One thing I've seen too often is GMs who get so obsessed with preventing metagaming that they effectively make the players run characters who must have been plonked down into the world yesterday and know absolutely nothing.
I agree with this.
Absolute avoidance of Metagaming is impossible. The analogy I've used before is, how accurately can any human alive determine 90ft from 90.01ft within a 6 second window during a fight to the death and would the know that something that can be lethal at 90ft is harmless at 90.01ft.
If we take an average human's intelligence of being 10 in the real world, and imagine we were being attached by a flame monster, would anyone try to dispose of it with a flame thrower or would they assume that would be useless and look for a fire extinguisher or a water hose. Even person of low intelligence of 6 would probably me able to figure that out. Without living in a world where magic is mundane.
So our imaginary wizard or sorcerer that's lived in a world with where they dead literally walk should have enough sense to know that chill touch may not be useful against something that is visibly dead. Like a Ghost and adjust their behaviour accordingly.
The same thing applies to a lumbered heavily armoured target are you should to shoot something at it or throw some acid at it that it need to try and dodge out of the way of.. in that heavy armour.
I mean look. Ultimately you have to ask yourself two questions. 1) What's fun for me? 2) What's fun for my friends?
I happen to think it's fun when I recognize something and remember how it works. What can I say? I like learning. I've been playing and reading for a long time and I enjoy getting to feel like there was some bonus benefit to all that. Plus I like sharing things with my friends. Telling them about the cool thing I found. My friends are torn on the whole metagaming thing, though. Some of them think it's only fun if characters have the knowledge and insight that they'd realistically have, and don't have any knowledge or insight that it wouldn't make sense for them to have. So, for monster abilities, we've settled on a fine compromise, and it's one that I expect is pretty common: When we recognize a monster, we usually say, "hey DM, would it make sense for my character to know about this monster?" If he says yes, then we talk about it and use the knowledge to improve our tactics. If he says no, we keep it out of character, often even choosing to say as little as possible about it to our fellow players, in order to make it easier for anyone who hasn't figured it out to keep the knowledge out of their character's head.
But I would totally play in a game where your character was just allowed to know everything you know automatically. Would I play in one where you couldn't even ask? Ehhhhhh. Maybe..?
If you are trained in a subject and you don't immediately know "common knowledge" stuff about that subject, what the hell was your training for? That just makes no sense to me. The ranger, trained in nature, doesn't know basic stuff about nature? Or they have to pause and scratch their chin for 6 seconds to remember it?
Thats why my table usually uses passive scores for common knowledge stuff. We generally only ask for Intelligence (Skill) checks for less commonly known stuff. When it comes to monster facts I usually base it on CR. The higher the monster’s CR, the less common knowledge is about it. If the CR is less than frac12; the PC’s passive score in the appropriate skill, that PC just knows stuff about that creature. Almost everybody knows general stuff about 0 creatures, and many PCs know stuff about CR<1 creatures. Some PCs know about CR 2 creatures too, but usually only bards and people proficient with the relevant skill know facts about higher CR creatures, and even Experts only know all about creatures with a CR as high as 5. Anything with a CR higher than that requires a check. Our group’s main DM is a bit more lenient than that, but that’s still the general concept
Maybe have your PCs publish adventure guides that future parties can buy or borrow from a city library. What creatures description, habits, and behaviors are like. They can possibly make a little $$ of it. THEN Depending on dispersal, the new party may or may not have access to the books.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I once played with a kid. He was maybe 17. He told the DM, at the table, that his background was that as an Elf he had spent his "youth" of 100 plus years reading everything in a library, and now knew everything there was to know about Undead. The DM laughed. Everyone else at the table laughed. So, no, your background does not include some story that is conveniently targeting knowledge about ANY monster. You can twist it any way you like. It is still meta-gaming.
Yeah, I don't think much of the DM or other players.
Was the player trying to maneuver into getting some kind of advantage? Perhaps, though knowing everything about the strengths and weaknesses of the undead isn't all that much of one in practice. (Very few monsters really have the sort of things going on where the meta-knowledge question actually matters.)
More importantly, this is what the knowledge skills are for. These days, I'm pretty sure my reaction would be "OK, but you still need to make the skill rolls to remember things, especially in the heat of the moment. Now, tell me why you're so obsessed with the undead."
And then I'd let them run with it. They'd probably get advantage on many of the skill checks, and probably get to roll some that others wouldn't, because being a scholar of the undead is their thing.
