The Many Types of Metagaming

[@SupergeekMike]

Which of these forms of metagaming bothers you the most at your own tables? Thanks so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Visit www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK at checkout! www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike

[@MorningDusk7734]

I personally think the worst form of metagaming is when the player knows they're doing it to gain an advantage and think that makes them clever or something. It's one thing to exclaim "Trolls! Remember to use fire!" without thinking, but it's another when you read the adventure ahead of time and head straight for all the hidden loot and think that you've "won".

[@urielurielson3776]

It's so important to discuss Metagaming with new players in your group on session Zero (or start of a one shot), especially if they are literally new players to DnD. My mind was blown from utter surprise after few such chats - how many people thought initially that "G" in RPG is the main thing. And they are here to "win the game" at all costs. And I can certainly understand that approach! Oh damn, you don't want me to go into my crazy competitive mode when we are playing a board game / PC game and I'm like "today I've decided I will have most fun if I win, I will think super hard, focus, take my time and do my best", sure that can be also fun - SOMETIMES :) Other times I will play relaxed and just have fun. But a LOT of new players see this as "game" where DM is the enemy that wants to beat you. And they will do what they can to "beat DM" and sometimes "other players". Sure, there are many DMs like that, but that's not the point today - especially if you explain you are not like this, everyone's here to have some fun today and lay some simple ground rules about Meta. So in short - the form of Metagaming I hate the most is when people agree to the above and they still want to mess up your game ;)

[@miirav.8482]

one of my favorite critical role campaign 1 moments (MINOR spoilers incoming) has to do with “incongruous” monster knowledge. they see some random structures on a mountain, travis rolls an intelligence check, almost as a joke, and gets a high roll (might’ve been a nat 20, cant remember off the top of my head). he immediately goes to write it off like “hey, matt, you don’t have to give me this info, obviously grog doesn’t know this”. turns out it was a stone giant fortress, something that it would make TOTAL SENSE for grog to know about while nobody else in the group has the info!

[@Bravebear333]

I have the opposite problem: players don't ask each other about their secrets. AT ALL. Even if the situation demands it.

[@CooperAATE]

Same! And I've talked to my players about it, but they just don't wanna step on anybody's toes (even when a PC's backstory bites the whole party in the ass).

[@Pumpky_the_kobold]

I have player dropping VERY HEAVY LORE about their secrets and nobody is picking on it. Just mean that when the secret is now #theproblem, they're going to hate themselves for not adressing it sooner. All i'm gonna do is shrug!

[@thomashenderson3326]

Honestly, I resolve this by handling backstory stuff in the open when it comes up. Everyone gets to see the visions each player gets or the interactions with their past associates or families. I find that if you get the players curious and they tell each other that they want others to explore their histories with them it gets everyone involved. Im also that crazy dm that wants a backstory with tons of hooks/gaps/etc that I can build into the world and campaign. Currently I’m running with a druid trying to save her home from an evil god rising from death, a fallen devil that was given a chance to live a mortal life and will be gifted with a soul of her own in the afterlife if she can prove herself worthy, a noble heir to a barony trying to protect and earn the respect of his people, a runaway noble girl who is trying to remain hidden from her own family, and a reborn-fairy-revenant creature that was created by one of the Three Mothers (basically gigahags). Each of these has deep and intriguing reasons to be together and because of that every session is a delight of the players interacting as much with each other as with the wold around them and I love it.

[@Jermbot15]

Ahh, anti-drama players avoiding PVP. We're all guilty of not wanting to mess up the story for the other players.

[@Bravebear333]

@@Jermbot15 not what I meant. A PC ate evil mage’s eyes, a lot of other PCs saw it. If someone ate someone’s eyes in front of me I’d have some questions.

[@joshuabonesteel2303]

I feel like I've had the opposite of this before. I was playing the spelljammer campaign as an astral elf. When we found out that the elves were the main villains of the story, the entire group looked to my character for answers. I was constantly asking the dm if I would know certain things about the astral elves. Apparently, my character was the most out of the loop astral elf wizard to ever exist.

