What does and doesn't constitute metagaming?

[kingcheesepants]

I'd like to get all of your opinions on where you draw the line for metagaming what's fine for a character to know and what is clearly out of game knowledge that should be left behind at the table. I tend to find myself in disagreement with some of the folks that I play with over what is and isn't acceptable and usually I am the one being told that I am too metagamey whereas I maintain that they are playing their characters in a somewhat unnaturally ignorant fashion.

To me if a character is a professional adventurer who has studied nature, arcana, history etc and encounters a monster it seems perfectly reasonable for him to have a general understanding of what that monster is and what it does. He sees an animated skeleton and knows that bludgeoning attacks are particularly effective or he sees a blue dragon and knows that he needs to watch out for lightning breath or he knows that elves are immune to being put to sleep. Some folks however seem to maintain that no if your character hasn't personally seen these things before they can't know it, therefore I'm going to use a sleep spell on this group of drow attacking us even though out of character I know it won't work. But honestly that seems really silly to me, surely an adventurer someone who goes out expecting to encounter monsters and whose life may hang in the balance of what he knows, would definitely learn what he can about stuff before heading out. Are you telling me that nobody in the world has heard of dragons or knows what the various colors mean? Professional mercenaries heading into the underdark don't know even basic information about drow? This is doubly true for folks playing as bards, wizards or otherwise well learned or travelled folks. Surely a wizard who just cast detect magic on the mysterious circle on the floor to discover an aura of conjuration can put 2 and 2 together to figure out that it's a teleportation circle.

Sorry this turned into more of a rant than I intended. I guess a better way to say it is I feel like knowledge checks about certain basic things should probably be low enough to be auto successes for folks who are proficient in them. When I personally know that a blue dragon has lightning breath and therefore I should get some lightning resistant armor if I can only to be told that no you only got a 14 on your nature check so you don't know that blue dragons shoot lightning. Or to have someone make frankly suicidal decisions because he wants to avoid metagaming, well it seems really silly to me. Maybe you guys can help me sort out how to approach this in a way to make everyone happy.

[Tanarii]

Metagaming is when a player pretends their PC doesn't know something they know.

Also, this might help:
https://theangrygm.com/through-a-gla...er-seperation/

[PhoenixPhyre]

Metagaming is when a player pretends their PC doesn't know something they know.

Also, this might help:
https://theangrygm.com/through-a-gla...er-seperation/

That's definitely a variant understanding of the term.

The DMG defines it as "using knowledge that is a game to govern character actions". Knowing that you rolled a 2 on your trap check, so you ask someone else to try. Figuring that there must be a trick/trap because the DM wouldn't do X or always does Y (from other campaigns with that DM). Reading the adventure ahead of time. Playing the rules, not the game--acting like your character knows it's a game and what the rules are.

I don't consider monster knowledge or genre savvy to be metagaming. It may be out of character for some characters and thus bad roleplay, but it's not metagaming.

[Greywander]

Roleplaying games are, well, games. If you just want to roleplay, there are places on the internet for that. There's nothing wrong with knowing the rules of the game and applying them to your advantage. There are times where you have to "play along" with a failed check, even though you as a player know something is wrong, but this, too, is part of the game.

It is a fair point that a given character might not be familiar with something that their player is. In such cases, I would just ask the DM something like, "Does my character know what this is?" or, "What do I know about this?" The DM also has the liberty to make changes to stat blocks if they really want to put players in a position where they actually don't know what the capabilities of a monster are.

The real problem is when, for example, a roleplay interaction occurs, and a player whose PC wasn't there to witness it changes how they act as a result. For example, the paladin who tries to murder the rogue for stealing their holy symbol, even though the rogue passed their Stealth check and the paladin has no reason to suspect the rogue. That said, don't steal from party members, or try to murder them, unless you've talked it over with the other players and they're okay with such shenanigans.

Edit:

After all, I hate players having to ask questions like “do I know what that is” or “can I make a knowledge check.”

Welp.

Edit2:
As Angry points out, you can probably assume that one player will fill in the others on anything important that they didn't witness themselves. So mostly I'm referring to situations where an event occurs that a player hasn't witnessed, and they react to it before meeting up with the player who did witness it, so there really should be no way that they would know about it.