They'd also sometimes get answers like "Well, Grimm's surveys of the folklore say vampires can do X, while Rice's interviews with vampirized subjects say Y, and Van Helsing says that, from his direct encounters with them during field work, they can actually do Z, and Rice and Grimm are a couple of posers who wouldn't know which end of a wooden stake to hammer in."
But that doesn't go with your "DnD is a tactical game and character backgrounds aren't a thing" approach, so *shrug*.
Edit: I also find it fascinating about all this chatter about role playing a char and immersion within that char suddenly comes to a screeching halt when combat tactics and monster knowledge are discussed.
The characters live in a world full of monsters. People are going to know things about how monsters work. Especially if they've made the lifestyle choices that send them out into the world to stab said monsters. Some of the characters are scholars of the unnatural. There is a natural expectation that they will know some things about some monsters. The question of how far that knowledge should go is a tricky one, and tossing it aside under a rubric of "no metagaming" fails to be the most believable approach.
I once played with a kid. He was maybe 17. He told the DM, at the table, that his background was that as an Elf he had spent his "youth" of 100 plus years reading everything in a library, and now knew everything there was to know about Undead. The DM laughed. Everyone else at the table laughed. So, no, your background does not include some story that is conveniently targeting knowledge about ANY monster. You can twist it any way you like. It is still meta-gaming.
Yeah, I don't think much of the DM or other players.
Eh, leading with "everything there is to know" without even having any features to support it is a bit of a flag on that player's side as well, imo. Granted, the table's reaction only made things worse, but if I was the DM I'd tell him that's gonna need to be dialed back to "the character is very knowledgeable about undead". Wanting to have an area of specialty is one thing, but phrasing it like you should have carte blanche to already know all the relevant information about such a wide category is really pushing the envelope.
This is a little bit of a tangent, but, when y'all play video games, like let's say even the new D&D video game, do you try and act like you don't know your Fire Bolt cantrip is gonna be worthless against the imps in the first fight? Do you intentionally waste a turn shooting fire at the freaky little flying guys because it makes sense in your character's background that they don't know about imps?
I mean, it's a rough example because in BG3 you can just right click any monster and see if it's immune to fire, but still. I know I don't do that, myself. D&D's the only game I play where I don't brazenly carry in every ounce of tactical and lore knowledge I've picked up in my life.
Is it just because of the abstraction? Like, there's no DM you can ask, so you just kinda go, "eh, maybe he knows about imps, it's possible" and proceed? Or is it because there's no one else there who might get disappointed or annoyed by it? Or what?
You raise an excellent discussion point.
There is a history of the video game industry profiting from selling magazine subscription and player’s guides that provide insight to the games.“How to kill a boss”. “Where is the secret level”. “What is the answer to a puzzle”….even if the game provided clues on how to pass an encounter.The market dictates that players would rather just “know” what they have to do, and the challenge was in the execution and not the discovery.Sure there are puzzle based games where the discovery aspect is the primary driving force; but for many games, the players’ enjoyment comes from the speed or efficiency in completing the encounter.
So now with D&D (or TTRPG potentially as a whole), what is it that inspires this separation between player knowledge and character knowledge.I see the four discussion points:
Other Players At the Table: This is a courtesy so that players with less experience and knowledge can have the enjoyment of discovery that a more season player may take for granted.
Player’s Character Narrative and Growth: A player may force this distinction between player and character because they want to see how the game’s story transpires and the how the character comes to learn in game information.
Respect to the Module: The game module provide elements and activities where the payoff is the discovery of such information.For example, the characters need to go on journey to obtain information that a player can simple announce “Why bother, if we take the creature out of the water it dies in like 5 or 6 rounds.”
Respect to the GM: I list this last because the above three all apply.The GM’s responsibility is to manage and officiate a good game. Players using knowledge of the encounters and creatures can result in derailing the game session. Players providing this courtesy of restricting their knowledge in gameplay will help with the game’s progression and alleviate some burdens from the GM.
The above all relates to a table etiquette and making an enjoyable adventure with a unique story.Video games’ coding limits the activity of the characters.By choosing to know something or not doesn’t change how scenes are supposed to conclude if the players are successful.In a TTRPG, the outcome is only known at the moment the players achieve the objective.How they achieve cannot be predicted based on the randomness of dice, character makeup, and the pure imagination of the players.
