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View Full Version : Cleverness vs metagaming



Silus
2013-04-16, 05:55 AM
So I'd like to see people weigh in on this little conundrum I seem to have found myself in.

How much of a difference is there in your character being clever/genre savvy and a PC metagaming knowledge?

An example from one of the last games I played:

We get tasked with going to this, presumably, demon/devil infested mansion and clearing it out. We beat down some Howlers and a four armed gargoyle and start exploring. We come to a closet with a "little girl" in it (quotes for instant suspicion). She says that her family took shelter in the mansion and were attacked and that her sister and father were dragged into the basement.

Now, as a player, my paranoia is kickin' in pretty hardcore right now. Little girl, hiding from extraplanar creatures that can likely smell fear, somehow managed to survive by ducking into a closet and closing the door. Over the course of the session, we discovered a girl's dress and a disguise kit, along with having magic items on her (a sneaky Detect Magic) and registering as "evil" on our Inquisitor's Detect Evil. Eventually she turned on us, though we took her down with some spell shenanigans (Ball Lightning woot woot). Throughout the session, I was highly suspicious of the girl, both OOC and IC, often contemplating dropping a Ball Lightning right on top of her. Given the circumstances (and the lead up of clues we found) would it be considered metagaming to attack her before she revealed herself if she had not presented any evil/hostile actions/motives, simply based on the feeling that something wasn't right?

Lorsa
2013-04-16, 06:08 AM
You have to view everything from the eyes of your character. Is she trusting or suspicious? Has she had any prior experiences with shapeshifters or people good at disguise? Does she think logically about the unlikelyness of a girl hiding in a closet in a demon-infested house or does she just think "oh no! what a poor girl! I have to save her!"?

There is no one answer to this question. In most cases, only you as player can know the difference between cleverness and metagaming. Sometimes though, it's obvious "Yes, after having grown up in a secluded village with no encounters of anything strange and with only basic warrior training I can easily deduce that this monster, which I never heard about or have seen before in my life, is vulnerable to a metal called Indium."

Saph
2013-04-16, 06:25 AM
This is one of those fine lines that depends on how you approach it.

Thing is, from an in-character perspective, it's quite an interesting question. Is your character the sort of person who's willing to attack a creature who looks like they're a threat, even if you're not sure? Is getting the jump on a hostile enemy worth the risk of murdering an innocent civilian? How you answer that says a lot about the kind of person your character is. So if you approach it from that angle it's not metagaming at all, it's an in-character decision.

Just be ready for the in-character consequences. Most people in real life are not violent sociopaths and tend to react negatively to characters who consider lethal force a first-resort solution to any problem.

NichG
2013-04-16, 07:39 AM
I generally consider this kind of thing to be the natural domain of supernaturally high Wisdom. Somehow your character just 'knows', as an extension of the player being genre savvy. That said, there are better ways to go about it than sudden lethal force. You have to consider both the possibility that you're right and the possibility that you're wrong. There are things you can do to provoke the enemy into revealing themselves before their deception has built up a large advantage that, if you're wrong, just mean that you made a little girl cry instead of killing her. In any event thats really the smarter thing to do since opening up with lethal force when everyone else doesn't suspect it is just going to make it look like you're the dangerous one.

As to the more general question, I think it depends a lot on the type of game you're playing. I don't mean D&D vs something else, I mean the particular culture and scenarios of your table environment. Just like its bad form to use optimization tricks to render other PCs or entire plotlines irrelevant, its bad form to use 'too much cleverness' or metagaming to bypass large sections of the game just because you can. If on the other hand, you have a table environment where figuring stuff out OOC is a big part of the game, its kind of expected that you throw your cleverness at problems.

There's a lot of grey in there, and there's definitely a line beyond which you shouldn't go (though the line depends on the table). Some things are much more meta than others; e.g. "The DM is getting bored, so we don't need to worry about random encounters because he clearly wants us to get there by the end of session, which is in about 2 hours" or "This is a really powerful item so there's no way the DM can let us keep it, so we'd better use it sooner rather than later."

valadil
2013-04-16, 08:09 AM
I wouldn't consider this metagaming if your character is a professional adventurer. Maybe if you're playing a level one newbie or a barmaid who has never been on an adventure before. But anyone who has lived through a certain amount of adventuring should have a healthy dose of paranoia.

