I once heard of this one time players were cheating by looking behind the GM Screen when the GM went to the restroom, as noted above. They found no game notes, no adventure, no rulebook. All they found was a note reading "There's nothing you can do" over and over, like a Jack Torrence novel.
Good metagaming that everyone should do: JOIN THE REST OF THE GOD DAMN GROUP. I will flat out make you roll a new character if your character decides not to join the party because "It's not what my character would do"
I agree wholeheartedly with that. After entire sessions where the party split up and we had to do 5 seperate stories, one for each player, (I suppose the urban environment lend itself to selfish choices) I just said to them they needed to do things together. Even if one of them wanted to do something personal, do it with the group. If you don't wanna wait for something to do, don't make the others wait.
Generally speaking, unless the character or player involved is a complete idiot, what the character would want to do and the optimal thing to do, at least in combat, are the same freakin thing.
I actually semi-retired a character I was playing for this very reason. Playing VTM I made a cult leader type who is raising his humanity. Which means as that gets higher killing, stealing, even lying becomes a problem. He got to a point where I felt he honestly wouldn't leave his group unless forced to, so I asked the gm if i could roll up someone new and let this guy kind of turn into a NPC. New guy is a former spy.. kind of inspired by Burn Notice.. So he's pretty much always interested in doing stuff with the group. Build up some friendships to use for his own goals later. He's becoming my favorite pc I ever made by far.
What about if the DM keeps kicking your character away from the group, even as you make it do some stuff it would not do (metagaming), in order to go to the party
@@Zantonny Dude yes.. or the one player who just shrugs and says "sure why not." to everything, despite being thrown every hook possible for their character. I really dont get the loner type or the person who just obviously isnt into it but wont say so when asked what the issue is. (character not what they thought, campaign isnt doing it, etc) Two sides of the same coin in my book.
You four? I...you do know...ah hell, I just can't do it. It'd be like telling someone the Easter Bunny isn't real, and Bun-Bun would kill me if I did that. Sure. Agreed. Seth, You four should definitely stream some games. What's that one guy's name again? :)
It really has to be extra hard for all of them to play together considering Dweebles' luck. Remember that time he had to cover his boss' shift because his child was being born? Or that time his mom died? Or that time he was held as a hostage?
I’m shocked how much he looks like his brother, I mean if they were twins sure, but they’re 4 years apart and his cousin Merl is eerily similar too. It was cool to meet them all at Origins last year, nice guys.
I ran a one-shot that opened with all the characters drinking a "Potion of Infinite Meta Knowledge." The PCs became aware that they were being controlled by otherworldly beings playing a game in someone's living room, and gained all the knowledge of the players, but they still had to act in character. Fun one-shot. I don't think it would work in an extended game.
I really appreciated that you didn't try to paint all metagaming as inherently bad, because some kinds really are harmless. Matt Colville really phrased it really well in his video about metagaming, in which he says that the problem isn't about metagaming, but about sportsmanship. And from what you said, you're right there with him!
The truly worst kind of metagaming. Peeking at the DM's notes. I looked away to pour a drink and suddenly the player to my right knew to go back to room 16 and tickle the chest to make it open (don't even ask). The guy was a repeat offender, and got exiled after another player told me he literally picked up and read ahead in my notebook when I went to the W.C.
That's not even metagaming, that's just plain cheating. He's gone beyond having his character act on player knowledge the character shouldn't know - the character's acting on knowledge his PLAYER shouldn't know. Call a cheat a cheat, and kick 'em out.
@@richmcgee434 Exactly, it's not the acting on dishonestly acquired OOC knowledge that's the problem; it's dishonestly acquiring that knowledge in the first place.
Best kind of meta-gaming is when the more active players turn to the less front-line ones and ask for their input, in-character. Sure, my noble and self-righteous arse might not normally ask the druid girl for her input, but if that player keeps getting talked over by someone else or isn't getting much of a chance to do anything, I'm going to try to give them that opportunity, but maybe flavour it in an in-character way.
I've always liked the common knowledge thing. Everyone knows fire and acid for trolls. It's fun to add to it instead of subtract from it. For instance less well known creatures add into the area mythos with disinformation from npcs. "Everyone knows" how old Scoggins the retired adventurer dissolved a gelatinous cube with a bag of salt back in his dungeoneering days. "Everyone knows" that Ilithids can't control your mind when you're singing in elvish or thinking in dwarvish. Or, "everyone knows" how if you slowly raise the temperature of water a grung can't detect it and will stay still until it boils to death. (based on a real life lie about frogs that "everyone knows")
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the PCs would have heard a story about a guy who warded off a troll by waving a torch around. If fire completely counters their regeneration, trolls are going to be _terrified_ of flames. PCs who get ambushed by trolls at night are going to be in for an interesting encounter when the pack refuses to get close to the campfire. Acid, perhaps less commonly. How often does a commoner keep a flask of acid on them? Not unless they're an alchemist of some kind, I don't think. The same can go for silvered weapons on werewolves and other creatures. The players have probably heard that certain monsters don't like to be around certain kinds of jewelry, or that some old, local Lord has apparently been ruling for a hundred years strong but doesn't treat their guests to fine meals with silverware, but some other shiny metal.
To be fair, waving a torch to ward off an attacker works on lots of things. Most natural animals, mummies, book golems - hell, I'm pretty sure it would work on me. Who wants to get smacked with a torch? Looks painful.
It is something I like about 3.5 D&D, the knowledge system. If your character has the appropriate Knowledge skill, they can make a free roll to identify the monster. The next round they can ask a single question about the Monster after a second roll, and keep going till they fail a roll or don't care to ask or the things is dead. Creatures with Zero hit dice or level adjustment is something anyone can identify... Goblins and Orcs fall under that category. The good thing about a troll is you can beat it down and then burn it later... Hydras on the other hand... yeah.
I like to play superstitious characters. Fire stops trolls? clearly ice heals them, so the wizard has to avoid using chill touch. It's fun to add to what a player knows to make what a character knows, and then I just try to keep it to something that could reasonably be a bar rumour (eg hill giants are big idiots, but I can't know they have 5 int. I might know that fire stops trolls, but not acid, or I might think it's only fire & acid combined or something.)
@Geidai013 , It has been the "House Rule " in my local area for the pass 30 years, Trolls will tear out burn flesh from their bodies to regenerate over fire / acid dmg area.
I have to disagree a bit about the blurters. In my experience they are not the people who are most comfortable with metagaming but the people most emerged in the game or the scene that simply have the least experience in roleplaying and/or a lack of selfcontroll.
Yeah, Blurters as he described them are just trying to be helpful. Although I would say it is still taking away from another persons "Shine Time." Blurters saying, "Do 'X" because you will get 'Y'" would be Meta...Cheating...That is just cheating.
I blurt in the following situation: If the problem is someone being stuck OOC, and I know they don't enjoy working through puzzling stuff out. If its not an IC quandary and just someone trying to solve something OOC and they don't enjoy that process sitting there for 10m while they're hardstuck isn't enjoyable for anyone involved including them. But you need to be acutely aware of whether its an IC or an OOC issue and what they find fun before that's okay.
@@gallavanting2041 That's not really what he was trying to Depict though, He was depicting another character taking the time to think something out IC but before they can have their RP moment, it gets ruined by the BlurterTM shouting what he should do.
I agree, but as a experienced gamer and I apparently 'blurt' as well. My group plays 3.5 D&D for the last 10 years and some of the players and the GM like to smoke sometimes during the game, while I do not. I am also the guy that has to keep track of things IC (I do the mapping as needed, carry the loot, etc). Folks will sometimes forget stuff OOC that they wouldn't forget IC, and at times I have to remind them of it. Is that 'Blurting'? I guess according to Seth it is... because that skit with the Key is something that happens a lot in my game. It is fine if the player /knows/ he has the key, but what if he forgot about it and it cost him his character? I mean, the GM can try to do stuff like make him roll Intelligence or Wisdom to see if he remembers he has the key if the player has forgotten, but the GM has no idea if the player remembers the key either. And people tend to get pretty butt-hurt over things that are kind of petty like that.
Am I the only dm that specifically keeps a handful of figures that have absolutely nothing to do with the campaign, just in case they do decide to peek. I love the look on their face when they actually think that two dragons and a lich are on the menu
We often have to use x figures to stand in for y monsters. So just because the DM has 10 beholder minis ready doesn't mean we're about to encounter 10 beholders. They could be ogres or hill giants instead.
lol I do that as well. I also "scribble random notes" when players say or do something they think is meaningless, or sometimes when they think they are onto something. By "scribble random notes" I mean I usually just doodle some lines and boxes. I've had gamers think I'm tracking things I'm not or that their seemingly random visit to a npc was important. A player once blurted something about "that must be important" and I just turned the paper around and said, "or I'm drawing boxes because it doesn't matter."
My group just uses little colored stones or small dice instead. Besides being cheap, can't tell just from the figurines what creatures they plan on showing us.
I ran a session of Dungeon World using a troll encounter. The wizard stated, "I believe I know something about this creature." That triggered a Spout Lore move. Success! I believe it was even a 10+ (sort of a crit). The wizard explained what they knew about trolls. I even aided the player with details. They changed their tactics accordingly and ended up having to run away. Even with character knowledge, a troll can be a tough fight. Some players had never encountered a troll in an RPG nor read any sourcebook. Adam Koebel has addressed metagaming on his channel with a similar viewpoint. Great video, man!
I have been playing MERP and RM since 86, and only moved to 5e the last year or so to find someone to play with here in Sisimiut, and to teach students how to play. I am a player in Lost Mine of Phandelver, and we found traces of the young green dragon. I rolled a nat 20 on my history/nature (I cannot recall), so I knew everything, but rolling was necessary.
This video perfectly encapsulates my own thoughts on Metagaming. It's only going to be a problem if it diminishes everyone's fun, and there's no real way to completely avoid it. Examining the Troll example in particular, I have a suggestion: _lean into_ the fact that the Player Characters could have pre-existing knowledge of the beasts. Write up short fables about monsters in your world, or even create catchy mnemonic phrases that people in the setting use to remember what monsters are what and how to defend against them. Like how in our world, we distinguish between the deadly Coral Snake and the harmless Milk Snake with the expression "red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, okay Jack". If Trolls are at all known to the people who populate their world - enough that they become a problem - there's going to be folk wisdom about it. Of course, folk wisdom can also be mistaken, with misconceptions, hearsay, or outright lies being passed off as truth. It might be useful for the DM to come up with several different ideas for how a monster could work or how they operate, and seed that information into the adventure. It's also a chance to justify changing around monsters to keep them interesting, if they're going off different legends (and the players need to figure out which bit of folk wisdom - if any - is accurate). This is the sort of thing I would use to justify injecting more Fairy Tale logic into a game. Like a Troll who is negatively affected by the sound of music, a Fae creature being stymied by iron nails and horseshoes, or a vampire who can totally cross running water and walk around in daylight, but gets trapped in his coffin if someone lays a rose on lid. (As an aside, the DM should always be careful to describe threats in the game as the PCs would perceive them. The Troll isn't called a Troll - unless someone else told the PCs about it - it's a "giant, lanky figure with sickly green skin, covered in growths and pustules". Keeping it down to descriptions rather than proper names not only preserves some of the mystery, but makes the players see the world from the perspective of their characters. They aren't archetypes fighting monsters of myth, they are people slogging through the wilderness and being attacked by flesh-and-blood monstrosities. It also makes the act of figuring out what creature they're fighting be all the more satisfying, rather than just being told.)
You forgot necessary metagaming under the good metagaming category. "What was it the Death Knight said to us that gave us a vague clue right before he escaped us at the end of the last game?" DM: "That was 20 minutes ago in game. Your character would remember, so if you forgot it means your character was not paying proper attention." I suppose this can be called reverse metagaming, but either way it's applying out of character circumstances to in character situations. In this instance it's basically necessary to metagame, as characters only have characters to worry about, while players have real life and the game is just an escape. Expecting players to prioritize their pretend characters in a weekly, even monthly 4 to 6 hour break from reality over their actual concerns as a human being turns a game into a responsibility and defeats the whole point.
Had this happen. We were given a few different stories about our target from different people wanting or promising large numbers of items. One said the target was probably cursed and gave us a scroll if it was true. When we finally met our target a month later (the next day in game) we'd all forgotten about the scroll and our shifty rogue spent over half an hour trying to convince/out-gamble the cursed mage who we knew was cursed by his behavior, but no one with curse removal spells was there. DM reminded us before a break about something one of the people we talked to to track down the mage gave us that might help.
I don't know that i would agree that it's metagaming. You're expected to hand out information that the players would need, that the character would already know because they live in the world. That's an expected, necessary, and accounted-for aspect of the game.
It's funny. I had a situation similar to what you said above, but it was the DM who forgot something. I had an animal companion, (a lynx named Snowball) and offered to buy her some armor. She responded with "You want me to WEAR SOMETHING!?" So I, in character, dropped the issue. A few sessions later, we met a dwarven smith. She noticed Snowball had no armor, and said "How could you let your companion walk around with no armor," or something along those lines. I responded with "She has told me she dislikes armor." The DM went silent. He had forgotten about Snowball not liking armor. He had the dwarf lady convince Snowball to let her make her some custom armor. Snowball got some sweet dwarven armor out of the deal that turned her INVISIBLE WHEN SHE STEALTHED! All at no cost to us, because these dwarves owed a favor to our benefactor.
I went to the bathroom at our last session and when I came back I was faced with two party members in the grasp of a door mimic, I paused time with an item and wanted to run up and attack, a fellow party member wanted to warn me that while I was gone they had marked out the floor traps with lights but the DM scolded him for trying to metagame. So the result was the entire party taking 164 damage from 7 fireballs. Needless to say I was pissed and argued that since my character was there he would have known that the floor traps were marked but the dm would hear none of it.
If the world is a high fantasy/high magic then it’s possible for there to be legends of weaknesses for certain monsters or even research for said weaknesses especially for a common monsters as trolls
i think the knowledge(local/other fitting ones) or bard knowledge is often a good option for that (since common foes are low DCs and easy to know). it's rollplay, but it's a good way to portray it, i think. Makes it harder when monsters are more uncommon (like Halas in PF which has weakness vs eagles)
William Belley that really only applies for common monsters like trolls as I mentioned and goblins and orcs but for say other monsters like fiends, celestials, and dinosaurs then it’s a good enough rp reason
Do you mean like a bard song including it and the like. I would not have them roll for that. I expect their PC to learn about those things. I ran into a number of item that have knowledge of things they never encounter but could.
Even in D&D -- start of combat, first thing I ask the DM is "what does my character know about this creature/opponent/monster?". Helps keep skills like nature, arcana, and religion useful. ;) I know the MM & VGM way too well (because I DM too), so I find that this check always helps me avoid metagaming and stay grounded. Also why I *love* a DM who homebrews monsters, because it's so much fun to encounter something that I, the player, have no idea about
Knowledge rolls are a good way of handling this sort of thing, and they can lead to some interesting character development. In the VtM game I'm playing, I've had implausibly good luck with rolls to determine if my character knows things about werewolves (which hasn't amounted to that much beyond little scraps of info here and there, but it's still far more than your average lick knows about the lupines). These successes got me thinking about how my character would know some of this stuff, so I modified his backstory to explain that he'd witnessed a pack of Sabbat who'd been after him and his sire get set upon by a pack of werewolves, which explained some of his knowledge.
