What does and doesn't constitute metagaming?

[MoiMagnus]

[About Knowledge Checks]

The point of putting information behind a skill check is to gatekeeping the gameplay of playing on the weakness of a creature behind having invested in knowledge skills.

This is far from the only instance of gameplay being gatekept by skills. If you don't have the good skills/abilities/spells, the infiltration gameplay is mostly inaccessible to you.

As all similar gatekeeping, you are sacrificing part of enjoyment of the "average table" in order to increase the reward of the character that were build for it. (Building a lore master that knows everything is much weaker if everyone can pick the monster manual and read the entries and use this knowledge without needing to "buy" it ingame).

But in general, it's very bad to gatekeep part of the gameplay which is central to the game. So the question becomes: is knowing precise information about enemies central enough to D&D that gatekeeping it is a bad idea?

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.

Agree on that. Custom monsters (and also custom spells) are great to push your players away from metagaming. Assuming that your players don't have too high expectations about consistency and balance, you can even get away with improvising some of them on-the-fly.

[stoutstien]

[About Knowledge Checks]

The point of putting information behind a skill check is to gatekeeping the gameplay of playing on the weakness of a creature behind having invested in knowledge skills.

This is far from the only instance of gameplay being gatekept by skills. If you don't have the good skills/abilities/spells, the infiltration gameplay is mostly inaccessible to you.

As all similar gatekeeping, you are sacrificing part of enjoyment of the "average table" in order to increase the reward of the character that were build for it. (Building a lore master that knows everything is much weaker if everyone can pick the monster manual and read the entries and use this knowledge without needing to "buy" it ingame).

But in general, it's very bad to gatekeep part of the gameplay which is central to the game. So the question becomes: is knowing precise information about enemies central enough to D&D that gatekeeping it is a bad idea?



Agree on that. Custom monsters (and also custom spells) are great to push your players away from metagaming. Assuming that your players don't have too high expectations about consistency and balance, you can even get away with improvising some of them on-the-fly.

Off topic-
As far as the DM challenge of integrating the knowledge skills into the game where players feel justify in those opportunity costs I try to always have a short list of bonus information depending on the nature of the stat/proficiency/expertise combo they have. they range from just interesting little facts they could leverage in someway to flat out mechanical impact like advantage against effects or added damage.

a player knowing that a troll is weak to fire is nice. A character that knows this fact and has taken the time to ingrain that knowledge would probably also know when they feel their life is threatened trolls are known to bite off thier own hands and have it retreat to try to prevent it's whole body from being destroyed. They also tend to hold grudges against those who temporary interrupt their constant feasting.

[cookieface]

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.

The issue all comes from a disagreement over what "the major knowledge points" are. It's the DM's world. As someone else mentioned, maybe dragons are exceedingly rare in this world, and so everything about them is dismissed as rumor or folklore. Maybe there is knowledge about them, but it is not common.

Is your PC a fighter with a soldier background? I don't see how they would be aware of dragons in the above examples. Is your PC a bard, or a wizard? Heck, even a druid sage. This is exactly what backgrounds are for: If you want a character that knows what specific dragons can do, you'd better have justification for it.

The example about dinosaurs doesn't hold up. Dinosaurs weren't discovered until the 1800s ... for the first several thousand years of human civilization, no one knew what dinosaurs were, but they were real. Even for the first 150 years of studying their fossils, we didn't know how they acted -- the assumption was that they were like giant lizards, slow and plodding thanks to their cold-blooded nature. In the 1990s, we believed that they were warm-blooded and acted a lot more like how modern mammals do. Not until the last 10-15 years did we realize they were covered in feathers, and actually more closely resembled birds.

If the last dragon died 100 years prior to your adventure, then sure, some sources may have true stories about them. But there would also be plenty of tales told about how they were the size of mountains, or how they had six legs ... just look at crazy stories about travelling to Africa or Eastern Asia from medieval European literature. There's a ton of stuff humans tend to understand very wrongly simply due to a generational version of the telephone game.

