Good/Bad Metagaming

[Guilliaume]

I was playing my Pathfinder game over the last couple weeks we just hit level 3 and an issue has come up a couple times, and I wanted to get outside opinions. What is good meta-gaming and what is bad-meta gaming? As I understand it meta-gaming is knowing that you are playing a game, not playing a character.

In my game we found a wooden box that made all of our characters uneasy around it. We were also led to believe that the contents of this box are going to be used to resurrect some ancient demon that laid waste to the world centuries ago. So in typical fashion a Big Bad kidnaps a damsel we've gotten to know and demands the box for her safe return. We collectively and independently decide, no this demon is far too scary. So unfortunately she is killed in the scuffle and the Big Bad gets away. The GM says we didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't act 'heroically' and that we should have meta-gamed and known that the GM would have set up an encounter after having rescued the girl to go get the box back at this guy's lair. This is something we should have inferred.

Next session we decide to leave town to try and get more information in a big city about the box, the demon, and as a side project try and restore the damsel's soul as she apparently wasn't killed but was put in stasis and her soul is in Hell. The travel/ knowledge domain cleric in our group said we could leave her in this small town and come back later because he could cast some spells to bring us directly here, implying he could teleport, when he gains some more experience. Later on the GM confided that he felt this was a terrible instance of meta-gaming. That a cleric shouldn't know what spells he's going to be given by his deity.

What do you think? About my situation? About Meta-gaming in general?

[Dr Bwaa]

No.

Let me clarify: your GM does not share my opinions on metagaming. At all.

Let me clarify: I don't think there's probably any "good" metagaming (in a serious campaign; obviously something like OotS relies on it). yes, the party could have thought "well, we need to hand over the box, but we'll go steal it back after." But they absolutely should not think "well, if we hand over the box, God will allow us to recover it." Because that doesn't make any damn sense (unless your character would actually believe that, of course).
On the other hand, knowing that powerful clerics have the ability to cast certain high-level spells is common-knowledge in-character in most games! it seems pretty reasonable to extrapolate from that fact, plus "I'm nearing that power level myself", to get "I will be able to cast those spells when I am that powerful!" This isn't even metagaming at all.

So basically, I think your GM is pretty emphatically wrong (IMO) on both counts, and you should talk with him about his/everyone else's expectations, because if you're allowed to metagame like that (it seems that he considers metagaming "anything having to do with the character sheet" rather than "anything having to do with knowing that you're in a story of a certain genre"), you need to know before people get upset.

[marjan]

The GM says we didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't act 'heroically' and that we should have meta-gamed and known that the GM would have set up an encounter after having rescued the girl to go get the box back at this guy's lair.

DM shouldn't tell you what your character should or shouldn't do.

[Name_Here]

Oh there definately is such a thing as good metagaming and bad metagaming. I don't think your GM is right about those incidences since my basic definition is good metagaming is metagaming that makes the GMs job easier and bad metagaming is metagaming that makes the GMs job unfairly harder.

Sure there are plenty of counter examples to these but those work for me.

[Piedmon_Sama]

I kind of sympathize with your DM in the first case. Of course you want to keep your players on edge, but Christ, you're supposed to be heroes who tackle long odds, not the guys who blew the whistle to the local high-levels. Sometimes you should make reckless decisions--if your PC wanted a steady, safe life he could have taken 4 ranks in Profession and called it a day.

The second thing about the Cleric's spells, I don't know what the ****.

[valadil]

I disagree with your GM on both counts. The second moreso.

[QuantumSteve]

Meta-gaming that "our GM wouldn't possibly give us an unfair encounter" is a prime example of "Bad Meta-Gaming" and a GM who expects their players to think along these lines is in for a rude awakening when he actually puts in an overpowered encounter from which the PCs are intended to retreat, and his PCs run headlong into a TPK.

Whether you think meta-gaming in general is good or bad, it's what breaks fantasy from reality and turns an immersive role-playing experience into a tabletop dice-rolling game. My advise is to use it at your own risk.

[Sallera]

Meta-gaming that "our GM wouldn't possibly give us an unfair encounter" is a prime example of "Bad Meta-Gaming" and a GM who expects their players to think along these lines is in for a rude awakening when he actually puts in an overpowered encounter from which the PCs are intended to retreat, and his PCs run headlong into a TPK.

