I'm going to need a concrete example here, so bear with me.  Let's take rot grubs as a for-instance.  

The very first time I encountered rot grubs, I had no idea how to beat them.  We tried stuff that didn't work, including one thing that seemed like it should have but didn't.  In character there was screaming and yelling and dying and out of character there was a lot of frustration at the table.

That first encounter wasn't fun!  There's no reason it should have been, losing characters to what's kind of an eff-u monster.

But, we eventually figured out how to beat them.  And from then on, that's what we did.  The first encounter with rot grubs where we didn't lose a PC felt like a real earned victory in a way that a level-appropriate combat encounter doesn't.

Now here's my assertion, which maybe not everyone will agree with:  play-acting out the screaming and yelling and dying phase of the learning curve isn't the point of rot grubs.  The point of rot grubs is the part where you, as the player not the character, have the opportunity to figure out the puzzle, and if you do so, get to actually beat them from then on.

The catch in asking players who do know how to beat rot grubs not to meta-game is that they're actually playing stupider than a party that doesn't know in the first place.  Because the party that doesn't know may still stumble on or surmise the one winning play, while the play-acting party is still looking for the nod or the intelligence check that will let them proceed.

So if you have a GM whose players all know about rot grubs, and his solution is to keep running rot grubs but ask them not to act on out-of-character knowledge, that GM has profoundly missed the point.  The only way to be true to rot grubs at this point is to stop running rot grubs and come up with your own damn Saturday night specials.

...

"What about the guy who reads the book and ruins it for everybody else?"  Okay, if you're stuck with that guy at all, I can actually see a role for telling him to keep it in his pants and let the newbies figure it out.  But I'll still assert that holding the whole table to the standard you set for that guy risks holding them back into playing stupid territory.

So I do draw a line between reading all published material ahead of time and acting on what you've discovered or heard as a player at the table.  They're both OOC knowledge, but to me they're as far apart from each other as IC is from OOC.  We need a quadrant grid, not a straight line continuum, to talk about meta-gaming or OOC knowledge.

...

"What about this thread, which I am obviously responding to?"  Well, partly we may be thinking of different play styles or scenarios, which is why I didn't post there.

But I will note that a player in my L5R game, who GMs and plays other games, has commented that he likes playing a game where he genuinely doesn't know what the back of the book says about things.  So it's a broader point than just rot grubs in D&D.  He was talking about a sense of mystery specifically - but on this topic it also means he's allowed to act on his own wild guesses, even when they're right!  Firewalling OOC knowledge may be a necessary evil for other players' sakes when you've been reading the book, but it's a very poor substitute for just playing games and worlds where you as a player don't have the books memorized, but are allowed to play as smart as you can.

http://thangorodrim.net/TANG/index.html#memory

That's basically how I approach D&D...the *players* learn stuff in-game, which is then transferred to their characters. Because it's a game. Player skill should count for something. Further, who's to say the characters wouldn't know about something like rot grubs? Surely when they're in the tavern, talking to ye olde grizzled vets, they might overhear a story about crazy shit in dungeons. In Real Life, where vampires aren't even real, most 10 year old kids know their weaknesses. Seems like a fledgling adventurer would probably know similar sorts of information.

I think as long as you're approaching the game in good faith it's kind of a personal thing whether you can comfortably separate IC and OOC knowledge. If you go out of your way to acquire the OOC knowledge then that's not approaching the game in good faith, but once you've got it you can't help having it. The points the OP makes are part of why I consider it bad faith, in the style of games I prefer, to dump OOC knowledge on another player, especially by telling them how you're going to stitch up their character. In that case I as GM would rule that the victim-player's PC acquires relevant knowledge e.g. through a vision, omen or dream. With the rot grubs example, if the players all know the score, I would try to give them PCs whose knowledge would reasonably match theirs. But there may be stark cases where the players really ought to separate OOC and IC knowledge. Say, for instance, you've played a god in a campaign world, then play a member of an opposing cult. That cultist shouldn't know all the enemy god's secrets. But it may depend on the kind of knowledge and how easy it is to separate IC and OOC and how likely it is to crop up. I think it's a fact-sensitive area and not one where you can necessarily safely apply a blanket rule.