I remember a particularly classy piece of metagaming I committed. Was playing as a goblin called Snozz - he was a Wild Magic Sorcerer who had a pet mouse that spoke to him. The first encounter we faced as a party involved a troll. Our characters may or may not have known the troll's weakness (we were all playing monstrous races and we called ourselves the Beastie Boys because why the hell not) but this wasn't the first one we'd fought in all of our time in D&D. I'd already murderised a number of trolls myself, and it gets a little tiring having to act out 'oh my, the troll is regenerating, whatever do we do' every time. So Snozz slipped the mouse from his pocket in the haze of battle. He calmly, gently, lifted the mouse up to his ear. It mewled a little bit, and Snozz nodded. Stowing the mouse back in his pocket, he lifted his hand up to the charging troll and cast Fire Bolt. ez victory after that. It was a good character moment too, because now everyone knows that this guy takes orders from a fuckin mouse. So yea. Not all metagaming is bad.
@@harperthegoblin I think he was saying throughout his whole D&D experience he was getting tired of acting that out, especially since he states that was the first encounter that they faced as a party.
Oh, I only just read these replies. Whoops. Yes, I am obviously referring to my experience as a whole. It would be exceptionally stupid if our characters didn't know the properties of a Troll if we've fought them several times in the same campaign. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I really couldn't agree with any dm that would hide the character's HP from the players. Its abstract but a character would know they're hurt, & to a certain extent would know if they're reaching their limits and of course if a character is injured they're going to react differently to danger. In fact it's more of a negative metagaming to keep trudging forward as if all is ok when your hp is low because as a player you're aware of ways that character can be resurrected, or that you can make a new character. So HP is essential to actually playing your character.
It is very commonn for injured people IRL to not realize the extent of their injuries in the heat of the moment, but hidden HP is very gritty. Not many people in my experience are that into hidden HP.
I understand the impulse to impart a sense of uncertainty to the players but in the end we are playing a game. I enjoy the "gamist" aspects as much as the narrative parts of the game. Besides, trying to describe each hit to each player gets old real quick. As a lazy GM, I say "Track your own damn damage."
Soldiers in active duty regularly check each other after a firefight. My veteran coworkers have lots of stories about taking shrapnel (or even bullets) and not noticing at all until the adrenaline cools off.
I remember once being guilty of blurting but I feel it was justified. A brand new, first-character-ever player had his wizard try to cast sleep on an uninjured tough monster that was surrounded by our single digit hp player characters. I simply said "the thing about Sleep is it puts the lowest health creatures in the area to sleep first. Sure you want to do that?" The DM was livid that I was meta gaming (and possibly sadistically looking forward to a noob-triggered TPK.)
Thats not meta gaming. A wizard would know what his spells do and you simply helped the player realize what it did. Just like how you expect your wizard not to cast fireball into a melee you would expect them to know that casting sleep near your injured allies would end badly.
I think that a certain amount of metagaming is allowed given that the monsters and races in a fantasy world would be well known, at least the more common ones. Using trolls as an example, in the Forgotten Realms there was an even called The Troll Wars. Hundreds of trolls, orcs, etc versus the humans, elves, and player races. The accounting of the battles always mentioned the burning piles of troll bodies and use of fire and acid to combat them. So given events like that a certain degree of common knowledge would be expected, IF the PC's knew about it or were from the region, or any region with large numbers of trolls. For other cases use knowledge or other applicable skill checks.
@@lunyxappocalypse7071 The point is that if you keep rewarding insane stunts, the players will come up with even insaner stunts until your game of D&D looks more like one of Feng Shui.
Hehe, that reminds me of a scene we had while playing Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40k RPG). We had to sneak into a base so being silent was everyting. However there was that one guard-post that was in our way and there was no way to silently ambush him with the weapons we had at that time. The GMs orignal plan for us was to backtrack and infiltrate the camp by either climbing a cliff next to the base or by sneaking in through the sewers below the base. However one of us said: "I will throw a grenade at him!" GM: "Why would you do that? The explosion will literally alert the whole base as well as the base 5 km down the river!". Player: "I never said anything about pulling the pin!" So he literally threw the grenade with the pin still in it and knocked out the guard by hitting him in the head with it.
So.. if your character should know tactics, but the Player doesnt.... isnt that some sort of metagaming as well? ...at least once they are higher Level 🤔 I love your troll example btw. Especially that the GM used the word troll, but then complained that the players knew what to do. Expexting the players to know what a troll is, and not describing it, it is kind of metagaming by the GM. Well, at least I could reasonably argue it to be.
First off, I assure you I watched the whole video :) I am a firm believer in a 360 approach to metagaming. It can be good, bad or neutral. When you really get down to it, the basic tenets of an RPG are all of a bunch of metagaming concessions that all players agree to. The precise knowledge of how each and every aspect of your character works and the dependability, reliability and predictability of character abilities, the concepts of dungeon crawls, etc. are all metagaming. I am so happy you included your sketch about the troll. This is one reason I really despair at the removal of "frequency" from monster stat blocks. I used to play it that if a monster was "Common" pretty much everyone knew everything about it. Like Dweebles so aptly stated - stories, fables, warnings from elders, tapestries, or any sort of regular media of the time would give you everything you needed to know about the common monsters that clearly were around enough to be categorized as such. As monster frequency went from Uncommon, to Rare, then Very Rare, the amount of reliable knowledge decreased and the more I, as a DM, would challenge player metagaming, though I always tried to be open to rationale provided from their concepts and backgrounds. A last bit of metagaming mumbo-jumbo that I really hate is secrets at the table. I have flat out told my players that they should not be actually keeping secrets from other players. If they want their character to keep information secret, they can say they are doing that but I have found that when players (at least mine) are aware of secrets, they role-play around them better than if they did not and we have the secretive player always hedging and engaging in behavior that might be counter to the party without other players knowing why. If a player says, "My paladin is going to keep the words his god spoke to him a secret from the party" I and my players are good with it. This is even better when the player with the secret tells the other players why - "My paladin is going to keep his god's words a secret because he wishes to spare the party such doom-filled prophecy".
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Me: "Well, I know what it is, but my character would have no idea." Other player: My Wizard rolls Knowledge: Local and gets a 15. DM: It's a troll. They can regenerate damage dealt to them but acid and fire damage will shut that off for a round and if it hits you with both of its claw attacks it can rend your flesh for extra damage. Other player: Kill it with fire! At least that's how I handle it in pathfinder.
@@lostsanityreturned Strangely enough, though, not a lot of people know to use knowledge skills to get meta info. That sort of blurb about the troll is exactly why I picked the Knowledge domain on my cleric. Because I can just touch something and I know what it is, what it does, and how to fight it. Especially the custom creatures that the DM likes to throw at us.
Couldn't possibly agree more, Seth. Excellent video. I get really sad when players new to my group say, "but, wait, no, I shouldn't do that, that's meta, my character doesn't know this." I always explain to my players when this happens that, look, if I didn't want you to do that, I would have made sure you didn't have whatever information you have. If you use the information you know about to play the game, don't ever worry that myself or anyone else at the table is going to be angry about it. Which is worse? A player takes an action based off of information he knows but his character might not, and the game progresses forward -- maybe I'll make a mental note that the player knows about that and change it up in the future, maybe not. Or, a player wants to take an action... but doesn't, because he thinks it's meta, and so bites his tongue and pretends not to know about it. The second option is far worse. Instead of everyone having a good time, we've got one player worrying about the knowledge he has, constantly checking himself to make sure that that knowledge doesn't accidentally seep into his characters' actions. And that really, really hurts the game. Players, if you know something, it's almost always safe to use it in your games. Nobody should get mad at you for that. If you know that in your last campaign, that monster behaved a certain way, you're well within your right to use that information -- there's a million ways you can explain your character knowing that information, and honestly, you shouldn't even need to! Just play the game and have fun with it, leave it up to your GM to worry about what information you have, because ultimately your GM is the one who controls that flow of information. Maybe you're very experienced and know a ton about the game you're playing you might think that you need to pretend you don't -- but don't do that, that's pointless and so very much not fun. Instead, play a character that knows that information or talk to your GM about it and let them know that they might want to change things around if they don't want you using that information. To expect players not to use the information they have is just... dumb, hurtful, and boring. A lot of what makes these games fun is discovering information and using it. We enjoy learning about the game world and using it to our advantage. If we then remove our ability to use that information and have to pretend to rediscover it, we're really just taking away the fun of the game.
Player characters are heroes. I'd venture even in Call of Cthulhu, even if "ordinary" heroes. Role-playing games are simultaneously crafted stories. I don't think role-playing is very interesting when you tell characters that they shouldn't play the most interesting versions of their characters. Also, a lot of things can happen "behind the scenes," so bogging the game down with conversations about rudimentary tactics as a waste of time. A basic level of neutral/good metagaming is necessary to tell a compelling story. Strangling gamers doesn't produce great games.
So metagaming is okay so long so as there is a reasonable train of thought and the players don't use metagaming to cheat. Sounds like a decent summary to me.
Two (and a half) points: First, I often find it hard to find the right line on the monster knowledge, especially when it comes to games that start with experienced heroes. If I am in a campaign that starts at 10th level (in D&D levels) there is a good chance that the heroes have fought a zombie and a troll and a dragon when they were level 1, 5, and 9. If we would have played those characters from level 1 we would have had the puzzle encounters of identifying monsters and figuring out weaknesses...so at level 10 the characters would have knowledge from those encounters that we never played. The half point is that it's useful to thinking about coding information. Just like poisonous and venomous plants and animals have certain color patterns, monsters that are red (like a red dragon) are often associated with fire. White or blue is often cold and frost. Monsters with big bony plates have high ACs. People with pointy hats and robes are often spellcasters. Second, the part about blurting and table talk is sticky because often times the divide between players and characters also goes the other way: just as characters don't know as much as their players, players don't know as much as their characters. Table talk and blurting can often be seen as "inner dialogue". Player might forget about the key from two sessions ago but the character is not going to forget it from yesterday. Player of the fighter might not know much about the wizard's spell list but the wizard and the fighter probably went over that spell list over breakfast and spent hours going over combat drills in the past few weeks.
My GM solves your first point of people jumping into a game late (or a old player making a new character) with level checks instead of a knowledge skill check (we play 3.5 D&D) if they do not have the appropriate knowledge skill. Your second point is what happens in my game all the time... people forgetting things Out of Character that they would know In Character. I mean, how does anyone (GM included) know if someone has forgotten something or not? A player who loses their character to something they OOC forgot would be pretty upset by that, so I would rather have someone remind them then not.
I posted on one of your other videos that I actually encourage my players to discuss options for another player's character to take, even if their character is not present, as long as they are only working with what the acting character would have knowledge of. Because it is ultimately up to the player whether their character has the life experience, mindset, intelligence, or wisdom for the "best" action discussed to occur to them.
Yeah, it can be done, though I think it probably works best online when you can use chat to discuss it without detracting from the experience. It’s even good because it shows the players care and are paying attention.
On the troll example- as a DM, ask the player "tell me how your character knows so much about trolls?" Let the player tell a short story about their uncle, the scared and grizzled veteran soldier and the tale he used to tell about how a troll cost him his eye. If the story is really cool you could even throw an inspiration token your players way. 🙂
The way i broke our group of blurting was by running Wraith... In Wraith every character is two halves, the main psyche and the shadow, or dark side of the personality.. You have other players play the main's shadow, so when someone starts blurting out advice to another player I would quietly remind them that the advice was coming from their shadow, and suddenly that 'friendly reminder' became their dark passenger trying to get them to do things.. 2-3 sessions and everyone stopped trying to 'remind' each other of crucial information, the nifty thing was the behavior stuck. They had gotten so out of the habit of blurting things out that they never even thought to do it when they weren't in the scene...
Of course, one way to deal with a player who played say "Lost Mine of Pilander" (or whatever) previously as say a halfling ranger, is to have them play as something else, like a half-orc barbarian, and that they, in character, simply say that they had traveled in the area before, and thus know about certain people and places (call it a History Check if you will).
Player or gm there is one part of metagaming I always insist on. You are part of a group. No screwing over the other players, or doing the exact opposite of what everyone else agrees on because "that's what my character would do." Why did you bring a character that wants to screw up the game to the game?
I have a character in my friend's campaign who will murder and die to protect hose few loyal to him, but will lie, cheat, haggle, finagle and blackmail to get the group the best deal possible for a job. And then share the profits as evenly as possible to ensure loyalty. My other character in his campaign (separate group) just kind of trusts people, even though it has burnt him before, because he thinks it is better to find out who will shaft him for small stuff before that have the chance to do worse. - - I think the second character is overall happier, while the first will end up more successful, though carrying a long list of enemies.
@@elbruces and you see I really think that philosophy is limited. It basically means you can’t run any less than perfect characters. You have to meta game in order to not backstab the group, I see no issue with this. The alternative is no evil, backstabbing or hole characters which really hurts the variety and player freedom
@@marcar9marcar972 Yes, it is limited. It's limited to making a character that would be fun to play in an RPG campaign. That's a really good limitation! It will make the RPG campaign that you're playing in fun. As opposed to making it fall apart and all complete shit. Definitely limit yourself to that!
Oddly, I had the reverse of the Troll situation happen when I ran The Cracked and Crooked Manse. My players felt like they were meta gaming if their characters knew that NACl was the chemical formula for salt, but I wasn't in the mood to make them roll for information known to everyone in the room.
Man I've never seen anyone else call out blurters. It's basically the equivalent of every character having a hive mind for any situation. Also I often do what I call "reverse metagaming" where like in the cult example if I was playing cards I'd all of the sudden really play up not knowing they're cultists, maybe hit on one of the girls so they'd invite me back to their lair for a sacrifice or something, because that's fun, and it advances the story.
@@gossamera4665 you know, i've considered doing something like that for call of cthulhu, basically forcing insane insight on all charachters. Appropriate SAN damage everytime meta knowledge was used. The danger is if players start metagaming the metagaming mechanic...
@@sanghelian I like it, the characters slowly become aware they're nothing but husks, puppets controlled by extradimensional beings whom derive sick amusement from their suffering.
Good to hear. If I can teach anyone from my many GM/player mistakes, then I'm happy. Just remember that as long as you and your players have fun, everything else is just details.
Mustache makes a good argument. You said "a troll" which implies that it is an acknowledged *fact* that a big green monster came out of the woods and _the characters all recognized it as a troll._ It could be a small jolly giant or a big goblin but it's implied that the characters all pooped their pants a little and said "crap it's a troll do we have anything to burn it with!?"
Funnily enough, I had the troll conversation today, in the context of asking me, the group GM, whether or not a player character in our Starfinder game would be aware of the helpful nature of a certain semicommon alien species. I came to the conclusion that for well-known creatures such as trolls (or, in our case, Skittermanders), I’m going to leave it up to my players in the future to decide if their character would reasonably know little facts about the creatures they encounter, save for rare monsters (the difference between knowing fire kills trolls versus taking the scroll from a Jiang Shi’s cap disables it).
