Getting players to recognize their own agency

[NichG]

It doesn’t follow my understanding of rubber-banding either, although I guess I can see where the idea is coming from, that if you have a bunch of easy encounters you will likely follow them up with a harder encounter later and vice versa to maintain the average.

Yes, players do have the opportunity to take on high risk high reward missions and vice versa, although I generally wouldn’t recommend doing it too often.

Why wouldn't you recommend it?

Let's say someone is a guard in a small town. They might have to deal with breaking up bar brawls and arguments as their daily job, with chasing a murderer or thief or dealing with local bandits as the biggest challenges (let's say CR5 at worst). They start the job as a level 3 character and advance to level 6 over the course of a decade on the job. Is it infeasible in your setting for such a person to just continue to deal with small town threats for the rest of their lives without e.g. automatically taking a promotion to city guard and taking on a CR9 thieves guild or defending the city from dragons or something?

If an NPC can stay in a post where they're consistently overpowering the challenges they're expected to deal with as part of their job, is there a reason PCs can't?

Note: "I don't want to run a game about that" is valid, but that's the sort of thing you have to be direct about with players. If you try to make it so that even if the PCs want to be like that they can't, that's going to make the whole 'you have choices and responsibility for their consequences' thing fall flat.

[Cluedrew]

Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

That seems to be on par with what I get when I'm running activities for 8-10 year old children. Outside of that I've had someone yell at me for dodging around their army in a war game (first time in half a dozen matches they hadn't seem-rolled me), I have been accused of having a tantrum for stating "well, I won't be having fun for the rest of the game" before quietly playing out the last few rounds as to not throw off the balance of the game and once I actually had a tantrum. I apologized for it and have never played that game again, actually I've been pretty careful with the whole genre ever since.

Oh I just remembered a fourth, that one was complicated. Depending on how many I've forgotten then rate might be between one every five months to one every five years. So yeah, one every five sessions seems on the high side to me.

[Talakeal]

Why wouldn't you recommend it?

Let's say someone is a guard in a small town. They might have to deal with breaking up bar brawls and arguments as their daily job, with chasing a murderer or thief or dealing with local bandits as the biggest challenges (let's say CR5 at worst). They start the job as a level 3 character and advance to level 6 over the course of a decade on the job. Is it infeasible in your setting for such a person to just continue to deal with small town threats for the rest of their lives without e.g. automatically taking a promotion to city guard and taking on a CR9 thieves guild or defending the city from dragons or something?

If an NPC can stay in a post where they're consistently overpowering the challenges they're expected to deal with as part of their job, is there a reason PCs can't?

Note: "I don't want to run a game about that" is valid, but that's the sort of thing you have to be direct about with players. If you try to make it so that even if the PCs want to be like that they can't, that's going to make the whole 'you have choices and responsibility for their consequences' thing fall flat.

I suppose if you agree to play a quiet low stakes campaign that would work fine.

I was thinking in a more traditional structure where the players are trying to amass as much money and power as possible for the sake of saving the world or whatnot.

The NPC bouncer isn’t amassing Experience iance and treasure at the same rate as someone pushing themselves, which is fine, but if a dragon or evil overlord or whatever threatens his home, he won’t really be able to do too much about it compared to your average commoner.

In game terms, if you take on to many low stakes missions you will fall behind in treasure, while if you take on too many high stakes missions you will probably test your luck too often and die, neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

[NichG]

I suppose if you agree to play a quiet low stakes campaign that would work fine.

I was thinking in a more traditional structure where the players are trying to amass as much money and power as possible for the sake of saving the world or whatnot.

The NPC bouncer isn’t amassing Experience iance and treasure at the same rate as someone pushing themselves, which is fine, but if a dragon or evil overlord or whatever threatens his home, he won’t really be able to do too much about it compared to your average commoner.

In game terms, if you take on to many low stakes missions you will fall behind in treasure, while if you take on too many high stakes missions you will probably test your luck too often and die, neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at. What does 'falling behind' mean really, if players actually do have full agency over their characters? If you want to tell people 'succeed or fail, its up to you and your decisions' but you also say 'oh, you must be Lv20 before two years pass in-game or the elder evil that is coming later in my plotline will kill you all', those two things don't really go together very well.

You could say for example 'In two years, there's going to be a very high level threat. If you guys are powerful enough to face it, game will center around directly resisting it, but if you're not strong enough to do so then there's an alternate way forward that involves being on the run and building up a way to escape. So it's up to you which game you'd rather play', which would leave the players the agency to make either choice on the basis of the expected consequences. But that's different than e.g. 'every four sessions, the CR of opponents you are expected to be able to directly face will go up by 1, and you can't avoid those conflicts'.

[Pauly]

After reading a bit more in the thread, I think what Talakeal wants is to make the social contract of the game explicit.

Going back to my previous post I would further suggest something along the lines of creating a single page document to cover the 3 main interactions DM to player, player to DM and player to player.


Part A
My promise as a DM to the players
1 -8) ennumerated points.
9, 10) left blank so the players can add additional promises they think are necessary

Part B
The DM’s expectations of the players
1 - N) ennumerated points about how Talakeal expects his players to behave. Be active, don’t wait for spoon feeding, work together as a group, remember plot hooks etc.
N + 1) left blank for the players to add points as they think are necessary.

Part C
Player’s expectations of each other.
1) Be respectful of each other
2+) left blank to allow the players to complete.


Then do not present this document as a fait accompli. Give the players the agency to amend/clarify the document and negotiate a mutually agreeable social contract.

Don’t try to enforce the contract. This is more of a expectation setting exercise. Also by allowing them the agency to alter the document it gives them investment into following through on their part of it.

[RandomPeasant]

I honestly think that if you're planning out what will happen in two years in-game, you're probably over-prepping regardless of what those plans are. The hardest part of DMing is writing only as much plot and setting material as is necessary for the game, or detaching yourself sufficiently from the excess material you've prepared that you don't railroad the players into it when they go a different direction.

neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

The GM having an epic plot is in direct conflict with player agency. Any time you plan out in advance what is going to happen, you are butting up against the ability of the PCs to do something else. That might be fine, as the success of adventure paths quite clearly demonstrates, but for players to have agency the plot needs to be something that happens as a result of their actions.

