What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?

[Fenris-77]

Fair enough. I think we're mostly talking about the same thing generally, just with different wrinkles. I do exactly what you just described regularly, so we can't be that far apart, my current mechanics idea aside anyway.

Modelling character knowledge not possessed by the player has been a constant source of frustration for me since 2nd. I know that no one answer or mechanic is going to get it done, but I like to putter with rules.

 

[Celebrim]

But that would be telling the player what his character thinks!

No, very literally I did not. I said, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment." I have said nothing about the characters beliefs or feelings or actions. Everything I described is external to the character.

So, clearly, he's just delusional.

It's not really up for me to decide that. If the player tells me, "The character is delusional.", that's fine. However, my first thought is likely to be something like, "This is an OOC joke.", and my second thought is likely to be something like, "I've not clearly communicated the shared fiction with the player, so that our understandings of the fictional positioning have diverged." That second thought might instead be, "The player wasn't paying attention.", if the player has been on his phone or engaged in OOC table chatter. While the case with the phaser and the Klingon is comical and exaggerated, far less exaggerated and less extreme versions of players offering up propositions based off poor understanding of the fictional positioning occur all the time. Making sure the player is not operating under a false assumption is an important GM job.

If the player tells me his character believes he has a phaser, then I'll work with that. If on the other hand the player insists that the character has a phaser, I'm likely to become nearly as concerned as if the player insisted that they have a phaser. Either way, the player has clearly lost it.

The DM could narrate him pointing his finger at someone (or at empty air) and making a trilling sound, for instance.

The DM could but the DM shouldn't. The player has purposed to shoot a Klingon with a phaser. I will certainly not narrate anything like pointing a finger at someone or empty air and making a trilling sound. If the player narrates that, then fine, but it's not my job to interpret the player character's actions to the degree I'm imposing anything on the character that the player hasn't proposed. If after a discussion, we establish that the player understands that the character doesn't have a phaser, but that the character is delusional then I will ask the player what it is that the delusional character actually does that he believes is shooting something with a phaser. It's not really my job to explain to the player that the character couldn't possibly know what a phaser or Klingon is, even if delusional. Perhaps he's recovering from a mind blast from a being from beyond the Far Realms, which in my game is an infinite realm of uncreated things that the primal creator could have created but didn't, and so some fragment of unreality has tainted the player. But even if a convenient explanation didn't exist, it's still not my job.

But again, if the player believes that the player character really has a phaser and insists on it despite all my explanations, then chances are that player needs psychiatric care. It's not something that has ever come up in 30 years of play, sometimes with some fairly dysfunctional teens and occasionally dysfunctional adults.

Speaking in tongues or something. Heck, you might even interpret that the character is speaking English rather than Common.

But again, why would I do that sort of interpretation? It's my job to resolve the interaction with the environment caused by a proposition the player makes. A proposition that a player makes that doesn't interact with the environment calls for no resolution. It's not my job to interpret what the proposition is. If I don't know exactly what the player intends, then I need to establish that first. Regardless of whether the character thinks he's speaking English or speaking in tongues or whatever, the likely result of such babble is probably that the character will be treated as being drunk or insane. I'm not interpreting what the character is doing, only what the NPCs are doing. At some point, I should always be able to explain to the player why the result that happens is logical and fair (although sometimes to avoid releasing OOC information, that may not be for a long time after the session). I can't do that, and it will be immediately obvious that it isn't, if the interpretation I put on an action was at odds with the player's intention.

I'm struggling to make it, so I don't blame you. Really, it's probably not worth the struggle. I guess I'm just trying to say that, yes, players can decide what their characters think and do, but that latitude is best exercised with some thought to the scene the DM has set, and the character's place in it.

I agree with that. What I'm trying to say is that the "interpretation" thing you keep bringing up isn't really part of the proposition->fortune->resolution cycle. I can interrogate the player to try to figure out what exact action that they intend, and often should do that. And I can force the player to phrase a proposition in a way that passes the games proposition filter, whether formal or informal. But I can't and shouldn't be transforming the proposition to anything that might lie outside the player's intent. Only after a valid and clear proposition is understood, do we start cranking handles and come up with a resolution. To do anything else is to be a very dysfunctional sort of "Gotcha DM", that would cause even Nitro Ferguson to shake his head and declare that you've got some maturing to do.

