"Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. In other words, sometimes using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions." - Wikipedia

There are a lot of different issues that could fall under the rubric of meta-gaming, but I want to consider a specific subset of meta-gaming: the use of player knowledge to guide character actions in the game reality.

I'll give an example of metagaming from a Core 3.5 Pathfinder Society campaign I am playing in:   Our party is battling some robed skeletons, the "Black Echelon."  The thief is firing her light crossbow at them, and my fighter (who wields a large hammer) tells her character "Don't waste your time with the crossbow, use a bludgeoning weapon to smash them!"

This provokes an accusation of metagaming from another player.  My character does not have Knowledge (Religion), and thus cannot possibly know of the skeleton's damage resistance.  I don't argue the point.
But is it really metagaming?  I could easily justify my fighter understanding skeletons weaknesses:

• They are incredibly common creatures, and their weaknesses may be so commonly know as to be included in children's rhymes.
• In medieval societies people frequently ate the marrow from bones. Anyone who has attempted this knows that trying to stab a bone with something pointy is impractical, and that a hammer works better for cracking open bones.  It's a simple intuitive leap to recognize how this applies to battling a skeleton.

There are many commonly encountered monsters in D&D with well-known abilities and weaknesses.  Trolls are an excellent example.  Everyone knows that trolls are harmed by fire and acid.  Being forced to role-play ignorance of this fact is, in many ways, simply obnoxious.

The Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Monsters Revisited entry on Trolls even includes a snippet of a child's nursery rhyme about disposing of trolls.  The point being that one doesn't necessarily need Knowledge (nature) to know not to run away from a bear, or to play dead if it attacks you.

I generally think that using player knowledge of routinely encountered creatures is fair game, especially if a character has spent any time hanging around other adventurers in their youth (my character has, and has a rank in Knowledge (Dungeoneering) to represent that).  DMs who want an encounter to be mysterious and unpredictable should avoid using the standards.

Another good reason to be lax about this sorts of metagaming is the simple failure of skill systems to accurately model the breath of human knowledge.  Regardless of the game, every system must trade off some degree of realism for usability.  The more accurate a skill system is, the more cumbersome and difficult to use it also becomes.  And no skill system can really account for the human ability to accumulate random trivia.  

There are also benefits to other forms of metagaming.  If players recognize that the DM will only steer them towards level-appropriate encounters with level appropriate treasure, then this can have a real positive effect on their decision making process that is genre encouraging.  Heroes who sit around a tavern quaking in their boots and have to talk themself into facing a challenge -- usually after demanding more gold -- is...not very heroic.

Stories, as in fictional narratives, tend to rely heavily on coincidence, on the protagonists making intuitive leaps or happening to be in the right place at the right time.  Allowing players to make use of player knowledge to guide their character's actions can be a useful tool for the DM...especially if he controls the information the player's have access to.

The idea here is to allow the players to be both participants and audience to the story they are helping create.  One example would be using "cut scenes" -- prewritten handouts with an account of events absolutely beyond player knowledge, such as scenes in the villain's headquarters.  Such scenes can reveal things about villain motivations and desires that open up entirely new avenues of action.  Rewarding skillful and subtle usage of player knowledge, such as role-playing out a character's reasoning out of the villain's plan by backwards engineering to an end he already knows, can serve to keep a plot on track -- essential for anything other than pure simulationist sandbox play.

How do you deal with this sort of meta-gaming in your games?

Well, I certainly don't see any sane objection to a fighter saying "Crossbow bad, big whacky thing good" vis-a-vis skeletons.  I'd think that most times a crossbow bolt would go right through a skeleton, even with a direct shot to the body.  They got holes in!

Knowing in-character about stuff like "level appropriate encounters" strikes me as a dicier proposition.  I'm fine with people knowing it out of character, and steering their character toward being more easy to motivate, as a result ... but a hero who says "Well, sure, I'll go face this dungeon, because I have complete and total faith that it will not be unreasonably dangerous" doesn't actually strike me as all that heroic either.  I like the guy who says "Who knows what's down there?  It could be so bad that our souls will shrivel and our bodies disappear in a blast of raw evilness ... but the princess needs us, so let's go!"

I pretty much always prefer to backfill a reasonable human motivation to justify what my player-knowledge tells me is a good course.

