Metagaming making your RPG better since ALWAYS

[PhoneLobster]

So anyways. I'm pretty sure I once had a little "Metagaming. Usually actually a good thing."

But I can't find it and it was pretty ancient. And I don't think the Good GMing FAQ covers it. So here is a new one.

The stupid thing people think...
I don't actually see it much these days, thankfully, but I've been reminded that hey, there ARE still people out there on this particular bad trip.

"Metagaming is bad", that's the three word slogan spouted by this group of wrong people on the internet.

The meat of their opinions? Players should never act on "out of character" information or in an out of character way, GM type players included. All game rules should be secret to characters, the very outcome of their actions shrouded in mystery and communicated, even to the players themselves, exclusively through method acting coded prose that never references game rules in any way.

Up to and often including "players should never know anyone's total HP or current HP damage, and attacks should never be described in the terms of how much HP damage they deal.

There are of course various levels of extremists on this, ranging from people who can't recognize a bad argument for whatever their latest RPG idea 'gem' might be to full on "It is your god given right, nay DUTY to resolve EVERYTHING behind a DMs screen and cheat as much as you feel like, if a player even shows a HINT of knowing a rule then you must kill their character and excommunicate the player from your DM worship cult".

But even the "reasonable" guys who only think metagaming is bad when it is convenient to them are basically shitting on metagaming for no good reason.

The truth about "metagaming"
1) Method acting is NOT a good way to make decisions good for game play.
From the most basic "why are we working together as a team for no reason again?" upwards, including on the way "why shouldn't johnny backstab and murder ALL the other PCs when he thinks it's totes 'in character' to do so?" and so on, actual in character decisions are frequently bad.

You are playing something that is a game, and just a game, and also games are supposed to be fun. You should be making the fun decisions, and, since the vast majority of RPGs are co-operative games, the decisions that don't needlessly shit on everyone else's fun.

2) There is no objectively correct 'in character' action anyway
Your character is defined arbitrarily and largely on the fly, largely by their actions. You think it's 'in character" for you to refuse to save Betty's character from certain death and instead go and weave a basket in the corner until the fight is over?

Well fuck you, YOU just made that decision and you didn't have to. So make a BETTER decision about what is 'in character' next time.

3) Flowery prose is not an effective method of communicating specific information with reliable certainty
"You hit him real hard dealing a grievous wound" and "You deal 15HP damage" communicate different information. The FIRST thing communicates something vague, open to interpretation, and open to lots of disagreements.

You as a player clearly think the 'grievous wound' means the guy is totally about to fall over, but hey, maybe the GM thinks it's a grievous relative to other wounds but NOT relative to the bad guy's awesome (secret) HP.

But stating the HP damage dealt outright? You just communicated a hard verifiable fact, ideally one players can compare to the publicly known HP total on the target to further inform their actions.

It puts EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE. No misunderstandings, no disagreements, everyone knows what just happened and what it means and everyone gets to make decisions and facilitate further fun gaming without problems caused by poor communication.

And hell, it's not like the grievous wound version and the HP version are in any way exclusive or incompatible, you can in fact just use both. For the best efficiency I'd recommend blending them together into a simple smooth statement like "You hit him really hard for a grievous 15HP of damage."

4) Game rules are in fact the ONLY means the game has of communicating with the players
In the real world we are just plain swimming in additional information and knowledge to assist us in making some sort of judgement about how hard we just hit that guy.

In the game... you aren't. Your playing half blind and deaf, most of your contextual knowledge gone to boot, attempting to decide the actions of an imaginary person in an imaginary world with nothing but the medium of a few spoken sentences and maybe some tiny toys on a crude map to communicate everything you need to know about the actions, the persons and the world itself.

There is less information going into and out of the game than you get sitting in front of the average modern computer game.

EXCEPT by the medium of the actual rules of the game.

So if you wall off dirty filthy rules information for being so dirty filthy "meta" then you just basically ensured that it is now pretty much impossible to figure out what the hell is going on in your game.

5) Secrecy leads to more secrecy leads to accusations of cheating leads to the dark side leads to people flipping tables
OK. Lets say you went with the classic and want to make the success or failure of actions secret. Or maybe you want to make HP damage/totals secret.

Well. Guess what. That means you actually have to hide the results of rolls.

Now, regardless of whether you cheat when you now hide those results, you are, very reasonably, open to accusations of cheating.

And players are going to feel like you are cheating even if they don't level the accusation.

