D&D story: What is Metagaming, and Should You Do It?

[trentwilis]

I think the troll and fire thing is just someone looking for a problem. Burn it with fire is pretty common even in our pretty tame world . Its not hard to figure out.

[AdorkableDaughterofNyx]

a good example of How Metagaming can be used as a good thing is the Coordination of a Group of player Characters at Session 0 to design a party that works together. or knowing not to waste a Shield Spell.. for example, choosing to not build an evil Necromancer in a Party with a Good Paladin alongside other good characters is a good example of metagamng done right, as is asking the game master which creature types are common in the region or focus of the campaign when you pick your rangers favored enemy.

[fhuber]

You can't completely eliminate metagaming.
You do need to somewhat separate player knowledge from character action.

[TrenchCoatDingo]

my reaction to most monsters firebolt/ball is it working yes keep doing ok ill try ice ect

[nickwilliams]

The problem with pretending not to know things that you actually do know is that it's not possible to do and not fun to try. There's pretty much always a better way to do things than to force your players to pretend to want to do things they don't actually want to do.

Just to look at the example of the Rogue checking for traps.

The problem here is that the players saw the roll and are now allegedly supposed to pretend they didn't.

One solution is for the DM to roll Investigation (as well as Perception and Insight for that matter) checks, or just use passive checks. Another is to rule that a failed attempt to search for traps sets any trap present off. That way, the consequences of the bad roll happen immediately without the need to railroad the players into taking an action they don't want to take.

Personally, I favour the second approach in conjunction with the "Click Rule": when a PC triggers a trap, you look up at the players and say, "Click."

The players then have an opportunity to immediately (and I mean immediately) declare an action as the trap activates. Before they know what the trap does. Try the Click Rule, it's awesome.

Or look at the old chestnut of the Troll attack. The Internets are full of people who think that players shouldn't use metagame knowledge to just attack the Troll with fire. No, they should instead use the same metagame knowledge to continually make a variety of attribute checks until the DM lets them use fire.

The central problem with this for me is that these DMs fail to understand what the _real_ challenge (and fun) of a Troll encounter actually is. It's not making the players pretend not to know something that every nerd on the planet knows. That's not a challenge and it's definitely not fun.

No, the challenge lies in the players having to use fire _strategically._ Essentially, at low levels (ie. the levels where the PCs are going to be Trollfighting), only one or two PCs are going to be able to bring the fire to the fight. These PCs can also - under normal circumstances - do a bunch of other shit too like give motherfuckers superspeed or turn into animals..

Except now they can't, because they have to stick to things like Firebolt and Produce Flame. You've locked those characters down.

And yeah, just tell the players what their target number is. Swinging a sword at someone's head is a pretty fucking good way to gauge how good their defences are.

Also, check this out:

[MrSilvUr]

Some points of contention:

What does a 4 look like on a Rogue's investigation? Does the Rogue not know he's doing a bad job? Why not? Unless it's a nat 1, I think something like, "You continue your search for traps, but you are having difficulty getting a read on the architecture here, " is fine. I feel like a lot of the problems are due to folks Roll Playing. If the DM isn't going to narrate the results of a roll in-game, and simply let the dice convey the events, then the started metagaming first: They let the narrative be dictated by something outside the game-world (the dice).

Regarding the trolls, an Adventure is inherently about contention with the unknown. On the one hand, I think it's silly to assume that every adventurer has done enough research to know what a troll is and how to kill it. For one, it's not likely that information is very easily accessible - There's no internet, and, in a more realistic medieval society, few books; you'd have to go on the word-of-mouth of people who mostly have never traveled more than a few miles. There are knowledges to determine how much an adventurer knows, so... Knowledge doesn't seem to be something to be taken for granted.

On the other hand... Adventures are about contention with the unknown, and that's true for the players as well. If the players know what's going on, especially regarding a puzzle boss, then it's just not a good adventure to force them to feign ignorance. As a DM, I'd see it as a failure to enforce such a thing. I made a bad encounter, or didn't account for player knowledge. The fix for this, I think, barring successful knowledge rolls, is to simply ask the player, "Why does your character use fire?" Or, "How does your character know to use fire?" You don't ask those questions as accusations, but as an opportunity to make that knowledge part of the story. One good way of phrasing it: "Tell us the story of how your character learned about trolls." I'd call a break if the player needs it, and probably award inspiration if it's a good story. It helps fix my bad encounter design, reinforces immersion for everyone, and lets a player shine.

Obviously. Context is important to consider: I'm not going to ask Ragnar Trollhunter how he knows how to kill trolls (though, if he decides to make an interesting story of it, he might get some inspiration), and in a hack-and-slash kill-fest where no one else is asking, I probably wouldn't either.

Regarding Shield, I think you're mostly spot on. Here are some other things to consider: You can assume that an attack that would have gotten through the shield was too fast or too tricksy for the caster to have responded with the shield anyway. This is, again, an issue of not letting the narration cease at the dice and rather actually describing what the dice actually mean.

