Was I being a dick to do this.

[Camelot]

The rogue was clearly metagaming in a world where orcs clearly could be helpful. I'm impressed that you let him survive. That's the perfect way to teach him a lesson, and if I was the player, I'd enjoy that and roleplay it as the character learning a lesson too.

My question is why didn't the other players ditch the dumb rogue instead of all following him. They could've taken him if they really needed him. The player must be very persuasive.

 

[rethgryn]

They kept the character with them, though he had a habit of splitting the party before and after that. Eventually the characters player left the group for unrelated reasons, he was dating another player, the lady who was playing as the battlemind and they had a falling out. His character stayed on for two sessions as an NPC, where I ran him as a sort of a Don Quixote sort of character to make fun of the player, who got killed after going off by himself by a recurring villainous sorceress who polymorphed herself into him to assassinate them and get revenge. It back fired on her because they never trusted him in the first place.

 

[Rune]

Also, the next time the players get to a civilized area, consider having the rogue immediately arrested, because, after all, rogues are all trained in thievery.

 

[Moorcrys]

I think you were completely fine.

They have knowledge checks, don't they? Did your players use them or did they charge heedlessly into the fray?

 

[DracoSuave]

You're totally green.

The NPCs were giving accurate information, and were acting true to the world setting. Those on the site you were on that claim 'Orcs are generally for killing' are obviously unaware of what Eberron is, and how it is different.

Did you give them a challenge that they could not overcome? Absolutely not. Sometimes the challenge is to run away. They did that. You rewarded them for beating the challenge.

This is where you take a player aside (not the rogue) and let him know that the orcs in the cave, not being a challenge, would not have provided XP. And you can 'let slip by accident' that the cave WILL be of interest later on.

And trying to find loopholes in the parcel system to 'get more treasure'? That's not how it works. You should also suggest that next time the rogue's player wants to do unwise acts in character to exploit the rules out of character, he should rethink it, because he clearly doesn't even understand the rules he's trying to game; and as a player he should get his dirty nose out of the DMG because there is no player resource in there for him.

His character stayed on for two sessions as an NPC, where I ran him as a sort of a Don Quixote sort of character to make fun of the player, who got killed after going off by himself by a recurring villainous sorceress who polymorphed herself into him to assassinate them and get revenge. It back fired on her because they never trusted him in the first place.

HAHAHAHAHA! Genius!

 

[Drakhar]

Hell even a monster 4 levels higher then the party is doable, so this wasn't even necessarily a no win scenario, just an exceedingly difficult one, you did your job very well, the rogue was asking for a beating though.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It's amazing how 'stuck' on certain long-established (but very overused and tired) concepts and tropes some players are.

I have a great deal of trouble with this in my homebrew world as well, sometimes even from otherwise decent players. Some of these gamers just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that Orc and Goblinoid tribes are, like humans, mostly Unaligned, and that Dark Elves in this world are NOT Drow, do not worship a silly evil spider goddess, or engage in wholesale murderous rampages. There are other examples, but those are two obvious and prominent ones.

Kudos to the OP for your handling of the situation, especially the way in which you "wrote out" the character. Nicely played.

 

[Destil]

Personally, I think metagame problems like that are generally best dealt with via metagame solutions. I would and have generally explained to my group that they won't necessarily always find monsters that they can kill through combat or the exact treasure expected per level.

However, all in all everything you did sounds like a great in game solution. The problem with the meta-gaming player is that he caused problems within the world due to his metagame thinking, and showing these issues in the context of the world is a very good solution.

Killing the orcs (for XP) I would allow, possibly, but they may all be level 1 minions and thus not worth any XP. If the players want to kill them that's up to them; the real cost to the party would be their orc guide running through the storm and bringing the wrath of an orc warband down on them.

I also like that putting a low level party in that fight was a very nice vignette for later adventures dealing with the Delkayr and their servants having been sealed in the Dragon Below. Good job.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Personally, I think metagame problems like that are generally best dealt with via metagame solutions. I would and have generally explained to my group that they won't necessarily always find monsters that they can kill through combat or the exact treasure expected per level.

I agree with you, though as I pointed out, you can explain this to some players until you are blue in the face; they just don't seem to "get it." I don't know to what extent this was true for the OP, but it is in those cases that you need to do as he did, and show the player in game that things do not match his expectations.

They can whine and cry foul all they like, but at the end of the day, if it was explained to them, and they were given plenty of warnings in-game but still went ahead relying on their wrong assumptions, then it's time to examine if they are in the right gaming group or not.

Some gamers are just not suited for every group, and some groups are just not suited for every gamer.

 

[GameDoc]

Sounds like the player in question was tryinng to "win D&D" (a la Chevy Chase on this week's episode of Community).

I don't see anything inappropriate about your handling it like you did. It's pretty funny actually since everyone survived and actually gained XP.

I actually had a new player join my group last week who showed fairly quickly he likes to role-play his character as an antagonist to the others in the party. I am fine with that if it's role-played well, used judiciously without derailing the entire session, and with the expectation that it won't always work when you want to spoil another character's efforts.

When I introduced his character (an assassin), I had him execute (by order of the party's benefactor) someone the party had just rescued in the previous session. The hook was supposed to be that by comparing backstories it would be obvious that he was set up as a patsy for the real enemy.

Anyway, he decided to spin an entirely different story than the one we had created to introduce his character so I made him roll a bluff check, which he failed, and I told the rest of the group it was apparent he was lying. It was pretty effective at reminding him in a low risk situation how the rules worked.

It wasn't metagaming on his part, but I felt it was still a scenario where the style of play our group uses needed to be reinforced.