So to bring it back to the metagaming question:
- I don't like it when PCs know things they would not, reasonably. I am fine with them checking, "Do I know anything about dragons in this world?" I'd much rather they do that than say, "Blue dragons breath lightning!" Sure, there's a chance you would know that, but if it is something I want to keep mythic in my world, then please respect that.
- I am okay with it when PCs use game mechanics (within reason) to make decisions in-game. Saying, OOC, "I'll go try and do this other thing instead of attack, because I know the monster I am standing next to already used its reaction" is fine with me.
- I am okay with it when characters discuss, within reason, their tactics for combat. That can be explained, IC, as these adventurers having talked about this during rest or similar downtime, or as their instincts of how to work with one another being very strong.
- I don't like it when PCs adjust their reactions due to failed dice rolls. If a player was trying to argue down the price of something, rolled a 1 on persuasion, and immediately conceding is one case of this. The worst instances are when a player is talking to an NPC, rolls Insight to determine if the NPC is lying, rolling a 4, hearing "You believe them", and then still believes they are lying because otherwise they wouldn't need the roll in the first place.

Metagaming is when the PCs act like they are in a game, as someone else said.

[stoutstien]

The issue with the low insight roll when a DM says something like," you believe them." That is well outside their authority to tell a player what their character believes or not.

It might seem like it's semantics to argue that they should say something like, "the NPC doesn't show any obvious signs of being deceitful" or "the NPC is so flustered and frightened you can't form a accurate baseline to determine if they are being forthcoming" but the distinction is very important when working with the flow of information. Player agency isn't something to take away lightly.

If you want some mystery in your insight deception challenges then roll behind a screen or flip a coin and use inverse values (1 is highest) so they can't really tell based on the value of the die what's what. Or you could use a single DC and dice pool roll so they have to base their decision based on looking at three numbers rather than a single one to determine their action. The math behind rolling 3d20 for a single check and 2 results over the DC means passing, disadvantage needs 3 and advantage only needing 1, is a nice little trick MoG posted a while back.

Regardless of what is the outcome the DM cannot tell the player what their character believes.

[Tanarii]

[About Knowledge Checks]

Knowledge checks aren't even really part of 5e.

Lore checks are, recalling information. In other words, based on how 5e ability checks are for things that require one roll vs automatically succeed if the PC takes ten times as long, and that PCs automatically fail things they cannot do:
Lore checks are for things your PC already knew, and is trying to recall in the heat of the moment.

Knowledge checks are just people carrying over the idea from previous editions. They are "randomly determine the state of my character" checks, where your character is a Schroeder's character prior to the check, both knowing and not knowing information.

[Keravath]

In my opinion, metagaming occurs when the player bases the decisions of the character on knowledge that the character is unlikely to have in the context of the game.

This can range from very minor to significant and happens to some extent or another in almost every gaming session. This is part of why there can be such a difference of opinion.

Examples:
1) Is the character aware of the conversation between another player and an NPC? Do they take action on knowledge they don't have yet? A common example is a scout 30' in front of the party. Often everyone rolls initiative at the same time and acts as if they are aware of what the scout has seen.

2) What knowledge does a character actually have? How much monster lore do they know? If they grew up in a village training as a blacksmith, hearing legends from their grandfather around the fire at night - would they have any clue what color of dragon corresponds to what breath weapon? That you need to avert your gaze from basilisks to avoid being turned to stone? What is the difference between skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, wights, ghosts, vampires and will o wisps? Are any of them even real?

A character, even an adventuring character, is unlikely to have access to a memory filled with a compendium of knowledge on the capabilities of a vast range of creatures. Even meeting these creatures might not give the character an idea of their full range of capabilities.

A DM could instigate a check to see if the character can recall any information about a specific creature. Simple or common creatures might not need a check ... the feeding habits of a Glabrezu might be an automatic failure unless the character has specifically studied fiends.

On the other hand, a player who designs the character response to an encounter based on knowledge they know about the creatures being encountered that the character does not know IS metagaming.

Avoiding metagaming does involve a willing suspension of the players knowledge and acceptance that role playing the character's lack of knowledge does mean a less than optimal response to a situation.

3) Metagaming also happens all the time with die rolls. Make a low roll on a perception check and the character should actually not know how effective they were. The character should assume that there is nothing there they can see and proceed accordingly. However, if the character rolls a 23, the player has the character march forward without a care in the world and if they roll a 6, the character often behaves much more cautiously. That is metagaming since the character doesn't know whether the check was successful or not even though the player has a good idea.

Anyway, most games have an implicit (sometimes explicit - it is something that should be mentioned in session 0) agreement that players will try not to take advantage of metagame knowledge while playing their characters.

[Darth Credence]

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.

OK, you're right. I was being hyperbolic in my statement.

[Dark.Revenant]

Where would you draw the line?

Not Metagaming:
"I attack with Flurry of Blows! Sixteen and twenty."
"You hit with both attacks. Are you going to use Stunning Strike?"
"No. I'm not confident of my ability to stun something that looks as hardy as a giant."
(This is a reasonable in-character judgement call.)

