As I noted, sometimes the implication may not be clear until you're on the spot, however. I had one time in an RQ game years ago when I ended up having to walk a character right out of a situation because I hadn't had complete information about certain assumptions in the setting before I walked them into it.

 

[Lanefan]

Perhaps some reframing of what part of the game loop is actually being engaged is relevant here. Players basically do two things: ask the GM for more information about the situation and declare actions that try to take them to a new situation.

I added in two key missing words (bolded) to your quote as IMO they make all the difference: the players are trying to get to a new situation via their action declarations but there's nothing anywhere saying that attempt has to succeed. And when it fails, they're still in the old situation.

You could imagine a modified fail forward type rule that doesn't require the situation change, but does require the GM to detail more about it.

How would that work in practice? When we didn't get the answer to the riddle-door fnr the fourteenth time, what more would there be left for the DM to detail?

 

[bloodtide]

It is absolutely metagaming.

I see your just using "metagaming" as "anything you don't like". Metagaming is a Player thing: when players cheat by using information they should not know.

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.

A "convenience" is not metagaming.

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.)

Again, I'd say everything "wrong" that you "don't like" is not just all put under the umbrella of 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".

Complicated Coincidence is not Metagaming.

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).

Odd, metagaming is a way players cheat. Cheating is always bad. Seems simple enough.

Most of the time when we attempt something IRL that carries risk, we know what the risks are at least to a general level.

The "real life" around were I live does not work this way.

 

[zakael19]

The "real life" around were I live does not work this way.

I'm sorry that you seem to stagger through life with no awareness of the risks inherent in what you do, or any judgement of potentially dangerous actions you take.

 

[Lanefan]

My experiences as both player and GM have been very different than that. I find that there can often be such discrepancies in understanding the shared fiction of the game. And yes, asking questions is part of the process of clarifying. But I would say so is sharing as much information as possible, and simply not worrying so much about the player-character division of information.

I mean, if having a shred of information that your character may not have is enough to shatter your sense of immersion or inhabitation, then I can't see how things like discussing hit points or rolling dice won't similarly take you right out of play. Hence my suggestion to accept that this happens, and then proceed with that idea in mind... and focusing less on situations that rely on that information.

As a very basic example... I stopped worrying about monster vulnerabilities for the vast majority of monsters in about 1988. Trolls and fire, vampires and garlic, lycanthropes and silver, and on and on.... I just am not interested in keeping those details from the players. Especially when most of them know it all already. So I don't let my games focus on "finding" the vulnerability.

Removing that kind of dreck actually lets me focus on things I expect my players will find far more interesting.

I don's eee it as dreck, but if I'm running all experienced players then sure, they can know this stuff. If I'm running a brand new player, however, as far as possible I want that player to experience and enjoy the same learning process we all went through at one point or another.

My bad experiences more often come from players meta-knowing things about what another character is doing and acting on that knowledge even though in-character they have no way of knowing or gaining that info.

The classic here is the lone PC scout who gets in trouble: had the other players not known he was in trouble they'd for sure have waited the hour he told them to wait, but when half an hour in he falls into a ravine and is laying there in danger of dying the other players just can't resist "suddenly deciding" to follow the scout early.

Nope. For me, the scouting should be done by secret note or similar such that the other players - just like their characters - don't and can't know what's happening to the scout at any given time until-unless he returns to tell them. Also, doing it this way allows the scout's player to report in their own words, thus providing the opportunity to forget something, embellish something, get something wrong, intentionally skip something, or whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

What we narrate in the open is stuff that is important to play that an actual person in the context would likely notice. This is made more manifest via mechanics that open a clear metachannel in some of these games, such as the "Read A..." moves from AW.

This isn't "the bartender has a mustache," it's stuff like "his eyes dart in all directions as he answers, clearly trying to conceal things" or "she keeps glancing over her shoulder, body tense" or "you can just tell from the tone of his voice, that annoying whine he gets so often, that he's going to go back on this as soon as you're out of sight" or ...

Ideally my roleplaying of the bartender doing those things while he talks to the PCs should be enough to get that across, shouldn't it?

 

[bloodtide]

I'm sorry that you seem to stagger through life with no awareness of the risks inherent in what you do, or any judgement of potentially dangerous actions you take.

As I live in Reality, it works out fine.