Importantly, I'm not saying the players or the DM in the example are doing anything wrong. The DM has (previously) set the scene, and describes a situation, the players declare actions (albeit all at once, since there's no initiative order), and the DM calls for a check on the one action declaration that is in doubt as to success/failure. He'll go on to narrate the results of all the actions. It's a perfectly cromulent example of play, that way.

Well, with caveats above, "Yes." If a player purposes, "My character delusionally thinks he's Captain Kirk, and that a Klingon has entered the room. He points his finger at the Chancellor of the Exchequer and makes a "Zap!" noice.", then that's a valid proposition that I can act on. It might not be a very good one. It might not be a very artistic one. It might not be a very mature one. But, heh, one man's art is another man's trash, and it's not my job to play the character. Besides, in some games, for some characters, that proposition might even make sense.

This discussion could do with a dissertation on the Proposition Filter concept, I think, if you haven't already provided one up-thread.

If I started one, I'd do it in a different thread. I'm concerned that we've been too long off topic and are no longer advancing any discussion in a meaningful and useful manner. In fact, I'd abandoned the thread until some fresh voices joined it.

Because at least some of the concern with metagaming and "you can't do that" seems to be related.

Yeah, "you can't do that because you're metagaming" is definitely an informal proposition filter I've seen employed at tables. Heck, at one time - say before age 20 - I probably would have deployed it myself. I do think that there is value in playing in character as much as possible, and would encourage players to adopt more mature stances toward their player character. However, I've since decided that "You can't do that because you're metagaming!" is unworkable as a proposition filter and is ill-advised on several grounds:

a) Sometimes metagaming is helpful to everyone's enjoyment and many sorts of metagaming are blessed by GMs. As such, whether a particular metagamed action triggers the filter pretty much comes down to, "I don't like that.", and a GM shouldn't really be filtering PC actions to that degree.
b) It's not actually possible for a player to not metagame, so a GM asking a player to not metagame is often asking the impossible of them. And again, whether or not the GM accepts that a particular action is not metagaming often comes down to whether the GM thinks it's the right action, which eventually comes down to the GM playing the PC.
c) Most of the time that a GM faults a player for metagaming, the GM is actually the one at fault for using some process of play that gave the player metagame information - including not just keeping his mouth shut when he should have. By passing the responsibility to the player, the Gm is not adopting more mature methods of play and growing as a GM.
d) There are always better approaches to dealing with any sort of metagaming that is having a negative impact on play.
e) It's entirely possible that the GM deploying "You can't do that, it's metagaming." is actually the dysfunctional participant and the real motivation is that the GM wants total control over the game.

 

[Riley37]

If the player knows everything about stone golems, it doesn't really matter what the player character knows, his play will be inevitably and unavoidably colored by his knowledge of stone golems. The player can, if he wishes, try to pretend he is the character who doesn't know anything about stone golems, but no person can exactly pretend to act as if he did not have knowledge that he has...

Not exactly, no. Nor can any person can sing perfectly on pitch, and yet some humans still sing, because many of us do it well enough for entertainment purposes.

Sure, there's a discrepancy between character knowledge and player knowledge. I cannot bring that gap to zero point zero, nor do I want to. That said, there's a significant difference between "bought the scrolls" and "didn't buy the scrolls", and my imperfect, non-exact RP still falls on the side of "didn't buy the scrolls"... when I'm a playing a PC who knows that she's likely to encounter stone golems, and who doesn't know how useful those scrolls would be. Yes, when we actually encounter the stone golems, I the player will think "too bad my PC didn't know about thunder damage", but even if some NPC had cast Detect Thoughts on my PC, that thought was not in the PC's mind *at an observable level*.

Is this, in your experience, an unusual level of compartmentalization? I consider it a low bar to clear. If a player cannot (or will not) refrain from declaring character actions which act on information which their character could not possibly know, then I consider that player an unskilled and/or immature TRPGer, and I'd rather not sit at the same table.

As such, there is no real way to stop players from metagaming even if you wanted to. Even if they want to cooperate with your goal, they will be at some point unable to do so.

There is, however, the option of recruiting players to your table, who have *their own goal* of managing their meta gaming, in order to co-create an enjoyable story. Some players are okay with the suspension of disbelief necessary for "we encounter stone golems", while disliking the suspension of disbelief necessary for "the barbarian just happened, for unrelated reasons, to have some scrolls of Thunderwave, which the barbarian now hands to the wizard for immediate tactical use".