Probably Not Metagaming:
"I attack twice. Seventeen and eighteen."
"That's a miss and a hit."
"Okay! So this monster has 18 AC. Good to know."
(You're putting an out-of-game mechanical number to something your character wouldn't be able to conceptualize, and making decisions based on that. However, it can be argued that your character would be able to understand how hard it is to hit/injure a foe, and that puzzling out the AC out-of-character is basically the same as your character getting a measure for their foe in-character.)

Possible Metagaming:
"I don't trust him."
"Roll Insight."
"... Five."
"You don't sense anything wrong."
"... I still don't trust him."
(You're most likely setting your character's perception of reality based on your own judgment as a person, judging the DM's portrayal of an NPC outside of the confines of the game world and mechanics represented by the Insight roll.)

Likely Metagaming:
"I search this wall for a secret passage. There's got to be one here."
"Roll Perception."
"... Six."
"You don't find anything."
"Hey, Rogue? You've got good eyes; can you come look here? I can't find anything but I just know there's got to be something here."
(You're making a personal judgment call, outside of the game, that your character wouldn't trust his/her own senses. While this is not necessarily unrealistic, would your character do the same if you rolled a twenty?)

Definitely Metagaming:
"I walk ahead of the party and keep my eyes peeled for traps."
"Roll Perception."
"... Five."
"The coast looks clear."
"I stop walking. I hold up my hand to signal the group to stop and beckon the Rogue forward to take another look."
(You're using the poor roll as an excuse to have someone else take a second try.)

Blatant Metagaming:
"I try to jump the gap."
"Roll Athletics."
"... Fourteen."
"Almost, but not quite. You-"
"I would have cast Guidance beforehand... four!"
(Now you're changing history and the flow of time to make up for a poor roll, after the result of the roll is made available to you. Note that in this scenario—unless you have house rules to the contrary—you can't even use Bardic Inspiration; the DM opened their mouth and said the roll failed, so it's sealed.)

Also Metagaming:
"I know out of character which type of weapon I need to use to dispatch these skeletons easily, but my character has never fought them before. So instead of drawing my maul, I'll draw my pike!"
(You're using your out-of-character knowledge to inform what your character does. In this case, you're doing the opposite of what you understand to be the best move.)

Well-Intentioned Metagaming:
"The party is split. Group A, you're bleeding out on the ground after the Goblin ambush brought the last of you to 0 hit points. Group B, you're in another area of the dungeon. What do you do?"
"I double-back and start running toward Group A again, sword drawn. I have a bad feeling about this place."
(This is pretty blatant metagaming, but it's done to try to keep the group together and avoid a TPK.)

[greenstone]

Metagaming is doing things in the game that wouldn't make sense in the real world.

Sometimes this is because the rules of the game are strange.

For example, in late game Monopoly, players want to go to jail. In real life, property moguls don't.

For example, players in online games often take off gear when running through dangerous areas, because gear that is not worn doesn't get damaged when your toon dies. In real life, you would keep the protective gear on.

Sometimes this is because of player knowledge, and this, I think, is the one most people dislike.

For example, a GM in an RPG asks a player for a preception roll, which the player rolls badly. Knowing the GM wouldn't ask for a roll if nothing was there, all the other players have their characters stop traveling and search around. In real-life, the characters didn't notice anything so wouldn't have any reason to stop traveling.

[kingcheesepants]

Hmm, you guys have given me a lot of things to think about for sure. I'm glad to see that there are a decent number of people who agree pretty wholeheartedly with my initial statement and that I'm not alone in thinking that my adventuring wizard who has studied nearly everything should probably know things about the world, and I'm also glad to hear that there are a decent number of folks who agree with the people I played with and think that I'm too metagamey. Having read your replies I think I have a much better understanding of why people feel that way and what I might do in the future in order to alleviate some of that tension.

In general I shouldn't assume things about a DMs setting without first asking the DM about it and that I should probably have a pretty good idea of why my character would know these sorts of things and be ready and willing to make a check to see if I can recall what I know. I think I'm still going to be a bit annoyed if my teammates try to cast sleep on some drow, or I have to pretend that I don't know I should be using thunder damage spells on earth elementals. But I'll have a talk with my group about where we should draw lines and try to come to a consensus that everyone can live with.