[KineticDiplomat]

As a last note before I beg off:

The players being emotionally immature and the GM being capricious and all-powerful are not mutually exclusive positions. Add on that mechanics can be easily used to rationalize why either side is right in both cases, and the supposed objectivity of the rules is not really a balancing factor. I dare say it’s likely that everyone in the situation here is tragically right.

We have a GM who is personally very heavily invested in his homebrew D&D mod providing a certain experience. He has, in several threads to date, not once had someone point out a possible system issue without a response as to why the poster is wrong and his system actually covers that and it’s not a problem. I imagine this is his attitude towards any system complaints his players have.

Add to that the GM is, by virtue of being the author of a homebrew, the only person in the world who is probably in any way proficient with the mechanics to the level “normal” mainstream systems might expect. Yet he is terrified of “nerfing the campaign” so much that he openly states his intent to play the NPCs as a wargame (if Aragorn doesn’t have a bow, all of the orcs will use their cyber-ork hive mind to kite him exactly X feet and shoot him with their bows) while his players are four disparate individuals, and despite there being the same Magic/Damage/Move combat puzzles as D&D wants his players to know that any weakness in this system - which again, he’s the only one who actually knows well enough to game - will get exploited by something so they better get it right or face the consequences.

And then we have his history where in umpteen scenarios not once have his players been competent - aka done what he thought was reasonable - despite whatever hint/agency/vision/hook he gave them, they have 100% of the time over a large sample size of events always done the “wrong thing” for which of course they had to suffer.

Safe to say, if his players think he’s a capricious killer GM who responds to perceived offenses against his own personal vision of his personally designed system experience by punishing them, yep, they’re probably right.

At the same time, if even a fraction of the events he’s reported are accurate - and with all single source reports about extraordinarily circumstances we always have to consider that the reporting source is misrepresenting the situation - then the players are man-children (or possibly really children) for whom no GM or system would work.

———

So, no reason both parties can’t be deep in the wrong here, but almost no likelihood an “open letter” - which in this day and age is almost always an attacking argument no matter how framed - is going to solve it.

[Talakeal]

As a last note before I beg off:

The players being emotionally immature and the GM being capricious and all-powerful are not mutually exclusive positions. Add on that mechanics can be easily used to rationalize why either side is right in both cases, and the supposed objectivity of the rules is not really a balancing factor. I dare say it’s likely that everyone in the situation here is tragically right.

We have a GM who is personally very heavily invested in his homebrew D&D mod providing a certain experience. He has, in several threads to date, not once had someone point out a possible system issue without a response as to why the poster is wrong and his system actually covers that and it’s not a problem. I imagine this is his attitude towards any system complaints his players have.

Add to that the GM is, by virtue of being the author of a homebrew, the only person in the world who is probably in any way proficient with the mechanics to the level “normal” mainstream systems might expect. Yet he is terrified of “nerfing the campaign” so much that he openly states his intent to play the NPCs as a wargame (if Aragorn doesn’t have a bow, all of the orcs will use their cyber-ork hive mind to kite him exactly X feet and shoot him with their bows) while his players are four disparate individuals, and despite there being the same Magic/Damage/Move combat puzzles as D&D wants his players to know that any weakness in this system - which again, he’s the only one who actually knows well enough to game - will get exploited by something so they better get it right or face the consequences.

And then we have his history where in umpteen scenarios not once have his players been competent - aka done what he thought was reasonable - despite whatever hint/agency/vision/hook he gave them, they have 100% of the time over a large sample size of events always done the “wrong thing” for which of course they had to suffer.

Safe to say, if his players think he’s a capricious killer GM who responds to perceived offenses against his own personal vision of his personally designed system experience by punishing them, yep, they’re probably right.

At the same time, if even a fraction of the events he’s reported are accurate - and with all single source reports about extraordinarily circumstances we always have to consider that the reporting source is misrepresenting the situation - then the players are man-children (or possibly really children) for whom no GM or system would work.

———

So, no reason both parties can’t be deep in the wrong here, but almost no likelihood an “open letter” - which in this day and age is almost always an attacking argument no matter how framed - is going to solve it.

While nothing you are saying is wholly off base, please note that you are drawing conclusions from the most extreme examples. There have been literally hundreds of times my players worked together competently, that I have changed my rules based on feedback, and that we all had enjoyable games together.

But of course good times don’t make for long forum threads.

I will say though, I don't think I would be getting all the complaints about rubber banding in the recent threads if I actually played monsters as perfectly efficient hive minds.

[Quertus]

To circle back to something I said earlier: Talakeal, if you want to give your players Agency, a good place to start is to place control of when the rules change in their hands.

IIRC, you said that 1 player wants to change things a lot, but that the group thinks that you change things too much. So, pick someone else to determine (or, probably less good, determine by group vote) when the rules should change to address an issue vs when they should remain as they are for this campaign.

This will both show that you are listening and trying to improve, and *force* you to listen to the tempo they set / what they think is worthy of rules changes // will encourage you to ask questions and try to understand why they wanted the rules changes in some instances but not others - very important feedback for testing your system!

Previously you had various suggestions about showing the players the monster stats, or hand them a copy of the adventure after the fact, etc.

Ah, so I did. In the past. Thanks for jogging my senile memory.

I have longer responses for Quertus and Old Trees, but I don’t have time to type out or edit them right now, stay tuned.

I look forward to it. (It took a while to write this (I was busy), it might already be there)

I will say that, as for the vampire, its not that there was any misunderstanding going on. The players spotted the clue, mentioned it, and then never a ted upon it, and when I later asked them why, they told me that they forgot and it should have been my job to remind them.

That… seems a really strange expectation. Did you correct them / ask them why they believed this… or just ignore it?

Yes, players do have the opportunity to take on high risk high reward missions and vice versa, although I generally wouldn’t recommend doing it too often.

