Why do some players insist on destroying an enemy's spellbook in front of wizard?

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't see the connection to good parenting. I see a connection to being stupid and ignorant rather than malicious or cruel, but I don't see any connection to good parenting.

That suggests to me that your bias is showing. (It's an understandable bias, if you are a passionate RPG hobbyist-not everybody is)

[Batcathat]

That suggests to me that your bias is showing. (It's an understandable bias, if you are a passionate RPG hobbyist-not everybody is)

Not sharing someone's hobby is one thing, keeping it from them for an irrational reason is quite another.

[Imbalance]

Not sharing someone's hobby is one thing, keeping it from them for an irrational reason is quite another.

If your knee-jerk reaction is to interpret it as irrational, that's also irrationally judgemental. Parental guidance is a real thing and must be balanced, but a lot of responses to this side-topic jump straight into calling it bad parenting without any context that it is. There are plenty of aspects about D&D that many young children are factually not mature enough for, and parents should have the first right to make that determination without being called irrational.

[Batcathat]

If your knee-jerk reaction is to interpret it as irrational, that's also irrationally judgemental. Parental guidance is a real thing and must be balanced, but a lot of responses to this side-topic jump straight into calling it bad parenting without any context that it is. There are plenty of aspects about D&D that many young children are factually not mature enough for, and parents should have the first right to make that determination without being called irrational.

The discussion about parenting was specifically in regards to "parents throwing away their children's D&D equipment because of the possible evil influence." So unless you have any sort of evidence linking D&D to "evil influence", I'm quite confident about calling it irrational.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am sorry to have given this derailment additional fuel, and would rather we got back to the topic at hand. (If there is any more mileage to be had on that).

[Imbalance]

The discussion about parenting was specifically in regards to "parents throwing away their children's D&D equipment because of the possible evil influence." So unless you have any sort of evidence linking D&D to "evil influence", I'm quite confident about calling it irrational.

You're certain that it is impossible that a young mind could be negatively influenced by material which discusses slavery, killing, and torture? Are you asserting that parents have no right to rationally define what is evil toward their offspring?

My evidence is anecdotal, in that as children my peers and I routinely put ourselves (and sometimes other children) in dangerous situations while attempting to reenact exciting events from the media we consumed. I would not be as confident in judgement, and, with respect to Korvin, throughout this thread we see how alternate game systems may have been very influential in the events that prompted the original topic and that rational "parenting" by the DM may be in order.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Skipping the whole parenting discussion,

I prefer to not think of metagaming (in the bad sense) as using out of character knowledge because that's inevitably going to happen.

Instead, I prefer to define it (following the 4e and 5e D&D DMGs descriptions) as using the knowledge that it is a game in-character.

Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like when a character in a movie knows it’s a movie and acts accordingly. For example, a player might say, “The DM wouldn’t throw such a powerful monster at us!” or you might hear, “The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door — let’s search it again!”

And this is only an issue (for me, personally) when it starts distorting the character. Characters should, IMO, plausibly appear to be making decisions based on the world in which they live. They're not, at least completely. But players should strive to draw that veil more firmly and avoid, if possible, gross violations. What counts as "if possible" and "gross violations"? Up to the table itself.

[Batcathat]

You're certain that it is impossible that a young mind could be negatively influenced by material which discusses slavery, killing, and torture? Are you asserting that parents have no right to rationally define what is evil toward their offspring?

Parents are very welcome to rationally define that. However, in my experience the parental panic of the hour (whether it's about D&D, video games, rock music, women wearing pants or whatever) rarely have much to do with any sort of rational argument or actual proof.

Note that I'm not saying that parents that ban things for irrational reasons are bad parents (mine did, on occasion, and I quite like them), but I'm very much against labeling it "good parenting".

[Bohandas]

That suggests to me that your bias is showing. (It's an understandable bias, if you are a passionate RPG hobbyist-not everybody is)

It's not about gaming being good, it's about basing decisions on deranged conspiracy theories being bad, and about being drawn into mass hysteria being bad, and about following trends being neutral at best.

[LibraryOgre]

And this is only an issue (for me, personally) when it starts distorting the character. Characters should, IMO, plausibly appear to be making decisions based on the world in which they live. They're not, at least completely. But players should strive to draw that veil more firmly and avoid, if possible, gross violations. What counts as "if possible" and "gross violations"? Up to the table itself.

This is why you always play a bard. "I understand stories and I know a lot of random information" makes metagaming proper gaming!

If Elan were smarter, he'd be nigh-invincible.

[icefractal]

And this is only an issue (for me, personally) when it starts distorting the character. Characters should, IMO, plausibly appear to be making decisions based on the world in which they live. They're not, at least completely. But players should strive to draw that veil more firmly and avoid, if possible, gross violations. What counts as "if possible" and "gross violations"? Up to the table itself.

Agreed; IMO, the main problem with metagaming is an aesthetic one - if you're trying to get a feeling of immersion or emotional engagement with what's going on IC, then 4th wall breaking impedes that. For which reason I wouldn't care about metagaming in a game that was already comedy with OOC jokes.

It's sometimes mentioned as a power problem, like the metagamer is getting an unfair advantage, but IME -
1) Most campaigns aren't competitive that way.
2) It's possible for the GM to counter if they are trying to run a competitive game.
3) Mechanical tricks that produce actually broken results are a problem whether they're arrived at by IC or OOC routes. Pun-Pun should be banned in virtually all campaigns regardless of whether it's a Paladin who randomly starts the bootstrap process for no IC reason, or a Kobold who has a whole backstory about venerating the Sarruhks.