[@pedrogarcia8706]

I've created an astral elf character that was dropped on Torril as a baby and therefore knows nothing about other Astral Elves

[@Lurklen]

I hate this. DM's are too secretive, these characters live in the world, they are going to know all kinds of details about it without even thinking. Will they know a monster's weakness? Probably not, but they'll probably know what it is if they hear even a couple of common details. And Astral Elves are ALL ABOUT knowing random stuff through their weird trances. The other day I was in a game, and we were looking at a mural on a ceiling of a city. The DM asked us to roll to see if we recognized it, I was like "I've literally only ever been to one city, it's where I grew up, and it's the biggest most recognizable city in the world. Unless it's there, I'm not going to recognize it." We roll, I fail, the NPC gets high enough, he's like: "Hey I've only been there one time, but isn't that your home city!" Apparently I couldn't tell but this dude could. It's okay to give your players knowledge, because then they can do stuff with it. Knowing nothing leads to random nonsense, instead of cool choices.

[@Jermbot15]

Should have been a conversation during character creation. Even something as short as the DM saying, "Okay, you can play an Astral Elf wizard, but you're essentially a hermit." Or as long as, "Hey, lets come up with a group of Astral Elves for your character that's largely separate from the Astral Elves I'm going to be using in the mid to later part of the game's plot."

[@spiceyicey]

@@pedrogarcia8706 that's how all astral elves work, they're taken away from the silver void for a few decades so that they're able to age because there's no ageing in the silver void

[@starofaetherius]

Maybe as a wizard they were out studying magic and shit for so long they didnt even realize their people were doing atrocities haha. Had your nose too far in a book or something. Thats really funny

[@wumbojet]

I love that you use your own mistakes and bad behavior to explain how something that someone does with good intentions can ruin someone else's fun

[@ToG_Michael]

When I run a game I utilize something called “Backstory Proficiencies.” For low intelligence players if they have something in their backstory that would have knowledge of said thing will allow them to roll a general intelligence roll with proficiency. It allows them to have a slight boost to the roll and gives them a feeling that a “dump stat” is more useful for role play rather than cutting them out of a portion of the game.

[@ecgrey]

You could also give the information without a roll.

[@ToG_Michael]

@@ecgrey a lot of the time yes but I treat information in my games like breadcrumbs but if they ask the right question it might let them skip a few aforementioned breadcrumbs. This way they feel like they earned something rather than feeling like they’ve been lead.

[@andrewshandle]

I think a big problem is people treat 7 INT like the character couldn't dress or feed themselves. :) Even low INT characters would have general knowledge of the world they live in.

[@ToG_Michael]

@@andrewshandle yeah. One of my favorite ways to play low intelligence is as a cleric/zealot barbarian. It serves more as a lack of understanding of how the real world works rather than as a cognitive issue.

[@danielbeshers1689]

I never metagame I didn't like.

[@davidgipe997]

Yooo! :D

[@matthewdesrochers4581]

That one took me a second, well done

[@nathandixon2048]

Ba dum tss

[@oldmanandrew]

HEYOOOO

[@joshuakruger9455]

*sad trombone*

[@Howler452]

A mild extension from the 'I know the monster statblock' one that irritates me is when people say the monster's name before you're finished your description or give away the surprise. My players were going into a city filled with undead spirits, like ghosts, wraiths, specters, etc. And they camped outside the city the night before they entered. Some of the spirits attacked them and the first thing they spotted was a Banshee. I hadn't said it was a Banshee, but that ONE player who recognizes every monster said out of character that it was a Banshee, all while I was trying to build a feeling of suspense and tension as it approached. While it's not as bad as giving away stat blocks, it still really takes the wind out of my sails as a DM cause what was the point of me going through all that tension building if you're going to spoil the surprise, and it breaks said tension for the other players too. This player also tried to tell a new player under his breath to 'Let the person with the highest Charisma make the Deception check', so he's THAT type of meta gamer too.