[Jerrykhor]

Everyone have different tolerance for metagaming. Some people think just because you encounter a particular monster for the first time, you shouldn't know anything about it. That knowing a monsters specific vulnerability is cheating, because you must have peeked at the Monster Manual before. Well excuse me if i have DMed before, not everyone is 100% player or 100% DM.

For me, if a player casts Chromatic Orb at an Earth Elemental and chooses Thunder, I won't question how his character came to know about the vulnerability. Its disrespecting and frankly, completely stupid to question a player on his metagaming knowledge. He is simply doing what the spell says. This is why i hate it when DMs like to tell druids 'You haven't seen this type of beast before'. Basically when metagaming is used as an excuse to shut down the potential of abilities, that's not fine.

Some DMs just get a kick out of seeing players flounder around like morons, and therefore act like the PCs were born yesterday.

[Kylar0990]

This is why i hate it when DMs like to tell druids 'You haven't seen this type of beast before'. Basically when metagaming is used as an excuse to shut down the potential of abilities, that's not fine.

Some DMs just get a kick out of seeing players flounder around like morons, and therefore act like the PCs were born yesterday.

I've always seen this as silly. Even as a 1st level character your character isn't an infant. What kind of person pursues the path of a Druid without ever seeing any animals?

[MoiMagnus]

Tension about metagaming are mostly tension about what kind of game a RPG is.

(1) Having an heavy separation between character and player push the players toward one of the following:

(1A) A role of spectator or actor. The character is given the precedence over the player, resulting in the lost of some player agency ("you can't do that because you don't know that"). In exchange, you can build some dramatic irony (the players know that they are running toward a disaster, but the character don't) or similar complex story structure. To the extreme, the "PCs" are in fact just "NPCs each played by a different DM" as everyone around the table are pseudo-DMs.
[Despite the hate of the angry DM for OOC/IC separation, I'm sure even him agrees that the DM should have an OOC/IC separation for each of its NPCs]

(1B) A boardgamer. The player is given the precedence over the player, resulting in the RPG being seen as a tool and set of rules, rather than as a universe to immerse oneself in. This is what peoples usually complain about when they complain about metagaming.

(2) At the contrary, absence of separation between character and player push the players much more "natural" gameplay. The main problem here can be a tonal dissonance between the universe and the PCs (the PCs are expert in magical bestiary while the rules say that they should be unknowledgable farmers), though it usually indicates that the intended tone of the campaign just doesn't match the players.

[Valmark]

Imo metagaming is when you pretend characters have knowledge they can't possibly have. Stuff like two players talking between themselves and the third somehow knowing everything they said (without having listened in or stuff like that)- it has nothing to do with knowing stuff like dragon colors and their meaning or that elves are immune to sleeping magic.

In fact I'd probably make fun IC of someone not knowing that stuff because it does require you to be living under a rock. Or be a new player that doesn't know anything (in which case it'd be explained to them).

Generally it's not a problem when the latter happens anyway- homewever the former can lead to annoyance when players start butting in IC when their characters shouldn't have any reason to.

Metagaming is when a player pretends their PC doesn't know something they know.

Also, this might help:
https://theangrygm.com/through-a-gla...er-seperation/

Interesting- that's like the exact opposite of what I often heard metagaming be defined as. That definition is kind of an important part of roleplaying.

[MrStabby]

I think that some of this should be expectations set at the start.

So you come across skeletons and you whip out a mace for bludgeoning damage... adventurers probably know about low level monster vulnerabilities right?

Well maybe. It depends on the world - is the plot that the dead are becoming animated? That this is news and hasn't happened before? I.e. is this a world where undead are common or not?

And can you reason that the skeleton would be vulnerable to bludgeoning damage? It is still a stretch - its magical. Your character has never seen it before. Some force is holding the bones together anyway after all the ligaments and tendons and muscles have rotted away - why would you believe that frce would disipate or fail to act between two parts of a broken bone?

It depends on the campaign world. Discuss it.




Easiest way is just have the DM reskin monsters or reasign abiltities for things they think the players won't know about. It saves bogging things down at the table with more eperienced players and gives the players the reward for exploring the world.