The "roll behind the screen" is one of the most dreadful of terrible ideas ever. It might be impossible to utterly eradicate from game play, stealth checks and hidden object detection is pretty troublesome without it. But as a general rule you should NEVER "roll behind the screen", it undermines everyone's faith in your fairness and enjoyment of the game. And any advice ever suggesting you roll behind the screen routinely, or because that is your "right" as a GM, or for shits and giggles is bad fucking advice.

6) Actually it's not like it's even disruptive to mention HP and stuff from time to time
It turns out it's no big deal. See as it happens, most actual people actually playing these actual games. Actually know they are playing a game.

Mentioning gaming terms and game mechanical outcomes does not in fact disconnect them from their experience.

An experience, which I remind you, is supposed to be playing a god damn game.

7) Is it even so damn bad if NPCs in setting have some sort of knowledge of HP?
Now one of the big straw boogie men trundled out is "oh noes, but what if every peasant in the world KNEW their own HP score and talked about it in character!".

Leaving aside that it is in no way necessary to do that while still communicating real game terms to players and having characters make game play relevant decisions. Because they can just do that. Without having to ever say anything in character about it.

Leaving THAT rather giant point aside... so what? What IF every peasant in the world knew if he had 1, 3, or 5 HP. What IF farmer bob said "I'd kill that there Manticore me-selfs but I only gots me 2 HP on a good day..."

Even then... it's not especially the end of the world. Nothing especially bad comes from it. I mean, it's totally gratuitous because he COULD have just said he was frail and the information that he only has 2 HP at maximum COULD just be information the GM lets the players know separately. But gratuity aside it's not a gigantic disaster that is even going to hurt anyone.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that any gaming table so utterly super god damn serious about their in character role play that they wouldn't either ignore or even enjoy the 2 HP version of the farmer bob in character line... is a group of people with some serious poles up their asses playing a pretty pretentious shitty version of a game.

8) If NPCs make decisions that are sensible in rules terms THE SETTING BREAKS!
And while that might be true... well... NPCs don't HAVE to do that, and in particular probably shouldn't. In fact who-ever is in control of the NPCs... probably should use METAGAMING to make the appropriate decision to avoid breaking the setting.

The decision on whether NPCs all ways make "the best" decision is a pretty fuzzy boundary. The decision on how much of a problem a bad motivation from a rule might be for NPCs (or even PCs) might be is a pretty fuzzy context specific boundary again.

But wherever you choose to draw the line, it's actually predominantly a RULES issue, and one which is best solved by removing as many "bad motivation" mechanics as possible AND by applying fucking metagaming to avoid the remainder.

9) Players routinely attempt to use metagaming to improve the game
Probably the worst examples of metagaming you will see occur pretty regularly in practice are things like the following.

The PCs never ever split up. For metagame reasons regarding their powers combined summoning captain planet.

The PCs, if split up, will attempt to metagame the hell out of getting back together, just in case they need to summon captain planet.

The PCs, if split up AND an encounter happens to one of them, will metagame the hell out of attempting to get back together RIGHT NOW to somehow arrive in time to help/not miss out on... summoning captain planet.

The PCs will attempt to apply metagame knowledge about events that happen to other characters, they will attempt to have input into conversations happening to other PCs in other places, and they will frequently try to move the story along by means and information not directly available 'in character'.

But you know what, in practice the VAST majority of these applications of metagaming are flat out POSITIVE attempts by the players to move the game along, participate in the game, and co-operate with each other for better outcomes.

Yes that's right, even some of the worst conceivable applications of dirty filthy metagaming, more often than not, are just players trying to do the right thing. And often as not, if you let them, they will succeed in doing the right thing and making the game better through metagaming.

Because... actually it IS better if the PCs stick together, and it IS better if they can use any slim excuse up to sheer senseless coincidence for them to get back together "in an emergency" if they need to in order to enjoy participation and help prevent PC deaths. It IS better if the players share knowledge, decisions and interactions that the characters don't, it DOES move the story along more smoothly and make a more fun experience with broader participation and engagement.

Is 'metagaming' EVER bad for a typical RPG?
Probably, maybe. I'm sure you can paint some extreme edge case if you must.

But as a pretty damned reliable general rule you can be certain that pretty much anything most commonly denounced on the internet during arguments about RPGs as filthy filthy 'metagaming' is actually... not a problem and is probably good for game play.

It helps that the people so desperately concerned about 'metagaming' being wrong-bad-fun are pretty much reliably a long way down the crazy train by the time they start trying that one on.

It also helps that basically, who the hell even runs around denouncing "metagaming" these days? The basket weavers are dead, the OSR crazies who wear their skin corpse as far as I was aware went in at least cosmetically different directions/branding on the denouncing metagaming front. An entire generation of gamers will only recognize the language more in the context of "the metagame" for competitive games and the like.

