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

[Umbran]

He's violating such a basic rule of the "roleplayer social contract" that I don't even understand why people are considering other options above...

Because mature adults talk things over before just making decisions and acting, even if the course of action seems clear at first glance.

 

[Sunseeker]

1: Always make adventures your own with little twists and changes. Remember that the adventure reacts to what players are doing (if its a good adventure) and many are designed to be adaptable to larger homebrew campaign settings.

2: Enforce player/character knowledge. There's always some overlap, but if the guy/girl is regularly bringing in knowledge that their character obviously doesn't have don't hesitate to challenge them on it.

I don't personally mind if my players read up, there's a lot of backstory in larger adventures that I don't always have time to give at the table and it can help players get into the adventure, but I make an effort to enforce what knowledge characters have or don't have or can reasonably ascertain and I will challenge my players to prove that what they know is something their character could have figured out from the information available.

 

[SubDude]

I'm in the "knock it off or get out of the game" camp, but if you're not up to doing that, how about you just not tell them what the name of the adventure you're running is?

Maybe even lead them all to believe that they are playing Dungeon One, but two rooms into the thing is a teleportation trap that drops them into Dungeon Two, which you keep in an unlabeled binder.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Because mature adults talk things over before just making decisions and acting, even if the course of action seems clear at first glance.

The guy is reading the adventure before playing, I don't think that someone who does that qualifies to join a mature adults conversation in the first place. Besides that, I don't see how much conversation can happen here beyond "ok, do it again and you're out". It remembers me of another thread some weeks ago where someone asked what to do with a player who cheated in dice rolls. Are people really expected to circumvent any kind of dishonest behavior "because we're friends"? I don't think so.

 

[SubDude]

It remembers me of another thread some weeks ago where someone asked what to do with a player who cheated in dice rolls. Are people really expected to circumvent any kind of dishonest behavior "because we're friends"? I don't think so.

Same guy.

 

[Shasarak]

If you are going to be using a publicly available adventure then I do not see a problem if someone buys a copy and reads it.

Now if you are making your own adventure and he starts to read through your notes, then that would be a problem.

 

[Shiroiken]

I had this situation happen in a different RPG. It worked well for me, as the player used his knowledge to keep the party on track. He normally didn't use his advanced knowledge to do anything, but if the party stalled or just fell off track completely, he would use his knowledge to steer them back on track. He was so subtle at first that no one knew what he was doing. Once I caught on, I didn't mind al that much, even if part of me felt like it was cheating. His actions made the game better, and so I put aside my personal feelings as best I could.

Things changed after a while, either because of a change in attitude by the player or because he noticed a change in mine. He started using his knowledge not to push the game forward, but to get around challenges altogether. After he had a character die, he knew the next adventure and built his character with it in mind. Said character had all the correct skills (in a skill based RPG) and Advantages, as well as no Disadvantages that would hurt him. He also used his knowledge to be the "hero," gaining all the glory (which is actually a mechanic in the game).

This definitely pushed it over the line into cheater-land, so I deliberately changed things. The player actually got upset at this...

 

[guachi]

I'd just no longer invite him to play. While there are suggestions that can work, like changing the adventure around, doing that means he is controlling your behavior and you are reacting to him.

With the other issue you brought up, I see little reason to play with such an individual any longer.

 

[Sunseeker]

The guy is reading the adventure before playing, I don't think that someone who does that qualifies to join a mature adults conversation in the first place.

How does reading ahead make him immature?

What if he's played/run this adventure before and he just knows it from experience? Is one immature because they've played D&D sometime in the last 40 years?

What if he read up on them ages ago and has a good memory, maybe he really liked this adventure and was really looking forward to playing it some day, is he immature because his biology affords him a good recollection of past events?

I played Castle Ravenloft recently, I read ahead, but didn't use out-of-game knowledge to ruin the game, but I was somewhat unimpressed with how my DM handled the game, I felt like a lot of what seemed interesting the campaign guide was left out. If I had not read ahead, I'd have no idea why people gave two coppers about Ravenloft, it was that much of a letdown.

I understand taking offense to reading up...and then spoiling the game. But doing the former does not imply the latter. Though the player sounds like a problem in a variety of other ways, which I think this would add up to the straw that broke the camel's back. What I don't understand is how when some people get in the DM chair they expect their players to know all of jack diddly about anything outside what that DM deems is "allowed to be known".

 

[Rune]

How does reading ahead make him immature?

What if he's played/run this adventure before and he just knows it from experience? Is one immature because they've played D&D sometime in the last 40 years?

What if he read up on them ages ago and has a good memory, maybe he really liked this adventure and was really looking forward to playing it some day, is he immature because his biology affords him a good recollection of past events?

I played Castle Ravenloft recently, I read ahead, but didn't use out-of-game knowledge to ruin the game, but I was somewhat unimpressed with how my DM handled the game, I felt like a lot of what seemed interesting the campaign guide was left out. If I had not read ahead, I'd have no idea why people gave two coppers about Ravenloft, it was that much of a letdown.

I understand taking offense to reading up...and then spoiling the game. But doing the former does not imply the latter. Though the player sounds like a problem in a variety of other ways, which I think this would add up to the straw that broke the camel's back.

Except that, in this case, the player who read ahead did use that knowledge to spoil the game (or does telling the other players "this NPC has a secret" not count as a spoiler?). If I were a fellow player, I'd be pretty pissed that I'd been cheated out of the possibility of discovering that on my own. Even if that secret would have involved treachery.

What I don't understand is how when some people get in the DM chair they expect their players to know all of jack diddly about anything outside what that DM deems is "allowed to be known".

I'm all for players using meta game knowledge, personally. It just opens up a new dimension with which to mess with them. But the issue here isn't really what means the player is using to be disruptive. The issue is that a disruptive player is being disruptive.