Well, take the example: Four players are playing the game in character and go to meet the king to find out about a problem in the kingdom. Player five just "I attacks the king!!!". Even just attacking the king ruins the game for everyone else. Everyone else wanted to go on the adventure.
Or: The PCs win the battle and get the potion that will save the kingdom. Player five: I pump the potion out and laugh!!! Again this ruins the game for everyone.
PVP is here too. Player Five "I wait for the others to go to sleep and then kill them!!!"
All of these actions are a player being a jerk. The first is an example I
specifically called out as unreasonable and unwarranted, and thus, it isn't railroading to tell the player "no, you can't do that". I specifically called that out
because it is so commonly used as an example.
The second is, again,
clearly unreasonable and unwarranted. A player who does this is simply being a butthole. If a player actually said this to me, I would first think it was a joke and laugh. I would then stare at them dumbfounded for a moment, before asking, "Do you
really think your character would ever do that? That's completely irrational. What in God's name would justify doing that?" And since I genuinely do not believe any answer to that question exists, there is no possible world where I would permit that. It isn't railroading. It's expecting players to take actions that are,
as I said, reasonable and warranted. It is flatly
neither reasonable nor warranted to destroy the hard-won prize that will save the kingdom
and which you just fought so hard to obtain.
I don't agree here. Your example is much more of a rule sort of thing. If the player has a PC take an action and it, even unknowing, goes against a rule...the rule still applies.
The point was that the player
means to cast the spell on the doppelganger, because that's who they think the king is. They're in range of the doppelganger, but NOT in range of the real king. As a result, if the GM were to just say that the spell fails, it would instantly reveal the ruse: the players would know immediately that, whoever it is in that meeting,
it isn't the real king. But since preserving that ruse until the right moment is critical to the GM's plot, because the players need to obey the fake king in a later scene, the GM has to come up with an excuse for why the spell won't work
that won't give away the plot. Hence, it is railroading; the GM is
forcing a specific sequence of events to occur, inventing
ad hoc reasons why a thing the players want to do won't work.
My classic here is the player tries to cast a charm spell on an invalid target. Or casting a fire spell on someone with a ring of fire protection.
Same issue applies though. If the party casts
charm person on a doppelganger, it will fail because they aren't humanoids, they're monstrosities. As a result, they would instantly know that the king is fake, and the GM wants to prevent them from knowing until the right time. Thus, the GM
invents a reason why the spell will fail, which is different from just "the rules forbid you from doing that". You're getting distracted by the "the rules say you can't" part, and missing how the GM
making up a different explanation is a form of railroading to conceal their pre-set plot.
Every different....it is "live" and involves other people.
It's not that different. Yes, it involves live interaction, but you do most of the
writing part at other times. You aren't
writing the session AS you conduct it, most of the time.
For me a Casual DM is a little more then a careless jerk. Sure they sort of agreed to DM, but they put nearly zero effort into it. They just show up on game night and just "improvise" whatever. They often don't even know they rules, or care too. They come to the game to socialize and hang out.
Then you are using the word "casual" in a way I never, ever would have, nor would I ever have guessed that. It's a little frustrating to have such idiosyncratic terms, particularly when you have dismissed others' arguments in the past for being "word salad".
If you're going to use a term like this where "casual" doesn't mean "casual", it
actually means "lazy, unserious, and flippant", you should explain that, rather than presuming everyone understands what you mean by such a term.
Is there a word for not taking actions in game reality because of real reality then?
Not that I'm specifically aware of, no. I would allow that this is one
subtype of metagaming. But there are several other types, and those types are much more common in my experience.
Right, I put this as metagaming. Because you asked then to in the real world, they must make characters that get along. Real Life effecting the game.
I strongly disagree. This is not "metagaming" as anyone I've known has ever used the term. It is completely part of gaming, it's just a request made at the level of players, not characters. If this counts as "metagaming", then:
- Every campaign pitch is always 100% pure metagaming
- Every time the GM says "roll initiative", it is metagaming, since it's a request external to the world
- Every time a player lets you know they will be absent, they are metagaming
- Bringing in a new player is always metagaming
- Running a module you just bought is always metagaming
Etc., etc., etc. None of these are "metagaming" in any way, as far as I can tell. They're not
roleplayed actions within the world, but that doesn't make them metagaming.
Again, in my example, the DM is making the clue easy to find for the gameplay. It is easy to make a fictional "perfect" thing, beacuse as your making it you won't make a mistake. After all a mistake can only be made if you make it.
You can say it makes sense for a clue to be found easy...that is fine. In most cases it is done for the game flow, so that makes metagaming to me.
I don't understand how this relates to what I said. You simply said making clues easy to find is inherently metagaming, and that's simply false.
Like even based on your argument here, we can trivially see the converse. Yes, sometimes for "game flow" (pacing), we don't make a big deal out of a thing because that wouldn't be interesting. (I don't consider that even slightly "metagaming". It's just
gaming. You, as GM, are making decisions about what the game should be. That cannot be metagaming, it's literally your role as GM to do that.) But sometimes, for pacing reasons, we make something
hard instead! Maybe the players
could just (say) sit down and read a lot of books to find a clue they need. That would be
too fast, making it boring, when the GM would prefer that this scene feel mysterious and intriguing. So they spice it up: you scour the library and find nothing with the answers you seek...but you
do find references to
De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis, which should have the answers the party seeks, but the last known copy is in the long-abandoned Manor de Winter...
(To be clear, I
also don't consider this metagaming. But if things can be made easier for reasons you call metagaming, the exact same thing can make them harder, so we're left with "anything at all is metagaming" and that's pretty obviously wrong.)
A clue's easiness or difficulty is both a function of what is in the world, and what makes most sense to the people playing the game. That's not metagaming. It's just gaming.
I agree it is just one element. A big one though.
It's not nearly as big to me. A well-executed lie is still a lie.
I game with a lot of strangers. And I'm beyond cruel. Still jerk players are common, so this needs to be said.
I am never cruel (and frankly find it shocking you would call yourself not just cruel but "beyond cruel"!), nor do I think jerk players are common. But I agree that one needs to be clear that outright bad behavior won't be tolerated. I have never had an issue with this.
