The Metagaming Issue

[evil-frosty]

Currently I am involved in a campaign with people who I see as my family (and in fact the DM is my dad). The party balance is sort of out of whack in terms of roles being covered (most members have some form of arcane spell casting). So far the campaign has been open world with some intrigue, we have obvious goals but it is completely up to us to pick how and which we pursue. We searching for parts of potion called a Potion of Prismatic Dragon control and for obvious reasons we want to get it before any number of BBEG's. I have a somewhat chaotic personality, and have been unfairly labelled as a trouble maker for the party as a player at times. This is the first time I am actually running an actual chaotic character though. As a side note every one else has a slight tendency to run almost the same character over and over role playing wise. Anyway, my character has a tendency to end up alone/has gained some knowledge that only he would know, but the rest of the party acts like they were there too, or act incredulous when I did not tell the rest of them that my character was given essentially a nuclear deterrent by his guild on the last quest (I was given a wand of power word kill with one charge, and we just gained level 5).

This has been bothering me, especially since in the future I have managed in character to arrange an important meeting with a neutral third party who currently has two parts of the potion (the rest of the party has blindly attacked the poor chaps before as well without any provocation) and so as it stands my character has very little reason to trust any one else in the party for various reasons (some theft of loot, one character is a wanted criminal, the aggravated assault of a neutral party, I was shouted down when I objected to letting the mentally unhinged wizard rest regaining his spells, and lastly the trusting of the incompetent local priest of Bahamut). The meta gaming has been bothering me, and it isn't generalized it is specifically when it concerns me, so I am asking after the playgrounds insight in how to broach the subject to the rest of the party, and how to handle the conversation? Also if you could please share your experiences with the issue of metagaming I would appreciate it. Thank you.

[nedz]

It sounds like you have a very different play style to the rest of your group. There's not much you can necessarily do about that and it would depend on interpersonal interactions anyway; which are hard to second guess over the net.

[Shining Wrath]

Nothing to be done by you.

DM is within his rights to rule that any PC acting on knowledge said PC does not possess fails with epic fail at whatever they are trying to achieve.

[Flickerdart]

Passing notes is a time-tested method, especially when you include dummy notes in the exchanges.

[Mnemnosyne]

Yeah, this is something you need to talk to the DM about and have him deal with, if the other players seem incapable of separating in-character knowledge from out of character knowledge. For your part, ask the DM to never reveal any information regarding your character or things that only your character knows to the other players, since they can't seem to restrain themselves from acting on such information. If he doesn't seem inclined to enforce the separation of in-character information from player information on his own without prompting, ask him to do so.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Is it really an in-game problem? If not, solve it out of game. If it's truly in game, continue...

Metagaming can be a good thing. In this case, it's essentially cheating.

It sounds like there's plenty of evidence suggesting a less-than-fully-cooperative party. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with the introduction of private notes. Removing the temptation to cheat does two things: One, it stops everyone else from cheating. Two, it allows them to act incredulously without being accused of cheating. Maybe they were all suspicious of you anyway - in that group environment, they should be. The difference is they'll only have general suspicions now.

The main downside is the time it takes, if you don't allow computers and IMs.

[Flickerdart]

The main downside is the time it takes, if you don't allow computers and IMs.

It's a bit of a jerk move to spend everyone's time at the table doing things between just yourself and the DM. See if you can't work out some way of communicating about off-screen events between sessions. For things that have to be done live, you can establish an amusing spy thriller-style code. "I hear the gooseberries are coming in this year, and so are the mangoes / Mine aren't, but the Big Cheese gets his at low tide tonight" could be important information, or it could be a red herring (although disguising your code as casual banter is probably best).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I think allowing electronics to pass notes is going to be easier than inventing an actual spy code. Also he was spending the time doing 1 on 1 stuff either way. If the players are now upset that they have to wait instead of watching the scene, well, they lost that privilege.

[Flickerdart]

I think allowing electronics to pass notes is going to be easier than inventing an actual spy code.

If we cared about making things easy, we would probably not be here.

[evil-frosty]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have talked to the DM about this, and one of the plans is to try to do some things between sessions. I just wanted your guy's take since the playground has a wealth of knowledge and experience I do not.

The issues so far are things like some members of the party condemn me because I had a potion of healing I used to save another characters life, but did not tell them about. (with no real divine casting healing is at a bit of premium currently.) Also only my character and another treat the NPC's normally till given a reason for suspicion, other characters are usually just straight up hostile to any named NPC's unless if they are a goodly priest. I like the note idea just to mess with the fellow players, sounds like it could be fun. Oh, and to clear something up I'm not usually out alone just the party has a tendency so far to break off into groups Scooby Doo style.