You make several good points.

Some monsters (particularly in D&D and similar bestiaries) are essentially puzzles, difficult or impossible to beat, but much easier when one knows how. That crucial knowledge can make the difference between life and death, at least for the rotgrubs and whatever they're blocking access to, and possibly for the PCs too.

Especially if they don't or can't run away. Some puzzle monsters can be fled, which leads to the other issue, of whether the players stubbornly fight everything to the death rather than flee, or not. But that's another point.

Your point about players roleplaying monster-solution knowledge or not is well-taken. Especially if the players know just from browsing the Monster Manual, which is almost like reading a published adventure module the GM is using, except that a type of monsters appear over and over, and it's fairly likely that players have browsed monster manuals, played in other games with that monster, and/or heard other players talking about what to do with monster X, etc.

Personally, I would say the fairest way to handle player-vs-PC monster knowledge, would be to determine whether the PC has that knowledge or not, from actual experience, experience from background, or experience from lore/rumor/skill, the latter of which I would prefer to have some system for determining random chances for. If the PC doesn't have the knowledge, the players should roleplay that.

I also agree that it can be frustrating to have to deal with puzzle monsters in various ways... but that brings us to the higher-level issue that all players have different tastes, which is a same-page problem.

In my personal case, I dislike puzzles (monster or otherwise) unless they are what I'd call "detailed, logical and interesting", which is the kind of puzzle I don't mind facing. I want my puzzle monsters to have multiple possible ways to deal with them, which make some sense and which can be deduced through observation and experimentation. "Unaffected by anything but pewter weapons, which kill them immediately" for no discernible reason, seems just annoying to me, and makes me want to play in a universe designed by someone else.

I also like puzzle monsters to be rare, and if they have been around, I'd expect there to be information available from rumors and lore. For example, I had several types of slimes in a world I ran, but many adventurers had heard what you could and couldn't do to each of them. I added a few of my own extra details, and one or two very rare variants that very few people knew about, but those details were not crucial to defeating them, and the rare ones were almost never encountered, and also were figure-out-able without being in a "you're screwed" situation if you didn't.

On the other hand, again as my own example of different tastes, I once played in a game where the GM had come up with an evil application of telekinesis that a group was using against us. We didn't know what was going on at first, and our attempts to fight it, and then escape it, were very bloody and terrifying and not very successful. We did roleplay our reactions, as well as trying various things. It was uncomfortable and I felt a bit of "this isn't the game I was expecting to be playing", but I would say it was actually one of the stronger and more memorable and interesting part of the game, in some ways. But he was a creative physics major and what was happening definitely made sense, even if we didn't know how, so it felt somewhat fair. More like we walked into an ambush from hidden positions, than that the game was just making up arbitrary puzzles. By the same token, when we came up with some evil plans, he let them be wickedly effective until the NPCs figured them out. That's about the way I'd like such things to be happen.

But I'm also a player who avoids D&D almost always, and one of the main reasons is the monster manual, race (and level, and alignment, and religion, and...) setup, and the hierarchical power levels, all of which break my suspension of disbelief because there are so many rock-paper-scissors and "A is just totally better than B" things, none of which I recognize in my imagination of how things actually work in a believable consistent world.

When the world makes sense to me, I think role-playing lack of knowledge can work well and be fun. But I don't even want to play D&D because of all the "you should know you can mop the floor with kobolds, but have no chance against Rotgrubs unless you know how", not to mention the tiers of monster toughness which require the GM to artificially determine what the players meet in his world based on their level, etc.

Quote from: Saladman;827388Now here's my assertion, which maybe not everyone will agree with:  play-acting out the screaming and yelling and dying phase of the learning curve isn't the point of rot grubs.  The point of rot grubs is the part where you, as the player not the character, have the opportunity to figure out the puzzle, and if you do so, get to actually beat them from then on.

The catch in asking players who do know how to beat rot grubs not to meta-game is that they're actually playing stupider than a party that doesn't know in the first place.  Because the party that doesn't know may still stumble on or surmise the one winning play, while the play-acting party is still looking for the nod or the intelligence check that will let them proceed.