This one in particular is something some people have to be trained out of. I think a lot of players get into the mindset that the GM will never toss something at them that they can't kill, especially if that has been the case in the past, and it can lead to a lot of unrealistic character behaviour. In my first campaign, for example, everyone was new to the system, so I mostly worked off the CR system and made sure nothing was too difficult. This now means that in my new campaign with the same group, none of the players will even consider running from something without heavy urging. Last session featured a TPK when none of the players would retreat from what was obviously a heavily buffed sorcerer, even to wait out the durations, and after two of three were dead, the third chose to attack blindly rather than run or surrender (to a good enemy, mind you).

So in short, try to impress upon your GM that the characters have no reason to assume every encounter will be possible to defeat, and it's not metagaming to avoid fighting someone they have good reason to believe is beyond their capabilities.

On the second point, I'd definitely agree with the others here that casting characters should have knowledge of the way magic works in general. Unless your cleric has no ranks in Spellcraft or Knowledge: Religion, it's perfectly reasonable for him to know that after he gains a bit more power, he'll be capable of casting certain spells. He won't know about it in terms of levels or experience points, but that doesn't make the knowledge any less accessible. (If he lacks ranks in either, however, the DM may have a reasonable argument.)

[Moriato]

Most GMs I've played under would, in that situation, problably give someone an intelligence check, or some other roll to get a hint that they would be able to recover the box later. It would have been very simple to slip your characters some information like "The ritual to summon this demon will probably take a month or more to complete" or "The box is only the main component, he'll probably still need to find a gold dragon's nipple / frog's tooth / weightless gold etc before it's finished".

How should the characters, or even players know what's going to happen? That's ridiculous. If you're supposed to metagame to know what happens next in the story, all that means is that the story is cliche, and overly predicatable.

[Tinydwarfman]

Wait, the cleric isn't supposed to know that higher level clerics can teleport? WTF?

What does your party consist of? Any paladin-like characters that should have insisted on saving the damsel?

[Piedmon_Sama]

[QUOTE=Sallera;8260599]This one in particular is something some people have to be trained out of. I think a lot of players get into the mindset that the GM will never toss something at them that they can't kill, especially if that has been the case in the past, and it can lead to a lot of unrealistic character behaviour. In my first campaign, for example, everyone was new to the system, so I mostly worked off the CR system and made sure nothing was too difficult. This now means that in my new campaign with the same group, none of the players will even consider running from something without heavy urging. Last session featured a TPK when none of the players would retreat from what was obviously a heavily buffed sorcerer, even to wait out the durations, and after two of three were dead, the third chose to attack blindly rather than run or surrender (to a good enemy, mind you).[QUOTE]

I've had this happen before too. If my players read this they may argue, but I am p. certain I forewarned thim this would be a horror/suspense-driven campaign where not every challenge could simply be fought through. So their team has discovered a lost elven city (in an extremely unmagical world where people don't even know such things exist), and is exploring the empty streets when they find some kind of spectre (a high-tech hologram, unbeknownst to them) of the Elven Queen. The (prerecorded) message tells them to seek survivors beneath the city; they find a stairwell in the street (like a subway entrance), and find themselves descending into what was once an underground canal, where the elves used small barges for street-to-street transport. The canal is long-dried, and they find themselves walking through the channel when they're attacked from behind by a horde of undead elven warriors. Now, these were basically 3rd-level skeleton warriors; a handful would be a tough fight for a 4th-level party; but they were coming in waves. The PCs kept fighting through three waves of the things, losing one fighter, their NPC leader (Expert 5), and his two robotic bodyguards (doomguards MMII), the Rogue getting grappled and almost torn to shreds (was at 1 hp) before I broke down and said "guys they're 70 lb. skeletons, just knock them over and run." The key to the fight was just using overrun checks to break through the skeletons and run down the channel!

In the end only three PCs escaped and the campaign pretty much ended there. And I no longer use Gimmick Fights as setpieces. :V

[Lysander]

The first isn't so much meta-gaming as genre-playing. He expected you to stick within heroic tropes, which is not necessarily bad but something he should have specified. You made the more pragmatic choice.

The second isn't metagaming. Presumably higher ups in the clerics church have all kinds of neat spells the lower ranking members know about. Although I could understand if the DM required a knowledge religion check.