Also a couple of people noted asking another person to take a look at something if you fail to find a trap or secret door that you think might be there as an example of unacceptable metagaming. But do you really think that? If I have reason to suspect that there might be something hidden and I should check for it, I have reason to double check for it. I would say that if you roll a 20 and don't find anything and then don't ask any of your teammates to take a look, that's metagaming but honestly it's metagaming being done in order to streamline things and quicken the pace so I doubt many people would be too annoyed.

One other example of metagaming that nobody mentioned but I often see (and am not bothered by at all) is adding new players to a game. We want to have all the players treated equally and getting an equal share of the treasure and such and working as a team. If a new player is added he'll show up and for whatever reason (depending on the table it might be really organic or it might be pretty forced) he'll want to join the group and then soon enough they're working together as a team and sharing the spoils and acting as if they've known each other for ages. If an NPC were in the same place they certainly would not be treated in the same manner but players are exceptions and I think we all (or at least most of us) accept that. If this were not the case it would slow down or even in the worst cases totally destroy games.

[Jerrykhor]

I thought the definition of 'metagaming' is treating it like a game, or gaming the system.

'Oh I would have cast Guidance, sorry i forgot' is not metagaming if it make sense that you have the time to cast it

'I spam Guidance so that i have Guidance on Initiative' is metagaming.

D&D is weird. Everyone knows its a game, and treating it as a game shouldn't be wrong. But sometimes it is.

[Dark.Revenant]

Hmm, you guys have given me a lot of things to think about for sure. I'm glad to see that there are a decent number of people
One other example of metagaming that nobody mentioned but I often see (and am not bothered by at all) is adding new players to a game. We want to have all the players treated equally and getting an equal share of the treasure and such and working as a team. If a new player is added he'll show up and for whatever reason (depending on the table it might be really organic or it might be pretty forced) he'll want to join the group and then soon enough they're working together as a team and sharing the spoils and acting as if they've known each other for ages. If an NPC were in the same place they certainly would not be treated in the same manner but players are exceptions and I think we all (or at least most of us) accept that. If this were not the case it would slow down or even in the worst cases totally destroy games.

I'd argue that isn't metagaming, because it's not really related to an aspect of gameplay. You're suspending your disbelief, as a group, in the interests of facilitating the group's collective fun. You're bending the portrayal of your character not for an advantage or disadvantage in some task you need to complete, but to make sure the game can happen at all.

[OldTrees1]

I'd argue that isn't metagaming, because it's not really related to an aspect of gameplay. You're suspending your disbelief, as a group, in the interests of facilitating the group's collective fun. You're bending the portrayal of your character not for an advantage or disadvantage in some task you need to complete, but to make sure the game can happen at all.

But it is having the metagame impact how you are choosing to have your character react to this particular character (and the characters are an aspect of the gameplay). So I would argue it is metagaming. RPGs are one of the games where everyone frequently cooperates on the metagame level to enable the game level to best fit the desires of the playgroup. It is not all about advantage or disadvantage in game.

[Composer99]

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.

I think the answer to "what is acceptable metagaming at any given table" is "what is negotiated and agreed upon at that table". If your table hasn't hashed out what constitutes acceptable metagaming, it's probably past time to do so.

To sort out how to approach this in a way to make everyone happy (or, at least, satisfied with whatever compromise is reached), I think you may want to reach out to the DM and other players, come up with a few examples of occasions when you think metagaming - with or without some kind of in-setting fig leaf to cover it up - is acceptable, a few examples of occasions when you think metagaming is unacceptable, and even a few examples of occasions when you think not-metagaming (anti-metagaming?) is unacceptable. Probably best to come up with more tactful wording as required. Invite the rest of the table to provide their own examples. Then see what you have in common, how you can come to agreement/consensus on variances, and, where you can't come to agreement/consensus, what you can or can't live with. This discussion may also reveal whether or not you have similar or dissimilar ideas of what constitutes metagaming to begin with.

Ideally, this open and honest (but tactful) communication and negotiation will allow you to have more fun during a game session without necessarily causing others at the table to have less fun.

[Garimeth]

Where would you draw the line?

Not Metagaming:
"I attack with Flurry of Blows! Sixteen and twenty."
"You hit with both attacks. Are you going to use Stunning Strike?"
"No. I'm not confident of my ability to stun something that looks as hardy as a giant."
(This is a reasonable in-character judgement call.)

Probably Not Metagaming:
"I attack twice. Seventeen and eighteen."
"That's a miss and a hit."
"Okay! So this monster has 18 AC. Good to know."
(You're putting an out-of-game mechanical number to something your character wouldn't be able to conceptualize, and making decisions based on that. However, it can be argued that your character would be able to understand how hard it is to hit/injure a foe, and that puzzling out the AC out-of-character is basically the same as your character getting a measure for their foe in-character.)