But you know. Just in case someone still tries to dig up the crumbly old "metagaming bad-wrong-fun" zombie from it's second or third hand tomb right next door to the forgotten ghost of the millennium bug and kick it back to life...

[koz]

I believe a lot of 'metagaming' arises from the fact that most game designers eat too much paste to think through whether their rules end up encouraging the kinds of actions their setting should. But as you mention, the rules are the game world, and thus, if there's a disconnect between what the rules encourage and what the setting claims to be true, the setting is wrong, pure and simple.

[momothefiddler]

I have a player who will bring her OOC issues IC - if you piss her off, be prepared for your next character or three to be constantly fucked over by her corresponding character(s). And while I can see the appeal of calling "no metagaming" on that, I acknowledge the validity of good metagaming, and from now on will file that behavior instead under "don't be a dickhole".

(I mean it is metagaming, sure. But it's also talking in English, and I'm not banning that, so)

[Wiseman]

I don't see why you can't do both? Using descriptive text and stating the mechanics isn't that hard. Here's one of my posts from a PbP game I was in.

Astraloth C HP 55/176 sickened con damage

The fiend hissed as the blade cleaved through it, leaving it critically wounded. It roared and leaped towards Arin, claws and fangs crackling with negative energy. Arin quickly leaped back flipping away from the strike. The monsters claws struck into the grass, blackening it.

Active Assault
5 foot step as immediate action.

At Mia's mental command, one of the astraloths leaped upon it's comrade, ripping and tearing.

4 hits
Damage: 76
Astraloth B HP 264/210 54 temporary hit points. +20 Str

The daemon not under her control quickly figured out what had happened, it pointed at mia and fired another bolt of negative energy, this one striking true and stealing her life force.

Energy Drain
Spell Resistance Check: Success
Levels Drained: 4
Mia HP 82/110 4 neg levels
Spells Lost:
Hijacking Dispel
Suddenly Phantom Train
Polymorph Any Object
Veles Missile

Mia stumbled about, feeling cold and clammy. Her staff spoke up. "Milady, I regret to inform you that many of your high level spells have been lost. Examination of your vital signs reveals the cause to be a direct attack on the soul."

"I know how energy draining works!" Mia shouted. "Now how about a little retaliation?!"

Mia lifted the staff, tapping into the magic she had stored within it. A massive transparent glowing blue hand appeared in the air. At a gesture from Mia, the hand went barreling into the fiend who had drained her. It struck head on, sending the monster flying, where it landed on it's back, dazed.

Holt's Clenched Fist
Charges Remaining: 43/50
Fort Save DC30 or stun.
Attack Roll (CL+INT+13): 49
Damage: 105
Astraloth B HP 159/210 +20 Str Prone, Stunned

[PhoneLobster]

I don't see why you can't do both?

I was pretty exhaustive and covered that basic fact already. More examples don't hurt, but yeah, totally had that one covered.

I don't want to blow it up to too much of a strawman, though there really were/maybe still are people who genuinely think major rules like HP or all rules/rolls period need to be kept secret. But I think it needs to remain clear that even the lesser forms of anti-metagame argument were demands that certain information, or types of player decision making needed to be excluded not that fluffy descriptions merely needed inclusion.

So while mixing fluff and rules info is certainly a good thing you should do... it did not, and will not satisfy those people who's entire thing was that rules info and gaming outcome driven decisions like "I want us all to play together, have fun and not lose" needed to be excluded from play.

[Stinktopus]

So, when the Rogue says he's going to sneak into the enemy camp and rolls badly, he is justified in saying, "You know, I'm not feeling particularly stealthy right now. I'm going to try back in an hour."

[PhoneLobster]

So, when the Rogue says he's going to sneak into the enemy camp and rolls badly, he is justified in saying, "You know, I'm not feeling particularly stealthy right now. I'm going to try back in an hour."

Or you know, you simply actually inform him that his action failed and of the consequences, with maybe some game mechanical terms and transparent opposing values where relevant.

Look, you had one job for yourself with that example that you volunteered and selected without prompting or limit.

And you are falling flat on your fucking face by having issues with even comprehending how action resolution works.

I mean fuck, it's like you cannot even tell the difference between transparency and a complete lack of game mechanical failure states.

You could do better. I am disappoint.

[Chamomile]

So, when the Rogue says he's going to sneak into the enemy camp and rolls badly, he is justified in saying, "You know, I'm not feeling particularly stealthy right now. I'm going to try back in an hour."