Why wouldn't you recommend them taking on a larger number of low-risk, low-reward missions?

EDIT: ah, I see that you half answered that, with "because the Doom clock is counting down". So… what if the Doom clock doesn't start counting down until *they* can start it, at… say, level 17? Or what if they can handle those low-risk missions *faster*, and level up at the same speed as (or possibly even faster than) if they had taken on higher risk missions? Any reason for them not to go that route if that's what they enjoy? Any reason for you to not build your game such that they can enjoy it?

This is absolutely going to be a simple on the rails game.

Good to know. Not what I expected when you said "Agency". But, now that I know, as long as you get player buy-in, I can try to give you appropriate advice.

On the plus side, a linear "rails" game is ideal for my "boxed text" idea.

Yes, it is fully possible to have a death spiral. It is also fully possible to have the opposite, a runaway monty haul game where the PCs can simply through money at any challenge to make it go away. In twenty years of gaming, I have managed to thread the needle and not run into either, which is one of the reasons why I am hesitant to drastically alter my games difficulty as some forumites suggest.

Your posts have repeatedly indicated that that is what your players desire, so I have suggested that you give that a try.

That said, my "demigods of adventure" idea explicitly does *not* lower the difficulty, only increases the stamina of the PCs, to allow you to test one component of "difficulty", to see how that affects your players' behavior (specifically, their desire to rest after every encounter), and, if it helps make the game more in accordance with your desires for heroic play, to calibrate your encounters and/or system accordingly. But, arguably more importantly, to facilitate having that conversation with your players.

It explicitly does *not* change how you would "thread that needle", does not produce "a runaway monty haul game" (unless your system mandates periodic >100% resource expenditure to prevent such, which would be… odd); if you have taken that away, then you have misunderstood the concept, and should ask questions until you understand it better.

And yes, bad luck can push resource expenditure to the point where mission failure is likely or prudent, and I want the PCs to recognize that it is possible due to bad luck without there being someone to blame. Thst being said, the odds are pretty small, less than 5% if previous games have been any indication.

How many "missions" does your standard campaign entail?

How many missions do your players usually fail for *other* reasons?

It is mostly over-lap. The difficulty thing is not a frequent complaint from my players, but people on the forum keep telling me that when my players complain what they are really saying is that the game is too hard.

This may be a you (Talakeal) communication thing - anyone not posting from a phone care to show Talakeal examples from their posts that feed this belief / *really* sound like Talakeal saying exactly that?

Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

Now, this doesn’t seem too unusual to me, based on my experience playing Monopoly with my brother, Golf with my Dad, cards with my sister in law, Warhammer with guys at the game store, or Warcraft with randos online; people get frustrated when they are losing and look for something to blame and lash out at. But I am told that it is not normal for gaming groups and that I have a problem.

The exact nature of the fit varies, both by person and time, it might be dramatic with shouting and swearing and throwing models, or it might be more subtle with accusations of cheating or favoritism and lots of sarcasm.

1) no, that's really *not* normal in… heck, not just RPGs, but even board / card games with well-adjusted, sober adults, in my rather extensive experience. If you're playing for money, and you've just bet the house, your wife, and your 2.5 kids? Sure. Otherwise, not so much. Environments where such overreaction is common are referred to as "toxic" - often, by its own members (I'm looking at you, League of Legends)!

(EDIT: upon reflection, I realize that I have seen slightly similar behavior from individuals regarding things which are their "passions", and disturbingly similar behavior from disempowered sports fans, whose interactions are limited watching and yelling ineffectually at the game. Although I don't exactly condone such behavior, and consider it childish, these groups aren't generally labeled "toxic". Anyway, I know that this is gonna be really strange advice, but have you considered trying to get your players to be *less* invested in your games?)

I don't know how else to emphasize my concerns about your group without it coming off like I'm attacking you (yeah, I'm bad at communication, too - I'm glad that you are understanding of my communication failures), but I strongly agreed with Segev when they said that you apologizing was a strange play in that scenario (I'll try and find the quotes if you don't know what I'm referring to).

2) now, this might just be me, but I view the "more subtle" things, like sarcasm, as a desperate attempt to communicate to you, by engaging you in every possible bandwidth in the hope that *something* will get through. Because, from what I've heard, it sounds like that's actually been one of the most effective forms if communication from some of your players. Which is part of why I keep encouraging you to listen to your players more (not that it's not good advice in general, but… it's a bad sign when your players feel that they need to resort to sarcasm for you to hear them). So you'll probably enjoy the game more of you can find a way for them to communicate with you more directly, rather than resorting to sarcasm and personal attacks.

3) we aren't at your table - you are. It occurs to me as I write this that what you choose to address, and when and how you choose to address it, may be one of your most powerful weapons to change how toxic your table is.

A lot of your decisions of when and how to change rules, of what player feedback to listen to, of how to respond, I would have chosen very differently. "Building a table culture" is… Hmmm… complex, and highly affected by such choices.

Typically the things that trigger it fall into a few categories, although tensions are always higher when the group is struggling than when they are breezing through.

1: Players tend to build their characters around one big thing. When it is prudent to spend money on something that doesn't directly correlate to a bonus to their one thing, they get bitter. When their one thing doesn’t work, they get mad.

2: When a players actions have unintended consequences. Usually this is because they don’t think things through, but often its because they weren’t paying attention, forgot or misunderstood something, failed to do any reconnaissance , or are surprised by something. Some of these fall under miscommunications and “gotchas”, but not the majority.

The more I think about this, the more I start to think that the problem isn't that the game is challenging, it's that it's challenging the wrong people.

Builds, tactics, consequences, resource management, problem solving--that's all stuff that challenges the player. It means that you, as a person, have to stop and think about what you're doing. And for a lot of us it's the best thing about tabletop RPGs.

But not, it sounds like, for your players. For whatever reason, they don't want to find themselves in situations where there's a wrong choice. They want to roll dice and use their special abilities; they want to enjoy the worlds you come up with; and they don't want to have to worry about anything while they do.

