I believe that context might be helpful, but I assume it has something to do with railroading?
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Yeeeah, that's pretty much the surest sign of "we're doing exactly what I want and nothing else ever, screw your ideas of 'agency'.
The other neon one is "ok, guys, so this is a modified version of CthulhuTech that I'm basically spinning off into my own system and I want you to help me test it out."
Its a reference to the most railroady campaign ever. Hold on, I'll see if I can't dredge up a link to the SUEniverse.
Ah, here we are
Part 1
Part Deux
Part the Third
Actually it's usually because they don't know any better.
One of my groups has the following guys:
Gish: played w/ me for 6 years, generally knows the rules, occasionally investigates things online.
Paladin: played 2nd ed back in the '90's; joined us at 8th level. I write up the new stat block for his Steed each time it increases in HD.
Druid: played 2nd ed, came back during 4th ed & hated it; joined this campaign at 1st level, this is his first 3.X game.
Bard: never played D&D ever, before joining us at 14th level. Been playing for 8 months.
For three of them, this is their first 3.X game ever, & two of them hadn't played D&D in 15+ years, or ever.
Compare that to me. I've been living & breathing 3.X since September 2000, & been active in D&D message boards since 2002. I've seen most of the tricks mentioned on-line, & read through a lot of the rules arguments.
They haven't.
True, you either have to a) have competent, trustworthy players; b) have someone in the group (DM or fellow player) who can sanity check the crazy (either by knowing the rules ahead of time, or, as you did, looking them up), or c) embrace the crazy.
That makes it sound like munchkins aren't trustworthy. :smallconfused:
Random stats are an extremely crap-shoot way to influence power-level though. For one thing, somebody who knows how to optimize (and intends to do so) can usually work with any set of stats, where-as someone who just wants to make a simple character will be far more screwed by a bad one. For another thing, it's random! Heck, the usually-Wizard player may be planning to try something different and then ... 9, 15, 14, 18, 6, 5 ... welp, guess it's time for another Wizard!
Yeah, it basically comes down to option B in my group, with me being the most well-versed. It just slows down the game constantly if it's some class I don't know, and depending upon how long some specific thing has been happening wrong on the player's sheet without me knowing about it, it causes continued problems because then the player has to unlearn his mistaken interpretation, so the above conversation interrupts the game flow repeatedly for several sessions.
Now, there are certainly times I'm up for "walking through the rules" just being a part of the campaign. My other group is playing in a world where divine and arcane magic were tainted generations ago, so the emphasis of the campaign was meant to be on the alternate subsystems of Third Edition. We've had a lot of fun communally learning about Incarnum, Psionics, Tome of Battle, and Binders. Not that some of those hadn't been used before (ToB and Psionics), but we've gained a lot of experience with the lesser-known Incarnum and Binders, for sure. This campaign has been a bit deadly compared to others (luck of the dice a lot of the time; grinding too far, then realizing they are too depleted when hitting the BBEG at the end a couple times), plus one player has retired two or three characters along the way, so we've seen a good assortment of stuff. All four players now have experience with ToB, and all four have had experience with some aspect of psionics. The only type that hasn't been played is a Binder, though they have faced some in the campaign. Some of them have also had experience running some unusual races with LA and RHD. It's been a fun learning experience as we see what else the system has to offer. But the campaign was designed to be that way.
Some people will call anything being a munchkin, including completely IC plans that are "too effective".
Like "those zombies can't get up here, we can shoot them from safety instead of wading in", or "instead of all trying to climb at once and half the party probably falling, let's have the good climber go up first and drop a knotted rope". Cheesy munchkin tactics, apparently. :smallconfused:
Another red flag I have is when a DM tries to stop people from reading books. And I know books like BoVD suggest that, but that carries with it both the assumption that players innately metagame and that none of your players are ever going to DM themselves.
It doesn't bother me to restrict players from reading setting information that their characters would not reasonably have, especially if the player hasn't bothered to buy the books, himself. It falls under a similar category to not letting players read the adventure module.
That said, this only goes so far, and getting forceful about it starts to be irritating.
I mean if the players are gonna metagame then it's there own fault anyway. I shouldn't have to go out of my way to prevent it, nor do I consider it a good thing to want to police what they read up on anyway. I've done adventure modules and then had players from those adventure modules go out and DM that model with a different group. Sometimes I go from DMing to adventuring the same one.
Well, to be fair wizard isn't the only thing you can play with those stats. They're only slightly less than ideal for a twf rogue skill monkey (non-face), or possibly a daring outlaw build, or psion, or many other things that benefit from a high int.just because int is the casting Stat for wizards, doesn't mean you have to play a wizard if you have an 18 int.
I find it literally impossible not to meta-game when I have information my PC wouldn't. And I am using "literally" accurately.
If I use the information I have but my PC does not, I'm metagaming in the obvious way. But when I try NOT to use it, I am in that weird situation of having to figure out if my PC would "guess" the right solution or not. Even flipping a coin is metagaming over what I could do to analyze the situation with a "clean" slate of knowledge. It's a similar situation, actually, to the one I face when social "mechanics" are non-existent except to say such-and-such NPC is generally persuasive. Well, is my PC persuaded? I'm not dealing with that NPC, personally; I'm dealing with the GM, who may or may not be all that persuasive. I'm also not my PC; if I'm playing, for instance, a promiscuous bard, is he automatically tempted by the succubus, or is he less likely to be because he gets plenty of action, or what?
I'm not saying it's impossible to simulate ignorance, but it's a lot HARDER to do than when you share your PC's ignorance.
I understand where you are coming from. I think I do a fine job of not metagaming when I know something my character does not. Which brings me to a dislike of mine; DMs not telling information that I do not know, but my PC would certainly know. That makes a game pretty hard.
I'm usually super blunt about things like this. Like the time we ran into trolls, and I was playing a (black) dragon shaman. I looked at the DM (he and I being the only experienced players in the group) and I said "I roll to know the thing." I failed, so I proceeded to hammer away at the thing with my heavy mace, in desperate hopes that the party druid told me to start barfing on it to keep it down. Such is life when trying to not be smarter than your character.
That's a pretty straightforward one, though.
It gets worse when you know OOC that, for example, someone is a traitor, and have many clues IC to indicate that such is the case. When can you determine that you've figured something like that IC without metagaming?
I consider myself at least a somewhat clever person, and it's not unusual for me to put together incoming reveals. But if I have access to metagame information, it's hard to determine when I would have put 2 and 2 together naturally, and most systems don't have a roll to "anticipate plot."
Ah. Then you can do what I do whenever watching a show with friends and family. When I know exactly what the plot is, and what is going to happen, I write it down. When the inevitable reveal happens, I show people the note.
Spoiler: exampleDuring Fantastic Beasts, I had dudebro pinned as Depp within the first few seconds he was on screen. My wife noticed and was puzzled the entire movie.
This sounds like a job for a 5-year-old! Simply present the relevant information to a convenient 5-year-old, and see if they can reach the correct conclusion.
Alternately, if, through improper management of resources, you have depleted your supply of 5-year-olds, instead, present all the information your character has to a GM-approved friend, and see what they come up with.
EDIT: note that this trick works in many other circumstances, too.