I'm also of the opinion that in game folklore would have taught people quite a bit about the world they live in. Consider what the average person in our world knows about vampires. Stakes kill them. They don't like garlic or crosses. They might also know something about vampires having no reflection or not being able to enter a house uninvited. Vampires don't exist and yet our common folklore includes all this knowledge. I can't conceive of a game world where vampires do exist and people don't have this same level of knowledge. Extrapolate that onto trolls, demons, chromatic dragons, etc.

Joe the Rat
2013-04-16, 09:02 AM
You can use your metagaming knowledge to be clever, but it really needs to make sense in character. And sometimes your character should have more than you do.

Some things, like not wanting to root through foul smelling garbage and unidentifiable ooze-like substances - that's common sense. Not because one of those things could be a nasty flesh-eating monster, but because you could catch something nasty. Are dungeon halls and doors and chests potentially trapped? Yes. Would your character know this? Are trapped locks and dungeon halls common knowledge? Is it something your character has seen before, or been taught?

Case in point: My current table group is new to gaming (the only ones with prior gaming experience are me and the DM). So there is a lot about the standard fantasy dungeon crawl setting they are still learning. Like that you should be keeping your eyes and ears open, and specifically be checking for dangers. OOC, I'm suggesting things the characters would know to do, that the players might not (the "metagame" the characters should have). I've also written into my background that my character was a Hireling in his younger days - basically torch-bearer for an adventuring group. He doesn't have exceptional knowledge on what the dangers are, or the skills, but he has observed adventurers in action, and knows the kinds of things that they do, what they carry, and what they look out for. So in character, I can point out things like the existence of traps and secret doors, the importance of keeping watch while camping, or advising against splitting up. At the same time, I'm not telling them to change weapons between skeletons and zombies (they're figuring that out), or being particularly worried (in character) about "Yellow Musk" anything. I'm still not sure how I'm going to play it when trolls pop up.

Boci
2013-04-16, 09:07 AM
It would not have been metagaming to have lightning bolted her, but it may have been unwise. However, I think your character had ample justification for a pre-emtive nonlethal attack, like colour spray.


I'm also of the opinion that in game folklore would have taught people quite a bit about the world they live in. Consider what the average person in our world knows about vampires. Stakes kill them. They don't like garlic or crosses. They might also know something about vampires having no reflection or not being able to enter a house uninvited. Vampires don't exist and yet our common folklore includes all this knowledge. I can't conceive of a game world where vampires do exist and people don't have this same level of knowledge.

You should play world of darkness sometime. Vampires mythology changes in every game (and clever vampires can work within such weaknesses even if they are true). Its going to be awfully convinient if you only ever use folklore to justify your character doing the right thing, and never have them try something from common folklore that doesn't work under the rules.

Jay R
2013-04-16, 10:14 AM
I can't see what meta-gaming knowledge was used.

If you come across two people fighting, and one of them is named "Buffy", so you conclude that the other is a vampire, you used meta-knowledge.

If you meet an old man on the road with one eye and two ravens, and your Egyptian character decides that he's Odin, they you used meta-knowledge.

If your character decides to try to mix sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter to make gunpowder, you have used meta-knowledge.

But in this case, you merely used the natural suspicion of a professional risk-taker who was raised on the stories of bards.

snoopy13a
2013-04-16, 10:15 AM
I wouldn't consider this metagaming if your character is a professional adventurer. Maybe if you're playing a level one newbie or a barmaid who has never been on an adventure before. But anyone who has lived through a certain amount of adventuring should have a healthy dose of paranoia.



What makes it difficult is that even a level one newbie or barmaid might have listened to adventurers' stories. So they might not have firsthand knowledge but could have a decent store of secondhand knowledge.

For example, it is plausible that a barmaid would know that one must use fire to kill trolls, simply from adventurers bragging about how they fought trolls. I suppose a GM could, however, force a character to invest in a knowledge skill character gen to represent this mechanically, however,

Slipperychicken
2013-04-16, 11:06 AM
In dnd, at least, everything really is out to kill you. With so many shapeshifting monsters, domination spells, mind-readers, traps round every corner, curses, magic diseases, witches, and illusions, nothing is as it seems. Even a simple necklace can be a lethal danger, cursed by vile magic to choke the wearer to death. To call the world dangerous would be an understatement.

So in dnd, you have plenty reason to be paranoid. An adventurer's life is like Vietnam times twelve. That little girl could have easily been any number of malevolent spirits or predators (or been possessed by one), and it turned out it was! You should be more wary.

Scow2
2013-04-16, 11:16 AM
Closest to this set of circumstances has come up recently in my D&D Next playthrough. We're in a dungeon we know is Nethack-level dangerous, and the first 'encounter' our party heard was clucking from a distant room.