Take this exercise for an example: Let’s say 7 of use here agree to play a pre-written D&D module offered on D&D Beyond.Each day we rotate our roles to play different classes, party functions, and even DM.Everyday for one week, we play the same encounter in the module.One week, same adventure, same level, a total of 7 times. Then we me move to the next chapter and repeat the process. What is likelihood that sessions on different days playing out in a nearly identical faction?I don’t mean just the time of the session or number of rounds to win an encounter; but the character choices and how the scenario concludes.Because of this randomness and uncertainty, I feel the players tend to look at this concept knowledge separation as being essential to table because it allows for the game to evolve organically (for lack of better term).Players will allow for dice roles, clues in the game, random chances, or the GM to provide the characters insight that will serve as permission for the player to apply knowledge to the character.In the video game, we are wasting time in having the character “discover” things that the code assumes they will eventually know and must use in a limited amount of ways to achieve the goal.The theatre of the mind that comes with TTRPG sessions can reward the player by “playing ignorant” because of the random results and uniqueness that comes with each table.
Still, this does’t address OP’s question or the overall question of how to properly adjudicate player knowledge v. character knowledge. But I think it is fair to point out that we are all still just playing a game and it is not so far fetch to see that players are going to be educated on the games’ rules and makeup.In end, I think it comes down to what you as a player wants to get out of the game.
One thing I've seen too often is GMs who get so obsessed with preventing metagaming that they effectively make the players run characters who must have been plonked down into the world yesterday and know absolutely nothing. The worst incident was when I got accused of metagaming in a 3.5 game where I was running a dwarf ranger with Favored Enemy: Giants (in 3.5 lore, dwarves had such a long history of animosity with giants that they actually got bonuses while fighting them thanks to anti-giant combat training) because my character immediately tried to set a troll on fire.
This is a great point. I don't know where it comes from; is it laziness or just a misinterpretation of "metagaming" and how it exists in game play.
It reminds me of watching a modern day Zombie movie. There is almost always a scene where characters have to be told of the lore of zombies and how to defeat them, etc. As if the last 50+ years of films, video games, comic books, novels, tv series, toys, and board games that have influenced our culture does not exist in the world where these characters in this new movie exist. Furthermore, the film or series will then show the existence of the zombie spans weeks if not moths or even years. And yet, the expectation is the characters are to be absolutely oblivious to the fact? Now if the reason is to provide exposition for audience members who are not fully versed on zombies, that is fine, but they can be told of this in a manner were the majority of the character are not clueless to things that can be argued is ready and common knowledge.
There are logical ways to reveal information to the players and to allow characters to have some basic knowledge so that the story can reasonable progress.
This is a little bit of a tangent, but, when y'all play video games, like let's say even the new D&D video game, do you try and act like you don't know your Fire Bolt cantrip is gonna be worthless against the imps in the first fight?
Is it just because of the abstraction? Like, there's no DM you can ask, so you just kinda go, "eh, maybe he knows about imps, it's possible" and proceed? Or is it because there's no one else there who might get disappointed or annoyed by it? Or what?
You raise an excellent discussion point.
There is a history of the video game industry profiting from selling magazine subscription and player’s guides that provide insight to the games.“How to kill a boss”. “Where is the secret level”. “What is the answer to a puzzle”….even if the game provided clues on how to pass an encounter.The market dictates that players would rather just “know” what they have to do, and the challenge was in the execution and not the discovery.
I don't know about all that. I think players usually want to figure it out on their own, it's just that sometimes it's too hard. I mean, if you know anything about video game history, which it sounds like you do, then you know there's been some truly arcane crap that nobody in their right mind would figure out naturally. Plus, these publications have often been a sort of collectible in their own right, or been packaged with other content like behind-the-scenes info or promotions for other games. (And they're cheaper than the actual games... Some people use them as a Cliff's Notes, or a buyer's guide, without even playing the associated games.)
And of course there's the fact that a game guide is a piece of tertiary media that doesn't require the writer to have insider contacts or particular expertise -- just that they solve the game situations and write about it. This is a huge boon for anyone looking to capitalize on the hype around a game. How many of modern games media publications got their start making walkthrough content? How many videos are coming across my YouTube feed that put All the BG3 spells on a tier list? All told, I don't think you can really look at the relative success of game guides as a genre and extrapolate that players by and large don't have an interest in coming up with their own solutions to game situations. I mean, there's no money being spent on that, so how would you track it anyway? Track all game purchases and downloads, subtract game guide purchases and free community-made walkthroughs, and also subtract everyone who simply gave up? Yeah, good luck.