That said, I do like the use of skills to know things about the world and about monsters. I think this is an imporant element of roleplay to allow for knowledgable characters. I think that it is also a good thing to allow higher Int/skilled characters to get value fromtheir knowledge rather than handing it out to everyone either in character or through using monsters that players know about.

[minute]

Simplest thing to do, in terms of what knowledge your character would know about a certain monster/creature/race, is ask the DM. If it's something you think your character would know, explain that. The DM might force you to make a check for it, they might easily tell you the information that you're seeking, or they might say that your character wouldn't know. Whatever the case, you should accept the DM's ruling on it.

Now, I know that intelligence is a popular stat for all the powergamers out there to dump. A 6 or 8 intelligence character isn't going to know as much about certain creatures as the wizard does; somebody who has probably spent their entire life studying and gathering knowledge.

Lastly, and I know this is an unpopular playstyle on forums like this, but during character creation I don't create adventurers. I create characters. I flesh out their backstories and their motivations and their personalities. So when you say "a seasoned adventurer" would know certain things about certain creatures, that doesn't apply to all tables, because not every character starts the game as an adventurer, or even somebody who wants to be an adventurer. If that's the case it just depends on what your character's backstory was like; yes, the druid would know a lot about woodland beasts. Yes, the blood hunter would know a lot about fiends/undead. Etc. Etc.

[stoutstien]

Mostly a pointless term used when either there is a miss match of player expectations at a table or when a gimmick encounter doesn't work because of the impossible task of trying to regulate player/character knowledge separation.

it's a lot easier to just work from that fact than trying to label whats good from (roleplaying) or bad (metagaming) is subjective and definitely not enforcable so why waste the effort.

[MoiMagnus]

Interesting- that's like the exact opposite of what I always heard metagaming be defined as. That definition is kind of an important part of roleplaying.

I think that's purposefully the opposite. (That's definitely not how metagaming is used in practice)

The whole point of the angry GM's rant linked is to explain that if there is enough separation between the player and the character for metagaming to be a thing, and OOC conversations to be significantly different from IC conversations, then you're doing something wrong (in his opinion).

[diplomancer]

I think that some of this should be expectations set at the start.

So you come across skeletons and you whip out a mace for bludgeoning damage... adventurers probably know about low level monster vulnerabilities right?

Well maybe. It depends on the world - is the plot that the dead are becoming animated? That this is news and hasn't happened before? I.e. is this a world where undead are common or not?

And can you reason that the skeleton would be vulnerable to bludgeoning damage? It is still a stretch - its magical. Your character has never seen it before. Some force is holding the bones together anyway after all the ligaments and tendons and muscles have rotted away - why would you believe that frce would disipate or fail to act between two parts of a broken bone?

Heh... I was about to make the opposite point. Getting a big hammer, instead of a sword or, Gods forbid, a Bow and Arrow, to put down an animated pile of bones is the first thing that would spring to my mind.

If Skellies, instead of having Vulnerability to bludgeoning, had, for some magical reason, Resistance to it (other damage types remaining the same), and a PC did NOT get out a big hammer to strike it down, THEN he could be suspected of metagaming (and all the arguments about whether that would be "expected character knowledge" or not, which would indeed vary from table to table, setting to setting, and even PC to PC)

[Corran]

To me if a character is a professional adventurer who has studied nature, arcana, history etc and encounters a monster it seems perfectly reasonable for him to have a general understanding of what that monster is and what it does. He sees an animated skeleton and knows that bludgeoning attacks are particularly effective or he sees a blue dragon and knows that he needs to watch out for lightning breath or he knows that elves are immune to being put to sleep.

Big no from me here. How can you know that blue dragons have a lightning breath when in my setting there has been only one blue dragon alive for the past couple thousand years, and that blue dragon has not been seen or heard from by almost anyone? Or how can you even know what a skeleton even is, let alone to what kind of weapons it's vulnerable, since necromancy is on its first legs and unheard of by the general population and only now we are close to a breaktrhough. And next week when the first zombie will be produced, kill the mad wizard who created, breaks free of its dungeon and stambles upon your party who is travelling closeby, I think I am more likely to ask everyone to roll a wisdom save against fear than to ask you to even roll to see if you can recognize anything about this threat which you see for the first time.