Re: the troll... With my party of more-experienced players, I designed an encounter with a troll shortly after they’d had to go underwater. None of the players had fire cantrips, and all the gear was soaked. I didn’t have to disallow meta-gaming. I gave them a high-stakes puzzle and let it play out :)
One way to minimize metagaming is to shake things up a bit. Make certain monsters in your world tougher, faster, smarter, etc. For example: DMPC Ranger: We'll camp here for tonight. PC Barbarian: I'll get some firewood. DMPC Ranger: No. No campfires. No candles. No lanterns. We eat our meals cold until I say otherwise. PC Paladin: Why? DMPC Ranger: Listen. (All players roll perception checks) PC Cleric: I hear nothing. PC Wizard: Me neither. DMPC Ranger: I know. That's what's wrong. No birds. No frogs. Not even crickets. PC Fighter: What does that mean? DMPC Ranger: We're in Orc Country. PC Barbarian: What? You got us all worked up over a bunch of stinkin' orcs? DMPC Ranger: You've never met an orc. PC Barbarian: Oh yeah? (pulls out necklace of orc tusks) I pulled one from the mouth of every orc I killed. DMPC Ranger: Those weren't orcs. PC Fighter: What? What were they then? DMPC Ranger: Hybrids. Half breeds. The results of orcs forcing themselves on the females of smaller, weaker races. Mostly goblins, but sometimes halflings and gnomes. PC Paladin: So what are real orcs like? DMPC Ranger: Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Far, far more viscous. And they move in very large groups, never less than sixty in a party. PC Cleric: What happens if they find us? DMPC Ranger: If they see our camp? They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we are very, very lucky, they will do it in that order. (Yes, that is a Firefly reference)
As a GM that also plays, I often have knowledge that my character doesn't, mostly from studying dungeon maps to adapt to my own homebrew campaigns. I've learned some ways to either use or not use that information to try and keep the other players engaged and the story moving. I generally don't use that info unless the party seems to have stalled on solving a particular problem or puzzle. Sometimes that appears like my character is impulsive, but with this uncanny ability to stumble into the action. I usually make my characters have some connection to a higher power to explain their ability to "fall into" the right place once the party has stalled out. My GMs have generally liked and encouraged this, because it's not fun for any of us when the group spends 45 minutes trying to discover how to solve the same door puzzle when there is no right answer because it's a fake door (I'm looking at you, Tomb of Annihilation).
I’ve always thought it was weird that the Troll’s vulnerability to fire is commonly used as an example of metagaming. In the real world, we all know plenty of information about various creatures, even if we’ve never seen one live. Cobras are venomous! If you’re ever chased by an alligator, run in a zig zag. Most insects don’t like smoke. We even know the weaknesses of fictional monsters like vampires and werewolves. If trolls were real, you can bet every schoolkid would know they’re weak to fire.
I think metagaming would be a little too hard to resist where monsters are concerned. "Well, the monster's immune to fire damage, but my character doesn't know that, so there goes my spell slot I guess..."
With the Troll example, if discovery is important to your group a great method is to set up some scenes beforehand so that your characters learn about the upcoming monster. Matt Colville has an episode where he talks about this with the Medusa. Things like encountering "incredibly lifelike" statues of creatures outside of its lair give both players and characters insight into the monster's abilities (and plausible deniability when it comes to metagaming).
I once had someone I was playing with in a game of dnd 5E just, ignore a clue I thought was rather clear (that he said later he did get) because his character 'wasn't smart enough' there int was 8. That encounter was horrble, he actually quite after because 'he didn't trust the DM to properly balance encounters after that' There was a ring on the ground, and a docile undead in front of it, when he touched the ring it begane to chase him, but he took the ring it with him, the DM actually told him to run, and then the player preceded to run around in circles around a house (this was in a deserted town with about 6 houses) Just, the player blamed the DM for an unbalanced encounter and his character almost dieing if mine hadn't been near by, but he just 'ignored' a clue and clearly didn't do what the DM recommended... (the DM said later that he was supposed to run from that encounter) It just...bothers me to this day, I know those guys
Our table has a thing where people declare "I want to do this but I don't know if my character would do this." Then they tell us why they might or might not know it and we all decide as a group if it's something the character should know. We also can ask to do history/arcana checks for the knowledge and GM tells us how we know it if we do good on it. We do the same thing in reverse when we're playing characters we don't have the knowledge to play. "I feel like my character would know this or have something cool they could do here but I don't know it." Then everyone throws in their own knowledge to help us play.
Blurting is definitely gray area to me. Some tables enjoy it, some don't. You might not want it during a suspenseful horror scene. But during a heroic fantasy game, when we have parents taking care of kids on and off during a 4 hour session, blurting is super OK.
I don't do blurting, but the players know they can ask a player to make a INT roll. The player chooses if they want information from another player. If they do AND the make the roll, then they are given the information. It is usually to help players who may have forgotten some information, but their character may not have.
That story about 2 of your players starting D&D by reading the monster manual was way to close to home. I found the game by coming across the 2nd edition monster manual at a flea market and saving my allowance to buy it. I was 14 and read it ravenously.
The other week I walked my Wizard straight into an instant Death trap a few scenes after another PC found a map of traps and was furiously running to warn us.
Nice vid. I find myself agreeing for the most part. Personally where I stand is I wouldn't expect a party to sit around throwing ice shards and hitting a troll with a mace to feign ignorance -- and in the *exact* opposite way, that is in a sense also metagaming in the same sense lawful stupid is. Same with Lycanthropes, or at least the semi famous ones... And really if you, to use said lycanthrope example, threw werewolves at a party of martial characters without silver weapons or any IC reason to suspect they might need them, I'd argue the DM would have been cheating at that point. And then you have gotcha monsters. The completely martial fighter is completely justified to start using his spear's shaft or grabbing a bone without a knowledge check, as would be a cleric if you threw a 1e nilbog at them, because their entire purpose within the game is to screw the players.
12:30 I find this an odd way of thinking, and I can't really wrap my head around it. I always encourage my players to read the fiction related to the world we play in, right now my players are playing on Ansalon 10 years after the end of the Dragon Lance Chronicles, so I have encouraged all my players to read those books, to learn about the world. If my players don't know about the world and the politics in the world, how are they supposed to make accurate reactions to things that happens around them? Why would they care about a quickly scribbled note from Kitiara if they don't know who the blue lady is? They more the people know about the world, the more they are able to concentrate on what their place in the world is, and how events affects their character, and they will be able to get much more engaged in the story and give me a lot more material to work with as a DM
I know many people who wouldn't want to read and memorize several books and everyone in it just to play a game, including me. I think this can be dealt with differently. If your DM builds his/her own world, talk to them about where your character is from, what politics are like, etc. Just the general idea is enough in my experience. If it's the official world, a quick Google search is enough usually. If they find said letter, just quickly ask the DM if they've heard that name before, and if it's a well known name, sure. I usually prefer not to know too much about the world we play in because I love exploring it along with my characters. In our campaign I specifically made a character from a different continent so I could know nothing and ask NPCs about everything while the rest of the players who also don't know too much can play their characters as if it's all old news to them.
For in world knowledge. I feel like somethings are just common knowledge. A Greek wouldn't need to roll knowledge religion to know who Zeus is. A Roman wouldn't need to roll to know what Italy is.
Well, technically Italy wasn't a thing what the Roman Empire was, but I get your point. I mean, we all live in a world where Trolls (in the D&D sense) don't actually exist. Yet pretty much every nerd on the planet knows to use fire against them due to the hobbies we play. And yet it's supposed to be plausible that someone living in a world that literally has literal Trolls living in the swamps has never encountered this information? To say nothing of the fact that the PC are not normal people: their _jobs_ (not their hobbies) involve going into danger and fighting these things. It's almost always just as easy to justify a PC posessing knowledge about their world as it would be to claim their ignorance.
@@nickwilliams8302 But that's as you said, just the "nerds", specifically the nerds into fantasy. What would Chad McBiff or yo moma do when faced with trolls? What would you do if faced with a hippogriff or domovoi? They exist in our mythology, but not as many knows their nature. If they're considered myths in the game world as well, then the same thing applies, especially since probably next to noone knew about trolls and fire before baldur's gate. I'll admit it's less than smooth to try and police that kind of meta gaming though.
The analogy I always use for knowing a monster is harmed by "x" in most of the common monster cases (ie trolls) is to ask, "Well Bob, do you know how to kill a vampire?" When I get a positive response from the player, I ask the simple follow up, "Ever met one?".....
Have you ever met a vampire? That argument is just as ridiculous as Seth's example. Just because you never met an elephant doesn't mean you don't know what it is. Especially something popularly discussed, like a vampire?
In my early days as a DM (we were all teens) one player would apparently peek at my notes when I went to the Bathroom. They were unable to read my atrocious handwriting. I also had several dungeons planned that would take months to run, so I often flipped to a different page I my notebook confident it would be forgotten by the time it came around.
Seth, your example of fighting a troll, complete with player counter-arguments, was ON POINT! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it and talk about it in detail. Now I have something I can whip out on my smartphone and show to people if that sort of thing ever happens at the gaming table ever again.
For Blurters, almost every DM in my group simply asks the blurter "Are you there?" and that immediately shuts the person up. If the person is actually present then they'll be like "yea, sorry I thought you knew that I went to the blacksmith with him"
To the point about tactical advices: there are two things i tend to say to my players in their first session. 1) Meele equipment: wear helmets and shields if thei fit to your charakter. Are they cool? Maybe not but your character would know they save lifes! 2) Use Cover if you don't want to become a sieve. Is it metagaming? Maybe ... on the other hand the player characters should know about this stuff most of the time. You could say it is demetagaming?
My group uses Rolemaster, so not only are helmets and shields important, but so is parrying. Every first level character leaves whatever training they get with the advice, "Parry at first, THAN determine if you can afford to attack." The advice to spellcasters is usually, "I know it's heavy, but learn a weapon and PARRY!"
Damn, listening to Seth, I recognised myself as the blurter… I now feel very bad even though my original intention was to help other players. Thanks Seth for pointing it out
This is why i enjoy pathfinder with their specific knowledge checks. See a troll, roll knowledge (local) for humanoids. But yeah you could do this in session 0 at times
Another example of good metagaming in my opinion is making a character well suited for the upcoming campaign. Its not fun playing, for example, a ranger best accustomed to survival in the wilderness when 90% of the campaign will take place in an urban environment(it can work, but it takes an experienced roleplayer). On on the other side, playing a social chameleon character perfect for almost all social encounters when the campaign is a struggle for survival with nearly everything trying to kill the party, can feel equally bad.
This Reminds me of a time where the GM of our group had us fight a God as a boss, And even though one of the players had this very god as their patron was called out by our GM as a metagamer that this person knew who this god character was, and even though we in character knew it was the Shapeshifting god of insanity (forbidden knowledge) And Eldritch magic/creatures because of the legends and several Visual depections and all detailed encounters with him always having Bright Purple Eyes he claimed we never knew what we were fighting dispite it being blatantly obvious to our in universe characters and at the table players. Im not shure if this is Metagaming in a bad sencem or our Gm thinks we're just really stupid.
Revisiting this old video with a personal experience of how our table (Or at least I as a player) tries to handle monster/world knowledge. When encountering something that I feel would be in my character's wheelhouse, I ask my DM if I know what we just found b/c of my background, and if I know anything about how to handle it. Example: I'm currently playing a Kobold that grew up in a large mining/mineral city, a city that let's the Kobolds have free run of the sewers in exchange for the clutches maintaining them. While adventuring through some old ruins discovered UNDER the sewers of another town, we ran into a big monster with tentacles and a giant gaping mouth. I asked if I recognized it, was told that I do know it's an Otyugh. I asked if I knew anything about how we were going to deal with it, DM had me roll a reasonably difficult INT check. Rolled average, still failed, DM said "You are very aware of what these are as your clutch has bumped into them before, what you know to do is RUN!" So Nirk knew nothing, and I spent that fight in character trying to keep my distance and run support, and freaking out when our party's dps machine charged in. Second most memorable fight we've had so far.
Integrating the failed knowledge check as a panic response is awesome! I recommend it along with failed perception checks provoking paranoia with a "You get a feeling that your being watched!"
I've played in games with bad metagamers (the type that actually cheated by reading the modules and using that knowledge in character creation, etc) and also with people who are so militantly anti-metagaming that it gets annoying. Players who are anti-metagaming can cause the game to grind to a halt if the character they designed doesn't have a strong adventuring urge. Or they insist on trying to murder the party because they are evil-aligned. Or they are the healer but let their party members die after a big fight because "my character is just really focused on the loot, so I would go grab the treasure instead of casting spare the dying".
Yeah people who are 'anti-metagaming' but make shady characters are probably worse than metagamers. A lot of times they really are just using 'anti-metagaming' as an excuse to be a dick to others.
I've had an example of metagaming from the current campaign. The party has been dealing with a lot of undead, and as players we've been told that we'llbe dealing with more undead. My character has had a few close callsin combat and realized he had almost no ways to deal with them, so he is preparing his spells in a way that means he has some way to deal with undead at all times in abit of paranoia
More good metagaming: follow the plot when it's obviously what the DM/GM planned, talk to other PCs when your 1st level character is introduced sitting alone at a bar. 1st edition AD&D mentions player experience, sort of implicitly endorsing at least some level of metagaming.
Indeed it did, the home campaigns of Gygax and Arneson were chock full of horrible metagaming (by later rpg standards). The hobby evolved from wargaming, where you only have player knowledge.
Great video as always, Seth. I agree with everything said here, though I would submit a bit of an addendum to the "setting knowledge" example. Some games do specify that there's a great deal about the setting that PCs would not know, even if players do. World of Darkness as a whole is a good example; within individual games, the PCs know a fair amount about the goings on of their own supernatural race, but others are bound to be almost a complete mystery to them, because those other races are just as secretive. Vampires, for example, know almost nothing about werewolves, in large part because werewolves almost universally murder vampires on sight for reasons unknown to the vampires. However, by the same token, it would be pretty stupid to insist that a vampire PC trying to use a silver weapon on a werewolf was metagaming, because silver vulnerability is such a part of commonly known part of the werewolf myth that even a normal human would be aware of it. So even within this example, there are limits to what knowledge use can really be called metagaming.
One solution I've found that works: Give your character a reason to know this stuff. My (Pathfinder) is trained in Knowledge: Planes, which confuses the DM. But I took a plot hook the DM gave us (some monsters and events that happened) and found a way for him to learn this stuff (buying books, talking to various people, and having it be a sort of personal side-quest for him). It allows some meta-gaming, while still allowing the character to act in-character. It also leads to some fun plot developments, because this personal quest often happens at otherwise quiet moments, or his questions allow the DM to build tension. My fighter can reasonably say "Hey, that thing's immune to ice," but as a consequence he also tends to say things like "Yes, I would like to walk alone with you to your secluded library, Miss Representative of the Weird and Disturbing Cult!" Maybe not ideal for all types of meta-gaming, but if the intent is innocent (mine was "This game is fun! I want to read more about it! Oh look, weird critters!!!") it may be a way to gently nudge a new character into a more productive gaming mentality.