That can be frustrating. Normally I'd say run a very linear adventure, but given that they also seem to have emotional issues and a phobia of "railroading," I'm not sure entirely what you can do. But the more you talk about planning ahead and facing consequences, the more miserable they're going to be.

Tl;dr: You want the players to put more brainpower into the game then they're willing to devote to a game.

How does one… have this conversation / fix this kind of problem? "You seem to want to build characters with only one button to push; to maximize that button, and then get frustrated when that button is inapplicable"?

What solutions could be on the table?

Changing the system such that a lightning-throwing healing Cleric - something with multiple buttons to push - is actually a viable build?

Ensuring that every button is always valid to push?

Making buttons obviously overkill after a certain point, "anything you can sword dies in one hit", where it's obvious that they should improve something else now?

*Increasing* the number of "cannot be affected by <button>" encounters?

Creating complex encounters, with many components, *some* of which <button> is inapplicable, *some* of which it works on? Where either it's fine to only have a single button, or the impetus for multiple buttons comes from wanting to participate in a different component of the encounter.

Tailoring encounters to the PCs?

Verbal clue-by-four approach ("you… want to take your Pyromancer Wizard… to an area doubtless rife with fire-immune creatures? Are you *sure*?”) (note: doesn't work so well in linear adventures, where the GM picks the path)

Incentivized multiple buttons, by… reducing costs on "secondary buttons" (whether build resources or cheaper potions), handing out items of "secondary buttons" (your classic "wand of fireballs" / "flaming sword" to give the party firepower(heh), or increased drops of potions)?

*Forcing* multiple buttons, by… making downtime always improve *2+* things / making all characters "gestalt" / Fate skill trees?

I'm kinda at a loss, because I've not seen players build one-note characters before without acknowledging the consequences of such choices, *unless* they were *forced* to make such characters by a system that they subsequently hated as mandating trap options.

… "failed to do any recon" really stands out to me. It feels like this… is a "one of these things is not like the others" scenario, *and* low-hanging fruit, and really should be addressed.

Talakeal, did you ask your players why they didn't do recon? If so, what was their response?

[Vahnavoi]

Staying away from Talakeal's particular situation because it has enough people talking about.

On a more general level: the difficulty of making players recognize their own agency is that it has to happen from a situation where they don't believe or don't realize they have agency.

At length:

Agency is the amount of meaningful moves a player can make in a game, "meaningful" meaning change in a game state. It's a number that starts from zero and can go up without limit. Related, there's total game agency and turn-by-turn agency. Total game agency is delimited by total number of meaningful moves a player can make in an entire game - a number that's uncountable or even infinite in case of many tabletop roleplaying games. Turn-by-turn agency is the amount of moves a player can choose from per each decision prompt and by contrast is much smaller than total agency and often goes up and down depending on exact game state.

You can run a functional roleplaying game where turn-by-turn agency is two - that is, the player answers a series of yes/no of questions, or some other binary choice. Where at least some of the choices diverge, the move space and hence total agency of the player grows exponentially. If at least some choices continue to diverge without limit, such a game can have arbitrarily high total agency.

The maximum is harder to define, but one thing that delimits it is human working memory. Humans have limited storage-specific capacity for keeping things in mind, slightly varying from person to person. There are process-specific ways to apparently increase this, but those rely on a person learning and utilizing memory devices. In practical terms, you can expect a new player to consider and choose from around three different moves, and processing and choosing from more than those requires experience and special rules knowledge. More than three moves is prone to causing decision paralysis or just failure to see non-obvious moves.

So how does a player recognize their agency? You'd think it's just a matter of looking at the game rules, right? In theory, yes, but that's the first hick-up: people who just look at the rules (especially the first time) often can't deduce which moves are meaningful and which are not, because roleplaying games typically don't offer complete information to players. In other words, they don't recognize their agency - they assume agency.

The second hick-up is that tabletop games require other people to process the game moves - a game master being the most obvious, though it's still true of games without such a role. In short: nothing actually happens in the game without approval and instantation by those other people, so those other people serve as convenient scapegoats for anything and everything in the game. It doesn't help that tabletop games are often full of pseudo-agency - moves that sound meaningful, that could conceivably meaningful, yet aren't meaningful because no-one pays attention to them. Then there's fake agency - situations where other people purport to give you a choice, but never intent for that choice to matter. Because a player can't turn back time or pick apart source code of other people's brains to check how they operate, a player can hence claim all agency in a game is pseudo or fake, and it is difficult to prove them wrong.

So to get a player to recognize their agency you have to get past at least these hick-ups: they have to stop assuming their choices matter and they have to stop assuming their choices don't matter just because another person is required to instate them. Actually have them count their moves and what projected outcome those moves have. It is expected a lot of moves converge in the same space - that is, either nothing happens or the game is lost. In a game of incomplete information, some amount of trial and error is also expected, which requires willingness to return to the start state and try again. Often, recognizing agency feels the same as figuring out the solution(s) of a difficult puzzle. (It often literally is solving a puzzle.) It is very hard to get this to happen in an unwilling or incapable person - a situation described by the saying "you can lead a horse to the water but you can't make it drink" .

[GloatingSwine]

To use an actual story, one time the villain was a doppleganger impersonating a vampire. I dropped numerous hints, and at one point after describing the vampire's reflection, one of the players corrected me, thinking I had made a mistake, to which I informed him that while his character knows vampires don't have reflections, this one does..

Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

[Batcathat]

Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

I don't know about this. I feel like a fairly obvious hint that the supposed vampire is displaying some distinctly non-vampiric traits should at the very least be a reason – both in and out of character – to consider the reason for that. Even if it is some sort of wacky homebrew vampire, it's still worth looking into just in case it comes with some wacky homebrew powers.

That said, giving players clues that are just the right degree of understandable is always tough. They can miss things the GM thinks is blatantly obvious while simultaneously latching onto some tiny clue the GM just meant as foreshadowing.