Yes, such examples are extreme, and they probably dont have place in the typical dnd setting. But who's responsible for the setting? Who decides what's typical and what is not, what tales get told around the places the pc's grew or adventure? The DM. Yes, no DM can create a setting in such excrutiating detail so that no matter what monster you come across there is a fixed list of things you know about it, of things you cannot know about it, and of things you might know about it. The easiest thing a DM can do, is to let the dice decide. And the DC set tries to approximate the monster's place in the game world. Sure, players can influence that decision. So for example if you come across ghouls and you tell the DM that in your backstory your pc's hometown was attacked by ghouls, you might not even have to roll to know things about them. Or you may roll with advantage to see if your character does indeed remember anything about these creatures. Or you may roll normaly, and failure to meet the DC could mean that your character was too young to remember anything about that incident, or that this incident was purposely not discussed and people of your hometown tried to forget it and move on after it had happened. And some DM will set impossible DC's and others will allow automatic success, and the DC's wont always be consistent or always make sense inside the game world for someone who always looks close enough.

You call some things obvious. Such as skeletons being vulnerable to bludgeoning damage. Or at least you say these things should be obvious to adventurers. Maybe. But many things that you would think they would be obvious, are not obvious unless someone tells you about it, or until you figure it out on your own and then you are thinking 'how could I have not seen it all along'. And many ''obviously correct'' things tend to be an error of judgement after all. The point is, that all this depends on the individual for whom we are discussing, so in this case for each one of the pc's. It might be obvious that you should not use fire against a fire elemental, but is the effect obvious? Should fire just not affect it, or would it even heal it and empower it? Different pc's may very well have different answers to such questions, and some pc's may not have even thought of such things at all, at least before such situations present themselves before them. And the stress of combat is certainly not helping someone think clearly, so a check may even represent the chance to do something stupid because you dont have enough time or the clear mind to think it over.

All that is not to say that you shouldn't have an opinion about what your pc knows and what they dont. Or that you shouldn't argue when a DM makes a call that seems nonsensical to you. But there's no guarantee that just because you know you pc better you should be the only one deciding on these matters, because the decision is not dependent only on the pc, but also on the game world, for which the DM is responsible. And that's without even mentioning that players are more than capable of nonsensical decisions about their character's knowledge (because they are not impartial, because they like their pc so much that overestimating them is common practice, etc), so that alone means you could do with an impartial arbitrer.

[stoutstien]

Best just actually identify the issues. Mostly when someone calls foul it's about the removal of either discovery, tension, or challenge. None of those factors are within the control if the players besides the DM.

There are plenty of ways the DM can address this without reverting to trying to ask the impossible from theirs players.

[AHF]

Big no from me here. How can you know that blue dragons have a lightning breath when in my setting there has been only one blue dragon alive for the past couple thousand years, and that blue dragon has not been seen or heard from by almost anyone? Or how can you even know what a skeleton even is, let alone to what kind of weapons it's vulnerable, since necromancy is on its first legs and unheard of by the general population and only now we are close to a breaktrhough. And next week when the first zombie will be produced, kill the mad wizard who created, breaks free of its dungeon and stambles upon your party who is travelling closeby, I think I am more likely to ask everyone to roll a wisdom save against fear than to ask you to even roll to see if you can recognize anything about this threat which you see for the first time.

Just by way of counterpoint, dinosaurs haven’t been around for longer than that and people commonly can probably name a dozen varieties and lots of people with no particular education can talk about theories relating to their evolution, etc. because they are the stuff of legend and capture people’s imagination. I’d imagine the same would apply in a world with dragons. They wouldn’t disappear from collective consciousness because they would be memorialized by song and story. This is even more the case if there is a living connection like Dragonborn and Draconic Bloodline sorcerers whose magic and breath weapon are linked to the color of their dragon ancestor. Knowing something as basic as “dragons breath stuff and what they breath is linked to their color” doesn’t seem unreasonable.

[Willie the Duck]

The conversation seems to be mixing discussion of what metagaming is, and whether metagaming is okay.