I want many things, as a player. One of those things is the respect of the DM and my fellow players. The players, at the table where I play every week, would not be impressed by "hey, guys, look, my barbarian character has scrolls of Thunderwave!". They would give me a disapproving side-eye, or a spoken "Riley, that's crappy role-playing. We're not munchkins here". They'd rather have their PCs either win without those scrolls, or fail without those scrolls, than win by using those scrolls.

The question of whether the DM suppresses that kind of meta-gaming does not often arise, at this table, because peer pressure among players suffices to discourage that kind of meta-gaming.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm glad to see you: "Proposition Filter!" is what I've been trying to remember, and it wasn't coming to me.

But that would be telling the player what his character thinks! So, clearly, he's just delusional.

The DM could narrate him pointing his finger at someone (or at empty air) and making a trilling sound, for instance.


Speaking in tongues or something. Heck, you might even interpret that the character is speaking English rather than Common.

I'm struggling to make it, so I don't blame you. Really, it's probably not worth the struggle. I guess I'm just trying to say that, yes, players can decide what their characters think and do, but that latitude is best exercised with some thought to the scene the DM has set, and the character's place in it.
Importantly, I'm not saying the players or the DM in the example are doing anything wrong. The DM has (previously) set the scene, and describes a situation, the players declare actions (albeit all at once, since there's no initiative order), and the DM calls for a check on the one action declaration that is in doubt as to success/failure. He'll go on to narrate the results of all the actions. It's a perfectly cromulent example of play, that way.


This discussion could do with a dissertation on the Proposition Filter concept, I think, if you haven't already provided one up-thread.

Because at least some of the concern with metagaming and "you can't do that" seems to be related.

This is like teaching someone checkers and telling them they can move a piece on their turn only to be interrupted with, "I play a Draw 4!" You politely point out that's not checkers but Uno and are met with a, "so I can't move a piece on my turn then?"

 

[Celebrim]

Is this, in your experience, an unusual level of compartmentalization? I consider it a low bar to clear. If a player cannot (or will not) refrain from declaring character actions which act on information which their character could not possibly know, then I consider that player an unskilled and/or immature TRPGer, and I'd rather not sit at the same table.

Is it possible to provide examples where the obvious skillful move is known by the player? Sure. Can a skilled player choose when Actor stance is more appropriate than Author stance based on evaluating their own motivations? Probably so. But the real question for me here isn't player skill, but whether deploying a proposition filter that stops a player from metagaming is skilled play by the GM. I'm suggesting that it isn't and that there are strong limits to the ability of a GM or player to abide by a "no metagaming" rule. However bad unskillful play by the player may be, the proposed remedy is worse.

Let's move the earth elementals example back one step. A player character knows that they are going to encounter earth elementals and it's established by some process of play that that character shouldn't know anything about earth elementals. So now the player offers up the following IC proposition to the other players, "I don't know anything about earth elementals, and I don't think we should go face them without learning something about them. The sound magical and I'm not even sure a stone can bleed. I don't want to try to kill a rock with a sword. Let's find a wizard or a sage that might know something about earth elementals and see what we can learn about them." Now, is this metagaming? Possibly, but now the player is engaged in a more sophisticated Author stance. His motivation OOC might be that he wants to get Thunderwave scrolls, but he's offering a plausible in game explanation for his character's actions. Should this be stopped as an act of metagaming? Would this deserve side-eye from his fellow partipants?

And how do you know that, if the player was also ignorant, he wouldn't offer the same proposition? How can the player know whether, were he truly ignorant, he might offer the same proposition?

Sure, I think there are times when a player should try to ignore his OOC knowledge and play the character in a proper Actor stance based on what he thinks the character would do based on his IC knowledge. Heck, as a GM, I'm called to do this all the time, however imperfectly I can do it. "If I didn't know the PC's weaknesses, would I still use this sort of strategy? Would I still have cast this defensive spell before starting the encounter?" As a GM, I hold myself to not metagaming against the players at a much higher and more rigid standard than I would ever hold the players too.

However my points remain. Metagaming isn't always bad. Metagaming by the players is usually the GM's fault. And there are much better ways to deal with a metagaming problem than putting up a proposition filter that amounts to choosing what a PC is going to do.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Not exactly, no. Nor can any person can sing perfectly on pitch, and yet some humans still sing, because many of us do it well enough for entertainment purposes.