Of course, our INT checks said "Sounds exactly like chickens", but my mind immediately jumped to "Cockatrice" (Though I OOC didn't know any more than "They petrify people"), and said "Let's go another way." Of course, we found their nests, and properly identified them there. And I learned IC from my partner who DID make his check how Cockatrice work.

Bit Fiend
2013-04-16, 12:06 PM
This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRXNNqNfQBs) sums it up pretty nicely... :smallamused:

Boci
2013-04-16, 12:15 PM
This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRXNNqNfQBs) sums it up pretty nicely... :smallamused:

Bit of a comedy example though. That scenario in a serious game would go:

"Well, what's more likely: a 8 year old girl unafraid by being surrounded by 6 snarly monsters, or a 7th monsters disguising themselves as an 8 year old girl? Once that was established it was simply logical that of the 7 monsters, the single one taking pains to appear non-threatening was priority target"

Silus
2013-04-16, 01:26 PM
In dnd, at least, everything really is out to kill you. With so many shapeshifting monsters, domination spells, mind-readers, traps round every corner, curses, magic diseases, witches, and illusions, nothing is as it seems. Even a simple necklace can be a lethal danger, cursed by vile magic to choke the wearer to death. To call the world dangerous would be an understatement.

So in dnd, you have plenty reason to be paranoid. An adventurer's life is like Vietnam times twelve. That little girl could have easily been any number of malevolent spirits or predators (or been possessed by one), and it turned out it was! You should be more wary.

Actually she was just a Halfling disguised as a human child. Granted she had electric resistance, could summon demons, turn invisible and fly, but still, died like a chump.

dps
2013-04-16, 06:08 PM
I wouldn't consider this metagaming if your character is a professional adventurer. Maybe if you're playing a level one newbie or a barmaid who has never been on an adventure before. But anyone who has lived through a certain amount of adventuring should have a healthy dose of paranoia.

I'm also of the opinion that in game folklore would have taught people quite a bit about the world they live in. Consider what the average person in our world knows about vampires. Stakes kill them. They don't like garlic or crosses. They might also know something about vampires having no reflection or not being able to enter a house uninvited. Vampires don't exist and yet our common folklore includes all this knowledge. I can't conceive of a game world where vampires do exist and people don't have this same level of knowledge. Extrapolate that onto trolls, demons, chromatic dragons, etc.

OTOH, pangolins exist, and how many people are there that have ever heard of them, much less who would be able to identify one or know anything much about them?

NichG
2013-04-16, 07:57 PM
OTOH, pangolins exist, and how many people are there that have ever heard of them, much less who would be able to identify one or know anything much about them?

Most people will have heard of anteaters though. Sort of the difference between asking someone 'what is a monkey?' and 'what is a capuchin?'

Ravens_cry
2013-04-16, 08:02 PM
Cleverness is thinking in-universe and coming up with interesting ideas. For example, dropping a shrunken boulder, dispelling it, so it drops full size onto someone's head from high up, an at least the first time someone did it, is clever.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-04-16, 08:06 PM
So I'd like to see people weigh in on this little conundrum I seem to have found myself in.

How much of a difference is there in your character being clever/genre savvy and a PC metagaming knowledge?

An example from one of the last games I played:

We get tasked with going to this, presumably, demon/devil infested mansion and clearing it out. We beat down some Howlers and a four armed gargoyle and start exploring. We come to a closet with a "little girl" in it (quotes for instant suspicion). She says that her family took shelter in the mansion and were attacked and that her sister and father were dragged into the basement.

Now, as a player, my paranoia is kickin' in pretty hardcore right now. Little girl, hiding from extraplanar creatures that can likely smell fear, somehow managed to survive by ducking into a closet and closing the door. Over the course of the session, we discovered a girl's dress and a disguise kit, along with having magic items on her (a sneaky Detect Magic) and registering as "evil" on our Inquisitor's Detect Evil. Eventually she turned on us, though we took her down with some spell shenanigans (Ball Lightning woot woot). Throughout the session, I was highly suspicious of the girl, both OOC and IC, often contemplating dropping a Ball Lightning right on top of her. Given the circumstances (and the lead up of clues we found) would it be considered metagaming to attack her before she revealed herself if she had not presented any evil/hostile actions/motives, simply based on the feeling that something wasn't right?
You used in-game evidence to come to an in-game deduction. Not metagaming.

Metagaming is when an adventurer stabs a treasure chest on their first dungeon, because the player knows what mimics are.