One thing I've seen too often is GMs who get so obsessed with preventing metagaming that they effectively make the players run characters who must have been plonked down into the world yesterday and know absolutely nothing. The worst incident was when I got accused of metagaming in a 3.5 game where I was running a dwarf ranger with Favored Enemy: Giants (in 3.5 lore, dwarves had such a long history of animosity with giants that they actually got bonuses while fighting them thanks to anti-giant combat training) because my character immediately tried to set a troll on fire.
This is a great point. I don't know where it comes from; is it laziness or just a misinterpretation of "metagaming" and how it exists in game play.
It reminds me of watching a modern day Zombie movie. There is almost always a scene where characters have to be told of the lore of zombies and how to defeat them, etc. As if the last 50+ years of films, video games, comic books, novels, tv series, toys, and board games that have influenced our culture does not exist in the world where these characters in this new movie exist. Furthermore, the film or series will then show the existence of the zombie spans weeks if not moths or even years. And yet, the expectation is the characters are to be absolutely oblivious to the fact? Now if the reason is to provide exposition for audience members who are not fully versed on zombies, that is fine, but they can be told of this in a manner were the majority of the character are not clueless to things that can be argued is ready and common knowledge.
There are logical ways to reveal information to the players and to allow characters to have some basic knowledge so that the story can reasonable progress.
There's an old joke about horror movies in general and zombie movies in particular that they always take place in worlds where horror/zombie movies don't exist.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I've been building and play testing an adventure, based on another gaming system (Savage Worlds). This world is of my own making. As there are no world guides or monster guides for the players to study, I've been providing information to the players; specifically information that their individual characters would most certainly know. Interestingly enough, some of those characters are still woefully ignorant on what they should know.
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
All of this is why I have a Lore Book for my campaigns, though.
My Lore Books are written from the perspective of the people who live there, and provide basic, essential knowledge to the players -- in short, everything in the Lore Book is something that all the characters know to some degree or other.
they get used, too, lol.
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Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Wait - you sent the player information that their character specifically should know, but then when it came time for that information to be useful, you forced the party to roll for it anyway?
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I've been building and play testing an adventure, based on another gaming system (Savage Worlds). This world is of my own making. As there are no world guides or monster guides for the players to study, I've been providing information to the players; specifically information that their individual characters would most certainly know. Interestingly enough, some of those characters are still woefully ignorant on what they should know.
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Funny how things happen sometimes.
Yeah, an important thing to remember is that pretty much no player really reads that background material you give them. Partly they're busy; they have other things outside D&D. But at least as often, they do read (or at least skim it), but they don't absorb it the way you have. (I literally just had this happen to me; I wrote up a bunch of information they just acquired, and one of the players immediately came back with a brand new theory about what's really going on that not only contradicts everything they knew about the plotline in question, but also the information that they just read.)
Nonetheless, if it's a thing that's common enough knowledge that you put it into a handout, I don't think you should make them roll for it. It's kind of the opposite of the metagame issue that's been being discussed in this thread.
Do you know how to kill a vampire, a zombie , a werewolf and that's in a world where they don't exist. If they really existed folks would be scared of such and talk would go about how to kill said creatures now you know what they talk about in taverns and inns
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Wait - you sent the player information that their character specifically should know, but then when it came time for that information to be useful, you forced the party to roll for it anyway?
Yep. I'm a horrible person, and a bastard of a DM, who learned this game a long time ago, under different social rules than what is apparently the norm now. I provided the information that the player needed, in advance, and have a strong aversion to what I have learned is known these days as "spoon feeding" the players information, on demand. This particular player spends most of the time at this live table playing on their mobile, and regularly asks to be filled in on what's been happening, since their last turn. Give respect, gain respect. Be considerate of others, gain consideration from others. I'm not a computer game, here for others' pleasure at the expense of my own.
Play your own way, DM/GM your own way. I'll do the same.
I've been building and play testing an adventure, based on another gaming system (Savage Worlds). This world is of my own making. As there are no world guides or monster guides for the players to study, I've been providing information to the players; specifically information that their individual characters would most certainly know. Interestingly enough, some of those characters are still woefully ignorant on what they should know.
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Funny how things happen sometimes.