[Tavar]

the Rogue getting grappled and almost torn to shreds (was at 1 hp) before I broke down and said "guys they're 70 lb. skeletons, just knock them over and run." The key to the fight was just using overrun checks to break through the skeletons and run down the channel!

In the end only three PCs escaped and the campaign pretty much ended there. And I no longer use Gimmick Fights as setpieces. :V

Honestly, I wouldn't have thought of that, either. Largely because, by RAW, it doesn't work that way.

[Yukitsu]

In my experience, unless the DM flat out tells you you can't win, I explicitly have said I'll never run away from an encounter.

DM: *Some rambly description of some badass fighty type blah blah blah.*
Me: Well, no matter how hard you try to make it sound scary, there's no way he looks as scary as that ancient black dragon I soloed last week. I charge.

9/10 I manage to win those anyway, so my DM has stopped bothering thankfully. Cutscene encounters are lame to sit through anyway.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Honestly, I wouldn't have thought of that, either. Largely because, by RAW, it doesn't work that way.

Overrun? The thing where your opponent gets the hell out of your way or its your STR check vs his? This was a party with one slippery rogue (he had a solid tumble check) and three burly meleers. The creatures had a STR of 13. They would have had to be very unlucky to mess it up.

EDIT:
They would have taken less attacks if they'd tried to break through the skeletons than just standing there and trading sword-swings. The point of the anecdote is that they failed to do the obvious thing in that situation (outnumbered? Get the **** out of there!) because they were thinking it was like some kind of video game and they had to "beat" the encounter before they could "move on." But hey, it's not like you weren't there, Jesus.
VVVV

[Tavar]

The also get an AOO. If there really was a horde, then taking that many AOO's could be difficult.

Plus, I think I've seen the Overrun mechanic mentioned only once or twice before this, and those times it was how bad it was for mounted char

[Milskidasith]

The also get an AOO. If there really was a horde, then taking that many AOO's could be difficult.

Plus, I think I've seen the Overrun mechanic mentioned only once or twice before this, and those times it was how bad it was for mounted char

Yeah, overrunning is a *terrible* option. Metagame wise, you're taking, running through a horde without reach weapons, three AoOs per few feet and I'm pretty sure you can't overrun multiple things at a time (meaning you've got to do it one at a time), and character wise, running through a demonic horde that's almost killing you is... well, it's pretty dumb.

The rogue could have tumbled through, though.

[pffh]

In my experience, unless the DM flat out tells you you can't win, I explicitly have said I'll never run away from an encounter.

DM: *Some rambly description of some badass fighty type blah blah blah.*
Me: Well, no matter how hard you try to make it sound scary, there's no way he looks as scary as that ancient black dragon I soloed last week. I charge.

9/10 I manage to win those anyway, so my DM has stopped bothering thankfully. Cutscene encounters are lame to sit through anyway.

There is a diffrence between a cutscene encounter and not all encounters are CR appropriate. Say if your setting has some parts that are more dangerous then others or if you meet the archmage of some order you would expect these to be powerful encounters.

[Godskook]

The GM says we didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't act 'heroically' and that we should have meta-gamed and known that the GM would have set up an encounter after having rescued the girl to go get the box back at this guy's lair. This is something we should have inferred.

1.This is railroading, and bad railroading at that.

2.You shouldn't have inferred it. The DM through a moral-dilemma at you. You did the right thing instead of the feels-good thing, and telling you afterwards that you should've done the feels-good thing because of a reason your characters could not have known about is bull.

3.You have no reason to believe that the DM is telling the truth, even after the fact.

Tell him to stop throwing moral dilemmas at the party that directly contradict the player's and character's morals, *AND* to stop railroading.

Next session we decide to leave town to try and get more information in a big city about the box, the demon, and as a side project try and restore the damsel's soul as she apparently wasn't killed but was put in stasis and her soul is in Hell. The travel/ knowledge domain cleric in our group said we could leave her in this small town and come back later because he could cast some spells to bring us directly here, implying he could teleport, when he gains some more experience. Later on the GM confided that he felt this was a terrible instance of meta-gaming. That a cleric shouldn't know what spells he's going to be given by his deity.

Eh............this one is kinda weird and depends on a lot. A cleric will know of spells that are beyond his personal power, both through interaction with other clerics and personal attempts at bettering himself. A spellcraft check would be sufficient to prove to your DM that said cleric would be aware of such a spell. DC is 20+ spell level. If your cleric is walking around with a +24 or better, then your DM has nothing at all to stand on. Otherwise, there's a case to be made, but its rather odd that he'd make it. Well, a Know(Religion) check might do it too.