Scow2
2013-04-16, 08:30 PM
You used in-game evidence to come to an in-game deduction. Not metagaming.

Metagaming is when an adventurer stabs a treasure chest on their first dungeon, because the player knows what mimics are.

Nonsense. They stab the chest in case it's trapped, and it's a good idea to stab anything suspicious in a dungeon.

Slipperychicken
2013-04-16, 08:36 PM
Nonsense. They stab the chest in case it's trapped, and it's a good idea to stab anything suspicious in a dungeon.

If they're smart, they poke it with a 10ft pole or Longspear. If they're really smart, they get that Exotic 15ft reach spear from Dragon Magazine, or take the Summon Elemental reserve feat.

It's in-character for an adventurer to know a) dungeons and their contents are often heavily trapped, b) traps are dangerous, and c) poking things with 10ft poles (or having someone else interact with them) often saves you from the trap. From there, the course of action is obvious.

Silus
2013-04-17, 06:21 AM
You used in-game evidence to come to an in-game deduction. Not metagaming.

Metagaming is when an adventurer stabs a treasure chest on their first dungeon, because the player knows what mimics are.

Actually I was in favor of knifing her (Or having my Druid wildshape into, say, a dire lion to grapple and pin her and eat her face) before she tripped the Detect spells and we found the stuff. Seriously, a little girl in a devil infested manor is 9/10 not what she looks like.

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-17, 06:31 AM
With imaginative mind, you can come up with a passable in-game justification for almost any out-of-character plan etc. See our hosts "choosing to react differently". Cleverness is just covert metagaming. :smalltongue:

As far as I'm concerned, as long as a decision doesn't blatantly break suspension of disbelief, it's okay.

Friv
2013-04-17, 08:39 AM
Actually I was in favor of knifing her (Or having my Druid wildshape into, say, a dire lion to grapple and pin her and eat her face) before she tripped the Detect spells and we found the stuff. Seriously, a little girl in a devil infested manor is 9/10 not what she looks like.

I tend to agree with you.

On the other hand, if nine times out of ten the little girl is a monster in disguise, the tenth time you just murdered a kid, so probably best to wait for 100% certainty before you start knifing folks. ;)

Driderman
2013-04-17, 09:14 AM
I tend to go the way of letting my character be as dumb as I deem is good for the story being told. Like how, in a zombie scenario, you obviously have to let your character believe that "no, this guy wasn't bitten, he's just sick" the first time it happens.

Flickerdart
2013-04-17, 09:37 AM
If you meet an old man on the road with one eye and two ravens, and your Egyptian character decides that he's Odin, they you used meta-knowledge.
There was quite a bit of cultural blending between different peoples even back then (Egyptian gods feature in a few Greek stories, I believe). With Knowledge (Religion) being not culturally discriminating, at least in 3.5 any priest will be familiar with all religions.

Fable Wright
2013-04-17, 04:08 PM
Actually I was in favor of knifing her (Or having my Druid wildshape into, say, a dire lion to grapple and pin her and eat her face) before she tripped the Detect spells and we found the stuff. Seriously, a little girl in a devil infested manor is 9/10 not what she looks like.

To reiterate the point: Even if 9/10 she isn't what she looks like: Is it worth it?

Or, more importantly, can you convince the Inquisitor that it's worth the risk?

Tovec
2013-04-18, 04:07 PM
Given the information posted in the OP only:

Getting the willies IC and OOC and then acting on the willies is not metagaming. It may not be the greatest roleplaying either and there may be consequences of attacking a child without being sure but it isn't metagaming.

If the DM chuckles and says "I can't believe you are buying this" and you act, then it is is metagaming.

If you happen to feel something and are playing in character, and have no reasons why the character wouldn't feel the same then how would you be metagaming?

Matticussama
2013-04-18, 06:22 PM
There was quite a bit of cultural blending between different peoples even back then (Egyptian gods feature in a few Greek stories, I believe). With Knowledge (Religion) being not culturally discriminating, at least in 3.5 any priest will be familiar with all religions.

This is why I house-rule in cultural circumstance bonuses/penalties as they make sense for various Knowledge checks. Knowledge that is common place in one culture (Mummies in an Egyptian culture) will be relatively obscure in, say, a Native American culture. I never go beyond +/- 5, but especially at low levels it gives more importance to a character's background and personal history. By the time that +/-5 no longer matters, the adventurer has probably experienced enough that it makes more sense within the narrative for them to be well versed in a multitude of culture's monsters.