Yeah, an important thing to remember is that pretty much no player really reads that background material you give them. Partly they're busy; they have other things outside D&D. But at least as often, they do read (or at least skim it), but they don't absorb it the way you have. (I literally just had this happen to me; I wrote up a bunch of information they just acquired, and one of the players immediately came back with a brand new theory about what's really going on that not only contradicts everything they knew about the plotline in question, but also the information that they just read.)
Nonetheless, if it's a thing that's common enough knowledge that you put it into a handout, I don't think you should make them roll for it. It's kind of the opposite of the metagame issue that's been being discussed in this thread.
Do you know how to kill a vampire, a zombie , a werewolf and that's in a world where they don't exist. If they really existed folks would be scared of such and talk would go about how to kill said creatures now you know what they talk about in taverns and inns
And there would undoubtedly be a bunch of conflicting information.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I agree with this.
Absolute avoidance of Metagaming is impossible. The analogy I've used before is, how accurately can any human alive determine 90ft from 90.01ft within a 6 second window during a fight to the death and would the know that something that can be lethal at 90ft is harmless at 90.01ft.
If we take an average human's intelligence of being 10 in the real world, and imagine we were being attached by a flame monster, would anyone try to dispose of it with a flame thrower or would they assume that would be useless and look for a fire extinguisher or a water hose. Even person of low intelligence of 6 would probably me able to figure that out. Without living in a world where magic is mundane.
So our imaginary wizard or sorcerer that's lived in a world with where they dead literally walk should have enough sense to know that chill touch may not be useful against something that is visibly dead. Like a Ghost and adjust their behaviour accordingly.
The same thing applies to a lumbered heavily armoured target are you should to shoot something at it or throw some acid at it that it need to try and dodge out of the way of.. in that heavy armour.
I mean look. Ultimately you have to ask yourself two questions. 1) What's fun for me? 2) What's fun for my friends?
I happen to think it's fun when I recognize something and remember how it works. What can I say? I like learning. I've been playing and reading for a long time and I enjoy getting to feel like there was some bonus benefit to all that. Plus I like sharing things with my friends. Telling them about the cool thing I found. My friends are torn on the whole metagaming thing, though. Some of them think it's only fun if characters have the knowledge and insight that they'd realistically have, and don't have any knowledge or insight that it wouldn't make sense for them to have. So, for monster abilities, we've settled on a fine compromise, and it's one that I expect is pretty common: When we recognize a monster, we usually say, "hey DM, would it make sense for my character to know about this monster?" If he says yes, then we talk about it and use the knowledge to improve our tactics. If he says no, we keep it out of character, often even choosing to say as little as possible about it to our fellow players, in order to make it easier for anyone who hasn't figured it out to keep the knowledge out of their character's head.
But I would totally play in a game where your character was just allowed to know everything you know automatically. Would I play in one where you couldn't even ask? Ehhhhhh. Maybe..?
Thats why my table usually uses passive scores for common knowledge stuff. We generally only ask for Intelligence (Skill) checks for less commonly known stuff. When it comes to monster facts I usually base it on CR. The higher the monster’s CR, the less common knowledge is about it. If the CR is less than frac12; the PC’s passive score in the appropriate skill, that PC just knows stuff about that creature. Almost everybody knows general stuff about 0 creatures, and many PCs know stuff about CR<1 creatures. Some PCs know about CR 2 creatures too, but usually only bards and people proficient with the relevant skill know facts about higher CR creatures, and even Experts only know all about creatures with a CR as high as 5. Anything with a CR higher than that requires a check. Our group’s main DM is a bit more lenient than that, but that’s still the general concept
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Maybe have your PCs publish adventure guides that future parties can buy or borrow from a city library. What creatures description, habits, and behaviors are like. They can possibly make a little $$ of it. THEN Depending on dispersal, the new party may or may not have access to the books.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Thx for the Answers :)
Yeah, I don't think much of the DM or other players.
Was the player trying to maneuver into getting some kind of advantage? Perhaps, though knowing everything about the strengths and weaknesses of the undead isn't all that much of one in practice. (Very few monsters really have the sort of things going on where the meta-knowledge question actually matters.)
More importantly, this is what the knowledge skills are for. These days, I'm pretty sure my reaction would be "OK, but you still need to make the skill rolls to remember things, especially in the heat of the moment. Now, tell me why you're so obsessed with the undead."
And then I'd let them run with it. They'd probably get advantage on many of the skill checks, and probably get to roll some that others wouldn't, because being a scholar of the undead is their thing.