If my DM said something to me about it, I probably wouldn't argue the point unless I knew it was going to have long-term game impact, and even then, I'm not sure I could win.

[Yukitsu]

There is a diffrence between a cutscene encounter and not all encounters are CR appropriate. Say if your setting has some parts that are more dangerous then others or if you meet the archmage of some order you would expect these to be powerful encounters.

On the register for the day:

A dragon
A horde of warriors who would make any sensible person run in terror
A many eyed, magic spewing, mage nerfing eyeball
A horrible lich.

And I'm supposed to be worried about some old crotchety bugger just because he's part of some reputable country club? I think not.

The line between what is appropriate to fight and what not to fight isn't a clear one by any stretch of the imagination. Appearance and reputation or lack thereof often has nothing to do with the deadliness of the encounter.

[Umael]

I kind of sympathize with your DM in the first case. Of course you want to keep your players on edge, but Christ, you're supposed to be heroes who tackle long odds, not the guys who blew the whistle to the local high-levels. Sometimes you should make reckless decisions--if your PC wanted a steady, safe life he could have taken 4 ranks in Profession and called it a day.

...

We have very different gaming philosophies.

First of all, supposed to be heroes? Since when? Usually, usually the PCs are heroes, but that doesn't mean they use high-drama, high-risk to get the rewards.

What kind of game do the players want? What kind of game does the GM want? What game system are they playing? NOW you can talk about whether they should be heroes or not.

Second, your example with the skeletons - overrun or not, I do not think it is good GMing to tell the players "this is the solution!" Yes, retreat IS a valid options and they could have taken it, but to tell them how to defeat the monsters like that is effectively railroading.


As to the difference between good and bad metagaming, the answer is - it is good metagaming if it helps everyone have fun and bad metagaming if it ruins the fun.

[erikun]

Good metagaming is making out of character decisions which improve the game. For example, working with the party, or going with a plot hook, or trying to talk to an NPC even when the character isn't inclined to do so.

Bad metagamins is making an out of character decision which doesn't improve the game, or is detrimental to the game. Common examples include attempting to kill John's character because John ate the last slice of pizza, or assuming the four equal-CR encounters a day, or just being Chaotic Stupid because the DM will try to keep your character alive anyways.

For the first situation, how were you supposed to know that? Did your DM outright said, "Let the BBEG get away with the box, you'll get it back"? If not, I don't see how that could have been predicted by the players - I would assume the BBEG would resurret the demon once he had the box. It's not metagaming, good or bad, if you can't see it coming.

As for the second, wouldn't a simple Knowledge: Religion tell you what kinds of spells you will learn at higher levels? Or a quick divination to an agent of your deity? I can't think of a time where a spellcaster would not know their own common spells. I mean, I assume your wizard knew he would get fireball and teleportation, and your cleric knew he would get raise dead and rejuvenation. In this case, you'll want to ask your DM just what is common knowledge, what requires a Knowledge check, and what you just should not know. Most classes are assumed to have knowledge of their own class abilities, after all.

[Dr Bwaa]

Good metagaming is making out of character decisions which improve the game. For example, working with the party, or going with a plot hook, or trying to talk to an NPC even when the character isn't inclined to do so.

I stand corrected. These are indeed great examples of "good" metagaming. Not that you always have to go with every plot hook, but it can be nice for the GM not to have to beat you with the quest stick too hard.

[Totally Guy]

Can't fault Erikun.

I'd also like to add another instance of good metagaming:

"I want to perform this task and engage this system mechanic to fulfil this intent."

Task: I talk to locals.
Engage system: I roll Gather Information.
Intent: I find out about Plot Hook.

Engaging the system is a good thing. It makes stuff happen. There's nothing wrong with finding where you can potentially get your +2s from, whether you choose a buff or an Aid Another or whatever.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

*snip on good metagaming/bad metagaming*.

Yeah, basically this. It kind of seems like your DM has it backwards on the two cases you supplied us. While it is possible he may have hinted at the fact that you would have recovered the box, he may have just done so poorly. As for the fact that the cleric shouldn't know what spells he will gain, I call BS. The player is the one prepping the spells in this case, so either he's giving his character those spells as the god in question or the cleric goes "Oh, M'Lord, may I please have these spells today?" with the god in question going "whatever" and doing just that.