Sure, there's a discrepancy between character knowledge and player knowledge. I cannot bring that gap to zero point zero, nor do I want to. That said, there's a significant difference between "bought the scrolls" and "didn't buy the scrolls", and my imperfect, non-exact RP still falls on the side of "didn't buy the scrolls"... when I'm a playing a PC who knows that she's likely to encounter stone golems, and who doesn't know how useful those scrolls would be. Yes, when we actually encounter the stone golems, I the player will think "too bad my PC didn't know about thunder damage", but even if some NPC had cast Detect Thoughts on my PC, that thought was not in the PC's mind *at an observable level*.

Is this, in your experience, an unusual level of compartmentalization? I consider it a low bar to clear. If a player cannot (or will not) refrain from declaring character actions which act on information which their character could not possibly know, then I consider that player an unskilled and/or immature TRPGer, and I'd rather not sit at the same table.



There is, however, the option of recruiting players to your table, who have *their own goal* of managing their meta gaming, in order to co-create an enjoyable story. Some players are okay with the suspension of disbelief necessary for "we encounter stone golems", while disliking the suspension of disbelief necessary for "the barbarian just happened, for unrelated reasons, to have some scrolls of Thunderwave, which the barbarian now hands to the wizard for immediate tactical use".

I want many things, as a player. One of those things is the respect of the DM and my fellow players. The players, at the table where I play every week, would not be impressed by "hey, guys, look, my barbarian character has scrolls of Thunderwave!". They would give me a disapproving side-eye, or a spoken "Riley, that's crappy role-playing. We're not munchkins here". They'd rather have their PCs either win without those scrolls, or fail without those scrolls, than win by using those scrolls.

The question of whether the DM suppresses that kind of meta-gaming does not often arise, at this table, because peer pressure among players suffices to discourage that kind of meta-gaming.

One problem I have with all of this is that you are taking a personal preference...that not only you but also the people at your table strive to separate character knowledge from player knowledge...and then you start assigning value labels to that. Those who do that have "respect of the DM and fellow players". Those who don't are "unskilled and/or immature TPRGers".

As it happens, I've got my own way of describing people who insist on roleplaying exactly the way you like, but it's not very generous, so I'll refrain from sharing it.

You have a preference, which is great. Maybe it's safer to leave it at that, rather than trying to claim that it's superior, and that people who play some other way are inferior. Because the next thing you know the insults start flying.

 

[Riley37]

I've got my own way of describing people who insist on roleplaying exactly the way you like

I am indeed insisting on roleplaying exactly the way I like to role-play... at a table where, every week, that style is welcomed and encouraged. Last session, I told the DM "I think I know why the bad guys attacked this village, but I don't think my PC has figured it out yet", and the DM gave me a thumbs-up to keep playing accordingly. I had the "respect of the DM and fellow players" *specifically for that DM and those players*. Perhaps the DM and the players at *your* table would have formed a different opinion.

If I insisted on roleplaying exactly the way I like, at YOUR table, then I might wear out my welcome, and in THAT case, you'd have good reason to bluntly tell me what you think of my style.

Yes, there are player behaviors which I consider immature. Some of those behaviors involve fart noises. Some of them involve loaded dice. "My barbarian buys some scrolls of Thunderwave, just because he likes the noise they make", when actually the player's motive is tactical advantage, is *generally* one of the behaviors I consider immature, though with exceptions. (One exception: Session Zero established a zany, Loony Tunes level of suspension of disbelief. Another exception: The table has an understanding that the PCs are guided by Divine Providence, or nudged by the Valar, and sometimes make choices which turn out to be wiser than the PC knew at the time.)

If you have a problem with my opinions and preferences, then you can die mad about it. Or you can play at your table, and not at mine!

 

[Riley37]

I'm suggesting that it isn't and that there are strong limits to the ability of a GM or player to abide by a "no metagaming" rule. However bad unskillful play by the player may be, the proposed remedy is worse.

I agree, more or less. I don't like the remedy of the DM veto, the declaration "You can't do that." I prefer the remedy of another player asking "Wait, do our characters know - at this point - that thunder damage will be extra effective?" If the barbarian's player responds "No, my character doesn't know, he's making a lucky guess", then I still want the DM to decide what happens *in the fiction* on the basis of whether anyone in town has such scrolls and is willing to sell them (and at what price).

"Let's find a wizard or a sage that might know something about earth elementals and see what we can learn about them." Now, is this metagaming? Possibly, but now the player is engaged in a more sophisticated Author stance. His motivation OOC might be that he wants to get Thunderwave scrolls, but he's offering a plausible in game explanation for his character's actions. Should this be stopped as an act of metagaming? Would this deserve side-eye from his fellow partipants?