Possible Metagaming:
"I don't trust him."
"Roll Insight."
"... Five."
"You don't sense anything wrong."
"... I still don't trust him."
(You're most likely setting your character's perception of reality based on your own judgment as a person, judging the DM's portrayal of an NPC outside of the confines of the game world and mechanics represented by the Insight roll.)

Likely Metagaming:
"I search this wall for a secret passage. There's got to be one here."
"Roll Perception."
"... Six."
"You don't find anything."
"Hey, Rogue? You've got good eyes; can you come look here? I can't find anything but I just know there's got to be something here."
(You're making a personal judgment call, outside of the game, that your character wouldn't trust his/her own senses. While this is not necessarily unrealistic, would your character do the same if you rolled a twenty?)

Definitely Metagaming:
"I walk ahead of the party and keep my eyes peeled for traps."
"Roll Perception."
"... Five."
"The coast looks clear."
"I stop walking. I hold up my hand to signal the group to stop and beckon the Rogue forward to take another look."
(You're using the poor roll as an excuse to have someone else take a second try.)

Blatant Metagaming:
"I try to jump the gap."
"Roll Athletics."
"... Fourteen."
"Almost, but not quite. You-"
"I would have cast Guidance beforehand... four!"
(Now you're changing history and the flow of time to make up for a poor roll, after the result of the roll is made available to you. Note that in this scenario—unless you have house rules to the contrary—you can't even use Bardic Inspiration; the DM opened their mouth and said the roll failed, so it's sealed.)

Also Metagaming:
"I know out of character which type of weapon I need to use to dispatch these skeletons easily, but my character has never fought them before. So instead of drawing my maul, I'll draw my pike!"
(You're using your out-of-character knowledge to inform what your character does. In this case, you're doing the opposite of what you understand to be the best move.)

Well-Intentioned Metagaming:
"The party is split. Group A, you're bleeding out on the ground after the Goblin ambush brought the last of you to 0 hit points. Group B, you're in another area of the dungeon. What do you do?"
"I double-back and start running toward Group A again, sword drawn. I have a bad feeling about this place."
(This is pretty blatant metagaming, but it's done to try to keep the group together and avoid a TPK.)

Its a long post to quote, but personally I agree with this.

I also ABSOLUTELY agree with Corran's post on the first page. I'm the DM, and if its homebrew then I wrote the setting/adventure/whatever. Additionally, if its a module, I'm gonna change stuff, cause they are never ready for play right out of the box. Its absolutely acceptable for me to tell a character they don't know something about a creature, environment, spell, individual or whatever.

DM: "Yeah druid, you grew up in the forested mountains of Hometown, and you have definitely never seen whatever this weird giant land bird with a long neck is."
Player: "Guys its an ostrich."
Player 2: "I don't know, could be an emu."
Player 3: "Its totally a chocobo."

Who knows? Not the PCs.

Also, the dinosaur example is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, lol. I promise you that many of the "facts" we know about dinosaurs currently will get over turned in a century, just like all the previous ones did. I certainly wouldn't know the equivalent of its stat block. A wolf? sure, I can take a good guess at that. How about some crazy poisonous South American frog hiding deep in the Amazon? Probably not... cause its RARE.

The best answer is that the group has to have an understanding of where they draw the line for a particular game cause it means different things to different people.

[MoiMagnus]

Blatant Metagaming:
"I try to jump the gap."
"Roll Athletics."
"... Fourteen."
"Almost, but not quite. You-"
"I would have cast Guidance beforehand... four!"
(Now you're changing history and the flow of time to make up for a poor roll, after the result of the roll is made available to you. Note that in this scenario—unless you have house rules to the contrary—you can't even use Bardic Inspiration; the DM opened their mouth and said the roll failed, so it's sealed.)

Possibly not Metagaming.
If there was no drawback at casting Guidance, this is retconning (correcting the past to be more consistent with how reasonable character would have acted).
If there was a potential drawback at casting Guidance, like being detected, this is quantum play (making a choice a posteriori, depending on latter consequences).

The first issue is definitely orthogonal to metagaming. "No retconning" and "no metagaming" are different questions. The second issue is related to metagaming, but still in the grey area IMO.
[That doesn't make it automatically acceptable, it's just that IMO that's a pretty bad example of metagaming]

[Garimeth]

Possibly not Metagaming.
If there was no drawback at casting Guidance, this is retconning (correcting the past to be more consistent with how reasonable character would have acted).
If there was a potential drawback at casting Guidance, like being detected, this is quantum play (making a choice a posteriori, depending on latter consequences).