They'd also sometimes get answers like "Well, Grimm's surveys of the folklore say vampires can do X, while Rice's interviews with vampirized subjects say Y, and Van Helsing says that, from his direct encounters with them during field work, they can actually do Z, and Rice and Grimm are a couple of posers who wouldn't know which end of a wooden stake to hammer in."
But that doesn't go with your "DnD is a tactical game and character backgrounds aren't a thing" approach, so *shrug*.
The characters live in a world full of monsters. People are going to know things about how monsters work. Especially if they've made the lifestyle choices that send them out into the world to stab said monsters. Some of the characters are scholars of the unnatural. There is a natural expectation that they will know some things about some monsters. The question of how far that knowledge should go is a tricky one, and tossing it aside under a rubric of "no metagaming" fails to be the most believable approach.
Eh, leading with "everything there is to know" without even having any features to support it is a bit of a flag on that player's side as well, imo. Granted, the table's reaction only made things worse, but if I was the DM I'd tell him that's gonna need to be dialed back to "the character is very knowledgeable about undead". Wanting to have an area of specialty is one thing, but phrasing it like you should have carte blanche to already know all the relevant information about such a wide category is really pushing the envelope.
You raise an excellent discussion point.
There is a history of the video game industry profiting from selling magazine subscription and player’s guides that provide insight to the games. “How to kill a boss”. “Where is the secret level”. “What is the answer to a puzzle”….even if the game provided clues on how to pass an encounter. The market dictates that players would rather just “know” what they have to do, and the challenge was in the execution and not the discovery. Sure there are puzzle based games where the discovery aspect is the primary driving force; but for many games, the players’ enjoyment comes from the speed or efficiency in completing the encounter.
So now with D&D (or TTRPG potentially as a whole), what is it that inspires this separation between player knowledge and character knowledge. I see the four discussion points:
The above all relates to a table etiquette and making an enjoyable adventure with a unique story. Video games’ coding limits the activity of the characters. By choosing to know something or not doesn’t change how scenes are supposed to conclude if the players are successful. In a TTRPG, the outcome is only known at the moment the players achieve the objective. How they achieve cannot be predicted based on the randomness of dice, character makeup, and the pure imagination of the players.
Take this exercise for an example: Let’s say 7 of use here agree to play a pre-written D&D module offered on D&D Beyond. Each day we rotate our roles to play different classes, party functions, and even DM. Everyday for one week, we play the same encounter in the module. One week, same adventure, same level, a total of 7 times. Then we me move to the next chapter and repeat the process. What is likelihood that sessions on different days playing out in a nearly identical faction? I don’t mean just the time of the session or number of rounds to win an encounter; but the character choices and how the scenario concludes. Because of this randomness and uncertainty, I feel the players tend to look at this concept knowledge separation as being essential to table because it allows for the game to evolve organically (for lack of better term). Players will allow for dice roles, clues in the game, random chances, or the GM to provide the characters insight that will serve as permission for the player to apply knowledge to the character. In the video game, we are wasting time in having the character “discover” things that the code assumes they will eventually know and must use in a limited amount of ways to achieve the goal. The theatre of the mind that comes with TTRPG sessions can reward the player by “playing ignorant” because of the random results and uniqueness that comes with each table.
Still, this does’t address OP’s question or the overall question of how to properly adjudicate player knowledge v. character knowledge. But I think it is fair to point out that we are all still just playing a game and it is not so far fetch to see that players are going to be educated on the games’ rules and makeup. In end, I think it comes down to what you as a player wants to get out of the game.
This is a great point. I don't know where it comes from; is it laziness or just a misinterpretation of "metagaming" and how it exists in game play.
It reminds me of watching a modern day Zombie movie. There is almost always a scene where characters have to be told of the lore of zombies and how to defeat them, etc. As if the last 50+ years of films, video games, comic books, novels, tv series, toys, and board games that have influenced our culture does not exist in the world where these characters in this new movie exist. Furthermore, the film or series will then show the existence of the zombie spans weeks if not moths or even years. And yet, the expectation is the characters are to be absolutely oblivious to the fact? Now if the reason is to provide exposition for audience members who are not fully versed on zombies, that is fine, but they can be told of this in a manner were the majority of the character are not clueless to things that can be argued is ready and common knowledge.
There are logical ways to reveal information to the players and to allow characters to have some basic knowledge so that the story can reasonable progress.