[Devils_Advocate]

Y'all understand that Tharanos doesn't exist, right? Further, since this is a meta analogy, neither does Gary nor Sally or her ball. To the point, Tharanos doesn't exist without Gary, does not know nor understand anything that Gary is not privy to, cannot make decisions nor take actions without the throughput of Gary deliberately doing so as he imagines his character doing. Gary may not necessarily be Tharanos, but Tharanos cannot be but Gary..

Huh? Player characters, as you allude to, don't actually exist at all. Because they're fictional. They only fictionally exist, and fictionally have thoughts, feelings, personal histories, and so on. And the fiction is that they're aware of a bunch of stuff that their players aren't. E.g., Hypatia the Sorceress knows the verbal and somatic components for her spells. Her player doesn't know them, in no small part because they don't actually exist. Because those internal details aren't what the game is about. Hell, the extremely basic, fundamental, implicit default assumption that a fictional setting is "like reality unless noted" means that characters' sensory experiences are no less rich and detailed than the players', and thus would require some sort of virtual reality setup to fully convey! There's a heavy layer of abstraction between the players and the fiction layer. One can pretend that there isn't for the sake of a disingenuous "gotcha" ludicrous in the overall context of the exercise, but I don't see how that proves anything beyond that it's easy to be a jackass.

It would require selectively forgetting something for a moment while making a decision then remembering it again afterwards. That isn't something humans can actually consciously do.

What do you base that assertion on? I do hope we're all aware that a sample size of one is not statistically significant, and so being personally unable to do something is very weak evidence about the capabilities of humans in general.

Yeah, uh, show me a being capable of doing what’s necessary to pass the actual test,

What actual test? I'm intrigued by, but skeptical of, the implication that you're talking about a falsifiable theory.

and I’ll show you a being that isn’t human. If you game with beings who can do what’s necessary, you game with beings that aren’t human (and I’m jealous, because gaming (to my standards) despite standard human failings is arduous).

I'm curious what motivates your particular definition of "human". I'm also curious what that definition is, but that's probably not the more important question.

It's not about gaming being good, it's about basing decisions on deranged conspiracy theories being bad, and about being drawn into mass hysteria being bad, and about following trends being neutral at best.

My own far more basic point was that exercising authority isn't inherently virtuous. I would have hoped that that would go without saying, but it's unclear how "it's their call" was meant to function if not as a supporting argument. As it is, Korvin's post would make a lot more sense if "good parenting" were replaced with just "parenting". It would still be minimizing authoritarianism, but it wouldn't imply that it's somehow intrinsically good.

I am sorry to have given this derailment additional fuel, and would rather we got back to the topic at hand.

Why not both?

[Alcore]

I am sorry to have given this derailment additional fuel, and would rather we got back to the topic at hand. (If there is any more mileage to be had on that).

On a happy note the original poster did post back and thanked us for providing insight. We helped him.


...its somewhere back in page... 3? I think it is the halfway point.

[Quertus]

“The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door — let’s search it again!”

Um, I might feel stupid for asking, but… what do people think is the “correct” answer here? I’ve seen GMs claim that PCs should pay attention for and be aware of and act upon such obvious signaling, whereas I endeavor to describe things more equally (give or take what the party has shown interest in).

You're certain that it is impossible that a young mind could be negatively influenced by material which discusses slavery, killing, and torture?

So… history?

[Tanarii]

Yeah, uh, show me a being capable of doing what’s necessary to pass the actual test, and I’ll show you a being that isn’t human. If you game with beings who can do what’s necessary, you game with beings that aren’t human (and I’m jealous, because gaming (to my standards) despite standard human failings is arduous).

Yes. Humans can't "pass the test" when the claim is being able to pretend not to know something and make decisions for the (fictional) character as if they actually didn't know it and get the same result. The knowledge will impact the decision making to some degree. The decision made when pretending not to know may or may not be the same as one made while actually not knowing, but there's no way to know that and any claim it's the same is therefore unsupportable.

There's a large number of ways to work with knowing something your character doesn't and still play a character. But if someone wants them to hold water in a discussion on approaches to roleplaying (decision making for a character in the fantasy environment) as a coherent approach, acknowledging that when humans know something their character doesn't they can't actually make decisions for them as if they don't know it is a required starting point.

Although this is certainly far afield from the comments which led to me being summoned, IC vs OoC conversations.

[Bohandas]

Or it's good parenting, not a horror story. If they don't want their kids playing D&D it's their call. I lived through the "D&D is a satanic cult" era (thankfully, I was a young adult at that point, not a kid). I had been raised by two parents who were super strict in what they let us watch on TV, what movies we went to, etc. Somehow, I turned out OK. (I think

So would parents keeping their kids from playing soccer out of fear it would transform them into pigeons also be good parenting? Parents dictating what their kids may or may not do for irrational reasons might be acceptable parenting, but I certainly wouldn't call it good parenting.

I can show that it's not even acceptable parenting with another example of this kind of parenting ripped straight from the headlines.

What about parents who don't vaccinate their kids because they think it will make them autistic or something? Those are bad parents. Really really bad parents. I don't think any reasonable person would or could dispute that.