Ok, this is a pretty simply scenario that happened in my group, and I think I probably handled it wrong.
We have two newbies in the group, though we've played ~ 10 sessions now. I'll leave out the fact that they don't know spells, combat, skills, etc. yet ("Roll a Fortitude save" gets: "What die do I use for that?") - I actually find that bearable.
Here's the part that kills me:
They recently uncovered the lair of a dragon. They engaged in combat. The dragon flipped onto its back to attack said weenies.
The player, on their turn, then tells me that they are looking for the soft spot on the dragon's underbelly, because they know that dragons have the soft spot - they read it somewhere. (Like, The Hobbit maybe?
)
Now, I probably should have just said "No, you can't distinguish any spot that is softer than the other - you haven't seen any other dragons to compare, really. How long do you want to spend doing this?"
Unfortunately, being the messy session that it was, I said: "Well, that's metagaming. Your character hasn't studied dragons in particular, has she?" (This had actually been brought up before). "You, the person, have read 'The Hobbit' which is where you're pulling this information from. Your character has not read anything like that at all."
Not necessarily wrong, and I was trying to help, but probably the former would have been better.
Anyone else have any suggestions?
zyzzyr
We have two newbies in the group, though we've played ~ 10 sessions now. I'll leave out the fact that they don't know spells, combat, skills, etc. yet ("Roll a Fortitude save" gets: "What die do I use for that?") - I actually find that bearable.
Here's the part that kills me:
They recently uncovered the lair of a dragon. They engaged in combat. The dragon flipped onto its back to attack said weenies.
The player, on their turn, then tells me that they are looking for the soft spot on the dragon's underbelly, because they know that dragons have the soft spot - they read it somewhere. (Like, The Hobbit maybe?
)Now, I probably should have just said "No, you can't distinguish any spot that is softer than the other - you haven't seen any other dragons to compare, really. How long do you want to spend doing this?"
Unfortunately, being the messy session that it was, I said: "Well, that's metagaming. Your character hasn't studied dragons in particular, has she?" (This had actually been brought up before). "You, the person, have read 'The Hobbit' which is where you're pulling this information from. Your character has not read anything like that at all."
Not necessarily wrong, and I was trying to help, but probably the former would have been better.
Anyone else have any suggestions?
zyzzyr
