Player Knowledge REIGNS SUPREEM! Player v Character Knowledge Revisited. Also, NTRPGCON!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- I went from a lowly "YOUR CHARACTER WOULDN'T KNOW THAT" peasant to the Megaubergigaultrachad "come up with a reason why you'd know that, or don't, idgaf" KingEmperorGoldenGod.
You can too! ....If you feel like it. I did forget to mention that secrets between PCs are treated differently by me. Those secrets must be preserved, especially if the play isn't 100% cooperative.
See you at the con!
YES. Challenge the players, the challenging the characters isn't as interesting.
I've known this for years of course, but it is truly not very popular.
One of the cool things about 5E (and AD&D3 stole this which is what I will reference, PHB page 71) is different damage types to determine both damage and potential resistances. The damage types are Acid, Bludgeoning, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, Necrotic, Piercing, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, Slashing, and Thunder. Say you have a troll. Fire and Acid are the damage types the troll can't regenerate, right? What about a Frost Troll? That's basically a troll but they're bluish white in coloration (It's important to have distinction that's readily understood/seen). And if you try to burn them, they regenerate the wounds! Well, what damage types stop them from regenerating? Determine beforehand and let the players figure it out as their characters do. It's not a new monster, it's a variant on an old monster with the same rules of the old monster but the kicker that the players don't have to pretend not to know it's weakness, because they actually don't know it's weakness.
Allow players to gain expertise like this, it will, in a small way, get them more invested into your campaign. The next time they face a Frost Troll, they know how to kill it, and be sure to not take that away from them. It will also add flavor to your world and encounter tables beyond the monster manual, in an easy/no effort way.
On metagaming = bad: In most versions of the game a party can include a paladin (or cleric) and a thief. These two beings must metagame to coexist in an adventuring party. Always have. Arguably Druids do as well. This is due to each class's nature and their odds with the others, or with adventuring in general considering the Druid. Metagaming is just another tool. It can be used for good and bad. "Don't split the party" is metagaming. "Don't steal from the party" is metagaming. "Don't be a dick" is often metagaming.
Metagaming isn't bad, just intentions can be bad.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
Challenge the Players is the Gygax way. He always targeted players in his DMing, never the character.
Glad you came to see the light. If you run into Jason Hobbs down there, tell him we need more "HIGH ADVENTURE!"
Thanks for reminding me about getting Hyperborea.
It's a beautiful game! A perfect mix of Conan meets the Cthulhu mythos.
I can't remember if I saw this idea in DCC, the Oldschool primer, or some other blog post regardless somewhere I stumbled across the idea that player knowledge/skill can act as the characters luck or the hand of fate or favor of the dark mysterious gods
Talk to Greg Gillespie about Dwarrowdeep and what he's doing with his other books. :) And say hi to Jeff Talanian!
I think Gavin Norman from Necrotic Game is there!
My question
What's the best starting Dolmenwood village for the "hole in the oak" adventure?
I'll try to ask if I find him! One of the hard things is not knowing who anyone is by appearance, so I have to read badges like a weirdo. 🤣
Try not to get kicked out 😆😉
Your training is now complete. You have truly joined the old school. No longer are you a Padawan 5e gamer, now you are one with the old school. Please... Enjoy your cookies. 😉
I never got cookies... where are my 25-year old cookies? :)
@@LordSephleon Idk .. after 25 years I don't think yours would taste any good right now. ;)
@@FMD-FullMetalDragon ....we won't know until we try. Maybe they have REALLY strong preservatives. :D
@@LordSephleon Oh.. umm.. I might have given those to Aaron. ;)
@@FMD-FullMetalDragon Oh... I won't say anything if you don't then.
Hello, Aaron
Just played a session of AD&D
How'd it go?!
@@AaronthePedantic
We fought on a boat against
2 3rd level fighters
1 3rd level MU
8 1st level fighters
(3 lizard men)
And a parchred in a pear tree
And we had
1 1st level ranger (me)
1 1st level human MU
1 2nd level Elf fighter
1 2nd? Level orc fighter
2 NPC militia guards
We won, with no casualities
I got a magic sword
@@darkknightofhibernia4815 ...and licked your enemies blood from your blades...amIright? 😃
@@TheK5K
Nah, thats not very neutral good, and Im a ranger, my friend
Get some time with Levi Combs and Erik “Tenkar” if you can.
I'll try! I haven't run into Levi yet, and when I saw Tenkar he was interviewing a big fish. 😁
If you interview David “Diesel” LaForce, I have a super weird, nerdy question for you to ask him. Why do the old TSR products smell that way? I don’t know if it’s just me, but TSR modules have always had a certain kind of incense-ish smell that triggers my nostalgia. I figure Diesel might be the best one to ask. Aside from being one of the original BX and 1e AD&D artists (signed DSL), my understanding was that he worked at TSR maybe longer than anyone, from the late 70s to the late 90s when WotC bought out the company. Did they burn incense in the warehouse? If they did, does he remember what kind?