Real metagaming is similar to rules-lawyering, but instead of trying exploit loopholes in the Rules-As-Written they try to exploit continuity loopholes. For example; the Heisenplayer: a player hangs back when the party splits up into multiple groups, so he can decide later which group he joined or even claim to conveniently be somewhere else entirely. Similar to the amazing amnesiac; the player who "forgot" to say that they bought an antivenom potion this morning, right at the moment they got attacked by a snake. Or the player who rolled a bad investigation check and now is hanging around in that the room for no reason until the DM reluctantly say they may roll again.
One thing I'd also argue is that certain things called metagaming essentially represent out-of-character player skill, something that should be rewarded. A player who has played the game for years should play the game quite differently than a player who just started playing, because the former is good at the game. If you know to use fire against a troll, that means you're good at the game. Also worth noting is that a lot of challenges don't rely on the player not knowing them to be challenging. Going back to the troll example, trolls are still tough even if you know you need fire to kill them. This is because fire is a finite resource, and managing resources like that is a huge component of the challenge of a game like D&D in and of itself.
This, I see too many enemies just used as hit points to be hacked at. To be even kinda interesting, a troll should best be fought in the rain or by ambush (like yoinking someone off a bridge... Hmm wonder why that sounds familiar)
It's like vampires in modern fiction. The powers/weaknesses of vampires are so ingrained in our pop-culture that we usually don't even try to have our heroes figure out that garlic, sunlight, and stakes are the tools to use. Maybe we have some portion of them ruling out what doesn't actually work because it's myth, but usually we just roll with the knowledge that vampires are hurt by these things, and then get to the more interesting part of how our heroes implement the tools into their situation and overcome their foe.
@@SSkorkowsky It is like watching a show like Walking Dead and seeing how long it takes for people to figure out how to kill a Zombie, and then do it with ease later on. Still, everything is solved with a Knowledge skill check and it was dumb by WotC to take them away in 5e.
I usually give out rewards (XP or items) for roleplaying. That tends to cut down the excessive metagaming once players realize that not metagaming might actually get them more.
If a player is prone to cheating then there is a good chance they have experienced some really nasty gms in their past. However reading the module can also have to do with the GM being bad at relaying to the player with enough information about the layout of what they see in the location they are at. For example that dm who was against drawing the layout of the dungeon as we proceeded and instead expected us to make own own maps based on verbal description.
4:47 I actually love it when I know the source material on accident because for me its a great exercise in playing the roll. I like to act and it becomes more of an acting game for me. Yeah I'm not surprised but I'm having fun and I'm trying my best not to tell the other characters whats going on. I get to flex my improv muscles. Also I had a DM who was running curse of Strad and one of the players had run that one before as the dm so she let him be a local so it made sense when he knew things about the town that he probably shouldn't.
I 1000% agree that if you're going to call it a Troll, that means that YOU MEAN that the Characters KNOW that it is a Troll and they know what it is. If that's not the case then you should have not named it. I actually come up with even more colorful descriptions, and if a player recognizes the thing I don't care at all if they then "know" what it is and respond appropriately.
Eh... it is what knowledge skill checks are for. And if the game doesn't have that, that is poor game design and not the player's fault. On top of that, if the game doesn't have some sort of lore/knowledge system, how is a player suppose to figure out they need fire and acid to kill a Troll... how does the game separate IC and OOC knowledge? I mean, lets say you were in a Tavern and a farmer wanted to hire the party to kill the beast that is killing his cows. He has seen it and describes it to them, be he has no idea what it is. How does the party members figure it out then? Do they just know it is a Troll and get to look at the MM or what? What if they think it is Tolkien Trolls OOC because they are brand new players and think they have to turn to stone in sunlight to defeat it? Gah, it is so stupid then to hold that against the players.
@@blktom Oh no, not my intent with that. What I am saying is, IF I were to lazily say, "You see a troll!", the implication there is that I assume that the players, and their characters, know EXACTLY what a troll is and what the deal is. And I should NOT expect them to pretend that they don't. If they don't know that, or aren't supposed to know that, then I *should not have said it that way to begin with*. It's not that I would hold them not knowing "troll" against them. Quite the opposite in fact, if I as the DM simply name-dropped a monster ( implying they should be familiar with it ), and then the players asked for information; there wouldn't be mechanics involved. I'd simply tell them that this is something their character knows. If it's supposed to be mysterious, then I should describe the thing in vivid detail, talk about its claws, how its skin seems almost plantlike- how as it tears its own flesh as it comes ripping through a door but then a moment later seems totally unharmed. And on and on. Then we can have mechanics rolls and all of that; or even better they can run away from it, go ask an NPC or do "resarch", and then come back, armed with knowledge gained. Whatever works.
@@abortedlord Fair enough, but I still like Identification mechanics. That way even if the GM says Troll, well, we all know what a Troll is, but our characters don't. It is still on us to RP it properly till we identify it. I just kind of hate 'gotcha' moments. I don't want the GM and player to feel like it is a us verse them situation... I have been there, on both sides, when I was younger and inexperienced as a GM and a player. I just want to enjoy the game and hang out with my friends.
@@blktom What do you mean, "even if"? Are you implying that you roll an ID check every time your characters come across an example of any creature at all?
@@abortedlord For most combat situations, yes. Pretty much anything we want to ask about of the monster requires a ID check. For example, if we are in the Underdark and are fighting Drow, we probably will not ID Drow after the first encounter. But if the Mage forgets what their Spell Resistance is, he would have to ID it and then ask. It is a free action, so no real biggie, but you are wasting that first turn confirming that yes, they are indeed Drow.
Many years ago my brother ran the introductory adventure for FASAs Star Trek RPG, which was a lot of fun but.... A few years later with a different group he ran the exact same intro adventure. I didn't say anything but instead played my character as written, letting the other new players make the decisions and figuring things out. So my knowledge of the adventure was unused as I didn't want to ruin it for the others. In the end it really didn't matter as the adventure was written for a TOS style of play, being created before the Next Generation, but the new players were more TNG which put a totally different spin on how they handled the events and how the GM reacted and modified the adventure. Great video Seth, very insightful.
I like metagaming blurters. I let my players decide together what they want to do. The player of a character has final say but if they want to discuss what to do, especially players who are less experienced with the game that is all good in my games. I made the game tough I want them to have every advantage. Now if the character does not have the knowledge I would ask the player to make a decision based on what the character knows. But you are not your character and all the players make up a team so I allow them to be teammates just like a co-op boardgame would run.
I definitely agree with the latter exploration of the troll example. It's something where trying to pretend not to know how to deal with the situation really only drags things out artificially, until you get some sort of cue that it's okay to actually use that thing you know. Furthermore, I strongly agree with your suggestion to reskin the monster. If you want your players to have the experience of meeting something new and having to figure out how to deal with it, then you need to be a bit creative and actually have them meet something new to them, not just to their characters. Because having them genuinely not know what to do can lead to more compelling roleplay and more interesting gameplay. As for some of the "metagaming" involving game mechanics, it seems to me like that's the sort of thing that stressing about will ultimately take away from the game. Because it is just that - a game. If you're not going to let the players meaningfully understand and engage with the mechanics, then why aren't you just using a simpler game that doesn't have those sorts of mechanics in the first place?
For common stuff like trolls, let the character know some information. Make some of it false. And have the trolls only fight in heavy rain storms. Or Vampires only fight in pitch-dark caves (with magic or minions to extinguish light) and werewolves only live in metal-poor regions. If the characters know the creatures' weaknesses, you KNOW the creatures do also, and will take countermeasures against their weakness. - - - I recently had a vampire sit at the bottom of a dwarven complex filled with various tribes of orcs and goblins and such, each led and controlled by a vampire minion. The party almost didn't make it to the bottom, and the drained a lot of expendable resources to get there and defeat the vampire. One death, and all but two were dealing with burns, broken bones, sprains, bandaged cuts and so on. And all were deeply exhausted. And they felt that they had EARNED that victory.
Here's my problem, if I'm playing D&D and I have low HP. One of my party asks about my HP, I should tell the, my HP is fine because that's what my character would do but that also makes me not a team player.
There's also the issue where your party members may be able to visually see in game that your character is injured. If you've taken 80% damage, most people should be able to figure out that you're a good target for cure wounds
Your game master philosophy is pretty close to mine, I think haha! I actually prefer my players to be as optimized and strategically smart as they are comfortable being; if there are questions about in-game knowledge, I'll settle it with a skill check, but I really don't like my parties to feel helpless too often. I think it's discouraging and demoralizing for most kinds of players. I don't mind powergaming in my parties at all. The characters I'm running a session for should have a chance to feel like heros and badasses, if that's what they enjoy. And I prefer the party to be universally optimized, whatever the goal is for their character, so no one feels like they aren't contributing, and each player secretly feels they are the star of the show. If they kill the big bad in Act 1, that's my fault, not theirs :D
I feel like there is trouble discerning metagaming and superstition. Example: While a lot of plant type enemies in D&D are not especially suspectible to fire since a healthy plant ususally doesnt burn much easier than a healthy animal, players almost always resort to using fire. There are similliar tropes with using holy attacks against undead or silver against lycanthropes, as presented in this video. But all these superstitions can make the encounters more exciting when there are exceptions. Players may also know tropes out of character that does not work in a game sytem, and then they do go out of their way in encounters to use their "metagame" knowledge which only adds extra fun to the game.
Wooden stake through the heard, chop off the head and born both parts in separate fires. Works on pretty much everything. - So says my half-orc fighter.
A long time ago I guest GM'ed a CoC game with some serious meta gamers. It was a modern setting and they as characters said they were going to a bookstore to buy CoC. Fuckit I thought, it's not like they as players don't know the general material anyway, and let them buy the very custom adventure I was running. Then we had a serious sanity check as they read about their characters as pre-generated characters for the adventure and them reading the very adventure they were in.
One time, my party encountered a beholder Me: I would like to run away, because that is a fucking beholder DM: Your character doesnt know what a beholder is Me: Yeah he does, and he has a phobia of them. Check my notes.
Great video Seth, really enjoyed it, and it all really resonated with me. I suppose too that metagaming can be situational, and depend on the way it is played. So you could have a situation in Call of Cthulhu where a player continually gets their investigator to roll skill checks on everything they are 'low' on in the hope that they get lucky and advance that skill. The operative word is continually! To me that is a type of metagaming as they are trying to game the system. However, if played correctly I think it works. An investigator says "my history (or whatever) skill is very poor, in my downtime I'll read up a little on the history of America, Britain, or shoot off a few rounds on the range, whatever. And every chance I get I'll test my history, latin, archaeology, hand gun skill in the field to see if any of it sticks. They are essentially the same thing. But in the first example it is a shameless, artless attempt to game the system, in the second example the player has given it some thought and they are role playing their investigator's attempt to become better.
Great video, Seth! You have a lot of good points. My main takeaways here are: Number one, that the more the DM trusts the players and the more the players trust the DM, the better the game is going to be. I played in a game where my character's quirk was that she enjoyed taking damage. I had to trust the DM not to take advantage of that dynamic and kill my character needlessly. But the DM also had to trust me not to take things too far and put my character too much into harm's way. I consider that to be good metagaming combined with player/DM trust. And number two: it seems to me that bad metagaming tends to be selfish. It is usually things that only benefit the character or the player but don't benefit the game as a whole. Whereas good metagaming is usually something that takes the game as a whole and all the players at the table into account. One thing you didn't mention that I consider to be usually good metagaming, but can slide into "blurter" territory is the "reminder". One player reminding another player that they have a certain ability that would be really useful right now. I think this is alright, because while players tend to sometimes forget things, it wouldn't be in character for them to forget their special ability. But I know some DMs that don't like players reminding each other of things like that.
The troll is such a well known example, but are trolls rare in DnD? If you ask me, every secound village has a troll problem. People know about trolls. Why shouldn't players know about it? Prepare your journey.
I don't understand why anyone would think knowing your character's HP is metagaming. Like, in _real life_ I can easily tell if I'm hurt or tired, and I can make a pretty good guess as to whether something will significantly damage me. And judging by how often people complain about being tired, or aches and pains, or express being scared of heights or driving fast or animals or something, I don't think I'm alone here.
I once heard of this one time players were cheating by looking behind the GM Screen when the GM went to the restroom, as noted above. They found no game notes, no adventure, no rulebook. All they found was a note reading "There's nothing you can do" over and over, like a Jack Torrence novel.
That's awesome. I'm gonna write that on the back of my screen lol
I actually clapped.
Bravo
Good metagaming that everyone should do:
JOIN THE REST OF THE GOD DAMN GROUP.
I will flat out make you roll a new character if your character decides not to join the party because "It's not what my character would do"
I agree wholeheartedly with that. After entire sessions where the party split up and we had to do 5 seperate stories, one for each player, (I suppose the urban environment lend itself to selfish choices) I just said to them they needed to do things together. Even if one of them wanted to do something personal, do it with the group. If you don't wanna wait for something to do, don't make the others wait.
Generally speaking, unless the character or player involved is a complete idiot, what the character would want to do and the optimal thing to do, at least in combat, are the same freakin thing.
I actually semi-retired a character I was playing for this very reason.
Playing VTM I made a cult leader type who is raising his humanity. Which means as that gets higher killing, stealing, even lying becomes a problem. He got to a point where I felt he honestly wouldn't leave his group unless forced to, so I asked the gm if i could roll up someone new and let this guy kind of turn into a NPC.
New guy is a former spy.. kind of inspired by Burn Notice.. So he's pretty much always interested in doing stuff with the group. Build up some friendships to use for his own goals later. He's becoming my favorite pc I ever made by far.
What about if the DM keeps kicking your character away from the group, even as you make it do some stuff it would not do (metagaming), in order to go to the party
@@Zantonny Dude yes.. or the one player who just shrugs and says "sure why not." to everything, despite being thrown every hook possible for their character. I really dont get the loner type or the person who just obviously isnt into it but wont say so when asked what the issue is. (character not what they thought, campaign isnt doing it, etc) Two sides of the same coin in my book.
To quote a post from RPG horror stories, “am I smart enough to know what a door is?”
"Am I calm enough to use a door knob ?"
"Am I smart enough to know what a story is?"
@@primeemperor9196 wait am I smart enough to know what a what is
@@robweb2928 Can I speak intelligently? Can I even smart?
Am I door enough to smart a calm??
I wish you 4 would stream your D&D games. They always look so interesting, but I get getting everyone together on a schedule can be difficult.
You four? I...you do know...ah hell, I just can't do it. It'd be like telling someone the Easter Bunny isn't real, and Bun-Bun would kill me if I did that. Sure. Agreed. Seth, You four should definitely stream some games. What's that one guy's name again? :)
It really has to be extra hard for all of them to play together considering Dweebles' luck. Remember that time he had to cover his boss' shift because his child was being born? Or that time his mom died? Or that time he was held as a hostage?
I'd like to see him do a 5 or 10 minute video just to further flesh out the crew, they are pretty amusing, but I imagine that would be a LOT of work.
Weirdly, only one of them can be on camera at a time.
I’m shocked how much he looks like his brother, I mean if they were twins sure, but they’re 4 years apart and his cousin Merl is eerily similar too. It was cool to meet them all at Origins last year, nice guys.
I ran a one-shot that opened with all the characters drinking a "Potion of Infinite Meta Knowledge." The PCs became aware that they were being controlled by otherworldly beings playing a game in someone's living room, and gained all the knowledge of the players, but they still had to act in character.