Apparently most everything mentioned meets that wikipedia definition, but I always have thought of metagaming as more of the 'stuff a character would only do if they realized that they were in a game.' An example might be 'let's not bother fighting those heffalumps, because their treasure type is mostly just large amounts of silver and copper and everyone is already encumbered, let's go over to where we saw the Jabberwockies, as they have a high chance of a magic item drop.' Whether your character knows that blue dragons shoot lightning to me is something of a separate concept (although apparently still falls under metagaming).

In both cases, I think the only answer regarding whether it is okay is group consensus/individual table culture. The game has been played in so many ways with so many differences in what is considered important that I don't think there's a consistent expectation. That's why we do session zeroes.

Roleplaying games are, well, games. If you just want to roleplay, there are places on the internet for that.

Roleplaying games are, well, roleplaying activities. If you just want to play games, there are places on the internet for that.

[da newt]

If I was an adventurer by choice or happenstance in a world filled with monsters and magic, I would go out of my way to collect useful knowledge to help me survive encounters with monsters etc, so if I am playing a PC who either decided to be an adventurer or has been adventuring for a while, I always make a point of adding something like "Grog actively searches for information about monsters, creatures, lore etc. He asks the local wise folk and reads every book that might contain useful knowledge." into the PC's backstory / character make up. Realistically, how much would an average 200 yr old elf monster hunter know about hunting monsters? More than me, the dumb player who has been learning about this stuff for a few years as a hobby ...

The WotC cannon includes people like Volo, Tasha, Xanthar, Mortiken, etc who write books that contain this sort of information. Only the most foolish of adventurers wouldn't seek out the information in these books.

Unless your DM's world has some reason why the monsters haven't been seen/encountered before or your PCs aren't adventurers and grew up ignorant of combat and adventuring and tales of battles with epic monsters, it should be assumed the PCs know as much as the players.

[Corran]

Just by way of counterpoint, dinosaurs haven’t been around for longer than that and people commonly can probably name a dozen varieties and lots of people with no particular education can talk about theories relating to their evolution, etc. because they are the stuff of legend and capture people’s imagination. I’d imagine the same would apply in a world with dragons. They wouldn’t disappear from collective consciousness because they would be memorialized by song and story. This is even more the case if there is a living connection like Dragonborn and Draconic Bloodline sorcerers whose magic and breath weapon are linked to the color of their dragon ancestor. Knowing something as basic as “dragons breath stuff and what they breath is linked to their color” doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Yeah, fair enough. Tried to come up with some extreme examples on the spot to eventually support a more general claim (that the DM definitely should have a say), and looking at them both now, I am not very pleased with either one.

[OldTrees1]

Metagame is a term that is broader than just RPGs. Sometimes metagaming is used as slang for a related concept that does not represent the whole. I will be talking about the whole concept rather than individual instantiates thereof.


The players (including the GM) playing the game know they are playing a game. They can think about the game rather than just think inside the game. There are actions/options the players can do that impact the game that are not within the game. Using those actions/options is engaging with the metagame. This is in contrast to when the PCs pull out dice and start a mesagame.


There are tons of actions and options the players can do that are not within the game. Here are some random examples:
1) They can have a session 0 where they discuss what they want the game to be and what they want to avoid.
2) They can impart knowledge to a character that would not know that knowledge, or make a character forget knowledge they would know.
3) They can bring brownies or other treats to the table.
4) When a PvP conflict arises in game, they can discuss and decide it OOC to avoid the in character conflict.
5) The GM can let the players see a scene the PCs can't see.
6) They can fudge dice rolls
7) They can edit/ignore the game rules
Etc

Some of these actions/options are accepted or even welcomed (session 0, resolving conflict as friends OOC). Others might feel like cheating (this is where the derogatory slang usage of metagaming comes in).

So metagaming is when the player does actions/options that are available outside the game (although they can impact the game) which they are able to do because they realize they are playing a game. (Like session 0 in D&D, or when a MtG player changes their deck in response to changes in popular cards, or when a Grandmaster studies next their opponent's games and common openings).

[Tanarii]

Mostly a pointless term used when either there is a miss match of player expectations at a table or when a gimmick encounter doesn't work because of the impossible task of trying to regulate player/character knowledge separation.

