Quote from: EOTB;807332Yeah, I actually prefer the term adventure gaming to role-playing games, because for me role-playing is salt, not meat.  A little goes a long way, and too much ruins the fun.

Having labels to distinguish those two approaches/styles is really useful. Without some sort of shorthand a lot of these discussions can veer to the polemical side. Knowing where someone is coming from in that regard, it makes the "other side" a lot more understandable.

Quote from: talysman;807431You always challenge the players. It is impossible to challenge the characters, because the characters are just collections of numbers, possibly assigned randomly, possibly selected by the player, and possibly selected under stringent character building rules. So really, the question is: what do you want the challenge to be about? Knowing the fantasy world, or knowing the game mechanics?

"Trolls are vulnerable to fire. Trolls regenerate." These are facts about the game world.

"Trolls regenerate 1 hit point per combat round." That is a fact about mechanics.

I don't want the game to be about mechanics, or knowing how to exploit them to "win". I want it to be about "OMG A TrOLL IS ATTACKING US! What do we do? I heard that fire hurts them!" I am OK with players knowing and using facts about the world, as long as they aren't using knowledge of game mechanics; that, to me, is what "metagaming" means, and what I want to avoid.

As for whether the characters know facts about monsters: honestly, do we want to hand out pages and pages of stuff to memorize that represent in-character knowledge? A lot of the stuff in monster manuals is based on interpretations of real-world, literary, or cinematic legends. Making the gameworld legends identical to this body of lore players already know is a nice shortcut. Doesn't mean any of it has to be true, but why forbid players from using that knowledge?

Well, modern D&D tends to skew towards challenging the characters, not the players.

Consider traps. They roll to see if they find the trap, and they roll to see if they can disable it.

Challenging the player would be making the players themselves poke around to find the trap, and defusing it themselves. But the game wants it to be played the other way.

In the same way, I assume that the game is pushing you towards having players feign ignorance when they encounter a monster until they roll a successful Nature check or whatever they need to diagnose its information.

For some reason, I find the stuff about traps to be better when it's the players being challenged, but I'm not sure if I like having the same situation with monsters.

Another question: what if the players are literally sitting there with their own MM and looking up all the monsters and their info every time one comes up?

Too much metagaming?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;807701Another question: what if the players are literally sitting there with their own MM and looking up all the monsters and their info every time one comes up?

Too much metagaming?

Yes. But that goes beyond metagaming.  That's just non-gaming.

Well, if you're okay with them already knowing the monsters' info, then it seems like there shouldn't be a problem.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;807704Well, if you're okay with them already knowing the monsters' info, then it seems like there shouldn't be a problem.

If they're having to look up the monster's info, they don't already know it.

The game is not an open book test.

Quote from: EOTB;807705The game is not an open book test.

If the game is a test, why not make the test open book?

Quote from: EOTB;807705If they're having to look up the monster's info, they don't already know it.

The game is not an open book test.

What I mean is, is the problem here that they're going to learn the stats, or that it's wasting time?

Would you have a problem if they looked it all up before the game at home?

Quote from: Bren;807706If the game is a test, why not make the test open book?

I like to reward players who pay attention, and remember shit that can help them.  Also, as I said earlier, players often mis-remember details about monsters not frequently encountered.  Being able to simply look up the monster is going beyond that; the only skill being tested is that of navigating an index.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;807707What I mean is, is the problem here that they're going to learn the stats, or that it's wasting time?

Would you have a problem if they looked it all up before the game at home?

First, they don't know what to look up at home unless you leave off a session at the beginning of an encounter where the opposition for the next session is apparent.  Second, I assume that most people who play the game beyond a very casual level probably do read the various rulebooks at home.  But (especially if you haven't actually fought the monster in question) it is one thing to have read the entry for the quasit out of the 1E monster manual at some point in the last year, and another thing to remember in the heat of an encounter that it saves against spells as a 7 hit die monster, or that a successful melee attack drains you of a point of dexterity.  

In practicality, absent the hypothetical photographic memory, there is a huge gulf in practical gameplay between allowing players to use their knowledge and the sort of perfect recall emulated by reading the entry in the moment.

That's true. So would the right course of action to be discouraging looking up stuff in the MM during the actual game?

Quote from: EOTB;807714I like to reward players who pay attention, and remember shit that can help them.

OK. So pretty much like most Freshman and Sophomore college classes then.

Quote from: EOTB;807714In practicality, absent the hypothetical photographic memory, there is a huge gulf in practical gameplay between allowing players to use their knowledge and the sort of perfect recall emulated by reading the entry in the moment.