Fun one-shot. I don't think it would work in an extended game.
It absolutely would, ever heard of LitRPGs?
@@punishedwhispers1218 Nope. But I'll definitely be googling it when I get off work.
I really appreciated that you didn't try to paint all metagaming as inherently bad, because some kinds really are harmless. Matt Colville really phrased it really well in his video about metagaming, in which he says that the problem isn't about metagaming, but about sportsmanship. And from what you said, you're right there with him!
The truly worst kind of metagaming. Peeking at the DM's notes. I looked away to pour a drink and suddenly the player to my right knew to go back to room 16 and tickle the chest to make it open (don't even ask).
The guy was a repeat offender, and got exiled after another player told me he literally picked up and read ahead in my notebook when I went to the W.C.
That's not even metagaming, that's just plain cheating. He's gone beyond having his character act on player knowledge the character shouldn't know - the character's acting on knowledge his PLAYER shouldn't know. Call a cheat a cheat, and kick 'em out.
damn, that's kinda wack to cheat like that.
@@strandedstarfish The guy was a real character out of game, I don't know what was going on with him to be honest
@@ProjectBarcodeError Wickedy wack
@@richmcgee434
Exactly, it's not the acting on dishonestly acquired OOC knowledge that's the problem; it's dishonestly acquiring that knowledge in the first place.
Best kind of meta-gaming is when the more active players turn to the less front-line ones and ask for their input, in-character. Sure, my noble and self-righteous arse might not normally ask the druid girl for her input, but if that player keeps getting talked over by someone else or isn't getting much of a chance to do anything, I'm going to try to give them that opportunity, but maybe flavour it in an in-character way.
This is great to remember when playing with kids, new players, or people who are just plain shy.
"but maybe flavor it in an in-character way" That's my rule! Any in character Meta gaming I let slide! At least the are RPing! xD
I've always liked the common knowledge thing. Everyone knows fire and acid for trolls. It's fun to add to it instead of subtract from it. For instance less well known creatures add into the area mythos with disinformation from npcs. "Everyone knows" how old Scoggins the retired adventurer dissolved a gelatinous cube with a bag of salt back in his dungeoneering days. "Everyone knows" that Ilithids can't control your mind when you're singing in elvish or thinking in dwarvish. Or, "everyone knows" how if you slowly raise the temperature of water a grung can't detect it and will stay still until it boils to death. (based on a real life lie about frogs that "everyone knows")
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the PCs would have heard a story about a guy who warded off a troll by waving a torch around. If fire completely counters their regeneration, trolls are going to be _terrified_ of flames. PCs who get ambushed by trolls at night are going to be in for an interesting encounter when the pack refuses to get close to the campfire. Acid, perhaps less commonly. How often does a commoner keep a flask of acid on them? Not unless they're an alchemist of some kind, I don't think.
The same can go for silvered weapons on werewolves and other creatures. The players have probably heard that certain monsters don't like to be around certain kinds of jewelry, or that some old, local Lord has apparently been ruling for a hundred years strong but doesn't treat their guests to fine meals with silverware, but some other shiny metal.
To be fair, waving a torch to ward off an attacker works on lots of things. Most natural animals, mummies, book golems - hell, I'm pretty sure it would work on me. Who wants to get smacked with a torch? Looks painful.
It is something I like about 3.5 D&D, the knowledge system. If your character has the appropriate Knowledge skill, they can make a free roll to identify the monster. The next round they can ask a single question about the Monster after a second roll, and keep going till they fail a roll or don't care to ask or the things is dead. Creatures with Zero hit dice or level adjustment is something anyone can identify... Goblins and Orcs fall under that category. The good thing about a troll is you can beat it down and then burn it later... Hydras on the other hand... yeah.
I like to play superstitious characters. Fire stops trolls? clearly ice heals them, so the wizard has to avoid using chill touch. It's fun to add to what a player knows to make what a character knows, and then I just try to keep it to something that could reasonably be a bar rumour (eg hill giants are big idiots, but I can't know they have 5 int. I might know that fire stops trolls, but not acid, or I might think it's only fire & acid combined or something.)
@Geidai013 , It has been the "House Rule " in my local area for the pass 30 years, Trolls will tear out burn flesh from their bodies to regenerate over fire / acid dmg area.
My girlfriend and I love your videos, you're like our pretend cool uncle teaching us the ways of tabel top RPG's.
Why do you and your girlfriend have the same hypothetical uncle?
@@N8Bakka cause that's what cool kids do
@@meltinggoo3272 Stepbro what are you doing?
Didn't think that one through. I assure you guys we weren't related.
@@DJ-mh3ss Luke & Leia ❤️
I have to disagree a bit about the blurters. In my experience they are not the people who are most comfortable with metagaming but the people most emerged in the game or the scene that simply have the least experience in roleplaying and/or a lack of selfcontroll.
Yeah, Blurters as he described them are just trying to be helpful. Although I would say it is still taking away from another persons "Shine Time." Blurters saying, "Do 'X" because you will get 'Y'" would be Meta...Cheating...That is just cheating.
I blurt in the following situation: If the problem is someone being stuck OOC, and I know they don't enjoy working through puzzling stuff out. If its not an IC quandary and just someone trying to solve something OOC and they don't enjoy that process sitting there for 10m while they're hardstuck isn't enjoyable for anyone involved including them. But you need to be acutely aware of whether its an IC or an OOC issue and what they find fun before that's okay.
@@gallavanting2041 That's not really what he was trying to Depict though, He was depicting another character taking the time to think something out IC but before they can have their RP moment, it gets ruined by the BlurterTM shouting what he should do.
@@HexedSyndra but at the same time he was depicting that as what blurting in general was.
I agree, but as a experienced gamer and I apparently 'blurt' as well. My group plays 3.5 D&D for the last 10 years and some of the players and the GM like to smoke sometimes during the game, while I do not. I am also the guy that has to keep track of things IC (I do the mapping as needed, carry the loot, etc). Folks will sometimes forget stuff OOC that they wouldn't forget IC, and at times I have to remind them of it. Is that 'Blurting'? I guess according to Seth it is... because that skit with the Key is something that happens a lot in my game. It is fine if the player /knows/ he has the key, but what if he forgot about it and it cost him his character? I mean, the GM can try to do stuff like make him roll Intelligence or Wisdom to see if he remembers he has the key if the player has forgotten, but the GM has no idea if the player remembers the key either. And people tend to get pretty butt-hurt over things that are kind of petty like that.
Am I the only dm that specifically keeps a handful of figures that have absolutely nothing to do with the campaign, just in case they do decide to peek.
I love the look on their face when they actually think that two dragons and a lich are on the menu
Calm down there satan! I love that idea
We often have to use x figures to stand in for y monsters. So just because the DM has 10 beholder minis ready doesn't mean we're about to encounter 10 beholders. They could be ogres or hill giants instead.
I will also randomly roll dice and make comments under my breath or raise my eyebrow or shake my head.
lol I do that as well. I also "scribble random notes" when players say or do something they think is meaningless, or sometimes when they think they are onto something. By "scribble random notes" I mean I usually just doodle some lines and boxes. I've had gamers think I'm tracking things I'm not or that their seemingly random visit to a npc was important. A player once blurted something about "that must be important" and I just turned the paper around and said, "or I'm drawing boxes because it doesn't matter."
My group just uses little colored stones or small dice instead.
Besides being cheap, can't tell just from the figurines what creatures they plan on showing us.
I ran a session of Dungeon World using a troll encounter. The wizard stated, "I believe I know something about this creature."
That triggered a Spout Lore move. Success! I believe it was even a 10+ (sort of a crit).
The wizard explained what they knew about trolls. I even aided the player with details.
They changed their tactics accordingly and ended up having to run away. Even with character knowledge, a troll can be a tough fight.
Some players had never encountered a troll in an RPG nor read any sourcebook.
Adam Koebel has addressed metagaming on his channel with a similar viewpoint.
Great video, man!
I have been playing MERP and RM since 86, and only moved to 5e the last year or so to find someone to play with here in Sisimiut, and to teach students how to play. I am a player in Lost Mine of Phandelver, and we found traces of the young green dragon. I rolled a nat 20 on my history/nature (I cannot recall), so I knew everything, but rolling was necessary.
This video perfectly encapsulates my own thoughts on Metagaming. It's only going to be a problem if it diminishes everyone's fun, and there's no real way to completely avoid it.
Examining the Troll example in particular, I have a suggestion: _lean into_ the fact that the Player Characters could have pre-existing knowledge of the beasts. Write up short fables about monsters in your world, or even create catchy mnemonic phrases that people in the setting use to remember what monsters are what and how to defend against them. Like how in our world, we distinguish between the deadly Coral Snake and the harmless Milk Snake with the expression "red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, okay Jack". If Trolls are at all known to the people who populate their world - enough that they become a problem - there's going to be folk wisdom about it.
Of course, folk wisdom can also be mistaken, with misconceptions, hearsay, or outright lies being passed off as truth. It might be useful for the DM to come up with several different ideas for how a monster could work or how they operate, and seed that information into the adventure. It's also a chance to justify changing around monsters to keep them interesting, if they're going off different legends (and the players need to figure out which bit of folk wisdom - if any - is accurate). This is the sort of thing I would use to justify injecting more Fairy Tale logic into a game. Like a Troll who is negatively affected by the sound of music, a Fae creature being stymied by iron nails and horseshoes, or a vampire who can totally cross running water and walk around in daylight, but gets trapped in his coffin if someone lays a rose on lid.
(As an aside, the DM should always be careful to describe threats in the game as the PCs would perceive them. The Troll isn't called a Troll - unless someone else told the PCs about it - it's a "giant, lanky figure with sickly green skin, covered in growths and pustules". Keeping it down to descriptions rather than proper names not only preserves some of the mystery, but makes the players see the world from the perspective of their characters. They aren't archetypes fighting monsters of myth, they are people slogging through the wilderness and being attacked by flesh-and-blood monstrosities. It also makes the act of figuring out what creature they're fighting be all the more satisfying, rather than just being told.)
You forgot necessary metagaming under the good metagaming category. "What was it the Death Knight said to us that gave us a vague clue right before he escaped us at the end of the last game?" DM: "That was 20 minutes ago in game. Your character would remember, so if you forgot it means your character was not paying proper attention."
I suppose this can be called reverse metagaming, but either way it's applying out of character circumstances to in character situations. In this instance it's basically necessary to metagame, as characters only have characters to worry about, while players have real life and the game is just an escape. Expecting players to prioritize their pretend characters in a weekly, even monthly 4 to 6 hour break from reality over their actual concerns as a human being turns a game into a responsibility and defeats the whole point.
Had this happen. We were given a few different stories about our target from different people wanting or promising large numbers of items. One said the target was probably cursed and gave us a scroll if it was true. When we finally met our target a month later (the next day in game) we'd all forgotten about the scroll and our shifty rogue spent over half an hour trying to convince/out-gamble the cursed mage who we knew was cursed by his behavior, but no one with curse removal spells was there. DM reminded us before a break about something one of the people we talked to to track down the mage gave us that might help.
I don't know that i would agree that it's metagaming. You're expected to hand out information that the players would need, that the character would already know because they live in the world. That's an expected, necessary, and accounted-for aspect of the game.
It's funny. I had a situation similar to what you said above, but it was the DM who forgot something. I had an animal companion, (a lynx named Snowball) and offered to buy her some armor. She responded with "You want me to WEAR SOMETHING!?" So I, in character, dropped the issue. A few sessions later, we met a dwarven smith. She noticed Snowball had no armor, and said "How could you let your companion walk around with no armor," or something along those lines. I responded with "She has told me she dislikes armor." The DM went silent. He had forgotten about Snowball not liking armor. He had the dwarf lady convince Snowball to let her make her some custom armor. Snowball got some sweet dwarven armor out of the deal that turned her INVISIBLE WHEN SHE STEALTHED!
All at no cost to us, because these dwarves owed a favor to our benefactor.
I went to the bathroom at our last session and when I came back I was faced with two party members in the grasp of a door mimic, I paused time with an item and wanted to run up and attack, a fellow party member wanted to warn me that while I was gone they had marked out the floor traps with lights but the DM scolded him for trying to metagame. So the result was the entire party taking 164 damage from 7 fireballs. Needless to say I was pissed and argued that since my character was there he would have known that the floor traps were marked but the dm would hear none of it.
@@RoachDoggJr106 Sacred cock and balls, that is a _shitty_ thing to do. And it's like, _backwards_ metagaming on his part.
Call of Cthulhu: Were knowing a monster means you have the benefit of being aware of the fact that you're about to die or go insane.
Or both.
If the world is a high fantasy/high magic then it’s possible for there to be legends of weaknesses for certain monsters or even research for said weaknesses especially for a common monsters as trolls
i think the knowledge(local/other fitting ones) or bard knowledge is often a good option for that (since common foes are low DCs and easy to know). it's rollplay, but it's a good way to portray it, i think. Makes it harder when monsters are more uncommon (like Halas in PF which has weakness vs eagles)
William Belley that really only applies for common monsters like trolls as I mentioned and goblins and orcs but for say other monsters like fiends, celestials, and dinosaurs then it’s a good enough rp reason
Do you mean like a bard song including it and the like. I would not have them roll for that. I expect their PC to learn about those things.
I ran into a number of item that have knowledge of things they never encounter but could.
Nope, too much familiarity breaks the mystery,
@@Tony-dh7mz Then put in effort and make the mystery.
Even in D&D -- start of combat, first thing I ask the DM is "what does my character know about this creature/opponent/monster?". Helps keep skills like nature, arcana, and religion useful. ;) I know the MM & VGM way too well (because I DM too), so I find that this check always helps me avoid metagaming and stay grounded. Also why I *love* a DM who homebrews monsters, because it's so much fun to encounter something that I, the player, have no idea about
Knowledge rolls are a good way of handling this sort of thing, and they can lead to some interesting character development. In the VtM game I'm playing, I've had implausibly good luck with rolls to determine if my character knows things about werewolves (which hasn't amounted to that much beyond little scraps of info here and there, but it's still far more than your average lick knows about the lupines). These successes got me thinking about how my character would know some of this stuff, so I modified his backstory to explain that he'd witnessed a pack of Sabbat who'd been after him and his sire get set upon by a pack of werewolves, which explained some of his knowledge.
I remember a particularly classy piece of metagaming I committed.
Was playing as a goblin called Snozz - he was a Wild Magic Sorcerer who had a pet mouse that spoke to him. The first encounter we faced as a party involved a troll. Our characters may or may not have known the troll's weakness (we were all playing monstrous races and we called ourselves the Beastie Boys because why the hell not) but this wasn't the first one we'd fought in all of our time in D&D. I'd already murderised a number of trolls myself, and it gets a little tiring having to act out 'oh my, the troll is regenerating, whatever do we do' every time.
So Snozz slipped the mouse from his pocket in the haze of battle. He calmly, gently, lifted the mouse up to his ear. It mewled a little bit, and Snozz nodded. Stowing the mouse back in his pocket, he lifted his hand up to the charging troll and cast Fire Bolt.
ez victory after that. It was a good character moment too, because now everyone knows that this guy takes orders from a fuckin mouse.