[@LyrictheFilthyCasual]

I like looking for ways to sneak past Statblock Metagaming by using similar-looking monsters and unreliable narrators. I actually had my players 100% convinced that I'd dropped a beholder onto a party of 3 level 5 characters. The veteran player in the group actually said "have you lost your mind? That's a CR 13 creature. We're level 5!" And the newbie player spoke up and said "calm down. I'm sure there's a plan in place," then proceeded to 1-shot the Gas Spore I'd sent floating at them flanked by Myconids. I was so proud.

[@Keovar]

I was going to play at an organized play event, and the title of the scenario included the word ‘plague’, so I mentioned we’d probably need some alchemical item to help with disease saves. In every previous scenario, we were briefed on what we might be dealing with so we could get whatever equipment we might need. The GM said I was was “metagaming like a [expletive deleted]”, so I guess he was planning on skipping the briefing… but if that was the case, why did he even post the title on Warhorn? Just a couple minutes later, he was filling out a form for the game, and although the posting said it was for levels up to 7, he decided to ignore that and say my character was too high level. I told him I didn’t have other characters with me, so he said all of the enemies would be attacking my archery-focused ranger constantly. So not only was he breaking the organized play rules by not giving us the briefing (I looked the scenario up later, and a briefing mentioning ‘plague’ was in there) and not wanting to let me play a character that was legal for the scenario, he was also willing to metagame by having enemies magically know character levels. It felt like he was looking to kill characters, so I walked out and made sure to never sign up for a table he was running in the future. It sucked to have wasted time traveling out there that day, but I wasn’t interested in sacrificing my character to feed his overblown and hypocritical ego.

[@AdellRedwinters]

Pathfinder 2e has an action called “Recall Knowledge” built right into the system, and even has feat support to give you buffs for doing it. And it’s great to use for players to find out about special abilities or weaknesses/resistances which are way more common in that game. It allows someone with meta game knowledge to also, at the cost of one of your three actions (so not a huge loss to your turn) to in character act on that knowledge if they roll high enough.

[@rainmaker38]

Additionally, the implementation of secret rolls in PF2E alleviates the dice-roll metagaming mentioned later in the video.

[@ZeoR95]

The DCs are also easily modified for Uncommon and Rare stuff, being a +2 and +5 respectively. That being said Recall Knowledge is one of the few bits of PF2e that is left a bit vague, so if you are trying to be a know-it-all, DM discussion is probably needed!

[@AdellRedwinters]

@@ZeoR95 This is why I call the Thaumaturge THE metagaming class. It's literally built to learn all of the metagame knowledge and take advantage of it haha.

[@AGrumpyPanda]

For most of my campaigns I add a Monster Lore skill that all characters start at Trained for free so that they can always at least roll to see if they know something about the monster they're fighting. (for the non-PF2 players, Lore skills are like super specific knowledge skills that also include the practical skills needed to work a job, like Wine Lore is both specific knowledge about wine, and the skills needed to work in a vineyard or winery)

[@deschaingames1851]

On the topic of stupid characters understanding enemies, I was playing a Barbarian with 6 int but 16 wisdom. In my mind, that makes him a specialized person educated beyond his actual intelligence in one specific thing… fighting and slaying monsters. There are a lot of people in the real world that aren’t particularly bright, but they’ve been immersed in something long enough to know the ins and outs.

[@stevecarter8810]

I have known people who talk slow, don't laugh much, and don't have much to say, then you get them on their topic, e.g. tree care, and they have a wealth of knowledge and experience. You can also see them in social situations like raising their kids and you realise they have insights, attitudes and tools that you don't. So int and wis don't quite cover the gamut of possibilities, and I think your interpretation is good. Swap out tree care for monster wrangling, and you have someone who isn't into book learning but knows what must be done.

[@sparklefulpaladin]

I did something similar as an 18 wis/8 int cleric... she knew a fair bit about healing and a few niche sgorues, but for literally every other knowledge check, she went over to ask the wizard, who knew basically everything, but refused to talk to most of the party because they were kind of jerks to her.