The first issue is definitely orthogonal to metagaming. "No retconning" and "no metagaming" are different questions. The second issue is related to metagaming, but still in the grey area IMO.
[That doesn't make it automatically acceptable, it's just that IMO that's a pretty bad example of metagaming]

I agree with your general statement, but not this specific application. Unless this person literally guidances all the time, to retcon it for this specific failure is metagaming AND retconning.

Retconning would be better exemplified by somehting typical that gets glossed over in play, like "I would have filled my quiver with arrows before I left town" or even "we are all in the same merc group for a while now, so we have developed a simple system of hand and arm signals to communicate quietly".

EDIT: We may actually be saying the same thing, cause I see some references to what I'm talking about in your post.

[Dark.Revenant]

Yeah, that particular example has a lot of things going on. In retrospect, a purer example would have been better, but it's still the sort of thing players should avoid doing.

[KorvinStarmast]

DM: "Yeah druid, you grew up in the forested mountains of Hometown, and you have definitely never seen whatever this weird giant land bird with a long neck is."
Player: "Guys its an ostrich."
Player 2: "I don't know, could be an emu."
Player 3: "Its totally a chocobo."

Who knows? Not the PCs. [/quote]
This is where I facepalm. The PCs are not tabula rasa plus a few die rolls. They are beings who have decades of a life growing up and learning and doing things. Those are abstracted so that the game can begin. A druid not knowing what a beast is breaks my suspension of disbelief, since druids are specialists in the natural world. For unusual beasts, perhaps a Nature(INT) check is appropriate.

The druid, and all of the PCs, learned stuff when they grew up.
Example: when I was 7 years old I already knew what an ostrich was and I had not lived anywhere near one. Saw one at a zoo a few years later. By the time I was 17 and leaving high school I knew a considerable amount about the history and geography of the whole world I lived in. I could identify dozens of plants and hundreds of animals because I learned stuff while growing up and I was in boyscouts and so on.

Your point about dinosaurs is at least partly valid: depending upon how common they are in your game world.

[Nifft]

Probably Not Metagaming:
"I attack twice. Seventeen and eighteen."
"That's a miss and a hit."
"Okay! So this monster has 18 AC. Good to know."
(You're putting an out-of-game mechanical number to something your character wouldn't be able to conceptualize, and making decisions based on that. However, it can be argued that your character would be able to understand how hard it is to hit/injure a foe, and that puzzling out the AC out-of-character is basically the same as your character getting a measure for their foe in-character.)

I actually made that a concrete mechanic in my games.

When the PCs either hit the AC exactly or miss by 1, the AC is announced.

If the PCs have previously encountered this sort of thing, the AC is not secret in the first place.

This gives a few tense rounds of combat where AC (and saves which worked the same way) are unknown, then faster combat as the characters have earned information which just happens to make for more expedient player decisions.

Both the initial tense combat with unknown enemies, and the faster more expedient second part of combat, were regarded as positive by both me and the rest of the group.

(We also stole the "bloodied" mechanic from 4e, and announcing that -- even without any particular mechanics to take advantage of it -- also helps player decision making.)

[Tanarii]

Passive checks resolve many so-called metagaming issues. If something is secret, the DM is supposed to use passive score so there isn't a roll involved.

[da newt]

My basic litmus test for what does my PC know goes something like this:

I'm a fairly average guy IRL, what do I know about my world? Is my PC more ignorant or more of an expert in a certain field than I am?

What do I know about the animals that live in my world? Quite a bit but not everything. My PC will know as much about their world as I do about mine, adjusted for exceptional ignorance, expertise and societal norms.

[cookieface]

This is where I facepalm. The PCs are not tabula rasa plus a few die rolls. They are beings who have decades of a life growing up and learning and doing things. Those are abstracted so that the game can begin. A druid not knowing what a beast is breaks my suspension of disbelief, since druids are specialists in the natural world. For unusual beasts, perhaps a Nature(INT) check is appropriate.

The druid, and all of the PCs, learned stuff when they grew up.
Example: when I was 7 years old I already knew what an ostrich was and I had not lived anywhere near one. Saw one at a zoo a few years later. By the time I was 17 and leaving high school I knew a considerable amount about the history and geography of the whole world I lived in. I could identify dozens of plants and hundreds of animals because I learned stuff while growing up and I was in boyscouts and so on.