So yea. Not all metagaming is bad.
Your DM made you act shocked at the same thing multiple times in the same campaign.
@@harperthegoblin I think he was saying throughout his whole D&D experience he was getting tired of acting that out, especially since he states that was the first encounter that they faced as a party.
Oh, I only just read these replies. Whoops.
Yes, I am obviously referring to my experience as a whole. It would be exceptionally stupid if our characters didn't know the properties of a Troll if we've fought them several times in the same campaign.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I really couldn't agree with any dm that would hide the character's HP from the players. Its abstract but a character would know they're hurt, & to a certain extent would know if they're reaching their limits and of course if a character is injured they're going to react differently to danger. In fact it's more of a negative metagaming to keep trudging forward as if all is ok when your hp is low because as a player you're aware of ways that character can be resurrected, or that you can make a new character. So HP is essential to actually playing your character.
Agreed. The hit points game mechanic is there precisely to aid the player in estimating risk of character death.
How is knowing your own HP meta gaming? A character would know how hurt they feel and be able to see their wounds right?
It is very commonn for injured people IRL to not realize the extent of their injuries in the heat of the moment, but hidden HP is very gritty. Not many people in my experience are that into hidden HP.
I understand the impulse to impart a sense of uncertainty to the players but in the end we are playing a game. I enjoy the "gamist" aspects as much as the narrative parts of the game.
Besides, trying to describe each hit to each player gets old real quick. As a lazy GM, I say "Track your own damn damage."
Soldiers in active duty regularly check each other after a firefight. My veteran coworkers have lots of stories about taking shrapnel (or even bullets) and not noticing at all until the adrenaline cools off.
Theoretically you might know you’re hurt but not in the format of # out of Max
Yes the character can know they are hurt .
But not how hurt to a exact point & how close to death .
I remember once being guilty of blurting but I feel it was justified. A brand new, first-character-ever player had his wizard try to cast sleep on an uninjured tough monster that was surrounded by our single digit hp player characters. I simply said "the thing about Sleep is it puts the lowest health creatures in the area to sleep first. Sure you want to do that?" The DM was livid that I was meta gaming (and possibly sadistically looking forward to a noob-triggered TPK.)
Thats not meta gaming. A wizard would know what his spells do and you simply helped the player realize what it did. Just like how you expect your wizard not to cast fireball into a melee you would expect them to know that casting sleep near your injured allies would end badly.
Adversial DMs kill it for me. Roleplay is half the game to me, and meat grinder roleplay feels like wasted time 90% of the time.
@@TheBones1188 i didnt ask how many of my friends are in range, i said cast fireball
I think that a certain amount of metagaming is allowed given that the monsters and races in a fantasy world would be well known, at least the more common ones. Using trolls as an example, in the Forgotten Realms there was an even called The Troll Wars. Hundreds of trolls, orcs, etc versus the humans, elves, and player races. The accounting of the battles always mentioned the burning piles of troll bodies and use of fire and acid to combat them. So given events like that a certain degree of common knowledge would be expected, IF the PC's knew about it or were from the region, or any region with large numbers of trolls. For other cases use knowledge or other applicable skill checks.
Or you can spice it up. Only ice works on this troll. Why? The stories you heard we're mere myths
If someone is being creative in combat, *never punish that.*
But be careful what you reward, too, because there's a fine line between creative and crazy/silly.
@@0x777 Well... Whatever works.
@@lunyxappocalypse7071 The point is that if you keep rewarding insane stunts, the players will come up with even insaner stunts until your game of D&D looks more like one of Feng Shui.
Hehe, that reminds me of a scene we had while playing Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40k RPG). We had to sneak into
a base so being silent was everyting. However there was that one guard-post that was in our way and there was
no way to silently ambush him with the weapons we had at that time.
The GMs orignal plan for us was to backtrack and infiltrate the camp by either climbing a cliff next to the base or
by sneaking in through the sewers below the base.
However one of us said: "I will throw a grenade at him!"
GM: "Why would you do that? The explosion will literally alert the whole base as well as the base 5 km down the river!".
Player: "I never said anything about pulling the pin!"
So he literally threw the grenade with the pin still in it and knocked out the guard by hitting him in the head with it.
@@Geographus666 ok that's amazing
Dude the platapus comment was freaking hilarious.
The only thing that could have made that any funnier would have been a platypus stuffy suddenly appearing next to Dweebles.
So..
if your character should know tactics, but the Player doesnt.... isnt that some sort of metagaming as well? ...at least once they are higher Level 🤔
I love your troll example btw. Especially that the GM used the word troll, but then complained that the players knew what to do. Expexting the players to know what a troll is, and not describing it, it is kind of metagaming by the GM. Well, at least I could reasonably argue it to be.
Like most things on the internet terms like meta gaming tend to become more and more hyperbolic and broad as time goes on.
More so in the crazy climate around now,
Pamper to the crazies like SJW’s and you get sucked down the crazy tubes with them,
I honestly think that a lot of the people who decry metagming and claim that it's fun to pretend to know things you don't have never actually played.
You mean like how kids today turned Shaggy into the new Chuck Norris?
@@Tony-dh7mz This isn't a politics channel, don't talk politics
@@Tony-dh7mz that doesn't even make sense. Are you aware that you've done what you're complaining about?
First off, I assure you I watched the whole video :)
I am a firm believer in a 360 approach to metagaming. It can be good, bad or neutral. When you really get down to it, the basic tenets of an RPG are all of a bunch of metagaming concessions that all players agree to. The precise knowledge of how each and every aspect of your character works and the dependability, reliability and predictability of character abilities, the concepts of dungeon crawls, etc. are all metagaming.
I am so happy you included your sketch about the troll. This is one reason I really despair at the removal of "frequency" from monster stat blocks. I used to play it that if a monster was "Common" pretty much everyone knew everything about it. Like Dweebles so aptly stated - stories, fables, warnings from elders, tapestries, or any sort of regular media of the time would give you everything you needed to know about the common monsters that clearly were around enough to be categorized as such. As monster frequency went from Uncommon, to Rare, then Very Rare, the amount of reliable knowledge decreased and the more I, as a DM, would challenge player metagaming, though I always tried to be open to rationale provided from their concepts and backgrounds.
A last bit of metagaming mumbo-jumbo that I really hate is secrets at the table. I have flat out told my players that they should not be actually keeping secrets from other players. If they want their character to keep information secret, they can say they are doing that but I have found that when players (at least mine) are aware of secrets, they role-play around them better than if they did not and we have the secretive player always hedging and engaging in behavior that might be counter to the party without other players knowing why. If a player says, "My paladin is going to keep the words his god spoke to him a secret from the party" I and my players are good with it. This is even better when the player with the secret tells the other players why - "My paladin is going to keep his god's words a secret because he wishes to spare the party such doom-filled prophecy".
There's only 1 day left to vote for the 2019 ENnie awards. I'm up for Best Online Content, and you can help. Vote for the ENnies here: www.ennie-awards.com/vote/2019/
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You got my vote! Keep up the fantastic work!
@@chrisgerardy2877 same on my side! you deserve it, Seth
Seth ROCKS! Woooooo!
Done. You deserve that award indeed.
So....what you are sayin is a 5 is a bad thing...
It’s not like Michelin stars...
Me: "Well, I know what it is, but my character would have no idea."
Other player: My Wizard rolls Knowledge: Local and gets a 15.
DM: It's a troll. They can regenerate damage dealt to them but acid and fire damage will shut that off for a round and if it hits you with both of its claw attacks it can rend your flesh for extra damage.
Other player: Kill it with fire!
At least that's how I handle it in pathfinder.
Sounds good to me.
It is how most systems handle it :P
@@lostsanityreturned Strangely enough, though, not a lot of people know to use knowledge skills to get meta info. That sort of blurb about the troll is exactly why I picked the Knowledge domain on my cleric. Because I can just touch something and I know what it is, what it does, and how to fight it. Especially the custom creatures that the DM likes to throw at us.
Couldn't possibly agree more, Seth. Excellent video. I get really sad when players new to my group say, "but, wait, no, I shouldn't do that, that's meta, my character doesn't know this." I always explain to my players when this happens that, look, if I didn't want you to do that, I would have made sure you didn't have whatever information you have. If you use the information you know about to play the game, don't ever worry that myself or anyone else at the table is going to be angry about it.
Which is worse? A player takes an action based off of information he knows but his character might not, and the game progresses forward -- maybe I'll make a mental note that the player knows about that and change it up in the future, maybe not. Or, a player wants to take an action... but doesn't, because he thinks it's meta, and so bites his tongue and pretends not to know about it.
The second option is far worse. Instead of everyone having a good time, we've got one player worrying about the knowledge he has, constantly checking himself to make sure that that knowledge doesn't accidentally seep into his characters' actions. And that really, really hurts the game.
Players, if you know something, it's almost always safe to use it in your games. Nobody should get mad at you for that. If you know that in your last campaign, that monster behaved a certain way, you're well within your right to use that information -- there's a million ways you can explain your character knowing that information, and honestly, you shouldn't even need to! Just play the game and have fun with it, leave it up to your GM to worry about what information you have, because ultimately your GM is the one who controls that flow of information. Maybe you're very experienced and know a ton about the game you're playing you might think that you need to pretend you don't -- but don't do that, that's pointless and so very much not fun. Instead, play a character that knows that information or talk to your GM about it and let them know that they might want to change things around if they don't want you using that information.
To expect players not to use the information they have is just... dumb, hurtful, and boring. A lot of what makes these games fun is discovering information and using it. We enjoy learning about the game world and using it to our advantage. If we then remove our ability to use that information and have to pretend to rediscover it, we're really just taking away the fun of the game.
Player characters are heroes. I'd venture even in Call of Cthulhu, even if "ordinary" heroes. Role-playing games are simultaneously crafted stories. I don't think role-playing is very interesting when you tell characters that they shouldn't play the most interesting versions of their characters. Also, a lot of things can happen "behind the scenes," so bogging the game down with conversations about rudimentary tactics as a waste of time. A basic level of neutral/good metagaming is necessary to tell a compelling story. Strangling gamers doesn't produce great games.
So metagaming is okay so long so as there is a reasonable train of thought and the players don't use metagaming to cheat. Sounds like a decent summary to me.
Two (and a half) points: First, I often find it hard to find the right line on the monster knowledge, especially when it comes to games that start with experienced heroes. If I am in a campaign that starts at 10th level (in D&D levels) there is a good chance that the heroes have fought a zombie and a troll and a dragon when they were level 1, 5, and 9. If we would have played those characters from level 1 we would have had the puzzle encounters of identifying monsters and figuring out weaknesses...so at level 10 the characters would have knowledge from those encounters that we never played.
The half point is that it's useful to thinking about coding information. Just like poisonous and venomous plants and animals have certain color patterns, monsters that are red (like a red dragon) are often associated with fire. White or blue is often cold and frost. Monsters with big bony plates have high ACs. People with pointy hats and robes are often spellcasters.
Second, the part about blurting and table talk is sticky because often times the divide between players and characters also goes the other way: just as characters don't know as much as their players, players don't know as much as their characters. Table talk and blurting can often be seen as "inner dialogue". Player might forget about the key from two sessions ago but the character is not going to forget it from yesterday. Player of the fighter might not know much about the wizard's spell list but the wizard and the fighter probably went over that spell list over breakfast and spent hours going over combat drills in the past few weeks.
My GM solves your first point of people jumping into a game late (or a old player making a new character) with level checks instead of a knowledge skill check (we play 3.5 D&D) if they do not have the appropriate knowledge skill. Your second point is what happens in my game all the time... people forgetting things Out of Character that they would know In Character. I mean, how does anyone (GM included) know if someone has forgotten something or not? A player who loses their character to something they OOC forgot would be pretty upset by that, so I would rather have someone remind them then not.
I posted on one of your other videos that I actually encourage my players to discuss options for another player's character to take, even if their character is not present, as long as they are only working with what the acting character would have knowledge of. Because it is ultimately up to the player whether their character has the life experience, mindset, intelligence, or wisdom for the "best" action discussed to occur to them.
Yeah, it can be done, though I think it probably works best online when you can use chat to discuss it without detracting from the experience. It’s even good because it shows the players care and are paying attention.
On the troll example- as a DM, ask the player "tell me how your character knows so much about trolls?" Let the player tell a short story about their uncle, the scared and grizzled veteran soldier and the tale he used to tell about how a troll cost him his eye. If the story is really cool you could even throw an inspiration token your players way. 🙂
Great video as always.
I hope you win the ENnie for best online content!
The way i broke our group of blurting was by running Wraith... In Wraith every character is two halves, the main psyche and the shadow, or dark side of the personality.. You have other players play the main's shadow, so when someone starts blurting out advice to another player I would quietly remind them that the advice was coming from their shadow, and suddenly that 'friendly reminder' became their dark passenger trying to get them to do things.. 2-3 sessions and everyone stopped trying to 'remind' each other of crucial information, the nifty thing was the behavior stuck. They had gotten so out of the habit of blurting things out that they never even thought to do it when they weren't in the scene...
Of course, one way to deal with a player who played say "Lost Mine of Pilander" (or whatever) previously as say a halfling ranger, is to have them play as something else, like a half-orc barbarian, and that they, in character, simply say that they had traveled in the area before, and thus know about certain people and places (call it a History Check if you will).
Player or gm there is one part of metagaming I always insist on. You are part of a group. No screwing over the other players, or doing the exact opposite of what everyone else agrees on because "that's what my character would do." Why did you bring a character that wants to screw up the game to the game?
I have a character in my friend's campaign who will murder and die to protect hose few loyal to him, but will lie, cheat, haggle, finagle and blackmail to get the group the best deal possible for a job. And then share the profits as evenly as possible to ensure loyalty. My other character in his campaign (separate group) just kind of trusts people, even though it has burnt him before, because he thinks it is better to find out who will shaft him for small stuff before that have the chance to do worse. - - I think the second character is overall happier, while the first will end up more successful, though carrying a long list of enemies.
"If that's what your character would do, you should make a new character."
@@elbruces and you see I really think that philosophy is limited. It basically means you can’t run any less than perfect characters. You have to meta game in order to not backstab the group, I see no issue with this. The alternative is no evil, backstabbing or hole characters which really hurts the variety and player freedom
@@marcar9marcar972
Yes, it is limited. It's limited to making a character that would be fun to play in an RPG campaign. That's a really good limitation! It will make the RPG campaign that you're playing in fun. As opposed to making it fall apart and all complete shit. Definitely limit yourself to that!
Half of playing the game is metagaming....
Oddly, I had the reverse of the Troll situation happen when I ran The Cracked and Crooked Manse. My players felt like they were meta gaming if their characters knew that NACl was the chemical formula for salt, but I wasn't in the mood to make them roll for information known to everyone in the room.
I mean, that would be a good use for a Know roll or Natural World roll
Man I've never seen anyone else call out blurters. It's basically the equivalent of every character having a hive mind for any situation. Also I often do what I call "reverse metagaming" where like in the cult example if I was playing cards I'd all of the sudden really play up not knowing they're cultists, maybe hit on one of the girls so they'd invite me back to their lair for a sacrifice or something, because that's fun, and it advances the story.
The best way to handle blurters is to say take 1d8 damage for meta gaming, adjust the die as befitting repeat offenses, severity etc.