If this is metagaming, then it's the kind of metagaming which I consider useful, appropriate and part of a good story. It is functionally equivalent to playing a PC who is cautious and resourceful... which is one of the many possible forms of heroism.

It *might* lead to the purchase of Thunderwave scrolls. It might lead to the DM inventing, on the spot, a new NPC, in the form of a wizard or sage; that new NPC might in time become a recurring character. It might mean that the DM gets to *finally* introduce that librarian NPC which the DM has been *aching* to introduce to the PCs (with a side quest to recover some missing books of arcane lore). It might lead to the discovery that an NPC bought all the Thunderwave scrolls in the city, last week, and also bought some rope, rations and similar adventuring gear - and thus the hint that there's another party, also heading into the same mountains, who now has a head start on the PCs. This range of outcomes, all arising from an IC proposal to do some research, is lush with opportunities, more so than just going directly to "mark off X gold pieces, and add Y scrolls of Thunderwave to your character's inventory".

Another example of Riley-approved metagaming: the PCs meet someone in a tavern who wants to join their party, and the PCs find plausible reasons to welcome that person to their party, even though the PCs don't know that this stranger is the PC of a new player joining the group. If the PCs go through the motions of reasonably wary precautions (membership in a faction such as Order of the Gauntlet, or perhaps asking the newcomer to consent to Detect Thoughts or Zone of Truth), then they're establishing a higher level of IC plausibility, but they're still moving towards the answer of yes. (Depending on the table's convention about PCs with ulterior motives, that is.)

Metagaming isn't always bad. Metagaming by the players is usually the GM's fault. And there are much better ways to deal with a metagaming problem than putting up a proposition filter that amounts to choosing what a PC is going to do.

I agree on the first. As for the second, the IC welcoming of a new PC to the party, on the first session of a new player to the table, isn't the GM's fault, because no error has happened and thus no one is at fault. I agree on the third.

Tangent: could you perhaps recommend to me an article or essay which explains the Author stance and Actor stance, as you are using those terms?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am indeed insisting on roleplaying exactly the way I like to role-play... at a table where, every week, that style is welcomed and encouraged. Last session, I told the DM "I think I know why the bad guys attacked this village, but I don't think my PC has figured it out yet", and the DM gave me a thumbs-up to keep playing accordingly. I had the "respect of the DM and fellow players" *specifically for that DM and those players*. Perhaps the DM and the players at *your* table would have formed a different opinion.

If I insisted on roleplaying exactly the way I like, at YOUR table, then I might wear out my welcome, and in THAT case, you'd have good reason to bluntly tell me what you think of my style.

Yes, there are player behaviors which I consider immature. Some of those behaviors involve fart noises. Some of them involve loaded dice. "My barbarian buys some scrolls of Thunderwave, just because he likes the noise they make", when actually the player's motive is tactical advantage, is *generally* one of the behaviors I consider immature, though with exceptions. (One exception: Session Zero established a zany, Loony Tunes level of suspension of disbelief. Another exception: The table has an understanding that the PCs are guided by Divine Providence, or nudged by the Valar, and sometimes make choices which turn out to be wiser than the PC knew at the time.)

If you have a problem with my opinions and preferences, then you can die mad about it. Or you can play at your table, and not at mine!

Hmm. I used to be big about the PC/player knowledge divide, but then I came to the conclusion that this was immature of me and I could make intruguing and challenging ganes without expecting my players to have to pretend they don't know something to preserve the challenge of my games. Now, I look at situations like the barbarian buying scrolls not as a point where the player has to justify the action but as an opportunity for the player to tell us something about his barbarian and how he knows such things, if the player cares to. The trick is to not base the narrative weight of your game on not knowing things about the game (like monster stats). Heck, I'll usually give that stuff away for free.

And, I'll put the narrative weight and depth of my games up against anyone's -- they won't suffer in comparison at all because I don't strictly regulate "metagaming."

 

[Riley37]

an opportunity for the player to tell us something about his barbarian and how he knows such things

That sounds fun! Maybe long ago, a druid in her tribe fought earth elementals, evoked a thunderstorm, and won an amazing victory. Maybe there's a tribal folktale or song about that fight, which the barbarian heard as a lullaby. So the barbarian thinks "if I buy scroll and wizard makes thunder, then maybe the spirit of my glorious ancestor will return to re-enact great victory".

Okay, it's a stretch, but it's still an addition to the story, which I find vastly preferable to "uh, I bought these scrolls, which I can't use myself, for some reason completely unrelated to my actual intention". YMMV.