Should players know all the rules?

[....]

When I ran D&D for my friends I always had the only copy of the DM's guide and they only got to read the PHB. I'd explain what they needed to know as players and we'd just go from there.

The new group I play with is a bunch of guys who can quote you the common DEX of a juvenile green dragon with a seventh level cat's grace on him without looking at the books.

The new group is cool and all, but none of them roleplay. Or they do, but without any real enthusiasm. The game is often reduced to simply meat computers working out damage and to-hit rolls over a couple hunks of plastic and lots of discussion about feat progression and which PrC they'll dip next level.

I dunno about you, but I prefer roleplaying through a game rather than playing a PC MMORPG without the flashy graphics and calculator. I've taken to making the new group play WW games like Werewolf because they don't know it in and out and I can get them into the story more.

So, thoughts?

[Alex12]

The important thing is that they have fun. That is the primary purpose of D&D, and games in general. I prefer roleplaying, others don't.

[BardicDuelist]

Honestly, as much as I hate to say this, this is a group problem. They don't enjoy the type of game you do, it seems, and so no matter what you do, they will try to optomize and reduce it to "meat computers" vs. story.

Now, that being said, it can be fun when the players don't know all of the rules (new players running from skeletons and such because they don't know that they can be smashed to bits), but it shouldn't matter if they do. If you want to throw them for a loop to keep that element of surprise, change just a few things (who says that a dragon can't have a good Dex score, or that that mind-flayer can't have max HP? It sure changes their strategy when they do the right amount of damage and he's still up.)

I both DM and play, and so I may be biased in saying that there is nothing wrong with knowing all of the stats, so long as you roleplay and don't metagame. With your group, it seems that this may be a problem, and it may just be a difference in tastes.

To see things from their perspective, however, they may enjoy the strategy aspect of the game, and part of their strategy is the min-max philosophy.

[Telonius]

Almost nobody knows all the rules. There are the occasional exceptions. My general advice is: know most of the rules that you'll need to apply to your own character. Know what your feats and class abilities (and if applicable, spells) can do. Know what actions you can take in combat, and know where to find everything on your character sheet. Beyond that, let the DM worry about it.

More to the point, with your current group: it sounds like you're not having fun. The game you were expecting isn't the game they're playing. I'd suggest you talk it over with them. They might be willing to scale back the number-crunching. Then again, they might not. But remember, there's no wrong way to play D&D, as long as everybody's having fun.

[Shishnarfne]

Well, having players who understand the difference between a spell with a casting time of one round and one standard action certainly speeds up the game, and knowing which is which is an advantage.

Having players who know way too much about specific monsters need to be thrown a few curves... instead of the "mysterious noises" in the Underdark coming from invisible Duergar in a dwarf-made corridor (a tidbit you threw early to a dwarf in the party to get them off the track), have a levitating Drow cleric animating undead...

That sort of trick (in addition to modifying monsters via advancement and class levels) can keep the group guessing.

However, the real trick to getting players to roleplay (IMHO) is to provide them with a situation in which roleplaying appears more natural than swinging weapons: have detailed in-character conversions with NPCs, including a fair bit of nuance and development. Don't just let them "make a diplomacy check" have them explain how they try to convince the person, and give circumstance bonuses to effective roleplaying on these.

But generally, try to have a nice way of making sure that both they and you have fun by balancing them. One way I use as DM is the old Paranoia rule: "There is no out-of-character discussion." This is naturally an emergency measure only, but it might be necessary for some groups.

Homebrew monsters also are nice ways to catch people off-guard (there's plenty around here in the homebrew forum).

[tainsouvra]

The problem with your group is not that they know all the rules. The problem with your group is that they don't get into their roleplaying.

[valadil]

It depends on the players. D&D can be about interactive collaborative storytelling or it can be tactics and number crunching. Given that these players bothered to memorize all those rules I think it's obvious what type of game they prefer. If that's not what you're looking for, maybe a different group would be more to your liking.

I don't think the problem is that knowing the rules will inhibit RP. Players who aren't interested in RP may take more interest in the rules. You have a bunch of players who have apparently done just that.

[Ulzgoroth]

Er, unless I'm missing something that dex score is trivially 14, since dragons always have 10 dex (by MM) and cats grace always is +4. This is not exactly impressive knowledge. That said...