@@gossamera4665 you know, i've considered doing something like that for call of cthulhu, basically forcing insane insight on all charachters. Appropriate SAN damage everytime meta knowledge was used. The danger is if players start metagaming the metagaming mechanic...
@@sanghelian I like it, the characters slowly become aware they're nothing but husks, puppets controlled by extradimensional beings whom derive sick amusement from their suffering.
@@gossamera4665 and if it gets REALLY BAD they start developing their own free will and resisting the mind that has been so tormenting them.
The speed of trust is EVERYTHING. Just found your channel and as a new DM it’s been incredibly helpful
Good to hear. If I can teach anyone from my many GM/player mistakes, then I'm happy. Just remember that as long as you and your players have fun, everything else is just details.
Mustache makes a good argument. You said "a troll" which implies that it is an acknowledged *fact* that a big green monster came out of the woods and _the characters all recognized it as a troll._ It could be a small jolly giant or a big goblin but it's implied that the characters all pooped their pants a little and said "crap it's a troll do we have anything to burn it with!?"
His name is Mike :)
Funnily enough, I had the troll conversation today, in the context of asking me, the group GM, whether or not a player character in our Starfinder game would be aware of the helpful nature of a certain semicommon alien species.
I came to the conclusion that for well-known creatures such as trolls (or, in our case, Skittermanders), I’m going to leave it up to my players in the future to decide if their character would reasonably know little facts about the creatures they encounter, save for rare monsters (the difference between knowing fire kills trolls versus taking the scroll from a Jiang Shi’s cap disables it).
Re: the troll...
With my party of more-experienced players, I designed an encounter with a troll shortly after they’d had to go underwater. None of the players had fire cantrips, and all the gear was soaked.
I didn’t have to disallow meta-gaming. I gave them a high-stakes puzzle and let it play out :)
Best option taken, thanks for sharing!
One way to minimize metagaming is to shake things up a bit. Make certain monsters in your world tougher, faster, smarter, etc. For example:
DMPC Ranger: We'll camp here for tonight.
PC Barbarian: I'll get some firewood.
DMPC Ranger: No. No campfires. No candles. No lanterns. We eat our meals cold until I say otherwise.
PC Paladin: Why?
DMPC Ranger: Listen.
(All players roll perception checks)
PC Cleric: I hear nothing.
PC Wizard: Me neither.
DMPC Ranger: I know. That's what's wrong. No birds. No frogs. Not even crickets.
PC Fighter: What does that mean?
DMPC Ranger: We're in Orc Country.
PC Barbarian: What? You got us all worked up over a bunch of stinkin' orcs?
DMPC Ranger: You've never met an orc.
PC Barbarian: Oh yeah? (pulls out necklace of orc tusks) I pulled one from the mouth of every orc I killed.
DMPC Ranger: Those weren't orcs.
PC Fighter: What? What were they then?
DMPC Ranger: Hybrids. Half breeds. The results of orcs forcing themselves on the females of smaller, weaker races. Mostly goblins, but sometimes halflings and gnomes.
PC Paladin: So what are real orcs like?
DMPC Ranger: Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Far, far more viscous. And they move in very large groups, never less than sixty in a party.
PC Cleric: What happens if they find us?
DMPC Ranger: If they see our camp? They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we are very, very lucky, they will do it in that order.
(Yes, that is a Firefly reference)
As a GM that also plays, I often have knowledge that my character doesn't, mostly from studying dungeon maps to adapt to my own homebrew campaigns. I've learned some ways to either use or not use that information to try and keep the other players engaged and the story moving. I generally don't use that info unless the party seems to have stalled on solving a particular problem or puzzle.
Sometimes that appears like my character is impulsive, but with this uncanny ability to stumble into the action. I usually make my characters have some connection to a higher power to explain their ability to "fall into" the right place once the party has stalled out. My GMs have generally liked and encouraged this, because it's not fun for any of us when the group spends 45 minutes trying to discover how to solve the same door puzzle when there is no right answer because it's a fake door (I'm looking at you, Tomb of Annihilation).
I’ve always thought it was weird that the Troll’s vulnerability to fire is commonly used as an example of metagaming. In the real world, we all know plenty of information about various creatures, even if we’ve never seen one live. Cobras are venomous! If you’re ever chased by an alligator, run in a zig zag. Most insects don’t like smoke. We even know the weaknesses of fictional monsters like vampires and werewolves. If trolls were real, you can bet every schoolkid would know they’re weak to fire.
I think metagaming would be a little too hard to resist where monsters are concerned.
"Well, the monster's immune to fire damage, but my character doesn't know that, so there goes my spell slot I guess..."
With the Troll example, if discovery is important to your group a great method is to set up some scenes beforehand so that your characters learn about the upcoming monster. Matt Colville has an episode where he talks about this with the Medusa. Things like encountering "incredibly lifelike" statues of creatures outside of its lair give both players and characters insight into the monster's abilities (and plausible deniability when it comes to metagaming).
I once had someone I was playing with in a game of dnd 5E just, ignore a clue I thought was rather clear (that he said later he did get) because his character 'wasn't smart enough' there int was 8. That encounter was horrble, he actually quite after because 'he didn't trust the DM to properly balance encounters after that'
There was a ring on the ground, and a docile undead in front of it, when he touched the ring it begane to chase him, but he took the ring it with him, the DM actually told him to run, and then the player preceded to run around in circles around a house (this was in a deserted town with about 6 houses)
Just, the player blamed the DM for an unbalanced encounter and his character almost dieing if mine hadn't been near by, but he just 'ignored' a clue and clearly didn't do what the DM recommended... (the DM said later that he was supposed to run from that encounter)
It just...bothers me to this day, I know those guys
English?
RPG are a lot like video games, some times your character has to die a few dozen times before you get good at staying alive for at lest an hour.
Our table has a thing where people declare "I want to do this but I don't know if my character would do this." Then they tell us why they might or might not know it and we all decide as a group if it's something the character should know. We also can ask to do history/arcana checks for the knowledge and GM tells us how we know it if we do good on it.
We do the same thing in reverse when we're playing characters we don't have the knowledge to play. "I feel like my character would know this or have something cool they could do here but I don't know it." Then everyone throws in their own knowledge to help us play.
Blurting is definitely gray area to me. Some tables enjoy it, some don't.
You might not want it during a suspenseful horror scene.
But during a heroic fantasy game, when we have parents taking care of kids on and off during a 4 hour session, blurting is super OK.
I don't do blurting, but the players know they can ask a player to make a INT roll. The player chooses if they want information from another player. If they do AND the make the roll, then they are given the information. It is usually to help players who may have forgotten some information, but their character may not have.
That story about 2 of your players starting D&D by reading the monster manual was way to close to home. I found the game by coming across the 2nd edition monster manual at a flea market and saving my allowance to buy it. I was 14 and read it ravenously.
The other week I walked my Wizard straight into an instant Death trap a few scenes after another PC found a map of traps and was furiously running to warn us.
Why would a dm let a player walk into such a trap? I'd hate it even more to do it consciously.
@@Yolen16 it was just a one shot so I didnt have anything really bad to lose lol
@@OopsAllAlpharius ah I see :)
I have played or ran most of the old AD&D adventures, but i can ignore what i know. I have no problem letting others get the spotlight.
Nice vid. I find myself agreeing for the most part. Personally where I stand is I wouldn't expect a party to sit around throwing ice shards and hitting a troll with a mace to feign ignorance -- and in the *exact* opposite way, that is in a sense also metagaming in the same sense lawful stupid is. Same with Lycanthropes, or at least the semi famous ones... And really if you, to use said lycanthrope example, threw werewolves at a party of martial characters without silver weapons or any IC reason to suspect they might need them, I'd argue the DM would have been cheating at that point. And then you have gotcha monsters. The completely martial fighter is completely justified to start using his spear's shaft or grabbing a bone without a knowledge check, as would be a cleric if you threw a 1e nilbog at them, because their entire purpose within the game is to screw the players.
12:30 I find this an odd way of thinking, and I can't really wrap my head around it.
I always encourage my players to read the fiction related to the world we play in, right now my players are playing on Ansalon 10 years after the end of the Dragon Lance Chronicles, so I have encouraged all my players to read those books, to learn about the world.
If my players don't know about the world and the politics in the world, how are they supposed to make accurate reactions to things that happens around them?
Why would they care about a quickly scribbled note from Kitiara if they don't know who the blue lady is?
They more the people know about the world, the more they are able to concentrate on what their place in the world is, and how events affects their character, and they will be able to get much more engaged in the story and give me a lot more material to work with as a DM
I know many people who wouldn't want to read and memorize several books and everyone in it just to play a game, including me.
I think this can be dealt with differently. If your DM builds his/her own world, talk to them about where your character is from, what politics are like, etc. Just the general idea is enough in my experience. If it's the official world, a quick Google search is enough usually.
If they find said letter, just quickly ask the DM if they've heard that name before, and if it's a well known name, sure.
I usually prefer not to know too much about the world we play in because I love exploring it along with my characters. In our campaign I specifically made a character from a different continent so I could know nothing and ask NPCs about everything while the rest of the players who also don't know too much can play their characters as if it's all old news to them.
For in world knowledge. I feel like somethings are just common knowledge. A Greek wouldn't need to roll knowledge religion to know who Zeus is. A Roman wouldn't need to roll to know what Italy is.
Well, technically Italy wasn't a thing what the Roman Empire was, but I get your point.
I mean, we all live in a world where Trolls (in the D&D sense) don't actually exist. Yet pretty much every nerd on the planet knows to use fire against them due to the hobbies we play.
And yet it's supposed to be plausible that someone living in a world that literally has literal Trolls living in the swamps has never encountered this information? To say nothing of the fact that the PC are not normal people: their _jobs_ (not their hobbies) involve going into danger and fighting these things.
It's almost always just as easy to justify a PC posessing knowledge about their world as it would be to claim their ignorance.
@@nickwilliams8302 But that's as you said, just the "nerds", specifically the nerds into fantasy. What would Chad McBiff or yo moma do when faced with trolls? What would you do if faced with a hippogriff or domovoi? They exist in our mythology, but not as many knows their nature. If they're considered myths in the game world as well, then the same thing applies, especially since probably next to noone knew about trolls and fire before baldur's gate.
I'll admit it's less than smooth to try and police that kind of meta gaming though.
The analogy I always use for knowing a monster is harmed by "x" in most of the common monster cases (ie trolls) is to ask, "Well Bob, do you know how to kill a vampire?" When I get a positive response from the player, I ask the simple follow up, "Ever met one?".....
Have you ever met a vampire? That argument is just as ridiculous as Seth's example. Just because you never met an elephant doesn't mean you don't know what it is. Especially something popularly discussed, like a vampire?
I love the gaming philosophy videos, it's why I subbed! Please keep them coming! :)
In my early days as a DM (we were all teens) one player would apparently peek at my notes when I went to the Bathroom.
They were unable to read my atrocious handwriting.
I also had several dungeons planned that would take months to run, so I often flipped to a different page I my notebook confident it would be forgotten by the time it came around.
Seth, your example of fighting a troll, complete with player counter-arguments, was ON POINT! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it and talk about it in detail. Now I have something I can whip out on my smartphone and show to people if that sort of thing ever happens at the gaming table ever again.
For Blurters, almost every DM in my group simply asks the blurter "Are you there?" and that immediately shuts the person up. If the person is actually present then they'll be like "yea, sorry I thought you knew that I went to the blacksmith with him"
To the point about tactical advices: there are two things i tend to say to my players in their first session.
1) Meele equipment: wear helmets and shields if thei fit to your charakter. Are they cool? Maybe not but your character would know they save lifes!
2) Use Cover if you don't want to become a sieve.
Is it metagaming? Maybe ... on the other hand the player characters should know about this stuff most of the time. You could say it is demetagaming?
My group uses Rolemaster, so not only are helmets and shields important, but so is parrying. Every first level character leaves whatever training they get with the advice, "Parry at first, THAN determine if you can afford to attack." The advice to spellcasters is usually, "I know it's heavy, but learn a weapon and PARRY!"
Mentioned Bad Metagaming is why I hate doing Adventure League.
I’m playing a high Int wizard with lots of knowledge skill ranks in a sort of home brew pathfinder campaign, so the char knows more than the player!
Damn, listening to Seth, I recognised myself as the blurter… I now feel very bad even though my original intention was to help other players. Thanks Seth for pointing it out
This is why i enjoy pathfinder with their specific knowledge checks. See a troll, roll knowledge (local) for humanoids. But yeah you could do this in session 0 at times
Another example of good metagaming in my opinion is making a character well suited for the upcoming campaign. Its not fun playing, for example, a ranger best accustomed to survival in the wilderness when 90% of the campaign will take place in an urban environment(it can work, but it takes an experienced roleplayer). On on the other side, playing a social chameleon character perfect for almost all social encounters when the campaign is a struggle for survival with nearly everything trying to kill the party, can feel equally bad.
This Reminds me of a time where the GM of our group had us fight a God as a boss, And even though one of the players had this very god as their patron was called out by our GM as a metagamer that this person knew who this god character was, and even though we in character knew it was the Shapeshifting god of insanity (forbidden knowledge) And Eldritch magic/creatures because of the legends and several Visual depections and all detailed encounters with him always having Bright Purple Eyes he claimed we never knew what we were fighting dispite it being blatantly obvious to our in universe characters and at the table players. Im not shure if this is Metagaming in a bad sencem or our Gm thinks we're just really stupid.
Revisiting this old video with a personal experience of how our table (Or at least I as a player) tries to handle monster/world knowledge. When encountering something that I feel would be in my character's wheelhouse, I ask my DM if I know what we just found b/c of my background, and if I know anything about how to handle it.
Example: I'm currently playing a Kobold that grew up in a large mining/mineral city, a city that let's the Kobolds have free run of the sewers in exchange for the clutches maintaining them. While adventuring through some old ruins discovered UNDER the sewers of another town, we ran into a big monster with tentacles and a giant gaping mouth. I asked if I recognized it, was told that I do know it's an Otyugh. I asked if I knew anything about how we were going to deal with it, DM had me roll a reasonably difficult INT check. Rolled average, still failed, DM said "You are very aware of what these are as your clutch has bumped into them before, what you know to do is RUN!" So Nirk knew nothing, and I spent that fight in character trying to keep my distance and run support, and freaking out when our party's dps machine charged in. Second most memorable fight we've had so far.
Integrating the failed knowledge check as a panic response is awesome! I recommend it along with failed perception checks provoking paranoia with a "You get a feeling that your being watched!"
I've played in games with bad metagamers (the type that actually cheated by reading the modules and using that knowledge in character creation, etc) and also with people who are so militantly anti-metagaming that it gets annoying.
Players who are anti-metagaming can cause the game to grind to a halt if the character they designed doesn't have a strong adventuring urge. Or they insist on trying to murder the party because they are evil-aligned. Or they are the healer but let their party members die after a big fight because "my character is just really focused on the loot, so I would go grab the treasure instead of casting spare the dying".
Yeah people who are 'anti-metagaming' but make shady characters are probably worse than metagamers. A lot of times they really are just using 'anti-metagaming' as an excuse to be a dick to others.