[@thomashenderson3326]

I love that you covered how it's all up to preference and that there are dozens of types of metagaming and it's all situational

[@joeyrhubarb2558]

I like the addendum added at 5:20. If everyone knows the "trick" to a certain monster, and that gimmick is the centerpiece of this particular challenge, then it feels a bit off to be forced to see that gimmick through for the sake of (not) metagaming. The classic one is always trolls. If a new player hasn't had the experience of a seemingly dead and defeated troll, rising up again to whack them from behind, then we shouldn't take that experience away from them. But if everyone has experienced that already, then going through the motions of all that would feel a little tedious.

[@leeway3739]

I'm curious what your take would be on if gentle reminders are considered metagaming? I find I have a better memory than most people, so sometimes when people are forgetting something in game that they probably wouldn't forget if they were there irl I might give a quick, "Don't forget the..." as a helpful reminder. I had a DM who HATED me doing this and was constantly telling me to "Stop metagaming!", so I tried to not do it in his game. I've never had a problem on this with other DMs so I never even thought this was metagaming before, but now I'm not sure. Longer example: Two characters are talking in a room, my character is somewhere else, but as a player I am watching them on "TV". They discus plans for something and agree that when they leave this room, they should take the sword that is sitting on the table in front of them. They discuss some other things so some time passes, and when they say they are leaving the room they don't mention the sword. I know that they had already decided to take it with them, so I might say, "Don't forget the sword". Is this really metagaming? In a game that is mostly played in our minds, it is much harder to remember everything because you can't actually SEE the room and the sword, so as a player it might slip their mind, but as a *character* they never would have forgot that sword.

[@telarr9164]

Calling that metagaming is being a little precious. Sometimes the characters would be aware of things the player has forgotten. Sometimes the DM description wasn't as clear as it could have been. Sometimes it's been a month between sessions and the player has forgotten something that the character learned 10 minutes ago. People have latched onto metagaming as a buzzword but it's a game . Sometimes it's a necessary evil. This was a great examination by Mike !

[@andrewshandle]

Playing Devil's Advocate, if you are the one constantly reminding the other players, it could also be annoying the other players and the DMs passive solution is to call it "metagaming" rather than discussing it with you.

[@Bodharas]

Yeah, you're taking agency away from the other players. Definitely a habit you should break. I know you're trying to help, but let them learn on their own. Maybe just ask the DM first, if you feel like they're character wouldn't forget, or frame it a different way. Like I'm sure "characters name" wouldn't forget, but it sounds like you do it a lot. In that case it might be habitual, but like i said. Let the other players learn on their own. Don't take away their agency.

[@icefang111]

I get this, cause I am in this position often too. The key is to ASK THE OTHER PLAYERS! Ask them out of game if it's ok, and if it's a spur of the moment thing, ask them in the moment if they want a reminder! Before giving the reminder! This is one of those good intended things that can be really overbearing to others so you have to be careful. No shame to u it comes from a good place and I get that, there's just a few ways you can be a bit more conscientious about it. As for that dm it may be more of a them thing- sort of the reminder of "your not in the room right now" sort of deal. In which case respecting that as you did is the best call.

[@Ragea77]

I always feeel metagaming is such a personal thing and is pretty much hard to completely avoid. The thing I feel people don't talk about as much is how the fear of metagaming can create situations where players feel forced to limit they options to avoid the accusation or having to justify why they made the optimal desicion. There is also not enough talk about the positive requirement of metagaming, i.e. following the direction of the game to allow the adventure to progress,.

[@trently89]

I make sure to explain this in the session 0. I say, "there's times where you'll have time to do whatever you want, but sometimes when the situation involved them going in one direction. If they're not okay with it, I explain why that is and if they still don't want to play, then they don't have to play. Not every game is right for every player. That's not me punishing a player for anything, just not the right fit. You're not gonna hire a chef for a plumbing job, or an astronaut to be sent to war on the front lines.