[Vahnavoi]

A bigger problem is that "vampire" itself is a vague term due to all the different kinds of vampires in myth and fiction. Same is true for most popular monsters - without something in the game itself establishing beyond doubt that some traits are ironclad for that kind of monster, it's impossible to use them for guessing games.

[Quertus]

Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

This is a really good point: if I had been at Talakeal's table, I likey would have responded to this incongruous information with, "oh, cool, more homebrew puzzle monsters!". And either not given it a second thought, or began attempting to collect samples to perform alchemical experiments upon in order to determine the creature's variant capabilities before the inevitable confrontation.

Talakeal, this was a brilliant scenario, hindered by the combination of "your players¹" and "your history of homebrew".

Would you consider giving your PCs a "homebrew detector" for the next few campaigns, to build up a combination of "trust" and (if possible) "critical thinking skills"? Flavor it as a "foo" detector, where all your cool homebrew monsters are foo (whether that's fey/Dream, or Chaos, or æther-touched, or whatever). That way, they know when to look inside the box for answers, and when to think outside the box, at least. Then we can focus on building those two skill sets, rather than on getting your players to distinguish between them (and scream at you for "cheating" when they fail).

¹ I can't say much there, because i have numerous players, and several entire groups, whose only response would be, "what Knowledge do I need to roll to understand this?"

I don't know about this. I feel like a fairly obvious hint that the supposed vampire is displaying some distinctly non-vampiric traits should at the very least be a reason – both in and out of character – to consider the reason for that. Even if it is some sort of wacky homebrew vampire, it's still worth looking into just in case it comes with some wacky homebrew powers.

That said, giving players clues that are just the right degree of understandable is always tough. They can miss things the GM thinks is blatantly obvious while simultaneously latching onto some tiny clue the GM just meant as foreshadowing.

For me as a player? Yes, absolutely! But Talakeal's players don't seem inclined to do the necessary amount of research to understand a problem.

Given this limitation, what would you suggest? Do you think a "strike that: R&R - Research and Recon - are the biggest min-maxing / optimization things you can do in Heart of Darkness; teamwork weighs in after those" would encourage Talakeal's players towards critical evaluation of their opposition?

A bigger problem is that "vampire" itself is a vague term due to all the different kinds of vampires in myth and fiction. Same is true for most popular monsters - without something in the game itself establishing beyond doubt that some traits are ironclad for that kind of monster, it's impossible to use them for guessing games.

Also true. If we don't know what lore a 'Heart of Darkness" vampire is based on, we cannot recognize this as anomalous in the first place.

[Talakeal]

Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

Thank you for being honest. For years I have suspected that the whole “gotcha” thing was just code for saying DMs shouldn’t be allowed to home-brew content, but everyone else always denies it.

That being said, three things:

1: It wasn’t a super anything, let alone an ogre. It was a nerfed fomorian who dealt non-lethal damage.
2: There was no home-brew at all in The game with a vampire, it was a prefab 3.5 module.
3: The issue was t that they didn't catch the clue, they did and meant to act on it, but then forgot all about it and said it was my job to remind them.

I honestly think that if you're planning out what will happen in two years in-game, you're probably over-prepping regardless of what those plans are. The hardest part of DMing is writing only as much plot and setting material as is necessary for the game, or detaching yourself sufficiently from the excess material you've prepared that you don't railroad the players into it when they go a different direction.



The GM having an epic plot is in direct conflict with player agency. Any time you plan out in advance what is going to happen, you are butting up against the ability of the PCs to do something else. That might be fine, as the success of adventure paths quite clearly demonstrates, but for players to have agency the plot needs to be something that happens as a result of their actions.

I don't think having a plot hurts player agency in any meaningful way, as long as you let the players interact with the plot in their own way rather than following a script.

I dont think anyone would have fun if i just tossed the players into a sandbox and told them to make their own plot.

To use an analogy, I love customization options in games, so one of my friends was surprised I don't like games with a bunch of sliders that let you build a character from scratch. I told him that callingsliders customization options is like saying Home Depot is the world’s largest furniture store.

Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at. What does 'falling behind' mean really, if players actually do have full agency over their characters? If you want to tell people 'succeed or fail, its up to you and your decisions' but you also say 'oh, you must be Lv20 before two years pass in-game or the elder evil that is coming later in my plotline will kill you all', those two things don't really go together very well.

You could say for example 'In two years, there's going to be a very high level threat. If you guys are powerful enough to face it, game will center around directly resisting it, but if you're not strong enough to do so then there's an alternate way forward that involves being on the run and building up a way to escape. So it's up to you which game you'd rather play', which would leave the players the agency to make either choice on the basis of the expected consequences. But that's different than e.g. 'every four sessions, the CR of opponents you are expected to be able to directly face will go up by 1, and you can't avoid those conflicts'.

In my experience, player characters want to amass as much money and power as possible. They also usually have some sort of epic goal that requires a lot of power, whether or not it is their idea or based on the DMs plot. Even something as simple as keeping your family safe in a dangerous world of pillaging orcs and marauding dragons can require a lot of personal power and magic swag.

So yeah, its possible to play an alternate game where those assumptions aren't true, but I haven’t really talked to anyone who is interested in challenging that sort of model, and didn't really think about it whent talking about power curves.

[Talakeal]

@: Old Trees:

A few people have flat out said "do not show them this letter", Pex for one. But, in context, most of them are saying that I should just not send this particular letter, that the concept or the bullet points are fine. A few more poeple, not all of them on the forum, have asked me if any letter could possibly make someone start acting more mature, or if it was even appropriate to try. Further that with the idea that everyone is primed to read the letter in the worst light possible, and I think the odds are it would only make things worse.

For example, multiple people are reading the bits about enemies playing smart and exploiting weaknesses to mean I am playing to win and will meta-game and make the enemies omniscient, genius, hive minds to perfectly exploit the PCs weaknesses, when really I am talking about things like (examples from last campaign) a flying, fire-breathing dragon testing the party's defenses from the air before landing and wading into melee, or a muscular hobgoblin seeing a tiny frail wizard blowing his comrades apart with fireballs from a staff and deciding to try wrestling the staff away from her.