I tell my players that I have a 'you know what you think you know' policy for player knowledge when it comes to in-world Lore. You don't have to pretend you don't know something but I'm under no obligation to correct you when you're wrong. It works pretty well.
DnD is about competent Pulp Heroes
Your PCs will know what a Troll is. Just stop messing around, and use your Player knowledge to kill the GD troll
Boo hoo, my special monster isn't special
Get over yourself
First, love the Hyperborea thumbnail!
Back in summer camp, we did a BX Dungeon Delve when we encountered pools of green slime. The fighter wanted to hack them, but I (magic user) stopped her just in time and nuked them with fireball...because I as a player knew fire kills them. The referee liked that, saying as an 8th level magic user, I'd be like a sage who was knowledgeable in such matters. Player knowledge saved the fighter's live.
The more information a character sheet contains the more reliant player's are on their sheet for what the character can/cannot do.
If you just have Class features, equipment, AC, HP, Abilities and Saving Throws you get more creativity from players.
Hmm... interesting.
I'll have to consider that in relation to my previous understanding that challenging the players in a straightforward way isn't mutually exclusive of immersion and filtered knowledge. That is indeed the lingering effect of the trauma from my Sisyphean wrestling matches with 5e.
Player knowledge does reign supreme - and, you shouldn't metagame. These are not mutually exclusive. I recently considered the matter for an upcoming puzzle. This will be an in-game puzzle box, the completion of which will require not only the smarts to figure it out but also the dexterity to contort the puzzle in the required manner. My approach will be to allow the player to try and solve the puzzle by describing possible actions their character's trying with it. If they exhaust all of the ways they can conceive to open the puzzle - *then* it will come down to a roll (in this case INT and DEX attribute checks). If something comes to a roll then the outcome will be the final say on the matter - even if the player figures it out later.
Does my character know how to kill a Troll? Maybe, maybe not. Is he going to try and kill it with fire? Heck yes!
RPGs are about immersion into the viewpoint of a single character throughout an ongoing series of events. Because *that* is what makes RPGs notably different from other games which existed before 1974.
So when questions like this come up, I'm far less interested in answers on a game-by-game basis, and more interested in answers from the perspective of what makes RPGs a unique game-form in the first place. If it's far more practical to set aside immersion in certain ways when playing a particular RPG, that tells me that that particular RPG probably isn't doing the best job of living up to what RPGs are, that's unique, in the first place. In those cases, suggesting that immersion should be compromised to accommodate that particular game's limitations seems like a 'fix' at the expense of what RPGs are all about.
Suppose we were talking about strategy board games, and the fact that Chess is hard. One might suggest that Chess could be made easier by adding dice rolls to resolve fights between pieces, giving players a chance of winning without having to deal with all that difficult strategy stuff. But that's not a solution which should satisfy anybody who *wants* to play a strategy game.
In your example, I'd say that perhaps it's that I don't view D&D (as I play it) as a strictly immersive roleplaying game, but more as a fantasy adventure game that features immersive roleplaying when it's expedient. The fact that we play with such grave stakes so frequently and have meta-objectives in mind (level up, build a stronghold, etc) makes it such that we can't afford to sacrifice the character at the altar of character-knowledge without considerable loss.
I say this because in games where I have few long-term goals in mind, I tend to have little cares about what happens to my character. In those games, I'm much more concerned about portraying them faithfully.
I've only been in the hobby for about five years, so the thoughts are still growing! 😅
Interesting, but there is, but a DM can handle that, it can be a chore sometimes.
there is a point/place of division...i place it more on numerical knowledge rather than weaknesses, habits, habitat n such...
When I'm Gamemastering an RPG I enforce a no metagaming rule. if someone does something his character shouldn't know like for example where to go help another PC that fell down a well, I just say that he just can't do that. What he can do is worry about him and start looking for him in a way that makes sense.
Metagaming can be crazy, because if you have good memory or just allow people to open books people can do a whole lot of tactics without having earned that knowledge ingame or via investment in character attributes, skills, spells, etc This is something I enforced because my players could be seductive with Charisma 6 or they could solve chemical problems with Intelligence 8 or they could even introduce modern solutions out of thin air to ancient/medieval societies like creating gunpowder to blast walls.
Metagaming is BAD as a rule of thumb. Of course, some metagaming is subjective. If you as a player know that to kill a troll you need fire it makes sense unless you were raised in a jungle by a gorilla, because most people in that settings will have heard stories and fables about evil trolls and how to deal with them. Knowing exactly how an aboleth society works it's on the other hand nonsensical if your PC doesn't have Arcane/Religion/Bestiary Knowledge to support using that information.