Stealth rolls are made during your sneak. They are your sneak. When you roll the dice, that is your character attempting to sneak into the camp, and when you fail it, that is your character being spotted.

[Blade]

Right, metagaming is never ever a bad thing.

Some points are completely valid, but claiming that metagaming is never ever wrong is as wrong as saying that metagaming is always wrong. There's good metagaming and bad metagaming.

[Chamomile]

Some points are completely valid, but claiming that metagaming is never ever wrong is as wrong as saying that metagaming is always wrong. There's good metagaming and bad metagaming.

It's a PhoneLobster post. I don't know what else you were expecting.

[PhoneLobster]

...The "roll behind the screen" is one of the most dreadful of terrible ideas ever. It might be impossible to utterly eradicate from game play, stealth checks and hidden object detection is pretty troublesome without it. But as a general rule you should NEVER "roll behind the screen"
...
I'm sure you can paint some extreme edge case if you must.

And you know, even having hedged to not be 100% on this, and even having anticipated and described the exact lame exception you bring up...

...your lame example is pretty damn lame. Seriously, that comic boils down to
"make a roll, you are failing, what about the other guy, still failing, wait, you get a bonus from that thing you got? actually... you are still failing, what about this other check, nope still failing, the end"

I mean even if you wanted to wring your hands over how you can never make a truly secret resolution even when it's a roll to determine if something is secret... your stupid comic reference isn't even a good description of that being a problem, it's just a description of it how works in practice without any actual evident dysfunction since the comic forgot to have a god damn punch line. I mean you COULD work on your example and tag a bit of dysfunction on the end of it like a paranoid area attack or something, but... your example neglected to actually do that.

And there is dick all you can do about it no matter how much you denounce the players metagame knowledge that some sort of roll probably just happened because guess what, you still cannot genuinely hide that god damn spot check from the players without dramatic changes to the game mechanics. All you can do is yell at them and demand they leave the room while you totally aren't resolving something because "no reason", or constantly roll decoy chaff rolls like a paranoid git (which is the preferable method of obfuscation if you MUST obfuscate your awareness resolution).

Seriously. OK, so lets say that no punchline comic occurs. What is your actual plan apparently primarily involving denouncing metagaming that prevents players from knowing a roll just resolved?

I can think of game mechanical changes to reduce the issue, but crying about dirty metagamers doesn't help.

[TiaC]

"I've played this published adventure before. I walk up to the statue, ducking below the torches and push its left eye to open the secret door."

"My character is an uneducated idiot with little adventuring experience. Despite this, he will avoid his favorite attack because he somehow knows that this enemy is immune to it."

"I rolled a one on my appraise, I think I won't sell this gem yet."

"Even though Bob is the only one with True Seeing and he's silenced, I'm going to run straight at that 'wall'."

[PhoneLobster]

In fact, actually, let me help you out here and recast the OOTS counter example to an actual dysfunctional metagame scenario.

This is what it takes.

A spot check to detect enemies occurs and fails. Because the player is aware that a spot check occurred and failed they know there are enemies there.

That in itself isn't great... buut without some significant changes to the mechanics is pretty much unavoidable. Actual dysfunction however kicks in when the player makes decisions about their character's actions based on the information they "shouldn't" have.

But to do that the failed spot check first of all must occur in a context where the failure still gives them time for their character to act rather than having some sort of immediate consequence.

The character involved, in order to respond in a bad way, by say, dropping a fireball on a suspiciously empty corner of the room, needs to HAVE some sort of option that can be used against targets that cannot be detected.

It isn't all that big a deal if characters occasionally freak out and fire bomb something, without ninjas in... So the player then has to determine the exact location at which the undetected opponents are, which will require some pretty strict positional scenario edge case details.

And there needs to be either no possibility of them guessing wrong OR no consequence for them guessing wrong, and the second is actually even more edge case, because even if the response costs no resources, and carries no risks of detection, property damage, etc... then unless whatever the action is happens to be undetectable to the undetected ninjas... then they themselves will most likely provide the risk and the cost will be your limited opportunity to act before that.

Worst case scenario, you meet all the edge case requirements. Dysfunction occurs, a player nukes some ninjas they shouldn't on a "guess" based on highly specific circumstances, a process of elimination and some real blind luck? At that point, fuck it, good for them, I don't think we need to bother denouncing it or redesigning the game around it.

Hell, it might not be a bad idea to design your game with some elements to encourage lesser versions of the scenario, certainly once undetectable ninjas start filling everyone with shuriken SOME sort of way to wildly guess where they are and attack empty space is if anything desirable.

[TiaC]

Or, you know, "I just failed a spot check! Better cast a detection spell."