Also a good definition.

[MrStabby]

Just by way of counterpoint, dinosaurs haven’t been around for longer than that and people commonly can probably name a dozen varieties and lots of people with no particular education can talk about theories relating to their evolution, etc. because they are the stuff of legend and capture people’s imagination. I’d imagine the same would apply in a world with dragons. They wouldn’t disappear from collective consciousness because they would be memorialized by song and story. This is even more the case if there is a living connection like Dragonborn and Draconic Bloodline sorcerers whose magic and breath weapon are linked to the color of their dragon ancestor. Knowing something as basic as “dragons breath stuff and what they breath is linked to their color” doesn’t seem unreasonable.

I think this is a really good example. I like it

So you see a dinosaur - it is a dark brownish colour, about 8ft high, bipedal. eyes mounted high on the sides of its head, no crest. It has larger thicker teeth curving backwards - the front ones about 3 inches long. You can't see its feet in the grass but its hads have 3 digits each. How strong it it's dex save? Is it more likely to fail a strength save or a constitution save?

[Darth Credence]

I think that's purposefully the opposite. (That's definitely not how metagaming is used in practice)

The whole point of the angry GM's rant linked is to explain that if there is enough separation between the player and the character for metagaming to be a thing, and OOC conversations to be significantly different from IC conversations, then you're doing something wrong (in his opinion).

I always like to see links to angry GM, because I pretty much know to go the opposite of what he is arguing. He's horrible, and this is another example of it. Specific to your post, of course there are differences between IC and OOC conversations. If one cannot see that, then they need to think about this one:
IC: Gragnok, hold the line! Keep that door shut while we finish the ritual or we're all dead!
OOC: Bob, I'm grabbing a slice of pizza - you want one?

By his logic, Bob's character Grognak is being asked if he wants lunch, and if they are in the middle of a battle at the time, the enemies know this and... I don't know, think that the fight is going to be paused for a meal break? I know that the response to this is that he doesn't mean that, but his absolutes lead to it.

And more to the point of what he does mean, I'll take a direct lift from this article. The part where he says that if one person says my character wouldn't do that because of reasons, that must mean the character is saying that out loud in the moment. Which means that someone cannot remind the others of something that their characters would know, because they have know this person for a long time and truly know them, without saying it aloud in character. If one player has forgotten another characters backstory, but in game the characters have known each other since they were kids and the one that forgot would absolutely, without question, know, then saying that them reminding is the character also saying it out loud is stupid, and in direct conflict to what the ADM says here. It's a bad argument, and he seems to be a horrible DM that is only known because he uses the shock jock method of recognition.

[stoutstien]

I think this is a really good example. I like it

So you see a dinosaur - it is a dark brownish colour, about 8ft high, bipedal. eyes mounted high on the sides of its head, no crest. It has larger thicker teeth curving backwards - the front ones about 3 inches long. You can't see its feet in the grass but its hads have 3 digits each. How strong it it's dex save? Is it more likely to fail a strength save or a constitution save?

By DnD logic it would probably have roughly equal str/dex and is a bruiser that likes to use it's speed and power to use some form of multi-attack. Con save would be slightly over average because it's large and big stuff has more Con.

Might be a pack hunter so watch for ambushes and limit flanking and charging/pounce space if possible.

[MrStabby]

I always like to see links to angry GM, because I pretty much know to go the opposite of what he is arguing. He's horrible, and this is another example of it. Specific to your post, of course there are differences between IC and OOC conversations. If one cannot see that, then they need to think about this one:
IC: Gragnok, hold the line! Keep that door shut while we finish the ritual or we're all dead!
OOC: Bob, I'm grabbing a slice of pizza - you want one?

By his logic, Bob's character Grognak is being asked if he wants lunch, and if they are in the middle of a battle at the time, the enemies know this and... I don't know, think that the fight is going to be paused for a meal break? I know that the response to this is that he doesn't mean that, but his absolutes lead to it.