Also, even if the DM hand-picked said cleric's spells, I'm sure the cleric could have asked for them when they would have been crucial. So, yeah, I agree with the actions of your party.


In a somewhat related note, a good GM should be able to set up a small contingency on the off chance that the players don't metagame where he thinks they should. I personally had a game of Deadlands where we had no reason to stay in a certain town, but, because we had taken a stage coach into the town, it was a simple matter of the owner of said business giving us the runaround so we had to stay there instead of us as players metagaming to stay because the plot was obviously there.

EDIT: Another note on the cleric bit I forgot: If the DM mentioned at all that the cleric shouldn't even know of said spells, there's a skill for that. I didn't see anything about that, but I figured I'd mention it before I forget (again).

[Dr Bwaa]

Can't fault Erikun.

Apparently not.

I think (at least in my group--this is usually better for a less-serious game or one-shots) another similar example is: "I want to perform this action using this Obscure System Mechanic that Never Gets Used Because It's Suboptimal."

For instance, I had a bounty hunter hopped up on a drink called "The Twin Sisters" (named after Selune and Shar: one white drink and one black one, which you drink both at once. Then, according to the DM, they mix in your stomach and create Talos in there). He was in a barfight (because the girl he was trying to pick up was celebrating a hit, and always celebrated with barfights), and doing pretty all-right, so I made sure to look up and use as many suboptimal, obscure mechanics I could (Overrun, Charge-Jump-Bull Rush, etc), as well as use every action possible in a grapple. No real game effect; just kept the mood a little lighter and kept us all entertained as I searched for new actions to take between rounds.

[Whyte_Widow]

theres always going to be metagaming to a degree. however, i dont believe that the GM should have told you anything about what you should or shouldnt have done.

also, this depends on the groups alignment as well... if you were in a CG sitch... saving the damsel wouldnt be a high priority. keeping that box safe would. now a LG group would save the damsel, beat up mr. baddy... and take him in for questioning and detainment. i generally play CN so i would want to keep the box for further negotiation with something that can give me an edge on other people (I.E. beings of considerable power)... go kill mr. baddy and take all of his stuff. and ransom the damsel off for cash money.

tell your GM that metagaming can come from the GM as well... and your characters choices are yours, not his. his panties are probably twisted because he spent the last week working up the dungeon, encounter script, and loot tables for what he thought was a no-brainer party decision. if he spent all that time working out the details... he should have made it impossible for you to decide it wasnt worth it.

edit: the cleric will know what spells hes going to get. he has to learn how to be a cleric from someone... and that person is likely to be a higher level. in a world of magic, its common knowledge what spells are available to all clerics.

"Hey, Johnny! they just took Jill! What are we to do?"

"Meh, who cares... shes fat anyway."

[jiriku]

Erikun already succinctly described the difference between good and bad metagaming, but I'll add that any sort of gameplan that involves "...and then the players will do X, and I'll be annoyed and frustrated if they attempt to do anything else" is bad DMing. It is the DM's job to set up situations wherein players must make decisions. It is not his job to decide what your characters will do.

Recognizing this fact is a key step in achieving mastery as a DM. If you want to make decisions about who does what, you have NPCs. Keep your grubby paws off the decision-making of the PCs: they're not yours to play with.

So shame on your DM for railroading, and good for you for sticking to your guns. It sounds in general as though your DM is just new, and is still growing into an understanding of what does and does not work at the gaming table. Give him time (and a little tough love).

[mucat]

i generally play CN so i would want to keep the box for further negotiation with something that can give me an edge on other people (I.E. beings of considerable power)... go kill mr. baddy and take all of his stuff. and ransom the damsel off for cash money.


"Hey, Johnny! they just took Jill! What are we to do?"

"Meh, who cares... shes fat anyway."

Um, no. You don't generally play CN. You generally play annoying evil, and call it CN.

[Kylarra]

Um, no. You don't generally play CN. You generally play annoying evil, and call it CN.

Oh stereotypical CN[E], when won't you find your way into games.


It's actually funny to watch metagaming happen sometimes. There was one session in Scion where I was declaring everything extraneous to be a red herring or a plot hook.