So if you have a GM whose players all know about rot grubs, and his solution is to keep running rot grubs but ask them not to act on out-of-character knowledge, that GM has profoundly missed the point.  The only way to be true to rot grubs at this point is to stop running rot grubs and come up with your own damn Saturday night specials.

There are two types of play that factor into whether rot grubs are good monsters for the game.

Some games are tests of the players, which I understand OD&D and its monsters were designed to be. In that situation, OOC knowledge is player knowledge and is the point of that kind of play where characters are interchangeable and players are expected to play new characters based on their personal knowledge and not necessarily the characters knowledge.

Another type of play, which I prefer, is for characters to be played off of character knowledge instead of player knowledge. This allows for repeating puzzle monsters for new characters in many cases, which is part of why I prefer it. In this style of play, a player should be able to give a reason for most actions that fits their character and it does require the DM and players to be on the same page about what a character can know that occurred prior to or outside the campaign. Rot grubs  other puzzle monsters can be used in this style of play, but they don't really add much in my experience.

A very good reason not to use entries from the Monster Manual and make up your own instead. I don't even own Monster Manual. Never saw the point.

I'm not sure how you're defending metagaming.  

You start off saying if the players are in a place where they want to metagame, the GM is doing something wrong (like the constantly using Rot Grubs instead of some other monster).

Then you say a GM that tells a player who has OOC knowledge to keep it to himself holds the rest of the table to the same standard.  If they didn't read everything, he can't hold them to the same standard, and if we all know we all know something already, it's kind of difficult to have it be a mystery still as you point out above.

Then you defend wild-ass guesses and playing as smart as you can when you don't have the books memorized - neither of which are metagaming.

I don't really think anyone was arguing the other side of your arguments.

Quote from: CRKrueger;827441I'm not sure how you're defending metagaming. ..

As far as I can make out, you've mis-characterized every important point in OP's post.

Early editions of the game extolled player, as opposed to character, knowledge.  Modules were explicitly described as being for experienced players that also had characters of a certain level range, etc.  

When play-acting while playing RPGs became dominantly considered as the proper and more meaningful way to approach them (i.e., "we roleplay not roll-play") metagaming was coined as a disparaging term.

I don't enjoy extensive play-acting in RPGs.  For what I want out of the game, it is unnecessary and often a time-waster.  

So I fully support experienced players playing their characters to the full extent of the player's knowledge and abilities, unless there are unusual circumstances as determined by the DM.  A player running a 1st level character not doing things that would expose them to rot grubs is something that makes the DM in me happy.  

One exception I would make is when total newbie players are in a game.  Then I would ask the experienced players to make sure they're taking a back seat and letting the newbie get the full and fun experience of getting that experience through trial and error.  Those early game sessions are magic, and most experienced players I've sat with enjoy facilitating that.

I figure the types of folks that crawl around areas infested with rot grubs would talk a bit among each other.  Figure the little buggers are common knowledge, just like most anything in the Monster Manual.  'Course I never had a player memorize every monster with precise detail, more like using fire vs trolls or that black dragons use acid.

Not sure I agree with the 'puzzle monster' paradigm.  I just view them as critters in the world.  Whether a PC dies from a rot grub crawling inside him or swallowed by a T Rex happens because that is the type of critter that lives in the area the PC is nosing around.

"Metagaming" isn't just one thing.  There are multiple types, which often have different levels of acceptability within any given gaming group.

Remembering monster details (e.g., how to avoid or defeat rot grubs) from past characters, even though your current character may not share that knowledge, is one type of OOC knowledge.  Using this type of OOC information is widely (but not universally) accepted and some groups even consider it desirable ("player skill over character skill").  Personally, as a GM, I have no issues with it and I don't think that's a controversial stance to take.