I think its more of an issue post 3E than it was before. In 2e if the players were overusing their metagame knowledge you could change up the encounter or monsters and not break the game or create a meta-knowledge shit storm when you change a werewolf weakness from silver to bronze (or something similar)

Back in the early days of the hobby everyone mud wrestled with clowns; now we just shoot them. Something has been lost along the way.

Quote from: TonyLB;244800Well, I certainly don't see any sane objection to a fighter saying "Crossbow bad, big whacky thing good" vis-a-vis skeletons.  I'd think that most times a crossbow bolt would go right through a skeleton, even with a direct shot to the body.  They got holes in!

But what about the troll example?  There's nothing inherent in the troll that makes it obvious you should burn it or pour acid on it.

In my first 3.5 campaign, I actually played the game straight by the rules and the group encountered a troll.  Everyone failed on the knowledge checks to know what it was, let alone know it's weaknesses.  So the character don't know what it is.  It won't go down because of it's regeneration.  No body has fire spells, so there is no observation

So here's the problem.  The die rolls have confirmed that the characters who by the rules could know its weakness don't know it, but all the players do know it.  There is no way for them to come to the right solution to the problem that won't appear to be meta-gaming.  But they have to come to inevitably, or they get stuck in a perpetual encounter with the troll until probability fails them and they all die.

This is where "no metagaming" becomes highly problematic.

QuoteKnowing in-character about stuff like "level appropriate encounters" strikes me as a dicier proposition.  I'm fine with people knowing it out of character, and steering their character toward being more easy to motivate, as a result ... but a hero who says "Well, sure, I'll go face this dungeon, because I have complete and total faith that it will not be unreasonably dangerous" doesn't actually strike me as all that heroic either.  I like the guy who says "Who knows what's down there?  It could be so bad that our souls will shrivel and our bodies disappear in a blast of raw evilness ... but the princess needs us, so let's go!"

That's why I'm suggesting rewards for players who follow the second path, rather than simply banning the practice.

QuoteI pretty much always prefer to backfill a reasonable human motivation to justify what my player-knowledge tells me is a good course.

And that, I think, is the happy medium between no-metagaming and overt-metagaming.

I think trying to rein in meta-game behaviour is a doomed and headache-inducing proposition. Therefore I don't worry about it.

Quote from: Jackalope;244854But what about the troll example?  There's nothing inherent in the troll that makes it obvious you should burn it or pour acid on it.

Well, toss 'em an in-character clue ... maybe even something as simple as "You chop off it's damn ARM and the arm just grows back!"

If they're even as smart as Hercules (not the brightest hero on record) they'll figure out:  "Ewww ... open wounds just heal.  Time to cauterize.  Fetch some torches!"

Or else they'll figure it's immortal, and rather than trying to kill it they'll trick it into falling down a very deep hole, or something similarly heroic and clever.

These riddles aren't really all that hard to figure out in game.  And if they are impossible to figure out in game then they're pretty dumb attributes for a creature to have, aren't they?

Quote from: Jackalope;244854So here's the problem.  The die rolls have confirmed that the characters who by the rules could know its weakness don't know it, but all the players do know it.  There is no way for them to come to the right solution to the problem that won't appear to be meta-gaming.  But they have to come to inevitably, or they get stuck in a perpetual encounter with the troll until probability fails them and they all die.

Radical concept: the players could just run away. Then they go and research about trolls in the Sage's Guild in the local city. Then they stock up on oil and head back to the troll's hideout...

Sometimes these problems aren't really problems. In fact they add to the game.

Quote from: droog;244863I think trying to rein in meta-game behaviour is a doomed and headache-inducing proposition. Therefore I don't worry about it.

Yeah, I just tell my players "it (meta-gaming) really doesn't bother me, no matter what, your characters never stood a chance anyway"....

Regards,
David R

It's somewhat difficult sometimes. I'd lean toward the fighter having a reasonable chance of knowing that skellies should be smashed and not poked. The troll example is more difficult without knowing, in the game world how common they are and the like.

As a player, it is difficult to play a character who doesn't know even if you do. In a life or death encounter (combat) doubly so.

Quote from: noisms;244867Radical concept: the players could just run away. Then they go and research about trolls in the Sage's Guild in the local city. Then they stock up on oil and head back to the troll's hideout...