[PhoneLobster]

"I've played this published adventure before. I walk up to the statue, ducking below the torches and push its left eye to open the secret door."

Don't play published adventures. But meanwhile, if that left eye thing was anything other than flavor text tagged onto a mechanical outcome and could not be changed between play throughs to some other remotely similar feature... then something is decidedly wrong and stinks of Gygaxian "No one can solve this puzzle unless they KNOW they need to pull the red lever... IN THE OTHER DUNGEON!".

"My character is an uneducated idiot with little adventuring experience. Despite this, he will avoid his favorite attack because he somehow knows that this enemy is immune to it."

Who cares? Really, someone is playing a game effectively "out of character" even though an idiot might well in character coincidentally do random bullshit?

Call the god damn whaambulance, no one should be allowed to fight trolls with fire without AT LEAST Int 13. Yeah, screw that.

The players have fought your shitty trolls before. The players HAD the interesting experience of doing the whole "oh my god our mere bullets bounce right off it" moment. Now they want to do the thing where they kill a bunch of werewolves effectively with silver and they are prepared to facilitate that new or better game play experience based on the exact sort of marginally implausible coincidence and gut feelings they see constantly in fictional source material.

Just let it happen. Let the troll die to fucking fire already, let it go, stop coddling your monsters and your same repetitive set piece encounter, it makes for a better experience for everyone. And your players are TRYING to tell you that.

"I rolled a one on my appraise, I think I won't sell this gem yet."

Sounds like the "but a rogue wont stealth when he fails to stealth" example all over again.

"Even though Bob is the only one with True Seeing and he's silenced, I'm going to run straight at that 'wall'."

Took a while to get at least close enough to be passable to a good edge case.

It's a pretty shitty specific one hey.

[PhoneLobster]

Or, you know, "I just failed a spot check! Better cast a detection spell."

Which specific one?

How many resources does it cost you?

How much risk are you under casting your "detect secret doors" check when you just failed to detect invisible ninjas?

Did you just waste your one action you had before invisible ninjas attacked?

And in the end if you have the right detection spell, and pick it, and it's free, and it didn't waste your limited action, and it didn't risk ninja attack or other consequences in the mean time...

...is that a problem with metagaming, or a problem with your shitty legacy detection spell mechanics?

[PhoneLobster]

In fact, let me be helpful again and break down precisely what makes the true seeing silent wall running example make passable muster as an potential edge case of metagame dysfunction.

It requires three elements.

1) Secret Knowledge
Something only certain characters can learn through special means.

2) Limited communication
Something stopping them from sharing apparently important information with other characters.

3) Seemingly Nonsensical "Solution"
The solution to some situation revealed by this secret knowledge has to be something so seemingly nonsensical or counterproductive that it really isn't remotely plausible that it might happen 'in character' on a whim or coincidence or as a plot contrivance.

With those three elements you can now craft a million edge case examples... but... one and two, while certainly notably narrowing the edge case are far from implausible... but step three is a pretty nasty one to have to meet.

I mean even the true seeing silenced illusory wall example can be "broken" with marginally plausible solutions to "accidentally" finding the illusion INSTEAD of the hyperbolic "I run head first at a seemingly real wall for no reason".

Making your edge case bulletproof is pretty hard going, and thats the thing, a lot of this sort of metagaming is in fact the players probing your scenario, trying to solve the damn thing, the more bullshit specific you make the solution, the less likely (or even capable) they are to co-operate in solving it by "legitimate" means... and the more RIGHT they are to resort to increasingly extreme metagaming in order to get the damn game moving again and take back some sort of player agency.

[TiaC]

"I've played this published adventure before. I walk up to the statue, ducking below the torches and push its left eye to open the secret door."

Don't play published adventures. But meanwhile, if that left eye thing was anything other than flavor text tagged onto a mechanical outcome and could not be changed between play throughs to some other remotely similar feature... then something is decidedly wrong and stinks of Gygaxian "No one can solve this puzzle unless they KNOW they need to pull the red lever... IN THE OTHER DUNGEON!".

Then maybe it's taking 20 on search in a specific hallway and no others. Or maybe it's attacking the doppleganger as soon as they meet it. Are you really going to claim that players having access to the plot and details of the adventure before they go on it is not a problem?

"My character is an uneducated idiot with little adventuring experience. Despite this, he will avoid his favorite attack because he somehow knows that this enemy is immune to it."

Who cares? Really, someone is playing a game effectively "out of character" even though an idiot might well in character coincidentally do random bullshit?

Call the god damn whaambulance, no one should be allowed to fight trolls with fire without AT LEAST Int 13. Yeah, screw that.

