Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7768949" data-attributes="member: 177">Here's something that may help give perspective on this.I submit that the only way for a player to not metagame at all is for them to have no knowledge of the game mechanics.&nbsp; You can't use out-of-game information if you don't *know* any out-of-game information.&nbsp; You may scoff at this, except I have played this way - &quot;rules blind&quot;.&nbsp; My very first D&amp;D game, in fact.&nbsp; My brother brought home the 1e rulebooks from college for X-mas, and a copy of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.&nbsp; He asked the kind of people we wanted to play, assigned us each one of the pregen characters from the module, described them to us with no reference to the game stats (&quot;You are strong as an ox, and dumb as a post.&quot;) and off we went, without so much as a character sheet.&nbsp; The GM handled all mechanics.&nbsp; A whole lot of rolling dice on his part, but he did it.&nbsp; He would sometimes tell us &quot;You are in a lot of pain&quot; or &quot;you are tired&quot; or &quot;the giant ant bite on your leg looks ugly and inflamed&quot;.&nbsp; And we would choose accordingly.&nbsp; Sometimes we would rest.&nbsp; Or the Cleric character would cast the spell that he was told would heal people.&nbsp; But we never knew how many hit points we had.&nbsp; We didn't know what hit points *were* yet.Meanwhile, as soon as you look at your &quot;Hit Points&quot; to gauge how much more punishment you can take, you are using game-mechanic information to make what should be in-world choices.&nbsp; There are rationalizations that &quot;the fighter knows how much more damage he can take.&quot;&nbsp; But, damage to the human body doesn't work like hit points *at all*, they are a game abstraction.&nbsp; The rationalization also flies in the face of their being no death-spiral in D&amp;D - there's no change in performance as you get hurt, so there's no in-game way for the fighter to know.&nbsp; And, even if the fighter does know, you then have to stretch credibility to apply this this to the wizard, who in-game should not in general know how much physical punishment his body can take, as he hasn't been training his body to take it!So, referring to your hit points is metagaming.&nbsp; It is just metagaming we are all comfortable with.Now, we are not arguing about YES/NO to metagaming.&nbsp; We are discussing *what* and *how much*.&nbsp; A different conversation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 7768949, member: 177"] Here's something that may help give perspective on this. I submit that the only way for a player to not metagame at all is for them to have [I]no knowledge of the game mechanics[/I]. You can't use out-of-game information if you don't *know* any out-of-game information. You may scoff at this, except I have played this way - "rules blind". My very first D&D game, in fact. My brother brought home the 1e rulebooks from college for X-mas, and a copy of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. He asked the kind of people we wanted to play, assigned us each one of the pregen characters from the module, described them to us with no reference to the game stats ("You are strong as an ox, and dumb as a post.") and off we went, without so much as a character sheet. The GM handled all mechanics. A whole lot of rolling dice on his part, but he did it. He would sometimes tell us "You are in a lot of pain" or "you are tired" or "the giant ant bite on your leg looks ugly and inflamed". And we would choose accordingly. Sometimes we would rest. Or the Cleric character would cast the spell that he was told would heal people. But we never knew how many hit points we had. We didn't know what hit points *were* yet. Meanwhile, as soon as you look at your "Hit Points" to gauge how much more punishment you can take, you are using game-mechanic information to make what should be in-world choices. There are rationalizations that "the fighter knows how much more damage he can take." But, damage to the human body doesn't work like hit points *at all*, they are a game abstraction. The rationalization also flies in the face of their being no death-spiral in D&D - there's no change in performance as you get hurt, so there's no in-game way for the fighter to know. And, even if the fighter does know, you then have to stretch credibility to apply this this to the wizard, who in-game should not in general know how much physical punishment his body can take, as he hasn't been training his body to take it! So, referring to your hit points is metagaming. It is just [I]metagaming we are all comfortable with[/I]. Now, we are not arguing about YES/NO to metagaming. We are discussing *what* and *how much*. A different conversation. [/QUOTE]

Verification