Knowing what actions are rewarded in the game (B/X D&D gives XP primarily for treasure; 3e D&D gives XP for killing monsters and maybe also for collecting plot coupons; BRP lets you advance skills that you rolled on; when Bob runs Savage Worlds, he hands out bennies every time someone makes him laugh; etc.) and playing with an eye towards doing things that will be rewarded is a form of metagaming which is pretty much universally considered both acceptable and desirable.  I'm sure there are those who don't like it, but I can't recall ever meeting one of them and, really, what's the point of using a reward system that incentivizes certain behavior if you don't want people to pursue that incentive?

Going back to the origin of these current OOC knowledge/metagaming threads, "Bob just rolled a 2 on his perception check, so I want to make a perception roll because he obviously failed" vs. "Bob just rolled a natural 20 on his perception, so I won't bother to roll because, if there's anything there, I know that Bob already saw it" is yet another kind of metagaming and this is a kind that seems to be less widely accepted.  I know that I hate it, at least.

And there are other forms of metagaming, too.

So, if you're going to say "metagaming is bad" or attempt a "defense of metagaming", it would probably be a good idea to state what kind of metagaming you're talking about, because I don't think there's anyone who is universally for or against all forms of metagaming.

The way I learned to play something like the rot grub example or anything else really is thus.

If at least one PC survived the encounter then it is very likely they will inform the replacement character/s of whatever offed the last guy so messily. It may be tavern talk, and if the replacement is higher than level one then it is assumed that they may likely have heard of the same stuff. Or the group just says flat out. "We take an hour to explain to the new guy some of the things we learned so he is up to speed."

IE: Try to play with this effect of the player knowing stuff and seriously needing to learn from stuff over time within certain limits. That way the player can choose to act or not act on what they have learned from before.

Also something that one of my players suggested way back and that I incorperated into my own book was the idea of "Common Knowlege" lists. The other idea was a sort of ever growing "adventurers handbook" the characters kept. A journal of things they have run into and what they tried that worked or didnt.

I just role-play what my character would or wouldn't know about them. I am the rare exception to the general rule that most players don't role-play.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;827836I just role-play what my character would or wouldn't know about them. I am the rare exception to the general rule that most players don't role-play.

My experience is that posibly more than half the playerbase does role play. And even role play not acting on OOC info. But the ones that dont just tend to stand out in retrospect.

My group used to play a lot of Shadowrun 2nd ed (seeing as that was the newest iteration available).  In that game there were 2 resources important to character advancement, XP, which went by the name of Karma in the game, and money.  Our GM was very generous with the XP, which enabled us to raise our attributes and skills to mastery, but not so much the money.  Which really put a damper on things like new spells, new guns, medical treatment, etc.
Even collecting everything carried by those we defeated in battle (an age old tradition) seldom saw us get more then enough for maybe a value meal at the local fast food place.
Then our GM discovered the game Earthdawn, set in the same universe as Shadowrun, just thousands of years prior.  Our GM said he wanted to play it. One of us f*ckers would have to learn the rules to run it. (his words not mine)
So our friend came up with a plan. A devious plan.
Early in the campaign he gave us a chest. A large, heavy chest. A chest that was locked and took our thief several attempts to try to unlock (magical lock, picking it could only be attempted once per rank of the skill). Finally the lock was popped, and inside were coins.  Lots of coins.
Earthdawn has several forms of currency, but they are all based on the silver piece.  Think of 1 silver as being $1, a gold is $10. Then you have the elemental coins, Earth and Water each being worth $100, and Air and Fire being worth $1000.  Lastly you have Orichalcum, with each coin being worth $10,000.  Orichalcum is worth so much for 2 reasons, 1) it is fairly rare (being made of pure elements of earth, air, fire, water and wood. and 2) is VERY open to being used in magic.
The chest was full of Orichalcum. Thousands of pieces of Orichalcum. enough to buy roughly all of Europe, and large portions of Asia and Africa as well.
The problem was that every single piece of it was demonically tainted.
The OTHER problem was that this much Orichalcum in one place pinged just about every 'Detect Magic' spell in, oh, all of Europe, most of Asia, and large portions of Africa as well.  So pretty much EVERYONE in the world, most especially the demon who had tainted the coins, wanted them.
This, as you can imagine, caused a great deal of trouble for the players.

When we next played Shadowrun, getting money wasn't a problem.