The players have fought your shitty trolls before. The players HAD the interesting experience of doing the whole "oh my god our mere bullets bounce right off it" moment. Now they want to do the thing where they kill a bunch of werewolves effectively with silver and they are prepared to facilitate that new or better game play experience based on the exact sort of marginally implausible coincidence and gut feelings they see constantly in fictional source material.

Just let it happen. Let the troll die to fucking fire already, let it go, stop coddling your monsters and your same repetitive set piece encounter, it makes for a better experience for everyone. And your players are TRYING to tell you that.

Which is fine when it's some of the most common weaknesses and immunities around. However, if I asked you what element Cheliceras are immune to, I'm pretty sure you would have no idea. There are thousands of monsters and most of them have some weakness or strength that could affect your tactics. Making a game where it would be a good idea to read through monster manuals and memorize factoids is a bad idea in the same way that MMOs that aim to cause a gambling addiction are a bad idea.

"I rolled a one on my appraise, I think I won't sell this gem yet."

Sounds like the "but a rogue wont stealth when he fails to stealth" example all over again.

So all your skills need to have the consequence as a direct result of the bad roll like stealth. Now, this is easy if you roll appraise long before you sell it, but what if you appraise it when you first get it? There are all sorts of rolls that can be metagamed without consequences. For one, any roll that could give false information on a failure will not be trusted on a low roll.

"Even though Bob is the only one with True Seeing and he's silenced, I'm going to run straight at that 'wall'."

Took a while to get at least close enough to be passable to a good edge case.

It's a pretty shitty specific one hey.

Many tables put down a mini as soon as one character can see them. Even if they can speak, describing the exact position of someone 50' away to another person 30' away in combat is rather hard.

Edit: here's another example of shared player knowledge.

The party is split. The rogue has tracked down the inn used by the assassin who tried to kill you yesterday. The rest of the party is meeting with the friendly merchant who has provided you with information in the past. Then, the rogue finds that the assassin was in fact hired by the merchant. On the other side of town, the party initiates combat.

[PhoneLobster]

Then maybe it's taking 20 on search in a specific hallway and no others.

Not something I especially care about. I mean basically it's a time saving measure from the players telling you to get the hell on with it they've done this before. The alternative, that they take 20 and search ALL the hallways... is actually worse.

In the mean time, seriously, stop playing published adventures, but if you keep producing "pre-existing knowledge NOOOO!" as your criticisms then it keeps boiling down to "I make my players play the same adventure over and over again without changing it, and yet bizarrely I want them to pretend like they've never seen it before every time so as not to hurt my feelings" you and have a pretty poor set of scenarios where metagaming is bad.

Seriously. Stop playing the exact same adventure again. And if you ARE doing that, then surely the whole POINT is the players exploiting their prior experiences.

Which is fine when it's some of the most common weaknesses and immunities around. However...

However what if it's a bullshit puzzle monster no one has ever heard of... ONLY ONE BASTARD HAS HOW DARE HE!

Bullshit puzzle monsters are bullshit, but someone solving them, and for the wierdo one you've never heard of no less is WHAT THEY ARE FOR, and for the wierdo one no one has ever heard of... how the FUCK else other than metagaming are players supposed to solve that bullshit?

You up the rareness level to a billion in order to try to justify a ban on metagaming the solution, well that's the whole damn reason the players are metagmaing your bullshit puzzle monsters. Because players don't like bullshit.

So all your skills need to have the consequence as a direct result of the bad roll like stealth.

Generally, and without any metagaming element. YES YOU ASS.

Any element of the game, that is supposed to have an unpredictable outcome with a "win" or a "lose" MUST involve some element of cost, risk, or limited opportunity. Without that it is NOT a randomized win/loss, its a 100% win.

And whining about metagaming will not solve that.

Seriously. "But what if I retry a no consequence action until I get the best outcome?" isn't even a metagame issue.

Many tables put down a mini as soon as one character can see them. Even if they can speak, describing the exact position of someone 50' away to another person 30' away in combat is rather hard.

And every table SHOULD put a mini down as soon as one character can see one, and should do it without demanding everyone else wear blind folds, leave the room, or pretend like they can't see it.

Because the alternatives are stupid.

It's a game. Let the players know what is happening in it. One PC seeing a monster isn't a weakness you need to fight tooth and nail against like an ancient scrougelike gygaxian, it's a god damn opportunity to put a toy on the table and give everyone a chance to participate.

