Quote from: Haffrung;827349I'm pretty hardcore against the use of OOC knowledge in the game. And it's not just me - my long-time players police the other players who try to metagame.

I'm always surprised when I come across comments where GMs are eager for new monsters because players have memorized the stats and discovered optimal tactics against existing monsters. They let their players look at the stats? That's cheating in my books.

It's not "let them look at it," you can't do anything if your player just decides to crack the book open at the game store or buy it for himself.

Quote from: Rincewind1;827397One of the straws that broke the proverbial camel's back in my 5e campaign was when one of the players accused me of not reading the Monster Manual, when the rust monster destroyed paladin's sword with one successful hit (it's normally supposed to only implement a penalty of -1, with the penalties cumulating until the weapon breaks).

What did you do?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;827402What did you do?

Pulled the plug on the campaign, removed the 2 most offending players from my rooster (they were somewhat new to it), started a Kult game.

Did the other players find object?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;827345I think that's part of it, but a lot of players all have their own different ideas about how much OOCness is okay at the table, so it could just be that they aren't agreeing.

You're right, they could be disagreeing with their own different ideas. That's why the GM is there to set the tone and correct openly and honestly when such things arise. It's the easiest and friendliest way, though in part confrontational.

Now remember everyone, when offering criticism: sandwich. A slice of praise on the bottom, a hefty stack of criticism in the middle, a dollop of sauciness to bring in some kick, and another slice of praise atop. Tah-dah, criticism.

Quote from: Haffrung;827349I'm pretty hardcore against the use of OOC knowledge in the game. And it's not just me - my long-time players police the other players who try to metagame.

I'm always surprised when I come across comments where GMs are eager for new monsters because players have memorized the stats and discovered optimal tactics against existing monsters. They let their players look at the stats? That's cheating in my books.

On Sunday I was playing 5e. The GM was using zombies, she asked me about how their mechanics worked - so I turned to the back of the 5e Player's Handbook, where zombies are listed, and we went over their not-dying mechanic.

It was quite a 'not in Kansas' moment. OTOH I guess really 5e's back-of-PHB monsters are a big improvement from the 3e/Pathfinder paradigm where certain classes like Wizard, Druid and Summoner get to play with the entirety of the Monster Manual, choosing the most powerful creatures there to summon or polymorph into, while everyone else is a schmuck.

Quote from: Rincewind1;827397One of the straws that broke the proverbial camel's back in my 5e campaign was when one of the players accused me of not reading the Monster Manual, when the rust monster destroyed paladin's sword with one successful hit (it's normally supposed to only implement a penalty of -1, with the penalties cumulating until the weapon breaks).

I can't say this has happened much to me -- not playing D&D, for one, seems to insulate against most of it, and running my own setting takes care of the rest.  On the three occasions it has, over the years, I've pulled out the Viking Hat.  To quote that famous TBP post, "... it is very clear that *I'm* running the game, not three-hundred pages of recycled paper and second-rate art."

I am a DM. I am also a player. I by my very nature must not act on my knowledge of monsters. I am very good at that. Others are not. Such is. It is up to the DM to curb players who get a little, or a-lot out of hand with OOC knowledge.

This is simmilar to rules enforced on MUDs, MUCKs and other MU**s  in that your new character or ALT cannot act on knowledge or events that happened to a previous character.

My players know that sort of bullshit won't be tolerated in my games.

As I DM, I routinely change up stats and abilities of monsters. Whether a player regards that as legit or unfair gives a pretty good idea of how they approach the game.

What do you do if every player in your group likes ignoring all OOC info, except one, who thinks all OOC is the best way to play?

This is an unbridgeable gap.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828719What do you do if every player in your group likes ignoring all OOC info, except one, who thinks all OOC is the best way to play?

This is an unbridgeable gap.

Maybe. What is it the one player likes about OOC knowledge in play?

Quote from: Bren;828722Maybe. What is it the one player likes about OOC knowledge in play?

He likes to have the freedom to just do what he wants rather than be stuck with a character personality, and he likes to use it to support what the other players like to do, in his view. So he feels like they should do the same thing for him, and ignore their characters when he does something he wants to do.

For the most part this works out, but then you have situations where the guy might stab someone to rob them, and it causes all the good aligned characters to react negatively. He wants them to just look the other way because they're all players OOC, but the others don't want to because it's not in-character.

His argument boils down to "I'd do the same for you so why can't you do the same for me." He had a whole story arc planned out in his head about his character falling from grace and becoming evil, but being redeemed at the end, but it got stuck on the fact that the rest of the party wasn't going to tolerate the "fall from grace" part.

That kind of thing.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828728He likes to have the freedom to just do what he wants rather than be stuck with a character personality, and he likes to use it to support what the other players like to do, in his view. So he feels like they should do the same thing for him, and ignore their characters when he does something he wants to do.

For the most part this works out, but then you have situations where the guy might stab someone to rob them, and it causes all the good aligned characters to react negatively. He wants them to just look the other way because they're all players OOC, but the others don't want to because it's not in-character.

His argument boils down to "I'd do the same for you so why can't you do the same for me." He had a whole story arc planned out in his head about his character falling from grace and becoming evil, but being redeemed at the end, but it got stuck on the fact that the rest of the party wasn't going to tolerate the "fall from grace" part.

That kind of thing.

Funny, I had a player doing that sort of thing with 2 characters in 2 separate campaigns I was running.

He became the first player ever to have 2 characters in separate campaigns killed by the other PCs at the same time in my 38 years of running games.  All for IC reasons.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828728That kind of thing.

Sounds unbridgeable to me.

Also it sounds like he is only interested in supporting the other players in some of the things their characters want to do but not everything. For example, while he would support the other PCs being thieves or murderers he is totally unsupportive of the other players wanting to play characters who are good people.

Given that is so, he shouldn't be too surprised that the other players act just like him in that they also don't want to support his character in everything. Specifically they don't want to support or enable his character in being a murderous thief.

He either needs to get on board with the game that the group wants to play or he needs to find a new group. And I say all that as a player and a GM who is perfectly fine with playing or running a game with murderous thief PCs.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828728He had a whole story arc planned out in his head about his character falling from grace and becoming evil, but being redeemed at the end, but it got stuck on the fact that the rest of the party wasn't going to tolerate the "fall from grace" part.

There's the crux of the problem right there. As a player, you simply don't know what situations will present themselves to you beforehand. You may know that your character would be susceptible to certain kinds of temptation, and you can make the GM aware of this, but you still can't guarantee that those things will come up(or come up as often as you'd like) in the game. Or that if they do come up, they'll do so at opportune moments to take the bait(separated from the party, or only when party member(s) also susceptible to the same temptation are present, for example). You. Just. Can't. Know.

Planning out your character's arc in advance is bullshit. Doing horrible things in front of your good-aligned companions(or just in front of even halfway decent people in games w/o alignment) and expecting them to stand by and let you get away with it is bullshit. And for full disclosure, I say this as someone who plays quite a few Storygames; even by their standards(the ones I'm familiar with, anyway), this kind of pre-planning and asking other characters to overlook things they oppose for the sake of your pre-planned story arc bullshit is . . . well, bullshit.

You don't plan out your character's story arc, much less try to impose it on other characters. You see what story arc emerges from actually playing your character. It's that simple, and if this dude can't come to terms with that, you probably just need to let him go.