And more to the point of what he does mean, I'll take a direct lift from this article. The part where he says that if one person says my character wouldn't do that because of reasons, that must mean the character is saying that out loud in the moment. Which means that someone cannot remind the others of something that their characters would know, because they have know this person for a long time and truly know them, without saying it aloud in character. If one player has forgotten another characters backstory, but in game the characters have known each other since they were kids and the one that forgot would absolutely, without question, know, then saying that them reminding is the character also saying it out loud is stupid, and in direct conflict to what the ADM says here. It's a bad argument, and he seems to be a horrible DM that is only known because he uses the shock jock method of recognition.

I think that is a bit unfair. Angry DM isn't always wrong. He has a pretty even split between So Totally Obvious it Adds No Value Whatsover, and Wrong. So really only wrong half the time.

[Shadean207]

I always saw metagaming as "the players acting instead of the characters". Which, to a certain degree, is perfectly fine with me. I know that there are definitions for the word out there, but even the fact that there are multiple definitions, and that this thread exists, tell me that there is an inherent disagreement about the term.

In my (still fairly limited) experience, metagaming is almost inevitably bound to happen at some point and in varying capacities.

Some examples of "okay" and "not okay" metagaming instances, all in my opinion, include:

-- A player taking a long turn to think about their actions during their turn (which in-game has only six seconds, mind you) and discussing them with other players ("okay" with me, especially so for newer players)
-- A player immediately jumping to action, saying "Oh, I've fought these monsters in another campaign!" ("not okay", this is an abuse of player vs character knowledge in my opinion)
-- Animosity between players being carried over to their characters ("not okay")
-- The party/players discussing combat strategies after the fight and what could have been done better, using the words "turn", "bonus action" or similar ("okay" with me, again, especially when newer players are involved)
-- A player mid-turn asking the DM "is that allowed?"/"can I do that?" ("okay" with me, but by the definition I know, that would still constitute metagaming)
-- The DM looking up a monster's stats in the rulebook and telling the players that monster's AC, for example


I could go on, but as i see it, "Metagaming" can - and I emphasize CAN - mean anything that is not happening in character. Some people take it too far, sometimes it is necessary to explain to another player how things work.
At the end of the day, for me, DnD is a game, nothing more. So it would be a bit counter-intuitive for me to limit players to strictly in-game actions and knowledge. I've only seen that in "hardcore" LARP, on a basis of "your character can only do what you can do".

So, technically, everything the players do outside of character that still refers to the game is metagaming to me. The question is just, how much of that is okay, and at what point does it ruin the fun, perhaps?

[OldTrees1]

I always saw metagaming as "the players acting instead of the characters". Which, to a certain degree, is perfectly fine with me. I know that there are definitions for the word out there, but even the fact that there are multiple definitions, and that this thread exists, tell me that there is an inherent disagreement about the term.

-snip-

I could go on, but as i see it, "Metagaming" can - and I emphasize CAN - mean anything that is not happening in character.

Another example:
The player with a thief PC turns to the party OOC. They say their thief PC wants to pick pocket some of the noble NPCs in the room. They ask how the other players would feel about that. They then use that input to decide whether to allow their thief PC to act in character (pick pocket the nobles), or whether they will amend the characterization (not pick pocket the nobles).

1) Announcing information OOC
2) Discussing something OOC
3) Having that OOC discussion permit or amend the characterization of the PC

[Edenbeast]

I'm quite against metagaming, especially when your character knows what they rolled. As mentioned here in the example above with the disarm trap check. But another example is a character rolling for e.g. diplomacy, and rolls low, another player sees the result and want to try as well. Within reason, I let them, albeit with a penalty/disadvantage.

To me if a character is a professional adventurer who has studied nature, arcana, history etc and encounters a monster it seems perfectly reasonable for him to have a general understanding of what that monster is and what it does. He sees an animated skeleton and knows that bludgeoning attacks are particularly effective or he sees a blue dragon and knows that he needs to watch out for lightning breath or he knows that elves are immune to being put to sleep. Some folks however seem to maintain that no if your character hasn't personally seen these things before they can't know it, therefore I'm going to use a sleep spell on this group of drow attacking us even though out of character I know it won't work. But honestly that seems really silly to me, surely an adventurer someone who goes out expecting to encounter monsters and whose life may hang in the balance of what he knows, would definitely learn what he can about stuff before heading out. Are you telling me that nobody in the world has heard of dragons or knows what the various colors mean? Professional mercenaries heading into the underdark don't know even basic information about drow? This is doubly true for folks playing as bards, wizards or otherwise well learned or travelled folks. Surely a wizard who just cast detect magic on the mysterious circle on the floor to discover an aura of conjuration can put 2 and 2 together to figure out that it's a teleportation circle.