I don't think knowing all the rules is really a problem. Ever. Knowing and metagaming against things that are supposed to be outside your knowledge base, most obviously identifying every ability of a monster as soon as you get a description, yes. Being able to say off the bat whether an AMF protects against dragon breath, just how bad an idea it really is to grapple something 3 size categories larger than you are, or that a spear is readily thrown while a handaxe is not... no, nothing wrong there.

It sounds like there's a major gaming style disconnect between this new party and you, though. Playing D&D as a strategy game is fine, but clearly isn't what you're looking for.

[Assasinater]

We(me and my group) actually played for years with an unspoken system that everyone seemed to agree, where dice rolling was minimal, stats were used only as a guiding point, where you can kill a skilled swordsman with a single dagger on his back, if you can manage it.

Of course, that was because we liked it and were having fun. Like someone said, having fun is the core of the game. But, if they were having fun that way, and you weren't, you are free to express it to them, and find a middle point. Introducing them to WW seems like a good idea. They'll learn it after a while, but since then, you all will possibly have more fun.

[Chronos]

The new group I play with is a bunch of guys who can quote you the common DEX of a juvenile green dragon with a seventh level cat's grace on him without looking at the books.

14. Dragons all have 10 dex, regardless of type or age (it's their only "low" score), and Cat's Grace doesn't scale with level; it's always +4.

[Gerrtt]

I think a player should know or at least have access to any rules they will need to run their character. Anything other than that they should try not to bother with for the sake of their own enjoyment.

[KIDS]

Your problem is not that they know all the rules, the problem is that they are not roleplaying. Talk to them about it and see if you can solve the problem because this way it isn't fun for you.

Otherwise, the two are not corellated in any way.

[Justin_Bacon]

I dunno about you, but I prefer roleplaying through a game rather than playing a PC MMORPG without the flashy graphics and calculator. I've taken to making the new group play WW games like Werewolf because they don't know it in and out and I can get them into the story more.

So, thoughts?

YMMV.

Personally, I like knowing the rules forwards-and-backwards so that I can focus on my roleplaying. If I'm trying to figure out what I can do and how I can do it, I'll be focusing on the rules instead of on my character.

As a DM I vastly prefer having players who know the rules.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

[Wraithy]

as someone else has said, its a group problem. However that doesn't mean you have to leave, speak to the DM in private and ask them to adapt the adventure to be more RP centred, this can be achieved by giving players challenges that cannot be solved through dice rolls. good luck with whatever you do decide to do.

[Jasdoif]

As has been said many times already, your issue is not related to them knowing the rules, it's related to them expecting different things out of the game then you are.


In a general sense though, players should be able to know the game's basic mechanical rules. There's no good reason to expect them not to know those.

[Kyeudo]

Knowing the rules, even all the rules, is always a good thing. If you know whats going on, it slows the game less. I always found it annoying when my players didn't know their attack bonus and would forget between rounds. It slowed the game down so much I had players taking catnaps between their turns.

If your group is a kick-in-the-door, hack and slash, "screw the roleplay, give me treasure" type group, knowledge of the rules gets you to the fun faster. If you want to roleplay with anything and everything and hardly touch combat, then knowing the rules gets you to the fun faster.

The common abilities of most iconic monsters, like Red Dragons and Mind Flayers, are easily explainable as common sense. The stories of the game world tell of fire breathing dragons and brain eating mosters with squids for heads.

[JadedDM]

The thing is, even if your players don't know any of the rules at all, they will eventually learn. If not by diligently going over the books, they'll pick them up during gameplay.

The fun thing to do with players who insist on memorizing every little thing is to change things. Create a dragon with a DEX of 12 instead of 10. Then watch their minds boggle as their entire world falls apart.

[The_Snark]

I think that there is a difference here between "knowing the rules" and "knowing the general capabilities of most common monsters".

The first generally helps to speed up combat, and as someone commented, it can be more difficult to roleplay if you're having to look things up constantly.

The second can destroy your sense of immersion in the game. If you know that the big-looking skeletons don't actually have much health, you won't feel nearly as threatened as you should be by the skeleton of an elephant. You pick up some things just by playing, of course—most experienced players know some things about how zombies, dragons, and mind flayers fight. It's a tricky balance, and it's the reason I don't look at monster stats unless I actually need to know them for some reason (as in, I'm thinking of playing one).

A possible option for you is to just use more obscure monsters. Seasoned gamers won't run from skeletons and will know a lot of what dragons can do. Monsters from other books work well for this... of course, that requires having other books.

But if you find they're getting into the story more with new systems, it sounds like that works for your group too.

