D&D 5E What to do if a player keeps reading the adventures

[GameOgre]

Though I have DMed for a fellow DM when we both knew the knowledge back and forwards and had a blast, I think a player who reads every adventure before hand would spoil my fun. Part of the fun is seeing how the players overcome puzzles, handle treachery, deal with uncertain citations.

Without those things I'm not sure it would be worth DMing.

Now for sure I'm not talking about short term, but if the players is reading everything, this for me would be a major issue.

I also have to wonder why. Why does he read everything? I would say about 90% of the reasons would not sit right for me. In fact about the only reason would be if he was also a DM and was running it on the side.

I once had a player do this very thing because it gave him a advantage over the other players. He was not too terrible about it but it was always there and if I changed things up he often would get frustrated and act like I was "cheating them". Even after I asked him to stop he kept it up but just became a little better at hiding it.

This was a friend of mine and not someone I was cool with kicking out of the group but I was tempted. Finally in the end I actually made him DM. I didn't have to twist his arm much and he was all excited about a new adventure path that was coming out(he bought the first three parts). He spent his money and read them and worked on his game and the day we sat down to play I pulled out the players guide for it and let book four slip out of my book bag and onto the table.

He was all kinds of upset about it and asked if I had read it "I said oh yeah you were talking about it and it sounded real cool so I bought the entire adventure path and we have been chatting about it for this entire past week! We can't wait till the last book when we get to fight that army of Genies!"

Needless to say this did not go over well (we lied BTW we had not read anything but a one sentence long thing on each adventure book) and it took some work to calm him down and we all asked him how he felt. After a while of him ranting we asked him did he think that was how others had felt when he read the adventures, that seemed to hit home but it wasn't till afterwards when we told him we hadn't read the adventure and in fact had bought him book four to DM for us/and to help in our ruse, that everything turned out good.

I wish I could say it ended well but it didn't. The player just wasn't ready to DM and had some seriously bad habits (NPC that was really his character saved the day! Every day!) but in the VERY end I guess it did.

He stopped buying the adventures and reading them before hand and instead waited till afterwards once we were done before reading them. I call that a WIN.

 

[SkidAce]

First, figure out if he's metagaming. There are a lot of people who can play a game with knowledge of the story before hand, generally keep that information from affecting game play, and everyone have a good time.

Is his reading actually affecting anyone's fun at the table at any point? If not? Then do nothing. If its not broken, then don't fix it.

Yeah, I agree.

The difference could be if he is deliberately reading the upcoming adventures, or simply reads adventure.

There have been cases where a dM ran a game I had ran years ago. I can play such a modyule without hurting the game.

 

[Parmandur]

Is this the same player who is cheating at the dice rolls?

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Is the player actually using this inside information to make the game experience worse for everyone else? Or does it just bother you on some level?

The reason I ask is because I know I am capable of knowing everything there is to know about a published adventure and still not use the information in a way that ruins the game experience for everyone else. I also have a lot of one-shot adventures that I run for pick-up groups and I have regular players that will jump in and play them more than once (sometimes multiple times). I've had no problem with them doing that because they, too, only use the information they have to make the adventure better. (Typically they're in it to approach the adventure a different way they did previously to see how that changes the emergent story or to see how other people do things compared to their first time.)

In any case, if it's bothersome to you or others and ruining your game experience, just talk to the player outside the context of the game directly and politely and ask for his or her help in rectifying the situation to everyone's mutual satisfaction. If you can't find a compromise, then perhaps it's best to part ways.

Yes. I've known for a while he's had access to the module but he'd stated he wasn't reading ahead, though that didn't stop him looking at the end of adventure fight. I've managed to ignore it and changed a few things here and there either on purpose or accidentally, but last night he basically blew a whole section of roleplaying by letting everyone know he knew an NPC had a secret but as he'd read it he was going to sit it out and let the other players handle it. Straightaway all the other players knew there was a mystery and who to talk to to solve it. So yeah it did kind of ruin things a bit.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Is this the same player who is cheating at the dice rolls?

Yes afraid it is. Not only some dodgy suspicious rolls going on, add in a chunk of power gaming and now reading the module ahead of time!

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

If you want to get really meta, ask yourself what the villains and/or monsters in the adventure would do if they got to read the whole thing in advance. (You know, like that scene in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet looks at the script.)

 

[Agamon]

Yes afraid it is. Not only some dodgy suspicious rolls going on, add in a chunk of power gaming and now reading the module ahead of time!

Sounds like a real stand-up fellow. I'd tell him the next game is on June 31.

 

[iserith]

Yes. I've known for a while he's had access to the module but he'd stated he wasn't reading ahead, though that didn't stop him looking at the end of adventure fight. I've managed to ignore it and changed a few things here and there either on purpose or accidentally, but last night he basically blew a whole section of roleplaying by letting everyone know he knew an NPC had a secret but as he'd read it he was going to sit it out and let the other players handle it. Straightaway all the other players knew there was a mystery and who to talk to to solve it. So yeah it did kind of ruin things a bit.

Out of curiosity, what would have happened if the players didn't talk to that NPC and find out the secret?

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Out of curiosity, what would have happened if the players didn't talk to that NPC and find out the secret?

This is where the module would have gone seriously off script. Not an issue in itself but the reasons I elected to use modules was a shortage of time to create scenarios myself. I don't know if you're familiar with the official modules but some of them can be a bit railroady.

 

[Mercule]

Yes. I've known for a while he's had access to the module but he'd stated he wasn't reading ahead, though that didn't stop him looking at the end of adventure fight. I've managed to ignore it and changed a few things here and there either on purpose or accidentally, but last night he basically blew a whole section of roleplaying by letting everyone know he knew an NPC had a secret but as he'd read it he was going to sit it out and let the other players handle it. Straightaway all the other players knew there was a mystery and who to talk to to solve it. So yeah it did kind of ruin things a bit.

That's pretty low. I'd give him the option to a) keep his book closed, b) keep his mouth closed such as to be indistinguishable from "a", or c) don't bother showing up.

I have an extremely low tolerance to players reading modules before completing them. I view it as being outright cheating as much as I would fudging die rolls. I don't think it's even possible for 99%+ of cases for the player knowledge to not impact play.