I don't know about all that. I think players usually want to figure it out on their own, it's just that sometimes it's too hard. I mean, if you know anything about video game history, which it sounds like you do, then you know there's been some truly arcane crap that nobody in their right mind would figure out naturally. Plus, these publications have often been a sort of collectible in their own right, or been packaged with other content like behind-the-scenes info or promotions for other games. (And they're cheaper than the actual games... Some people use them as a Cliff's Notes, or a buyer's guide, without even playing the associated games.)
And of course there's the fact that a game guide is a piece of tertiary media that doesn't require the writer to have insider contacts or particular expertise -- just that they solve the game situations and write about it. This is a huge boon for anyone looking to capitalize on the hype around a game. How many of modern games media publications got their start making walkthrough content? How many videos are coming across my YouTube feed that put All the BG3 spells on a tier list? All told, I don't think you can really look at the relative success of game guides as a genre and extrapolate that players by and large don't have an interest in coming up with their own solutions to game situations. I mean, there's no money being spent on that, so how would you track it anyway? Track all game purchases and downloads, subtract game guide purchases and free community-made walkthroughs, and also subtract everyone who simply gave up? Yeah, good luck.
There's an old joke about horror movies in general and zombie movies in particular that they always take place in worlds where horror/zombie movies don't exist.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A twist on the knowledge thing, perhaps:
I've been building and play testing an adventure, based on another gaming system (Savage Worlds). This world is of my own making. As there are no world guides or monster guides for the players to study, I've been providing information to the players; specifically information that their individual characters would most certainly know. Interestingly enough, some of those characters are still woefully ignorant on what they should know.
Example: The party comes across a group of NPCs wearing a symbol, I show the players a drawing of that symbol. One of the PCs knows this information, but that player doesn't respond to it. They want to roll a knowledge check, but only one of those PCs could possibly know what it means, and that player rolls badly. They end up attacking a group of NPCs who could have made powerful allies; now the PCs are enemies of the gang that the NPCs belonged to. Later, I asked the player if they forgot the info that I sent them, a few days earlier. The reply, "I didn't read it." The document was a mere 4 paragraphs long, plus a picture of some symbols and their meanings.
At this point, the story line has shifted in this new direction; no problem at my end. The player eventually read the information I sent them, then complained that I should have told them this when they made the knowledge check. Again, the player failed that check. Had the player read, printed, or otherwise retained that information, then things might have worked out differently.
Funny how things happen sometimes.
All of this is why I have a Lore Book for my campaigns, though.
My Lore Books are written from the perspective of the people who live there, and provide basic, essential knowledge to the players -- in short, everything in the Lore Book is something that all the characters know to some degree or other.
they get used, too, lol.
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Wait - you sent the player information that their character specifically should know, but then when it came time for that information to be useful, you forced the party to roll for it anyway?
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Yeah, an important thing to remember is that pretty much no player really reads that background material you give them. Partly they're busy; they have other things outside D&D. But at least as often, they do read (or at least skim it), but they don't absorb it the way you have. (I literally just had this happen to me; I wrote up a bunch of information they just acquired, and one of the players immediately came back with a brand new theory about what's really going on that not only contradicts everything they knew about the plotline in question, but also the information that they just read.)
Nonetheless, if it's a thing that's common enough knowledge that you put it into a handout, I don't think you should make them roll for it. It's kind of the opposite of the metagame issue that's been being discussed in this thread.
Do you know how to kill a vampire, a zombie , a werewolf and that's in a world where they don't exist. If they really existed folks would be scared of such and talk would go about how to kill said creatures now you know what they talk about in taverns and inns
Yep. I'm a horrible person, and a bastard of a DM, who learned this game a long time ago, under different social rules than what is apparently the norm now. I provided the information that the player needed, in advance, and have a strong aversion to what I have learned is known these days as "spoon feeding" the players information, on demand. This particular player spends most of the time at this live table playing on their mobile, and regularly asks to be filled in on what's been happening, since their last turn. Give respect, gain respect. Be considerate of others, gain consideration from others. I'm not a computer game, here for others' pleasure at the expense of my own.
Play your own way, DM/GM your own way. I'll do the same.
See the above.
And there would undoubtedly be a bunch of conflicting information.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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I knew this was gonna turn into a dogpile thread the moment you posted.
Maybe it's not too late to save it though.
But I'm not sure what's left to say on the matter, lol.