The party is split. The rogue has tracked down the inn used by the assassin who tried to kill you yesterday. The rest of the party is meeting with the friendly merchant who has provided you with information in the past. Then, the rogue finds that the assassin was in fact hired by the merchant. On the other side of town, the party initiates combat.

This... this feels... hm... like surely the prime example of split parties I discussed in the opening post... hm... strange that...

Look splitting the party is a generally bad thing. Players typically recognize that GMs are rarely up to it and often and avoid it like the plague in a very metagamey way in the first place.

But you know WHY they avoid it? It's not JUST a charitable desire to share the fun with friends, it's not just a desire for the optimum efficiency of team fighting, it's also not just a selfish but understandable desire not to miss out on actually playing the game they turned up to for an hour, it's ALSO a strong desire not to be ambushed alone and have the GM declare that no one is allowed to come help you because... of reasons which largely boil down to whatever arbitrary distance and time issues the GM cares to pull out.

And players WILL metagame like hell to get to that fight, to save their buddies. And they probably damn well should, and you probably should let them as much as is humanly possible.

If you LIKE split parties the BEST thing you can do to encourage it is take every opportunity to let them re-unite on the flimsiest of pretexts if there is a split party ambush event. If the players know that you will let them use flimsy stupid excuses to join the action, save their friends, and not get ganked on, lets admit, the flimsiest of arbitrary pretexts from your side of the table, then they actually WILL split up occasionally and not metagame hardcore against ever splitting for any reason period.

Seriously though, useful helpful party re-unification, basically the poster child of my entire "metagaming is good" claims.

[OgreBattle]

I mean even the true seeing silenced illusory wall example can be "broken" with marginally plausible solutions to "accidentally" finding the illusion INSTEAD of the hyperbolic "I run head first at a seemingly real wall for no reason".

The cleric is silenced but has true seeing and knows that wall is an illusion. He points urgently at the wall. The fighter who has survived many a dungeon with the cleric and knows the cleric is able to see through illusions, so he charges forth.

---

Having played through Bloodborne where there's no voice chat but you can make gestures like pointing, any time anyone points at a seemingly solid wall is my cue to roll into it.

[hyzmarca]

Or, you know, "I just failed a spot check! Better cast a detection spell."

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that reasoning, either from an OOC perspective or from an IC perspective.
7

Then maybe it's taking 20 on search in a specific hallway and no others. Or maybe it's attacking the doppleganger as soon as they meet it. Are you really going to claim that players having access to the plot and details of the adventure before they go on it is not a problem?

There are basically two possibilities here. Either the player hides his knowledge from the GM and the other players, or he doesn't. In the former case, he's cheating. This is a blatant violation of the social contract, just as much as lying about dice rolls would be. However, in the latter case, the GM knows that he's played this adventure before so OOC knowledge is expected. Either the GM changes things, or he doesn't.
Whether the GM should change things or not depends very much on the goal of the game. Is it to be challenged? Then yes, he should. But he shouldn't change everything, because that keeps the player guessing. Is the goal of the game it to craft an interesting collaborative story? Well then, maybe he shouldn't. Because there is an interesting story to tell about that time when the PC stabbed the doppleganger in the face or whatever.

Which is fine when it's some of the most common weaknesses and immunities around. However, if I asked you what element Cheliceras are immune to, I'm pretty sure you would have no idea. There are thousands of monsters and most of them have some weakness or strength that could affect your tactics. Making a game where it would be a good idea to read through monster manuals and memorize factoids is a bad idea in the same way that MMOs that aim to cause a gambling addiction are a bad idea.

The answer to the Sphynx's riddle is "A man." My character may not know this, because he's never read Oedipus, but that's okay. Because puzzle monsters don't exist to challenge the character, they exist to challenge the player.

However, I'll go one step farther and suggest that you should never assume that the PC is less competent regarding tactics than his player. That just forces players to intentionally lose, which might be okay for collaborative storytelling (assuming that the GM will let them survive) but completely defeats the point challenging the players.

So all your skills need to have the consequence as a direct result of the bad roll like stealth. Now, this is easy if you roll appraise long before you sell it, but what if you appraise it when you first get it? There are all sorts of rolls that can be metagamed without consequences. For one, any roll that could give false information on a failure will not be trusted on a low roll.

Which is why false information paired with open rolls is bad. No information is the worst that you can do with open rolls. Giving false information requires hidden rolls. That's not a metagaming issue. That's just the a basic tautology. If the players know that they failed then they know that they failed. If you want to hide information then you need to hide information. If you want to deceive then you need to deceive.

Many tables put down a mini as soon as one character can see them. Even if they can speak, describing the exact position of someone 50' away to another person 30' away in combat is rather hard.