I am not opposed to Quertus' idea about showing the players my notes afterwards, although I do fear that if the players discover a mistake on my part (likely a math error or forgetting to write something down) it will backfire and only fuel their convictions that I am cheating.


I am willing to admit that I make mistakes and that I do share part of the blame when things go bad, I am not that arrogant. However, the players need to realize that I am not the sole factor in determining their success of failure.


The example of a lightning weak monster who is immune to fire and cold is just something I pulled out of my butt, but isn't too similar to a D&D golem. Assume they can't find out more because they failed their knowledge: arcana check and we are playing D&D RAW.

@Quertus:

Sorry, I don't have the time to quote everything I am responding to, let me know if I need to clarify context.


Two of my players are diagnosed with depression, which is known to hinder memory formation. All of my players tune out when they aren't the center of attention and spend half the game playing with their phones. As a result, they have decided it is my job to remind them every time they forget something. Of course, most of the time I don't know when or what they have forgotten, and I don't know how to be sublte about reminding them so it doesn't just look like I am ordering them about using word of god and further eroding their sense of maturity / responsibility / agency / accountability or whatever you want to call it.


Is the example of the healing / lightning throwing cleric specifically referring to the character I had two campaigns ago? Because, he was ALSO trying to be the party face and a martial artist, in a party which already had a martial artist, which is just too much for one person to take on (in a normal size group, it might be good in a smaller or larger party). A character who sticks to two or three roles is generally perfectly competent.


I imagine my players would be a lot better served if they weren't so uptight / perfectionist about the game. Basically, they don't want to have to be "on" all the time, but at the same time they freak out if they don't get every single objective and their character never fails or gets hurt. If they want to chill out and be more casual, that's cool, but they can't also be so uptight and on edge.


Boxed text is hard. My players have a standing policy of ignoring it, and I am not sure I could find enough people willing to go through it all to make sure it can't be twisted or misinterpreted. But, I can't do boxed text for everything, what all is it needed for? How should I start?



I am not sure what you mean by "razor's edge" balance, as I don't really balance that tightly. I only go for averages, trying to balance a specific instance is impossible. But its weird, anytime my players fail they immediately assume its because it "wasn't balanced".


I generally run about 20 missions in a campaign over about 18 months of play. In that time, I generally see 1 or 2 failed missions. So yeah, maybe 2-3% fail for other reasons? Although my last group seems very risk averse, and so they probably would have abandoned several that were perfectly winnable.


The new campaign is going to be totally by the book. Any printed optional rules can be voted on by the group. Now, I still need to be able to fix mistakes and game-breaking exploits; there isn't really a right answer there. If I can go off on a story, one time a player found a game-breaking exploit, and I said we needed to remove it, the party voted to keep it, so I had the enemies start using it to, which resulted in an almost immediate TPK. The party then voted to allow me to fix the exploit and retcon the session, but by that point there was bad blood all around.


The thing about my game is that I structure downtime actions a lot better than D&D, and reward players for having resources left over by letting them use them on downtime projects. So yeah, if the players always walked away with tons of extra resources left after a mission, they would be able to reinvest into crafting, which would improve their gear beyond the curve, which would further push them off the charts and could well create a monte-haul cycle if I am not allowed to adjust encounter difficulty or market prices to compensate, which my players do not want me to do.
I actually ran into a similar problem during the end of my last game; the players bought all the equipment they could to maximize their “one thing” and then just stopped buying anything else, which made them lag in other areas, particularly defenses, which meant they complained that every mission was too hard. And then used up all that saved money to drown the last session in consumables and make it a joke.
The end result was four overly hard missions with bitchy players, and then one overly easy mission which resulted in me being frustrated at the lack of a mechanical “climax”.




As I said in my letter, the optimal strategy is to look at every encounter / obstacle in isolation and ask yourself "how can I get through this using as few resources as possible". This guarantees you will have enough to get through the mission (barring catastrophic bad luck or mistakes on someone's part) and will hopefully leave you with a nice bit of extra resources left over to stash away so that in the future you can weather said catastrophic bad luck and mistakes.

[Batcathat]

For me as a player? Yes, absolutely! But Talakeal's players don't seem inclined to do the necessary amount of research to understand a problem.

Given this limitation, what would you suggest? Do you think a "strike that: R&R - Research and Recon - are the biggest min-maxing / optimization things you can do in Heart of Darkness; teamwork weighs in after those" would encourage Talakeal's players towards critical evaluation of their opposition?

I don't really know, to be honest. Personally, I would rather fail to solve a mystery by missing (or forgetting) the occasional clue, than to succeed but feel it was thanks to the GM spoon-feeding me everything I need to know (Yes, I realize that the "right" level is completely subjective). But this group don't seem to share my attitude in the matter so I don't know. Just never have anything being anything else than it appears and never have anyone lie to the party? I'm not quite sure if I'm kidding or not...

[Grod_The_Giant]

Basically, they don't want to have to be "on" all the time

Again, it's this. This is the problem. Your players want a simple game where they don't have to think too hard about tactics and consequences, and that's not the kind of game you want to run.

[Talakeal]

Again, it's this. This is the problem. Your players want a simple game where they don't have to think too hard about tactics and consequences, and that's not the kind of game you want to run.

Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.

I guess you just have to run games with no failure conditions? <shrug> Think of it as an improv challenge--whatever weird direction they hare off in, find a way to make it the "right" choice.

For encounters... maybe try to make them stand-alone? Move to per-encounter resources, let the players take the equivalent of a long rest after every fight, and otherwise make sure that it doesn't matter how well or badly they perform.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't think having a plot hurts player agency in any meaningful way, as long as you let the players interact with the plot in their own way rather than following a script.

Player agency is a spectrum, not a binary. Having a set plot means players don't have the agency to choose to go do something else, or to do things that derail the plot. It doesn't mean they have no agency by any means, but it does mean they have less agency than if you just said "here's the world, do some stuff". That be desirable, as the success of Paizo's adventure paths demonstrates. Many people don't want to think of a fully actualized goal for their character (particularly not one that balances with the other players and what the DM wants to do), and would prefer to be told "here's the problem you need to solve, solve it however you want".