[@stevecarter8810]

Sometimes the sound and camera crew have already set up on the far side of the door and it's obvious. So, limit your choices to _how_ you go through the door, not _whether_ you do.

[@air64000]

the most fun I've seen this used is a campaign where the world of DND was made real and the people at the table were playing as their actual selves. Now all that knowledge come in handy

[@RevRaak]

Tying (certain types of) metagaming to worldbuilding is a great reminder. I LOVE to let the characters know *relevant* information in the hopes that it helps the players be invested in those parts of the world's lore/structures. But then, I was just reminded at last week's game that I am a very generous GM. As for the rest of this encyclopedic video, very well done.

[@johnnygreenface4195]

I think the fact that homebrewing monsters in 5e is arduous makes this problem worse. It's super time consuming to write all your monsters from scratch because of all the stuff you have to worry about.

[@davidgipe997]

What I do as a quick thing is take qualities from other creatures and apply them to a different monster. For instance "This sorcerer has researched magical fonts and delved into aberrant energies." And the sorcerer is producing a healing rebuff aura needing a PC save to apply healing energy.

[@coolfry4708]

The best homebrew advice I ever gotten is to take a monster, give it a different name, and change the appearance of it. If you are that concerned about avoiding of metagame for monster stats, then changing the appearance leaves your player in the dark what this creature is. My personal favorite use of this is taking trolls and changing it into a eldritch horseman for a Halloween session, which the players had to scourge to find info on this creature.

[@gvanbooven]

Experienced Metagamey Player: "A troll! Hit it with fire!" Me: Smiles inside because I made the troll vulnerable to lightning and actually heals with fire.

[@brunohommerding3416]

Well at least in roll 20 i made a few templates for homebrewing my monsters and NPCs. For example I have a "brute" template that have a large size by default and some default hitpoints, attacks etc and i tweak it as needed if want to create another creature that would fit the "brute" archetype. The same for a "caster" template, "knight" template and so on. It makes everything smoother and way easier because all you have to do is adjust the stats you need for your new monster without building it from scratch.

[@Keovar]

On RPGBOT, there's a tool called the 'monsterizer' which give you a form to fill out and produces a stat block file with a good layout.

[@mariecosmos4383]

The general story knowledge one is so intensely relateable. We had a big gala with every important NPC in the realm and some realms beyond... my fighter was on edge all night long, just waiting for the place to get attacked, so much so that she started a romance with an NPC to lighten the mood for herself. There were assassins in the courtyard, which is better than a dragon tearing off the roof!

[@VelvetCake423]

indeed! i had one dm of a small one shot series printed out little booklets that had a section for general world knowledge for things EVERYBODY knows and learns in school, (major world geogaphy, celebraties, royalty, basic cantrip and lvl 1-3 magic info etc) then a little bonus section for what our character specifically would know that others might not. It was IMMENSELY helpful and i plan to do the same thing if i ever DM.

[@XanothAvaeth]

6:26 I really like that you moved from stats to how a character is played and what's in the backstory. To me, it makes perfect sense for a fighter with an int of 7 to know a troll is vulnerable to fire/acid (probably one or the other) if that's what they are trained for. 30:35 I feel this as a player. I joined an online game back in 2016 and I had a full detailed backstory and character description and was very much non-stereotypical for the class, then a major NPC referred to me by class upon first meeting. The DM was otherwise good and put in a lot of effort but that killed my immersion dead and it was totally unneed to even add the players classes into that NPC greeting us. He'd done so much work creating the scene and the NPCs in it then just killed it dead by reminding each an every player that they're playing a game and what class they are playing.

