Previously run adventure run again, how to behave?

[Senjou]

Dear All

Roughly 2 years ago I played the Forge of fury with a DM. This story was later added to Tales of the yawning portal which my new DM is currently running. How should I behave providing I remember a lot of stuff? Should I tell him that I know the story?

Greetings

Senjou

[Arkhios]

Dear All

Roughly 2 years ago I played the Forge of fury with a DM. This story was later added to Tales of the yawning portal which my new DM is currently running. How should I behave providing I remember a lot of stuff? Should I tell him that I know the story?

Greetings

Senjou

I've been in a similar situation plenty of times. My advice is, if you know you can trust yourself for not abusing that meta-knowledge, tell that to your DM, and whenever in the adventure a question arises whether you should do something related with the story, stand back and give others the chance to decide how to act. Otherwise, just play along and have fun. There's an old phrase I prefer to abide a lot: Suspend Disbelief (temporarily allow oneself to believe something that is not true, especially in order to enjoy a work of fiction); in other words: Allow yourself to believe that you don't known the story, and act as if you didn't, even though you know it isn't true.

[JAL_1138]

I've been in a similar situation plenty of times. My advice is, if you know you can trust yourself for not abusing that meta-knowledge, tell that to your DM, and whenever in the adventure a question arises whether you should do something related with the story, stand back and give others the chance to decide how to act. Otherwise, just play along and have fun. There's an old phrase I prefer to abide a lot: Suspend Disbelief (temporarily allow oneself to believe something that is not true, especially in order to enjoy a work of fiction); in other words: Allow yourself to believe that you don't known the story, and act as if you didn't, even though you know it isn't true.

Just chiming in to agree. This is pretty much the perfect advice.

This situation comes up a lot in Adventurers' League play, where people often have multiple characters and may end up running through the same adventure with each one; from experience, Arkhios' advice is a good way to go about it--imagine you don't know the adventure and act like it's new, and let players who really don't know the adventure take the lead a bit. In a non-League game, talk to your DM ahead of time.

[coredump]

Definitely tell the DM. He can make some easy changes that will make the adventure play differently for you, making it more fun for you too.

Let others take the lead, let them decide the best way to go, or who to talk to about what, etc.


The only time I will take the lead is if there are multiple *equally good/bad* paths, and I want to be sure to have a new experience.

[jaappleton]

Just because YOU know something doesn't mean your character does.

[Theodoxus]

I'm going to be facing this myself - I love running LMoP, having done it 4 times now, modding it a lot in the various incarnations I've run. But find myself going to play in a new game on Sunday with players I've never met. Since I know nothing of the DM, his style, or what the other players are bringing, I decided to play a character I've never tried: a ghostwise halfling open hand monk.

It's AL rules (thought not an official AL game) - so at least everyone will be on the same footing...


One thing I DON'T recommend, is making a character that is purposefully useless to the campaign. I ran a player through a Pathfinder Adventure Path a few years back, who specifically made a useless character, because he, the player, knew the AP from running it previously. He thought he was being helpful, by making the character full of Knowledges, but mechanically useless (he was a halfling bard who ran around with a crowbar, refusing to fight, but giving 'great' advice on how to deal with a problem). So, they lacked sufficient DPR, being a party of 4, and struggled the whole time, because he couldn't follow Arkhios' advice.)

[Douche]

Just because YOU know something doesn't mean your character does.

Yeah but it's hard to willfully walk into danger when you know the solution. You either meta yourself out of danger, or you feel hamfisted by purposely failing.

My solution - don't do or say anything. It sucks but that's what happened to my group... The DM ran the one of the adventures from Yawning Portal. One of the players had played & ran the original adventures back in the 80's or whatever, so he knew most of the tricks. The only time he acted was when one of us was in danger, to fish us out (like the time I walked into a cloud that Feebleminded me)

Edit: removed the specific module because I'd rather spoiler the hazard I walked into, rather than the adventure.

[GlenSmash!]

Yeah but it's hard to willfully walk into danger when you know the solution. You either meta yourself out of danger, or you feel hamfisted by purposely failing.

My solution - don't do or say anything. It sucks but that's what happened to my group... The DM ran the one of the adventures from Yawning Portal. One of the players had played & ran the original adventures back in the 80's or whatever, so he knew most of the tricks. The only time he acted was when one of us was in danger, to fish us out (like the time I walked into a cloud that Feebleminded me)

Edit: removed the specific module because I'd rather spoiler the hazard I walked into, rather than the adventure.

Agreed.

When I first started playing I bought the 5e Starter set. Assuming I would DM I read through the first chapter in the adventure. Then a friend of mine volunteered to run the campaign. So for the first chapter I kept my mouth shut. I still had a ton of fun sneaking up on goblins, convincing wolves not to attack us, and fighting the Bugbear. I just let my friends discuss and make the decisions about where to go first. It worked out fine.

If I had more knowledge of the whole campaign I think I could still focus on what my character's personality and motivations were.

It comes down to trust. Does the DM trust me? Do I trust myself?