I find it mostly annoying when I describe a monster that is quite unique and appears for the first time to the party and people go like "oh I know what it is," or worse: grab the MM (or look it up on their phone. I've seen this happen once. Bad behaviour.). I mean, sure you know what it is, but your character definitely sees it for the first time! We kind of solved it by using the older edition rules where you still had to roll for monster lore which was tied to the knowledge skills. The better the result, the more information the DM gives you. Like roll for Religion for undead, or Arcana for magical creatures or stuff about the planes (could use Religion as well for the latter). In the end it's difficult to avoid when they use the right spells to overcome immunities, but it's a tactical game, and as DM you also know a lot about the PC's that the monsters don't necessarily know... And to make it more interesting you could always come up with some variant monster where you just switch some immunities.

[Demonslayer666]

Telling the DM how their world works is not a good approach.

I could easily see how that would be considered metagaming - you are applying knowledge to their world that your character has not experienced. Worse still, you are using it for a tactical advantage in combat.

I my game, adventurers are very rare. So when encountering something you have never encountered before, you should do what your character normally does, and if that doesn't work, then try something else. Not try something else first because of player knowledge.

I agree with those that said if you reasonably think your character would know that, and can justify it, then sure, go for it. But if you do it all the time, that's cheating. Err on the side of caution.


I do not like playing D&D and testing player knowledge or player skill at acting/persuasion. Some do, and think that's part of the game. I don't think I will ever understand that.

[stoutstien]

Telling the DM how their world works is not a good approach.

I could easily see how that would be considered metagaming - you are applying knowledge to their world that your character has not experienced. Worse still, you are using it for a tactical advantage in combat.

I my game, adventurers are very rare. So when encountering something you have never encountered before, you should do what your character normally does, and if that doesn't work, then try something else. Not try something else first because of player knowledge.

I agree with those that said if you reasonably think your character would know that, and can justify it, then sure, go for it. But if you do it all the time, that's cheating. Err on the side of caution.


I do not like playing D&D and testing player knowledge or player skill at acting/persuasion. Some do, and think that's part of the game. I don't think I will ever understand that.

The issue is there isn't a reasonable way to dictate what a character knows amd when roleplaying and metagaming meet if the distinction exists at all. Playing the "how many rounds do I have to pretend I don't know the obvious strategy" isn't that different from "this game is most based on FR lore so dragons are color coded for our convenience". the only difference is the DM in question can feel more accomplished in the first circumstance?

deciding what a character knows based on how well a player can justifying is the highest form of metagaming. That challenge is resolved solely by the player's ability to come up with a in-game reason to sell to the DM. Saying adventures are rare isn't even much of a hurdle either. It's still fully within the realm of the players agency to justifiy what their character knows. they could be the only X in the entire campaign and still come up with a good reason.

If a DM wants to include Discovery in a game they have to take the time to come up with something new. Little more work but in the end it's worth it for everyone.

If a DM wants to add challenge best bet is to assume the major knowledge points are going to be known and/or make those points obvious early on both mechanically and theatrically. if Red dragons are immune to fire in a campaign put them someplace where it's obvious that fire doesn't bother them or add other clues to level out any player knowledge discrepancy a table might have. Then give the dragon some self awareness and if they have a weakness that they can address let them. The challenge isn't what the players know but how can they apply that knowledge.

If a DM want to use the unknown as tension then it should probably be larger in scope where the range and specifics of the threat and dangers are open ended enough to prevent players from feeling well informed. you can't expect the unknown to be treated like the unknown if it is not unknown. Tension is formed when you combine the sense of Discovery and the challenge of applying what you do know.


if you think of it like one of those escape room games the enjoyment is from knowing the information needed is provided. if it's randomized that you might not have all your information that you need provided to you, it's not a challenge, it's gambling. Personally, that doesn't sound fun to me.