I've had an example of metagaming from the current campaign. The party has been dealing with a lot of undead, and as players we've been told that we'llbe dealing with more undead. My character has had a few close callsin combat and realized he had almost no ways to deal with them, so he is preparing his spells in a way that means he has some way to deal with undead at all times in abit of paranoia
More good metagaming: follow the plot when it's obviously what the DM/GM planned, talk to other PCs when your 1st level character is introduced sitting alone at a bar.
1st edition AD&D mentions player experience, sort of implicitly endorsing at least some level of metagaming.
Indeed it did, the home campaigns of Gygax and Arneson were chock full of horrible metagaming (by later rpg standards). The hobby evolved from wargaming, where you only have player knowledge.
Great video as always, Seth. I agree with everything said here, though I would submit a bit of an addendum to the "setting knowledge" example. Some games do specify that there's a great deal about the setting that PCs would not know, even if players do. World of Darkness as a whole is a good example; within individual games, the PCs know a fair amount about the goings on of their own supernatural race, but others are bound to be almost a complete mystery to them, because those other races are just as secretive.
Vampires, for example, know almost nothing about werewolves, in large part because werewolves almost universally murder vampires on sight for reasons unknown to the vampires. However, by the same token, it would be pretty stupid to insist that a vampire PC trying to use a silver weapon on a werewolf was metagaming, because silver vulnerability is such a part of commonly known part of the werewolf myth that even a normal human would be aware of it. So even within this example, there are limits to what knowledge use can really be called metagaming.
One solution I've found that works: Give your character a reason to know this stuff. My (Pathfinder) is trained in Knowledge: Planes, which confuses the DM. But I took a plot hook the DM gave us (some monsters and events that happened) and found a way for him to learn this stuff (buying books, talking to various people, and having it be a sort of personal side-quest for him). It allows some meta-gaming, while still allowing the character to act in-character. It also leads to some fun plot developments, because this personal quest often happens at otherwise quiet moments, or his questions allow the DM to build tension. My fighter can reasonably say "Hey, that thing's immune to ice," but as a consequence he also tends to say things like "Yes, I would like to walk alone with you to your secluded library, Miss Representative of the Weird and Disturbing Cult!"
Maybe not ideal for all types of meta-gaming, but if the intent is innocent (mine was "This game is fun! I want to read more about it! Oh look, weird critters!!!") it may be a way to gently nudge a new character into a more productive gaming mentality.
Real metagaming is similar to rules-lawyering, but instead of trying exploit loopholes in the Rules-As-Written they try to exploit continuity loopholes. For example; the Heisenplayer: a player hangs back when the party splits up into multiple groups, so he can decide later which group he joined or even claim to conveniently be somewhere else entirely. Similar to the amazing amnesiac; the player who "forgot" to say that they bought an antivenom potion this morning, right at the moment they got attacked by a snake. Or the player who rolled a bad investigation check and now is hanging around in that the room for no reason until the DM reluctantly say they may roll again.
One thing I'd also argue is that certain things called metagaming essentially represent out-of-character player skill, something that should be rewarded. A player who has played the game for years should play the game quite differently than a player who just started playing, because the former is good at the game. If you know to use fire against a troll, that means you're good at the game.
Also worth noting is that a lot of challenges don't rely on the player not knowing them to be challenging. Going back to the troll example, trolls are still tough even if you know you need fire to kill them. This is because fire is a finite resource, and managing resources like that is a huge component of the challenge of a game like D&D in and of itself.
This, I see too many enemies just used as hit points to be hacked at.
To be even kinda interesting, a troll should best be fought in the rain or by ambush (like yoinking someone off a bridge... Hmm wonder why that sounds familiar)
It's like vampires in modern fiction. The powers/weaknesses of vampires are so ingrained in our pop-culture that we usually don't even try to have our heroes figure out that garlic, sunlight, and stakes are the tools to use. Maybe we have some portion of them ruling out what doesn't actually work because it's myth, but usually we just roll with the knowledge that vampires are hurt by these things, and then get to the more interesting part of how our heroes implement the tools into their situation and overcome their foe.
@@SSkorkowsky It is like watching a show like Walking Dead and seeing how long it takes for people to figure out how to kill a Zombie, and then do it with ease later on. Still, everything is solved with a Knowledge skill check and it was dumb by WotC to take them away in 5e.
I usually give out rewards (XP or items) for roleplaying. That tends to cut down the excessive metagaming once players realize that not metagaming might actually get them more.
If a player is prone to cheating then there is a good chance they have experienced some really nasty gms in their past.
However reading the module can also have to do with the GM being bad at relaying to the player with enough information about the layout of what they see in the location they are at.
For example that dm who was against drawing the layout of the dungeon as we proceeded and instead expected us to make own own maps based on verbal description.
4:47 I actually love it when I know the source material on accident because for me its a great exercise in playing the roll. I like to act and it becomes more of an acting game for me. Yeah I'm not surprised but I'm having fun and I'm trying my best not to tell the other characters whats going on. I get to flex my improv muscles. Also I had a DM who was running curse of Strad and one of the players had run that one before as the dm so she let him be a local so it made sense when he knew things about the town that he probably shouldn't.
But when the GM switches it up it becomes a surprise and tats always fun
I 1000% agree that if you're going to call it a Troll, that means that YOU MEAN that the Characters KNOW that it is a Troll and they know what it is. If that's not the case then you should have not named it.
I actually come up with even more colorful descriptions, and if a player recognizes the thing I don't care at all if they then "know" what it is and respond appropriately.
Eh... it is what knowledge skill checks are for. And if the game doesn't have that, that is poor game design and not the player's fault. On top of that, if the game doesn't have some sort of lore/knowledge system, how is a player suppose to figure out they need fire and acid to kill a Troll... how does the game separate IC and OOC knowledge? I mean, lets say you were in a Tavern and a farmer wanted to hire the party to kill the beast that is killing his cows. He has seen it and describes it to them, be he has no idea what it is. How does the party members figure it out then? Do they just know it is a Troll and get to look at the MM or what? What if they think it is Tolkien Trolls OOC because they are brand new players and think they have to turn to stone in sunlight to defeat it? Gah, it is so stupid then to hold that against the players.
@@blktom Oh no, not my intent with that. What I am saying is, IF I were to lazily say, "You see a troll!", the implication there is that I assume that the players, and their characters, know EXACTLY what a troll is and what the deal is. And I should NOT expect them to pretend that they don't.
If they don't know that, or aren't supposed to know that, then I *should not have said it that way to begin with*.
It's not that I would hold them not knowing "troll" against them. Quite the opposite in fact, if I as the DM simply name-dropped a monster ( implying they should be familiar with it ), and then the players asked for information; there wouldn't be mechanics involved. I'd simply tell them that this is something their character knows.
If it's supposed to be mysterious, then I should describe the thing in vivid detail, talk about its claws, how its skin seems almost plantlike- how as it tears its own flesh as it comes ripping through a door but then a moment later seems totally unharmed. And on and on.
Then we can have mechanics rolls and all of that; or even better they can run away from it, go ask an NPC or do "resarch", and then come back, armed with knowledge gained. Whatever works.
@@abortedlord Fair enough, but I still like Identification mechanics. That way even if the GM says Troll, well, we all know what a Troll is, but our characters don't. It is still on us to RP it properly till we identify it.
I just kind of hate 'gotcha' moments. I don't want the GM and player to feel like it is a us verse them situation... I have been there, on both sides, when I was younger and inexperienced as a GM and a player. I just want to enjoy the game and hang out with my friends.
@@blktom What do you mean, "even if"? Are you implying that you roll an ID check every time your characters come across an example of any creature at all?
@@abortedlord For most combat situations, yes. Pretty much anything we want to ask about of the monster requires a ID check. For example, if we are in the Underdark and are fighting Drow, we probably will not ID Drow after the first encounter. But if the Mage forgets what their Spell Resistance is, he would have to ID it and then ask. It is a free action, so no real biggie, but you are wasting that first turn confirming that yes, they are indeed Drow.
Many years ago my brother ran the introductory adventure for FASAs Star Trek RPG, which was a lot of fun but....
A few years later with a different group he ran the exact same intro adventure.
I didn't say anything but instead played my character as written, letting the other new players make the decisions and figuring things out.
So my knowledge of the adventure was unused as I didn't want to ruin it for the others.
In the end it really didn't matter as the adventure was written for a TOS style of play, being created before the Next Generation, but the new players were more TNG which put a totally different spin on how they handled the events and how the GM reacted and modified the adventure.
Great video Seth, very insightful.
I like metagaming blurters. I let my players decide together what they want to do. The player of a character has final say but if they want to discuss what to do, especially players who are less experienced with the game that is all good in my games. I made the game tough I want them to have every advantage. Now if the character does not have the knowledge I would ask the player to make a decision based on what the character knows. But you are not your character and all the players make up a team so I allow them to be teammates just like a co-op boardgame would run.
I definitely agree with the latter exploration of the troll example. It's something where trying to pretend not to know how to deal with the situation really only drags things out artificially, until you get some sort of cue that it's okay to actually use that thing you know.
Furthermore, I strongly agree with your suggestion to reskin the monster. If you want your players to have the experience of meeting something new and having to figure out how to deal with it, then you need to be a bit creative and actually have them meet something new to them, not just to their characters. Because having them genuinely not know what to do can lead to more compelling roleplay and more interesting gameplay.
As for some of the "metagaming" involving game mechanics, it seems to me like that's the sort of thing that stressing about will ultimately take away from the game. Because it is just that - a game. If you're not going to let the players meaningfully understand and engage with the mechanics, then why aren't you just using a simpler game that doesn't have those sorts of mechanics in the first place?
For common stuff like trolls, let the character know some information. Make some of it false. And have the trolls only fight in heavy rain storms. Or Vampires only fight in pitch-dark caves (with magic or minions to extinguish light) and werewolves only live in metal-poor regions. If the characters know the creatures' weaknesses, you KNOW the creatures do also, and will take countermeasures against their weakness. - - - I recently had a vampire sit at the bottom of a dwarven complex filled with various tribes of orcs and goblins and such, each led and controlled by a vampire minion. The party almost didn't make it to the bottom, and the drained a lot of expendable resources to get there and defeat the vampire. One death, and all but two were dealing with burns, broken bones, sprains, bandaged cuts and so on. And all were deeply exhausted. And they felt that they had EARNED that victory.
Here's my problem, if I'm playing D&D and I have low HP. One of my party asks about my HP, I should tell the, my HP is fine because that's what my character would do but that also makes me not a team player.
There's also the issue where your party members may be able to visually see in game that your character is injured. If you've taken 80% damage, most people should be able to figure out that you're a good target for cure wounds
Your game master philosophy is pretty close to mine, I think haha! I actually prefer my players to be as optimized and strategically smart as they are comfortable being; if there are questions about in-game knowledge, I'll settle it with a skill check, but I really don't like my parties to feel helpless too often. I think it's discouraging and demoralizing for most kinds of players. I don't mind powergaming in my parties at all. The characters I'm running a session for should have a chance to feel like heros and badasses, if that's what they enjoy. And I prefer the party to be universally optimized, whatever the goal is for their character, so no one feels like they aren't contributing, and each player secretly feels they are the star of the show. If they kill the big bad in Act 1, that's my fault, not theirs :D
I feel like there is trouble discerning metagaming and superstition. Example: While a lot of plant type enemies in D&D are not especially suspectible to fire since a healthy plant ususally doesnt burn much easier than a healthy animal, players almost always resort to using fire. There are similliar tropes with using holy attacks against undead or silver against lycanthropes, as presented in this video. But all these superstitions can make the encounters more exciting when there are exceptions. Players may also know tropes out of character that does not work in a game sytem, and then they do go out of their way in encounters to use their "metagame" knowledge which only adds extra fun to the game.
Wooden stake through the heard, chop off the head and born both parts in separate fires. Works on pretty much everything. - So says my half-orc fighter.
A long time ago I guest GM'ed a CoC game with some serious meta gamers. It was a modern setting and they as characters said they were going to a bookstore to buy CoC. Fuckit I thought, it's not like they as players don't know the general material anyway, and let them buy the very custom adventure I was running. Then we had a serious sanity check as they read about their characters as pre-generated characters for the adventure and them reading the very adventure they were in.
One time, my party encountered a beholder
Me: I would like to run away, because that is a fucking beholder
DM: Your character doesnt know what a beholder is
Me: Yeah he does, and he has a phobia of them. Check my notes.
Belatedly, to be fair if my tabaxi saw a beholder, he wouldn't need to know much about it - it probably doesn't look friendly, and is very very scary.
Great video Seth, really enjoyed it, and it all really resonated with me.
I suppose too that metagaming can be situational, and depend on the way it is played.
So you could have a situation in Call of Cthulhu where a player continually gets their investigator to roll skill checks on everything they are 'low' on in the hope that they get lucky and advance that skill. The operative word is continually!
To me that is a type of metagaming as they are trying to game the system.
However, if played correctly I think it works. An investigator says "my history (or whatever) skill is very poor, in my downtime I'll read up a little on the history of America, Britain, or shoot off a few rounds on the range, whatever. And every chance I get I'll test my history, latin, archaeology, hand gun skill in the field to see if any of it sticks.
They are essentially the same thing. But in the first example it is a shameless, artless attempt to game the system, in the second example the player has given it some thought and they are role playing their investigator's attempt to become better.
I'm such a secretive DM that my players don't even know they are playing..muhahaha!
do you just ask them to roll dice every so often?
Just write a book!
I would suspect that a troll's susceptibility to fire and acid would be fairly common knowledge amongst adventurers.
Any body know the name of the painting at 1:57? Thanks!
The Druid Stone by Kieth Parkinson
www.keithparkinson.com/product/the-druid-stone-giclee/
@@SSkorkowsky Thank you very much!
Great video, Seth! You have a lot of good points. My main takeaways here are: Number one, that the more the DM trusts the players and the more the players trust the DM, the better the game is going to be. I played in a game where my character's quirk was that she enjoyed taking damage. I had to trust the DM not to take advantage of that dynamic and kill my character needlessly. But the DM also had to trust me not to take things too far and put my character too much into harm's way. I consider that to be good metagaming combined with player/DM trust.
And number two: it seems to me that bad metagaming tends to be selfish. It is usually things that only benefit the character or the player but don't benefit the game as a whole. Whereas good metagaming is usually something that takes the game as a whole and all the players at the table into account.
One thing you didn't mention that I consider to be usually good metagaming, but can slide into "blurter" territory is the "reminder". One player reminding another player that they have a certain ability that would be really useful right now. I think this is alright, because while players tend to sometimes forget things, it wouldn't be in character for them to forget their special ability. But I know some DMs that don't like players reminding each other of things like that.
The troll is such a well known example, but are trolls rare in DnD? If you ask me, every secound village has a troll problem. People know about trolls. Why shouldn't players know about it?
Prepare your journey.
If they're common enough the DM could call for a knowledge roll to see if it's feasible for the weakness to be known.
I don't understand why anyone would think knowing your character's HP is metagaming. Like, in _real life_ I can easily tell if I'm hurt or tired, and I can make a pretty good guess as to whether something will significantly damage me. And judging by how often people complain about being tired, or aches and pains, or express being scared of heights or driving fast or animals or something, I don't think I'm alone here.