In particular, a plot that is set up multiple in-game years in advance is almost never going to survive contact with the players. With that much time, the players will inevitable derail the plot by figuring out a double-cross too early, or haring off across the world in pursuit of something that they thought was way more important than you did, or end up with enough power to sequence-break and stop the plot, or just switch sides. You can stop any of those, but only by denying their agency.

[OldTrees1]

@OldTrees:

A few people have flat out said "do not show them this letter", Pex for one. But, in context, most of them are saying that I should just not send this particular letter, that the concept or the bullet points are fine. A few more people, not all of them on the forum, have asked me if any letter could possibly make someone start acting more mature, or if it was even appropriate to try. Further that with the idea that everyone is primed to read the letter in the worst light possible, and I think the odds are it would only make things worse.

Yes. A lot of people evaluate this particular letter (a part, or the overall letter) has flaws that we expect will backfire. In your opening post you told us how your "most level headed and trusted player" summarized it. (My how quickly people forgot the draft of the letter was already delivered to one player.)

Some were about word choice/tone at specific parts.
Some were about the letter saying something different than you meant.
Some were about the blowback effect of one sided criticism.
Some were about the fear that you can only control yourself, so it might be impossible to write a letter to get the players to be more mature.

This is not saying giving advice, especially to new players, is bad. However it is saying your current letter, and maybe even its primary intent, is not a good way to give advice.

For example, multiple people are reading the bits about enemies playing smart and exploiting weaknesses to mean I am playing to win and will meta-game and make the enemies omniscient, genius, hive minds to perfectly exploit the PCs weaknesses, when really I am talking about things like (examples from last campaign) a flying, fire-breathing dragon testing the party's defenses from the air before landing and wading into melee, or a muscular hobgoblin seeing a tiny frail wizard blowing his comrades apart with fireballs from a staff and deciding to try wrestling the staff away from her.

Communication is hard and it is especially challenging for your situation (for a variety of reasons, some of which I don't understand). Your most reasonable player, and some people on the forum read that section in various ways you did not intend (although not to your hyperbole). Even I read it that way (although I ignored that reading since I had prior context). Some of this is audience, some is presentation (including preconceptions from prior experiences with you), and some is word choice. You have been given some advice on that 3rd category (see quote below for an example).

I do not envy your communication challenges. I hope you succeed. In this case I believe the open letter would make things worse, but maybe you could make some new player advice that has a positive impact. It is possible.

"In this campaign you will face some enemies with different tactics they can switch between depending on what they learn about the defenses they are facing"

I am not opposed to Quertus' idea about showing the players my notes afterwards, although I do fear that if the players discover a mistake on my part (likely a math error or forgetting to write something down) it will backfire and only fuel their convictions that I am cheating.

How often would there be a mistake? If they suspect every encounter is cheating but only find a mistake 1% of the time, they will probably yell but might start to accept you are not always cheating.

And showing your notes in advance (when possible, and make it possible more often) would not have this concern. Just thank them when they notice a math error.

However I understand the trepidation. My worst experience was with a player where we could not establish enough trust. This would not have been enough to fix that situation, but they would have reacted positively to the transparency.

I am willing to admit that I make mistakes and that I do share part of the blame when things go bad, I am not that arrogant. However, the players need to realize that I am not the sole factor in determining their success of failure.

1) I agree.
2) If I wanted to teach a new player that lesson, I would expect I should sandwich it in between admitting my contributions to their failure. I don't trust average new players to openly accept one sided criticism. Acknowledging my own contribution helps them swallow the lesson.
3) I don't dare suggest you try that with your group. I have not idea how to communicate the message credibly in that environment without it backfiring.

The example of a lightning weak monster who is immune to fire and cold is just something I pulled out of my butt, but isn't too similar to a D&D golem. Assume they can't find out more because they failed their knowledge: arcana check and we are playing D&D RAW.

They failed knowledge: arcana against the golem. However they can see the golem is made out of ____ so I could tell them what everyone knows about fire/cold/lightning/acid vs mundane pieces of ____. For the more obscure bits of common knowledge I might ask for a Knowledge nature check. For example: The blacksmith uses a forge to heat up the metal they work on. Metal gets cold quickly but warms up quickly. Lightning strikes the temple's metal spire a lot. Iron can rust but Silver does not tarnish.

When I can't answer a specific question because the PC does not know. I can still mention tangents that the PC does know about. They are not directly applicable. For example an Iron Golem is not exactly like iron.

[Pex]

3: The issue was t that they didn't catch the clue, they did and meant to act on it, but then forgot all about it and said it was my job to remind them.

How long was it real world time between noticing the "vampire" had a reflection and the fight they made harder because they thought it was a vampire? If it was that same game session a half-hour before, the players forgetting is their fault. If it was a week ago last game session, you can't blame them forgetting. If it was that week ago you can just flat out remind them of the incident. It hasn't been a game world week, so the characters should have remembered even though the players haven't. If you feel the need at least ask for an Intelligence check, say DC. A success gives you the excuse to tell them about the reflection. A failure you tell them they know they're forgetting something important about the vampire.

[icefractal]

They failed knowledge: arcana against the golem. However they can see the golem is made out of ____ so I could tell them what everyone knows about fire/cold/lightning/acid vs mundane pieces of ____.

A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

Most type of animal-people are basically on the same level as other humanoids - there could be a strong one due to class levels, but "a dozen lizardfolk" isn't usually scary to mid-level characters. But, squid-headed people (Illithids) and tiger-headed people (Rakshasas) are deadly threats.

A big bug with weird antennae is actually one of the greatest threats to many adventurers (a Rust Monster), despite that most big bugs are just normal melee types with at worst a nasty poison.

Red Dragons breath fire ... ok, clear linkage. White Dragons breath cold ... makes sense. Blue Dragons breath ... lightning? And they burrow in the sand? Not something you could tell from a picture of one.