Depends on how large the monster manual is and who your players are. I can still recall a lot of the stats from the OD&D Monster Manual even though it has been almost 40 years since I've used it. Back when I regularly played OD&D I had the whole thing memorized nearly word for word - and by that I mean the all the text. The stat section I did have word perfect.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;807717That's true. So would the right course of action to be discouraging looking up stuff in the MM during the actual game?

Obviously it depends on what sort of game you want.

Now I encourage players to look up stats and stuff in Star Wars and Honor+Intrigue. In H+I they frequently run some of the bad guys if their PC is not involved in a duel or battle. Back in the OD&D days, I would never have encouraged that, but we might look at a rule book if there was a disagreement about monster stats - assuming it was a standard monster at all. And when we play Call of Cthulhu a player looking up monster stats during a game would kind of piss me off as going counter to the idea of that shit being unknowable to the PCs.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;807717That's true. So would the right course of action to be discouraging looking up stuff in the MM during the actual game?

At my table, the players can have (and reference) players' material. So, the PHB and parts of Unearthed Arcana (being a 1E game).

Quote from: Bren;807719OK. So pretty much like most Freshman and Sophomore college classes then.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your comparison; care to elaborate?

Quote from: Bren;807719Depends on how large the monster manual is and who your players are. I can still recall a lot of the stats from the OD&D Monster Manual even though it has been almost 40 years since I've used it. Back when I regularly played OD&D I had the whole thing memorized nearly word for word - and by that I mean the all the text. The stat section I did have word perfect.

Obviously it depends on what sort of game you want.

True.  And I agree that OD&D the number of monsters and the size of their entries is probably a small enough sample of text that it would be much easier to recall more of it.  IME, once you get up to the threshold of information in 1E, it is harder for people to have that sort of recall unless they have years and years of DM experience.

Quote from: Bren;807719Now I encourage players to look up stats and stuff in Star Wars and Honor+Intrigue. In H+I they frequently run some of the bad guys if their PC is not involved in a duel or battle. Back in the OD&D days, I would never have encouraged that, but we might look at a rule book if there was a disagreement about monster stats - assuming it was a standard monster at all. And when we play Call of Cthulhu a player looking up monster stats during a game would kind of piss me off as going counter to the idea of that shit being unknowable to the PCs.

I'm not familiar with H+I, but sounds fun.  In AD&D I wouldn't be opposed to a player whose character was out of commission to help out running stuff that would be concluded before their character got back into the action.  That's a fun way to keep people involved, and possibly help seed a future DM, also.

Quote from: EOTB;807725I'm not sure I'm understanding your comparison; care to elaborate?

You get points for memorizing stuff.

QuoteTrue.  And I agree that OD&D the number of monsters and the size of their entries is probably a small enough sample of text that it would be much easier to recall more of it.  IME, once you get up to the threshold of information in 1E, it is harder for people to have that sort of recall unless they have years and years of DM experience.

Yes. Memorizing any available amount of monster info for an RPG is well within human capability. But of course the smaller the text the easier it will be to memorize and the more players who will be able and willing to do that.

QuoteI'm not familiar with H+I, but sounds fun.

It's based on Barbarians of Lemuria (BoL). It's great for Swashbuckling action and has moderately crunchy dueling rules. Which was what I was looking for when I discovered it (though more for Star Wars lightsaber combat than for rapiers and cutlasses).

QuoteThat's a fun way to keep people involved, and possibly help seed a future DM, also.

Yep. And as a bonus the players get the chance to try out combat tactics that their current PC may not be any good at which helps from an overall system learning curve.

Quote from: Bren;807731You get points for memorizing stuff.

I wouldn't quite agree with that.  Maybe my guys are just more beer-and-pretzel gamers, but even if they read through the books for appreciation or enjoyment on a semi-regular basis, I don't think many of them are doing it with quite that focus or intensity.  

Also, a perfect knowledge of what's written gets you no points at all.  Getting the prize gets you points, and knowing how many hit dice ogres have isn't the prize.  It's just data until you apply it meaningfully in the game.

Perhaps test was a word that threw my point off in a wrong direction.  I didn't mean it in an academic sense.  And again, subjective, but outside of someone playing with a total newcomer to the game, and playing kind of dumb with the goal of not spoiling that initial sense of having a blast but not knowing exactly what is going on for that noob, it's hard for me to equate playing stupid with better play.  As always, everyone's MMV depending on if faithful character emulation is prized in that group as a goal in and of itself.

Sorry, metagaming is not roleplaying.  So it's not at my tables.
Everyone has fun differently, and I don't mind when PCs try for lore rolls, etc, when dealing with stuff their characters would not know.

But I am pretty unbending when they trot out knowledge their PCs would not have (yet).