Your point about dinosaurs is at least partly valid: depending upon how common they are in your game world.

A modern 7-year-old's education is way, WAY better than 99.9% of people from whatever real historical era you consider DnD to be equivalent to. There weren't boy scouts in the 1500s. Have you ever seen a drawing of what medieval Europeans thought exotic animals look like? No way would anyone, even a highly nature-attuned individual, know details about animals from a vastly different ecosystem from their own.

That's why Nature is an INT check by default and not a WIS check -- it would require an immense amount of study to know things about Nature that aren't the basics of local animal behavior.

[greenstone]

Example: when I was 7 years old I already knew what an ostrich was and I had not lived anywhere near one.

You grew up in a world with printed books and televisions and museums and formal schooling and (depending on how old you are) the Web. Also, you can read & write.

In a swords & sorcery world, this is not be the case.

For example, a citizen of Athens or Rome probably knew what an ostrich is, because those cities had zoos and games. A citizen of a small village, probably not. A rural person (especially an archetypal druid secluded in a forest), almost certainly not.

[Garimeth]

This is where I facepalm. The PCs are not tabula rasa plus a few die rolls. They are beings who have decades of a life growing up and learning and doing things. Those are abstracted so that the game can begin. A druid not knowing what a beast is breaks my suspension of disbelief, since druids are specialists in the natural world. For unusual beasts, perhaps a Nature(INT) check is appropriate.

The druid, and all of the PCs, learned stuff when they grew up.
Example: when I was 7 years old I already knew what an ostrich was and I had not lived anywhere near one. Saw one at a zoo a few years later. By the time I was 17 and leaving high school I knew a considerable amount about the history and geography of the whole world I lived in. I could identify dozens of plants and hundreds of animals because I learned stuff while growing up and I was in boyscouts and so on.

Your point about dinosaurs is at least partly valid: depending upon how common they are in your game world.

Korvin, I think context is key. You knew what an ostrich was because of the advances of modern communication, publication, and education. Remote mountain tribes druid from Norway wouldn't know. He would know a TON about his area, and some pieces of lore from elsewhere, the rarity and distance of which would be represented by a DC skill check.

Now say this druid is playing in a campaign taking place in an appropriate climate, then sure he knows what an ostrich is, but now he doesn't know what a polar bear is.

I emphasize this because I completely agree with you on this:

"The PCs are not tabula rasa plus a few die rolls. They are beings who have decades of a life growing up and learning and doing things. "

That's why the DM should constantly feed things to the players and call for skill checks when necessary and tell them don't bother when its not. FOR EXAMPLE, I had a PC in my game last night ask an important NPC a question about national history that his PC DEFINITELY knows. I interjected and said "growing up in XXX you know YYY" the player recanted his question.

Think about the idea that a PC knows the equivalent of what we know to its extremes. At least half of my group knows how to make explosives from scratch. One of them is a paramedic. Hell, you yourself from reading your posts were a Naval pilot (I'm also Navy btw) imagine taking what you know and mapping it to a character.

My argument is not to infantalize the PCs, but saying that this idea that your PCs just know everything about the world the player knows about it (not your words, someone else's in the thread) and the DM is gainsaying the players to say otherwise, to me, is unrealistic. Heck, if anything the PCs probably know a good bit of incorrect information just like people do IRL.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's why the DM should constantly feed things to the players and call for skill checks when necessary and tell them don't bother when its not. FOR EXAMPLE, I had a PC in my game last night ask an important NPC a question about national history that his PC DEFINITELY knows. I interjected and said "growing up in XXX you know YYY" the player recanted his question.
.

I agree with this and would note that it's even more than just them asking questions. It influences player decision making. A noble character in their home court would know that the king can't be persuaded by certain types of arguments. They would just know that trying to impersonate <notable> is going to fail because he'd never be seen at that kind of event. Etc. The DM has to be an active participant in player planning, injecting the world-facts (acting as the Source of Truth) about the setting. Of course, the DM also should avoid the temptation to use that meta information to influence how the NPCs act, because the NPCs don't know this information.

That's one reason I try to maintain a wall between my knowledge and the characters' knowledge--the NPCs absolutely cannot know everything I know. Because that breaks everything. And I'm a player too--I expect the same sort of play from my players. I don't get mad if they aren't perfect about it--90% of the time I don't care. I'm open with facts about the world, and expect the characters to be suspiciously well-learned. That's fine. More info is generally better. But not always.