[Prometheus]

Sometimes Roleplaying can become just as nitpicky. One player will routinely argue with how I, the DM, imagine things to be. The point I am making is that it's not so much about technical versus descriptive aspects of the game, but whether someone is more concerned about playing the game than how the game is played (which is agreeing with, but sounds the opposite of "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, its how you play the game.").

[Swordguy]

YMMV.
Personally, I like knowing the rules forwards-and-backwards so that I can focus on my roleplaying. If I'm trying to figure out what I can do and how I can do it, I'll be focusing on the rules instead of on my character.

As a DM I vastly prefer having players who know the rules.

There's a difference between them knowing the rules (Bull Rush, a given spell, etc) and them memorizing the MM. The first is their obligation as a player - I'd expect a person playing ice hockey to know what offsides is, and I'd expect a person playing D&D to know how to make a basic melee attack. The second is metagaming - your ability as a player to read the books and memorize them is completely unrelated to your character's knowledge of same.

There's no excuse for that sort of metagaming. Find it out during gameplay? Fine. Read the MM and know that it takes a +5 weapon to hurt a greater fiend? No.

Change up the creature stats. Or hit your players in the face. I'm fine with either.

[Lord Tataraus]

*skims thread*
Its not bad to know all the rules, it actually helps me that my players are well versed. That way when I occasionally mess up, they can correct me and we hardly have to lift a book for an entire session (with the exception of level ups). You're real problem (as others have said) is that this group prefers a different playstyle than you. Thus, you need a cure, so story time:

This year I'm at college as is one other in my group, two are at our old highschool for another two years and one went off to his first year of boarding school. So we're all over the place, but still want to game together, thus I force them to stop lurking and register here and I start a game in PbP. I've gotten amazing results. My normally RP-awkward, combat-loving group is having an amazing time RPing in PbP. The environment is great for RP skills and we've had a blast. I suggest you either join or start a PbP to get your daily dose of RP or have your current players try out a PbP game and watch them turn into RP-junkies (or get bored and pissed off, that sometimes happens )

[Dausuul]

The second can destroy your sense of immersion in the game. If you know that the big-looking skeletons don't actually have much health, you won't feel nearly as threatened as you should be by the skeleton of an elephant. You pick up some things just by playing, of course—most experienced players know some things about how zombies, dragons, and mind flayers fight. It's a tricky balance, and it's the reason I don't look at monster stats unless I actually need to know them for some reason (as in, I'm thinking of playing one).

Do note that this cuts both ways, however. People who don't know the stats of critters in the MM may not be too impressed when they see a weird humanoid with four tentacles in place of a mouth, and wonder why the rules-monkey is gibbering in the corner and wailing "We're all screwed!"

And I'll add my voice to the chorus suggesting that it's good to change up monster stats now and then. I routinely tweak monster hit points and attack damage, and sometimes other things as well. Although not too much; players should have the opportunity to become familiar with common monsters and learn how best to deal with them.

[kamikasei]

The problem with your group is not that they know all the rules. The problem with your group is that they don't get into their roleplaying.

I don't think the problem is that knowing the rules will inhibit RP. Players who aren't interested in RP may take more interest in the rules. You have a bunch of players who have apparently done just that.

Agreed wholeheartedly with both of these.

I don't think knowing all the rules is really a problem. Ever. Knowing and metagaming against things that are supposed to be outside your knowledge base, most obviously identifying every ability of a monster as soon as you get a description, yes. Being able to say off the bat whether an AMF protects against dragon breath, just how bad an idea it really is to grapple something 3 size categories larger than you are, or that a spear is readily thrown while a handaxe is not... no, nothing wrong there.

Again, agreed. If anything, it helps roleplaying for the players to have the sort of everyday practical knowledge that their characters take for granted, and it's probably easier for a group with extensive rules knowledge to deliberately set aside metagame information than for a group who constantly has to ask whether a given action is at all feasible to achieve deep immersion.

Obviously it depends on your group and yourself, but I bristle a little at the suggestion that you should have them play unfamiliar systems so that they'll "get into the story more". If you want them to try to roleplay a bit more, try suggesting that they do just that. If they have to be unfamiliar with the rules in order to roleplay at all, maybe immersive character portrayal isn't what they're after. Unless both you and they want to incorporate deeper roleplaying, and they concede that they have to actually be ignorant of rules in order to avoid the temptation of metagaming, your solution sounds rather heavy-handed.

[blacksabre]

Throw more NPC character classes with exotic abilites and supernatural talents, or newly unearthed magics..

