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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8825266" data-attributes="member: 97077">Yeah, see my position is and always has been that you're not responsible for what the players do. So it isn't your fault directly that players "metagame." I'm not obligated to defend a position I don't take. But it is the DM who creates the opportunities for this to happen. You even admit as much by saying you change up monsters, thereby mitigating those opportunities. In addition, DMs create their own dissatisfaction by making it their business why a player makes a certain decision for their character when it's not their business at all.So very easy to just not react that way. To suggest otherwise is to admit to a lack of self-control in my view. All of these above are basically the same issue: DM demands an explanation for why a character is undertaking the action when they don't owe the DM one. They can do any of these things for any reason or no reason at all. Pick one that works best in the fiction, if you need to. To declare that an acceptable one doesn't exist is to admit a failure of imagination while playing a game that is based on make-believe. That doesn't seem like a good strategy to me.Remember, the DM is there to describe the environment, adjudicate the actions the players describe, and narrate the result. Not to judge them based on how and why they arrive at the decisions for their characters. If you do, you're creating the problem for yourself.Players can't declare they are making ability checks. So if players can just declare they are making rolls in you game, this is a problem of your own creation. And again, this is resolved after the first attempt anyway with "progress combined with a setback" on the failed check as previously established.Failure of the DM to set expectations around the PCs working together instead of against each other.The risk is on the player here because the assumption can be wrong. There's an example similar to this in the DMG where the players believe that the dragon the DM put before them is appropriate to their level because they know the DM well enough to know they wouldn't put anything in front of them they couldn't defeat. They're free to take the chance, but the outcome might not be great.DM fails to make time matter.Honestly, many of these just seem like things you don't like, not really "metagaming" as many people use the term.</blockquote>

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