[Tanarii]

That's one reason I try to maintain a wall between my knowledge and the characters' knowledge--the NPCs absolutely cannot know everything I know. Because that breaks everything. And I'm a player too--I expect the same sort of play from my players. I don't get mad if they aren't perfect about it--90% of the time I don't care. I'm open with facts about the world, and expect the characters to be suspiciously well-learned. That's fine. More info is generally better. But not always.

It's that 10% that leads to accusations of metagaming. Even though merely attempting to put a wall of separation in place in the first place is metagaming, far more so than failing to do so in many so ways. Anything to do with the myth of player/character separation is is metagaming in one form or another.

[cookieface]

It's that 10% that leads to accusations of metagaming. Even though merely attempting to put a wall of separation in place in the first place is metagaming, far more so than failing to do so in many so ways. Anything to do with the myth of player/character separation is is metagaming in one form or another.

There has to be a wall somewhere. Some just make that "fourth wall" more obvious and take a top-down view of their world and characters than others.

For example: If there were no wall, I would not be able to play a character with high CHA. It wouldn't be possible -- I am not a charming or persuasive person. If the response is, "It doesn't matter -- just roll the dice", then that's your wall of separation. Just like I don't have to be able to swing a sword to be a Fighter.

Intelligence skills (which seem to be the core of what is discussed here) are where it gets super fuzzy, alongside some Wisdom skills.

If I'm in a low-magic setting where suddenly all sorts of strange things start happening, I (the player) will know that a black cat-like creature with tentacles is a Displacer Beast. However, my PC will not know that. If there were no wall, then there would be no reason for me/my PC to use tactics that will work well against a Displacer Beast before I understand how they operate. There must be a separation of player and PC to make sense -- otherwise no player would ever be able to play a second PC after they gain experience from their first PC.

[Garimeth]

There has to be a wall somewhere. Some just make that "fourth wall" more obvious and take a top-down view of their world and characters than others.

For example: If there were no wall, I would not be able to play a character with high CHA. It wouldn't be possible -- I am not a charming or persuasive person. If the response is, "It doesn't matter -- just roll the dice", then that's your wall of separation. Just like I don't have to be able to swing a sword to be a Fighter.

Intelligence skills (which seem to be the core of what is discussed here) are where it gets super fuzzy, alongside some Wisdom skills.

If I'm in a low-magic setting where suddenly all sorts of strange things start happening, I (the player) will know that a black cat-like creature with tentacles is a Displacer Beast. However, my PC will not know that. If there were no wall, then there would be no reason for me/my PC to use tactics that will work well against a Displacer Beast before I understand how they operate. There must be a separation of player and PC to make sense -- otherwise no player would ever be able to play a second PC after they gain experience from their first PC.

Totally agreed. In fact, it can even go the opposite way in CHA checks. IRL, I'm a fairly persuasive person who is good at thinking on my feet. I have to self-limit my social skills when playing a non-face PC (on the RARE occasion I get to play...) because I start RPing a social dynamic my PC is just not capable of sometimes. Similarly, I have a hard time playing non-decisive characters.

It is toughest on the knowledge stuff, because like Phoenix said: it influences player planning too. I give out some pretty extensive lore handouts that my players are free to read or not, but if they don't and I catch wind they might be missing a key detail, I make sure to remind them or feed it to them.

Add on top of that it varies from setting to setting...lol.

I personally just homebrew everything and tell the players straight up not to assume that the stuff that was true in Forgotten Realms is true in my games. Granted, I can do this cause its a home game with a group I have been DMing for around a decade now so we have the trust and history, and they know I won't pull them around and they are gonna have fun in my games.

[Tanarii]

The point is the second you put up an artificial wall, you're metagaming. That doesn't make it always a bad thing, but it is what it is.

Also Cha checks are a useful tool for DMs, because they really work well with player declaring intent and approach, followed by DM determining outcomes and consequences. They're practically the model case for it, because they can either be done under the cover of a normal conversation, or can be done more explicitly, as desired. Player and NPCs interact, intent and approach are clarified if not obvious. DM determines if a check is needed and the value based on the interaction, outcomes and consequences follow.

OTOH as I already said, knowledge checks aren't really even a part of 5e, they don't really fit in with the paradigm of "if you can't succeed or automatically succeed don't make a check" very well, and they especially don't work with taking ten times as long resulting in success.

If you want to randomly determine the state of your character's knowledge, go for it. But besides not fitting with the design philosophy, it carries its own (commonly complained about) pitfalls, due to everyone potentially knowing everything and the randomness of the dice.