That's cool...until it's the 50th campaign you've ever played and your 800th encounter with trolls as a player, and you're immersed in a culture where the mystery of troll weaknesses has been an open secret since at least '81.

Then the fact that you're jumping through hoops becomes painfully obvious.

"Meta-gaming" is a very broad category. When it comes to monster special powers and the like, though, I can tell you:

When you play the game the first time, really not knowing is fun. After that, I'd find it kind of boring trying to play-act not-knowing stuff.

OTOH, and this kind of borderline with other types of "meta-gaming", I wouldn't care for having a player take a character whose background suggests "no experience with trolls", and then load that character up with vials of acid because they expect to run into trolls.

But, really, in D&D, I expect characters to be "adventurers", and a lot of that stuff is reasonably common knowledge for rough types. I'm afraid you can only lose your innocence once--but the upside of it is, world-mastery supports immersion in the sense of really absorbing yourself and taking part in the web of meaning of the campaign. It can be social, too, as "veteran" players take newbs under their wing and show them the ropes.

I was asked "the troll question" by a fuming gamer buddy a couple of years ago. He had been hosed by the GM for trying to use metagame knowledge, and then got frustrated when he was barred from burning the troll up because his characer wouldn't know what was going down.
He asked me how I would deal with such a situation.
My answer: I wouldn't because it is never going to come up in one of my games. Never.
It comes down to one thing, poor, lackluster GMing- at best, or at worst actively antagonistic GMing. either way the players are NOT at fault.

Allow me to elaborate- a skeleton is obviously a skeleton, BUT a troll is a big slobbering green humanoid thing. If the characters know enough to call it a troll, they should probably be hip to the regeneration. If they don't know enough to call it a troll, then they probably aren't going to be hip to the regeneration thing either. In the latter case the GM shouldn't say "it's a troll!" he/she should use a little imagination and just give description- or give the thing a local name. I think, "A gaint green manthing covered with leaking boils and stinking of rotten meat, lumbers towards you out of the darkness," or "Seek you Greenfang the Maneater who lives in the blackened stump of the Blood Tree on the Bone Mound," is better than  "uh... there's a troll and he lives up on a hill just outside of town. You guys want to go after him?" in a whole bunch of different ways.

As usual it comes down to imagination.

Frankly, I'm surprised at the lot of you- and I hardly ever say anything like that.

Quote from: TonyLB;244865If they're even as smart as Hercules (not the brightest hero on record) they'll figure out:  "Ewww ... open wounds just heal.  Time to cauterize.  Fetch some torches!"

Or else they'll figure it's immortal, and rather than trying to kill it they'll trick it into falling down a very deep hole, or something similarly heroic and clever.

These riddles aren't really all that hard to figure out in game.  And if they are impossible to figure out in game then they're pretty dumb attributes for a creature to have, aren't they?

But see, here's the issue -- and I've watched my players struggle with this -- it's almost impossible to not backwards engineer the right answer when you know, and that is metagaming.

So my players find themselves of knowing the troll's weakness by over-repetition of the troll in D&D, knowing that they know the troll's weakness as players but not characters, and knowing that using player knowledge that their character's didn't have was metagaming i.e. "cheating."

The net result is that they created a (I believe false) moral dilemma between doing the correct thing tactically (burn the troll) and the correct thing immersively (feign ignorance of the troll's weakness). Thus the conclusion they came to was that they could not burn the troll because that would be bad role-playing.  

It was only when I pointed out their conclusion, actually said it outloud (they had been skirting around it, sort of triangulating the position) that they recognized that it was ridiculous and burned the troll.

I should mention that the encounter occurred in an area that could best be described as "never-ending, trackless rolling moors shrouded in fog and gloom."  No convenient holes, nearest town a day's hike away.  Oh, and their fighter died on the first round (my first exposure to the "rend" ability), and their cleric fell on the third round.  Plus the mage was out of spells by the time it fell.  It was literally like "In 24 seconds this thing will be back on it's feet, and will probably kill you both before you knock it down again."  Really suboptimal conditions for finding alternative solutions.

I actually invented my "regenerating creature coup de grace" rule on the spot at the resolution of that battle (the rules are very fuzzy if you can kill a regenerating creature with a coup de grace, my rule is you can if it is damage that can't be regenerated).