So I don't see things like the "Sneeze Ogre" as a puzzle monster just because its abilities aren't immediately apparent. Heck, if it didn't have the nose at all and instead had a "Telekinetic Push" ability with no visual indicator, that would still be on par with the majority of monsters.

[Talakeal]

A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

Most type of animal-people are basically on the same level as other humanoids - there could be a strong one due to class levels, but "a dozen lizardfolk" isn't usually scary to mid-level characters. But, squid-headed people (Illithids) and tiger-headed people (Rakshasas) are deadly threats.

A big bug with weird antennae is actually one of the greatest threats to many adventurers (a Rust Monster), despite that most big bugs are just normal melee types with at worst a nasty poison.

Red Dragons breath fire ... ok, clear linkage. White Dragons breath cold ... makes sense. Blue Dragons breath ... lightning? And they burrow in the sand? Not something you could tell from a picture of one.

So I don't see things like the "Sneeze Ogre" as a puzzle monster just because its abilities aren't immediately apparent. Heck, if it didn't have the nose at all and instead had a "Telekinetic Push" ability with no visual indicator, that would still be on par with the majority of monsters.

Which is more or less what I have been saying all along, that all the “gotcha” talk is just telling DMs not to home brew , but Gloating Swine is the only person who will come right out and say it.

[NichG]

In my experience, player characters want to amass as much money and power as possible. They also usually have some sort of epic goal that requires a lot of power, whether or not it is their idea or based on the DMs plot. Even something as simple as keeping your family safe in a dangerous world of pillaging orcs and marauding dragons can require a lot of personal power and magic swag.

So yeah, its possible to play an alternate game where those assumptions aren't true, but I haven’t really talked to anyone who is interested in challenging that sort of model, and didn't really think about it whent talking about power curves.

It'd be good to separate 'what you expect they would want', 'what they actually will do given a choice', and 'what your setting/pacing/GM decisions encourage' here.

If you really don't intend your setting or game events to come with periodically escalating innate difficulty, then it doesn't make sense to tell them 'its a bad idea to take easy missions' because that would imply that you have a reason that you aren't saying as to why they will later be punished for taking it too easy.

You don't have to make the decision for them whether low risk/low reward or high risk low reward or low risk high reward or whatever is desirable. It would be enough to say clearly 'this CR 5 quest comes with a roll off of the CR 5 loot table (or 'comes with rewards appropriate to CR 5'), this CR 9 quest comes with CR 9 rewards, this CR 11 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but also narrative rewards (favors owed, etc), this CR 3 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but there's something that seems off about the posting, etc. Then, see what they do.

In my experience, players don't always go for the thing that maximizes money and power. They go for the thing which seems like the best deal for them, and a whiff of there being some kind of trap or gotcha to it will often make players sacrifice power. That's not because they made a mistake, that's them telling you what their risk/reward preferences are.

There's an item I handed out in two separate campaigns (edit: I'm wrong, the item was in one campaign and I made it a high level class ability in another campaign and no one took that particular class) which was described something like this: 'This item will grant you a wish with no limits and a guarantee of no genie-ing or twisting of the wish - literally I will work with you as to how the wish is granted until you are satisfied and say so, and if you aren't it isn't used up. However, it will also grant a wish of equal potency and scope to whatever entity in the universe is currently your greatest potential antagonist.' That item never gets used, despite that a character could literally wish for an infinite Strength score or to immediately become Lv1000 or to rebuild the game universe with them as its creator or something absurd like that, and I would run with it. I can give that item out without any kind of worry because it's an interesting question of whether anything would rise to the level that the players would actually consider using it. Even if the item is never actually used, the conversations about 'we could use the wand...' are gameplay content.

I recall you had a similar story of your players having a Wish but not being able to decide how to use it. Don't assume that's a mistake on their part with respect to their actual motivations. Protecting themselves from e.g. gameplay that annoys them may be a higher priority than advancement for them.

[warty goblin]

Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.

So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

This is of course a preference of your particular players. For players who want to engage in the game differently, being kited is just fine. Which is to say I'm not saying you did anything wrong in a global setting, just something that didn't work for this particular group of people.

*Or gameplay more generally for out of combat stuff

[Grod_The_Giant]

So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance.

That's a really good way to put it. We (as a collective group of gaming nerds) should try to remember it; it's a useful addition to the lexicon.

[Cluedrew]

But of course good times don’t make for long forum threads.

I would just like to point out, I haven't seen a short thread from you about the good times either.

I think they want a third option: combat* as performance.

Oh that's good. I would like it to be the fourth option after combat as event which is how I describe combat in game that isn't focused on combat, but it doesn't really apply to this thread. (In short, combat is an event in the campaign and we resolve it to figure out what happens in it and what happens next.) Combat as War and combat as sport are both challenge focused modes of play, this is more about relaxation or expression.

[OldTrees1]

A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

I do not understand your objection. Could you give me an example of
1) A player asking a question about a monster,
2) that the PC does not know the answer,
3) and there is nothing they do know related to any part of the question

The initial example was about would various damage types work against a monster. The monster is made of a material. I can give an answer about the material. In some cases that will be a red herring. But for many cases it will be slightly more helpful that saying the PC knows nothing about fire, cold, or lightning.

Is that giraffe headed person a danger? The PC does not know (why? was it a failed nature check, or just a GM that is pessimistic about PC knowledge?). Has the PC heard about Lizardfolk, ratfolk, kenku, and gnolls? From what the PC does know about animal headed people tend to be relatively equal strength to other people. Are there exceptions? Yes (Werewolf for example). Does the PC know of any exceptions? Maybe. Now the Player knows what their PC knows. Aka that most animal headed people are not a big threat but exceptions like werewolves exist. With that information the Player can make decisions based on their character knowledge. This is especially useful if the players have felt blinded before.

Again this is a technique to help a GM provide the Players more of their characters knowledge. If you already strike a good balance then you don't need this technique. However if the players feel constantly ignorant, then maybe it is worthwhile. Give the PCs knowledge checks and have failure be reminders about what they already knew rather than silence.