Yes, but only because you brought OOC knowledge into the game and made the decision based on it. Why not let the other players who haven't played through it before make the decision? Why not flip a coin? Nothing forces you to use the knowledge when making the decision.The DM is using a Dungeon that I've either played through or DMd before. We come upon a fork, I know going left leads to extra treasure. When asked, I counsel going right to "avoid" using that knowledge - that's still metagaming.
Why? You don't have to avoid something if there's a valid reason for doing it. Do you never search for secret doors? If yes, then you are not metagaming because you are not expressly avoiding searching based on OOC knowledge, your avoiding it because your character does not search for secret doors. If no, then you do search for them and so searching for one here would not be metagaming.In that dungeon, we are in a room I KNOW has a hidden door that will open if the PC approaches the wall a certain way. I expressly avoid doing that - that is also metagaming.
Not acting a certain way CAN be bringing in OOC knowledge, but it's also easily avoidable.NOT acting in a certain way is very likely ALSO bringing in out of character knowledge.
The threshold is case by case. You aren't going to be able to pin it down to something specific that applies across the board.Ok, so your metagaming threshold has moved from "pretty much every combat" to some amount greater than "rarely or never" for leading with fire vs. troll.
What is their go to cantrip that they use when they run out of spells?Same parameters (player knows, PC doesn't) except it is the end of the adventuring day and they are out of spell slots.
Is it metagaming if they pick fire bolt over their other attack cantrips... say ray of frost, poison spray, and chill touch... to attack the troll?
B doesn't exist. You act or don't act based on what your PC knows or typically does, not what the player knows.It's not the opposite. A and B from @Xamnam are both instances of a player making decisions on what his character does based on knowledge that he has as a player. They are similar in that regard.
In 38 years of playing D&D, I've never seen a new player(or an experienced player with a new and unknown monster) randomly switch from their regular attack to some other attack that just happens to be the one the creature is vulnerable to. I'm okay with the super, duper, extremely looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong odds of this circumstance happening.Just imagine what the character could do in that moment, entirely separate of the player. The character has no idea that fire is necessary to harm the trolls. The character may try another attack first. The character may actually try fire first. He may either make a lucky guess, or just blunder into the trick by blind luck!
I think we all agree that this is something that can happen, correct?
Now, bring the player into it. How can the character now guess or blunder into using fire? How is that possibility maintained once you're considering the player knowledge? How can C happen?
It can't. No matter what, you're going to call it metagaming and cheating. Which means that what may happen in the fiction is now subject to out of game considerations. That is metagaming. The character is now incapable of choosing fire, which is something that could conceivably happen.
Okay. So the once in a gazillion times that the above happens, it's my fault.This is why people describe metagaming as often being the fault of the GM, or that attempts to prevent it often actually bring it directly to the forefront.
Just an observation: the analogies are obfuscating the points being made in this thread, not clarifying them.
Sure, but to me and my group it's not problematic for PCs not to know everything that the player knows. It's not a player's right or decision to decide what his PC knows. It's only his right or decision to decide within valid parameters how his PC acts.What's problematic to me is the GM stepping in and trying to make these decisions for them.
That only follows if you consider cheating = metagaming. If you think that's a given, its not. There are all kinds of reasons to metagame that have no relationship to cheating.
Right, so in other words the rule is not “don’t use information your character wouldn’t know,” it’s “don’t take actions I think your character would take if they didn’t know”Can you perfectly replicate the state of mind you would have had if you did not know some piece of information? No, I believe you are correct there. But I do believe you can do it well enough for game purposes. And, since we are in the context of playing a game, I think that is really where we should be concentrating our thought.
My experience has been that most players (including ones as young as 10) can consider what they would have done if they did not know something and produce a result that feels correct within the game. Sometimes that is very simple ("oops I didn't mean to reveal that map; you don't know there's a trap there" -- "well, we usually follow the left-handed rule, so we go that way") and sometimes it's more complex ("Yes Dave rolled high for sense motive and you didn't, but you don't know that in character. You think the band drummer is into you and just wants a fun date" "My character generally likes fun dates, so I'll head out with him").
But overall, if people actually try, I've never seen them have a problem making decisions to the level of granularity a game requires. Far more often it's just someone who really hates losing and so is very reluctant to take a course of action the player feels will adversely affect their characte.
Metagaming is 100% avoidable. There's never a time where you are metagaming no matter what you choose to do.
Consciously deciding not to do something because of out of character information is still acting on out of character information.What you describe is not metagaming. Not bringing in out of character information is the literal opposite of what metagaming is. Metagaming = bringing in out of character knowledge.