A second point: If the DM wants to roll in secret, that's fine. A DM can say, "What's your armor class?"
"15."
"The attack hits."
"I cast Shield."
"The attack [...]"
This isn't something I would enforce on my players, but if I were playing, I'd think it fair if the DM enforced on me.(.. For the right reasons!)

The bit about rolling in secret applies to Investigation as well. If you don't want your players acting on information, don't let them have it. Simple as that. Oh, and maybe read up on Passive Investigation and think about why it's in the game. >_>

The point is, metagaming is often facilitated by the GM, whether they know it or not. I don't think it's inherently a bad thing, and when and how it is a bad thing depends primarily on context.

[iquestioneverything]

Isn't the adventurers usually new adventurers in a d&d game ? So Unless they go to monster hunting school they wont know trolls can only be killed with fire

[veggo]

About the trolls yes i think that a higher level player would know .But at level 1-3 your a new adventurer so maybe you shouldent

[joren]

It should not be so cut & dry for the DM to just tell you what your character doesn’t know. If they’re not going to just ask for a knowledge roll, you can try justifying it with the fact in a world with semi-common monsters, knowledge would be too. Maybe your Mom read you bedtime stories about trolls...

[aquawoelfly]

Meta gaming is ok when
A your the DM (duh you should know LOL)
B you rolled a 20 on your insight/history/perception etc
C your charector is a sage or otherwise connected to etherial sources.
D your charector has a high proficiency in something and metagaming is limited to that proficiency. IE OOC you know a storm is brewing neer the harbor. So IC you moor the boat to the pier. As a proficient sailor you know the skies and the seas and can tell something is coming also its just good practice to moor a boat if you want it to be there after high tide comes in and goes out.
E its not metagaming if your charector has a reasonable way of knowing (intelegence wisdom arcane etc checks) or otherwise subverting (such as a quark of always hitching the horses before a fight and high animal handling skills to calm them down when the danger passes) the DMs hijinks.

[Roguhr]

Okay, the troll example.. i see the DM's point on it, but really, all it takes is a hunter, a veteran warrior, a scholarly type of character to declare the knowledge early in the encounter. To keep it within the RP. Troll's weakness is common knowledge amongst players as much as amongst citizens of lands with trolls. can you imagine living in a world, with 12 foot monsters that could only be killed with fire, and not knowing about them? xD

[reyofsoul]

If I see a naked monstruosity am gonna try to burn that thing, because purging with fire seems always like the right thing to do.

[forestelfranger]

The whole you can't use fire on trolls thing just sounded like a very interesting one. Given fire tends to work well at damaging foes and burning things. Even if the character didn't know fire is a troll's weakness. You figure that they at least know fire can be rather useful or has been useful to them in the past, depending on what has happen. Given fire is a very useful tool. It can be used for cooking, lighting the dark dungeon path, slaying your foes and so much more. Why wouldn't i want to use such a useful tool against my foes?
That or if these things are a common enough threat, troll attacks happen often enough. Some common knowledge might be known, given fire tends to be a common thing. That might be what you know over say acid.

Which the whole trap thing. Well if they roll lower then normal. The case could always be made that it's rather noticable. Given they might of normally done two to five sweeps around the place but this time only did one look and normally get up and close to everything. Studying it over for even the smallest details but this time they sort of just half ass it. For you figure that if the roll results is very low, the rogue might not be searching for traps like they normally are. Heck maybe your character is not the trusting type and always wants to double check, for they think the rogue might be willing to backstab him by saying there is no traps when there truly is one and they just failed to tell the party. That or is just someone who likes playing on the safe side and always want to double check the results just to make sure things are as they seem. Maybe your character is just the type that think the rogue luck is two good to be true and one day it's going to run out and you will end up running into a trap they didn't notice.

Of course if you are looking for traps in the first place. It tells you the place is rather dangerous and who really wants to walk down the hallway that the rogue didn't find any traps in? Throwing a copper coin or two to check just in case, sounds like a good plan. For hey if the hallways is not trapped. Can just pick up the copper coin and go on with your business. If it is trapped. Well now you know and knowing is half the battle. For that coin is bound to make less noise then setting off the trap or someone painfully screaming as the trap kills or heavily injures them. Hey if someone notices you by throwing a coin down the hallway. You most likely were going with plan a anyway. Run run away run away! Or fight and kill it, after you got pass the traps. Given these raise dead spells are not cheap my son. Unless you are a brave or reckless fool, it might be useful to have a trick or two up your sleeve to deal with things like this.

[BlackRainRising]

One of my players I keep talking to about plans I have for my game, and he keeps taking those plans in game to his character, I actually threatened to throw my 30 sider at him if he didn't knock it off, the rest of the characters kept looking at him like he was speaking gibberish (he's playing the bard after all) so they played off his meta-gaming nonesense and kept playing the way they should, since then he's gotten a lot better!

[SuperParkourio]

I don't think it's metagaming for a player to advise a second player about what that second player should do with the knowledge that the second player's character has.