The correct method there is to simply give the players a huge penalty to attack rolls and the enemy a huge bonus to defense rolls.

Edit: here's another example of shared player knowledge.

The party is split. The rogue has tracked down the inn used by the assassin who tried to kill you yesterday. The rest of the party is meeting with the friendly merchant who has provided you with information in the past. Then, the rogue finds that the assassin was in fact hired by the merchant. On the other side of town, the party initiates combat.

Now that's interesting. In a cooperative storytelling game, the players probably shouldn't use the info without justification, but the GM can always manage to fabricate one. In a competitive game, though, it's the GM's own fault for not separating the players. He totally should have put them in different rooms when they split up.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I'm young enough that "metagaming" to me usually means that, in IRC / MUSH / Second Life RP, you don't use sock puppet characters (alts) to gather IC information, and then use what you learned on a different character who doesn't have the same strategic affiliations.

The idea that you're supposed to pretend you don't know fire = dead troll, until you learn it through trial and error, is pretty much alien to me and my peers. Or the one pretending he doesn't know is the one who's being an antagonistic asshole, not the "metagamer". You can tell they're the asshole because they fap to how awesomely low magic it is to be ignorant of basic facts about the fauna of your own planet.

[momothefiddler]

Which is why false information paired with open rolls is bad. No information is the worst that you can do with open rolls. Giving false information requires hidden rolls. That's not a metagaming issue. That's just the a basic tautology. If the players know that they failed then they know that they failed. If you want to hide information then you need to hide information. If you want to deceive then you need to deceive.

At the end of last session, at a tense juncture, my player decided to roll a Sense Motive. He got a 1. After the laughter subsided, I gave him the situation as he understood it.

I gave him a bit to assume that what I told him was false, then noted (to the entire group) that failing Sense Motive is failing to gain information, not gaining definitely false information (which is still gaining information). I pointed out that if you fail a Sense Motive, you're essentially making things up yourself rather than reading them off faces (or whatever), and that there's a chance those things you make up happen to be correct. You've just failed to guarantee any probabilistic tie between the situation and your understanding thereof.

Which means, I concluded, that it's entirely valid for me to occasionally state something entirely true in response to a failed information check.

And that's where we left off, so he's had like a week and a half now to try to figure out if his actions are bolstering the slave trade or not.

I dunno if this is something PL would decry as anti-metagaming play (and, on reading this thread, I don't know if this is necessarily an ideal approach as opposed to keeping things open and letting players restrain their IC knowledge as much as they feel is fun), but it's definitely an example of false info and open rolls. To be fair, it's also something I've never pulled off before, so I'm not necessarily saying it's easy to implement.

[TiaC]

Then maybe it's taking 20 on search in a specific hallway and no others. Or maybe it's attacking the doppleganger as soon as they meet it. Are you really going to claim that players having access to the plot and details of the adventure before they go on it is not a problem?

There are basically two possibilities here. Either the player hides his knowledge from the GM and the other players, or he doesn't. In the former case, he's cheating. This is a blatant violation of the social contract, just as much as lying about dice rolls would be. However, in the latter case, the GM knows that he's played this adventure before so OOC knowledge is expected. Either the GM changes things, or he doesn't.
Whether the GM should change things or not depends very much on the goal of the game. Is it to be challenged? Then yes, he should. But he shouldn't change everything, because that keeps the player guessing. Is the goal of the game it to craft an interesting collaborative story? Well then, maybe he shouldn't. Because there is an interesting story to tell about that time when the PC stabbed the doppleganger in the face or whatever.

Yes, what I was trying to get at here is that the social contract of the game assumes some information is hidden. Using that information is therefore unacceptable metagaming.

Which is fine when it's some of the most common weaknesses and immunities around. However, if I asked you what element Cheliceras are immune to, I'm pretty sure you would have no idea. There are thousands of monsters and most of them have some weakness or strength that could affect your tactics. Making a game where it would be a good idea to read through monster manuals and memorize factoids is a bad idea in the same way that MMOs that aim to cause a gambling addiction are a bad idea.

The answer to the Sphynx's riddle is "A man." My character may not know this, because he's never read Oedipus, but that's okay. Because puzzle monsters don't exist to challenge the character, they exist to challenge the player.

So, my position on puzzle monsters is that it would be better not to have them at all rather than making them some sort of secret handshake to separate out new players.

[Shady314]

6) Doesn't really bother me. If I don't trust the GM to roll dice without being a dick I'm not going to trust them to do anything without being a dick. Sometimes I even just let the GM roll for me because she tends to roll super high and I tend to roll shit. I've never secretly thought she was cheating.