Most of My campaigns combat are 20% MM+ creatures, the rest are NPC classes, with modifications. They always want to know what classs this or that NPC are. So I have them ask the NPC in character..which they recieve dumb looks..

After all, what class are YOU?

Now to be fair, I also encourage players to come up with a character theme, and if the rules don't quite fit, I make allowances to get them to as close as they can with out breaking the game. Call them house rules whatever. But this way they aren't surpised when a NPC character can do things they didn't expect.

This also allows for a lot of freedom in story telling

[Alex12]

I think it's Dungeonscape that has a section on swapping feats for some of the monsters. That'll make things interesting. Or give a few of the monsters really weird class choices, like a Mind Flayer Rogue/Barbarian.

[Serpent Stare]

Hmm. Well, if they insist on playing like murderous robots, the first thing to do is probably to ask yourself whether you can live in a murderous robot's world. If the answer is no (and it's sounding like it is) then yeah, present them with a few more talky circumstances, try to get them into it. And be a roleplayer yourself. Try having an unarmed orc show up and burst dramatically into tears or something to see whether it shocks them out of their number-monkey stasis. And act it out as well as you can. If you can get into the NPC's character, it'll help them get into theirs.

In my campaign, it's been roleplaying over combat from the get go. Partly that's because we all like playing that way (and we do), and partly it's because I'm the one who brought the ring together as a DM, I am myself new to the game, and I can't remember most DCs and specific effects for the life of me without looking them up or having them written down somewhere. But meh, we all have fun. And I know they appreciate my descriptive style because whenever a character rolls a critical hit, everyone leans in and demands to know exactly how it happened in-game. "C'mon, make it good!"

[Artanis]

You could take a page from Eberron and switch up some alignments. Imagine the horror when your players find out that the Red Dragon they just slew had several Paladin levels and was a city's sole defender protecting it from the evil Silver Dragon who would now come to eat the citizens' babies

[Tyrael]

Do note that this cuts both ways, however. People who don't know the stats of critters in the MM may not be too impressed when they see a weird humanoid with four tentacles in place of a mouth, and wonder why the rules-monkey is gibbering in the corner and wailing "We're all screwed!"

This is EXACTLY, VERBATIM what happened to us last session. My DM knew that I was the group rules-monkey, and we were gaming around a group of couches, and I was on the DM's couch He intentionally left his laptop at an angle where I could see it. I glanced over once. I saw a Mind Flayer. I shrugged and thought, Hmm, he must just be browsing through for ideas.

A few minutes later, I saw it again out of the corner of my eye. He's still looking at it. I wonder...? Nah, we're level 13, but that's an inappropriate encounter level, he wouldn't do it.

5 minutes later, in-game, we brushed some dust away from a plaque that bore the inscription of a tentacle-mouthed head. My heart sank. Oh, gods. He did it.

Me: "Uh, guys? We're dead."
Other Players: "Huh?"
I began to laugh hysterically. "We're gone, we're done. It's over, GG. Game over, man!"

The DM grinned at this. "You hear a soft noise behind you. A voice sounds in your heads: "Ah, so good of you to stay for dinner." You all turn around and see....THIS...rising out of the ground." He shows the Mind Flayer picture.

I curl up on the couch and begin shaking in fear. "Oh God oh God oh God..."



The rest of the night didn't go well. We escaped, but just barely (freaking Psionic Grease). Our party's Dread Pirate failed vs. Insanity, and now habitually screams about purple pineapples at odd intervals.

[Jayabalard]

The important thing is that they have fun. That is the primary purpose of D&D, and games in general. I prefer roleplaying, others don't.

Actually, the important thing is that you all have fun; if you don't enjoy running those sort of games, then you shouldn't be running them.

[Deepblue706]

I'll note that I'm ignoring just about everything what everyone else has already posted.

Should players know all the rules? No. Never. Otherwise, they'll try to take over. If you ever find someone wondering how something works, never direct them to the SRD, or your book collection. YOU go back, confirm, and return with the information. You have to limit all players, for not a single one has a heart. They are evil in the purest form.

Never give them any power, always leave them in the dark. Explain how things happen AS they happen, but never mention what mitigates this and adjusts that. The DM must be secretive, or the players have won.

D&D has never been about the players winning. My personal motto follows that of the true and original game that you know as modern D&D, which goes like this: "If the players do not feel guilty, confused or useless, then something is wrong". None of those have to apply more than the next - any combination thereof will do. Keeping them unaware of the rules is one of your surest bets.