Emmerask
2013-04-18, 06:45 PM
So I'd like to see people weigh in on this little conundrum I seem to have found myself in.

How much of a difference is there in your character being clever/genre savvy and a PC metagaming knowledge?

An example from one of the last games I played:

We get tasked with going to this, presumably, demon/devil infested mansion and clearing it out. We beat down some Howlers and a four armed gargoyle and start exploring. We come to a closet with a "little girl" in it (quotes for instant suspicion). She says that her family took shelter in the mansion and were attacked and that her sister and father were dragged into the basement.

Now, as a player, my paranoia is kickin' in pretty hardcore right now. Little girl, hiding from extraplanar creatures that can likely smell fear, somehow managed to survive by ducking into a closet and closing the door. Over the course of the session, we discovered a girl's dress and a disguise kit, along with having magic items on her (a sneaky Detect Magic) and registering as "evil" on our Inquisitor's Detect Evil. Eventually she turned on us, though we took her down with some spell shenanigans (Ball Lightning woot woot). Throughout the session, I was highly suspicious of the girl, both OOC and IC, often contemplating dropping a Ball Lightning right on top of her. Given the circumstances (and the lead up of clues we found) would it be considered metagaming to attack her before she revealed herself if she had not presented any evil/hostile actions/motives, simply based on the feeling that something wasn't right?

Its not metagaming to be suspicious and on your guard regarding her...
however dropping ball lightning on her just because there is a good chance she is evil is really not a good idea (if you want to stay a good guy and not go to evil town).

Especially so if your dm likes to throw curve balls at you :smallbiggrin:
I actually had a somewhat similar adventure but the girl was actually just a girl even though all evidence pointed to her as being a demon (or possessed by one), but actually her brother was, who acted extremely kind and interested in becoming a church paladin himself and engineered everything to point at his sister...
until he threw the Paladin across the room and nearly bashed the clerics head in :smallwink:

GoddessSune
2013-04-18, 10:27 PM
We come to a closet with a "little girl" in it (quotes for instant suspicion). She says that her family took shelter in the mansion and were attacked and that her sister and father were dragged into the basement.

This is not Metagaming. Metagaming is using game information that you, the player knows, that your character would not know. Like reading the published adventure your character is going through and doing something like ''oh, we go to room #6 and go over to the west wall and open the secret vault''.

But what your describing is what is known as ''Common Sense''. The ''little kid in the haunted house'' is a classic. It's like ''free treasure'', 'oh in the middle of the room is a pile of gold, with no guards or traps....right

TuggyNE
2013-04-18, 10:47 PM
This is not Metagaming. Metagaming is using game information that you, the player knows, that your character would not know. Like reading the published adventure your character is going through and doing something like ''oh, we go to room #6 and go over to the west wall and open the secret vault''.

But what your describing is what is known as ''Common Sense''. The ''little kid in the haunted house'' is a classic. It's like ''free treasure'', 'oh in the middle of the room is a pile of gold, with no guards or traps....right

It's actually (as mentioned in the OP) Genre Savviness, which is somewhere in that murky zone between metagaming and common sense. Your character might or might not legitimately have reason to suspect this seemingly innocent person, but the reason you suspect them is likely more because of stuff you've seen or read, not because you're carefully pondering exactly how your character would think.

Which, you know, is why there's a whole thread on this.

Scow2
2013-04-18, 11:44 PM
It's actually (as mentioned in the OP) Genre Savviness, which is somewhere in that murky zone between metagaming and common sense. Your character might or might not legitimately have reason to suspect this seemingly innocent person, but the reason you suspect them is likely more because of stuff you've seen or read, not because you're carefully pondering exactly how your character would think.

Which, you know, is why there's a whole thread on this.

If an adventurer isn't genre savvy, it really needs to get out of the profession.

To me, the question about "Cleverness vs. Metagaming" is "What about situations involving what we suspect is a monster we know about, but our character doesn't know the existence of?"

It could be argued that it's just general savviness, but having at least passing awareness of what's in the monster manual, no matter how obscure or not, does change how players approach situations: For example, my wood elf barbarian in a 5e playtest refused to go chase after what we were assured sounded like it was nothing more than chickens because I as a player was passingly familiar with Cockatrices... yet nobody in my other, Pathfinder campaign ever thought to check a bag of gold we found to see if it actually was safe - And, after trying to use it to buy two Raise Deads after an adventure went awry, ended up in serious legal trouble as they accidentally released more than than ten thousand Gold Bugs in the temple treasury, devouring all its wealth and nearly killing several acolytes.