[@BigKlingy]

The section on magic reminded me of how open Matt tends to be about what spells the enemies are casting on Critical Role, and it was only when reading a book written by another DM that I realized 1, not all DMs do this and 2, it actually doesn't make much sense in-world. (Unless your setting is anime-style and everyone has to yell the names of their attacks.) But while "you see ice crystals slowly forming on their fingers before they spray out towards you" makes more sense in-world than "They're going to try and cast Ray of Frost", sometimes breaking the immersion is necessary if you have players with Counterspell and they need to decide what to use it on and what to let through. Some DMs have players roll to recognize spells, while others are more open. Matt on Critical Role does play with this when it's a REALLY significant or unusual villain spell though. I seem to remember him never directly calling-out Delilah's Finger of Death until the party had witnessed it several times, only describing it in vague terms that still made it clear "this spell is BAD and you don't want to get hit by it."

[@EdsonR13]

The players with counter spell and similar abilities are why those DMs obscure the knowledge of those spells, if your character doesn't know this monster/enemy why should they know what spell/ability is worth counterspelling until they've seen them use those spells/abilities.

[@BigKlingy]

@@EdsonR13 At the same time, what if Matt hadn't told the players Vecna was trying to cast Teleport in Campaign 1's final battle? That could've ruined all their hard work with no warning, and we wouldn't have got the amazing moment where Scanlan sacrificed his 9th level spell slot to Counterspell it. (Though admittedly, a teleportation/dimension door spell would probably look pretty obvious) There's pros and cons to both approaches.

[@EdsonR13]

@@BigKlingy I think Scanlan was already pretty familiar with those types of spells at that point so it would be more than fair for him to recognize it even at a stricter table. And if Vecna did teleport away we would have just had a different finale, Matt wouldn't have even tried to teleport away if he didn't have some idea of what might come next

[@user-jt1js5mr3f]

I only take notes for sequences I’m involved in, so as I reflect on them in future sessions I accurately recall what I know and forget everything else 😂

[@henrymalinowski5125]

I’m the group note taker so I record everything but I bracket off the information and write in the 3rd-person.

[@andrewshandle]

Re: Dice roll knowledge, the hardest thing to teach players is that outside of combat, failure can be fun. There's this create scene in the latest season of Dimension 20 where Lou rolls a Nat 1 on an Insight check and _completely_ leans into his character reading the situation wrong and it's awesome because he knows the DM isn;t going to kill his character over it. So many DMs punish players for low rolls on things like perception, insight, persuasion, etc. that players can't help but dread a low roll, but it's up to the DM to teach the players to embrace the failure.

[@santinocusumano8814]

You don't get the knowledge that you were looking for but you got some thing else that might be useful later but not at the current moment

[@Kuribohcoast]

my favourite way to work around the discussing skills issue is I frame them in terms of *my character.* Is Danny the strongest person in the party? Im not sure, but I know he's stronger than *me.* Lucy is absolutely smarter than me, but I'm far and away more charming than she is. I don't know the exact number of Rory's DEX save, but I do know he's not the most nimble guy around, and I can run circles around him if I need to.

[@sherbert1321]

A couple years ago I joined this group for dnd, and I had very little experience. I was playing a wizard at the time, and most of the party were busy that day so it was just me, a gunslinger, and the dm. Honestly, I’m not sure how I got the confidence to be willing to join on that day because I knew neither the dm nor the gunslinger player at all at that point, and this was basically my introduction to them besides making my character with the dm. That’s besides the point, though. This was my first session in the campaign, and I knew incredibly little about dnd at the time. The gunslinger had been playing for years, though. At one point, we encountered a hydra’s den. I believe it was a hydra, but I can’t quite remember. The hydra was asleep, so we discussed how to kill it. I looked through my spells and said “…I have this spell called ‘Delayed Blast Fireball.’ Do you think that would work? If the hydra’s asleep, we can just wait the full minute for it to go off at max power.” (We were playing level 15 characters, which is a wild experience as a newcomer). The gunslinger looked at me and said “I don’t know. Sounds like a solid plan. We could try.” So that’s what we did, and to my utter surprise, the fireball did an insane amount of damage, crippling the hydra so much that it only took one round of combat to bring it down completely. And that’s when the gunslinger said to me, “I knew it was weak to fire damage. I was trying so hard not to say anything. That was awesome.” …And that was awesome. Love my dnd group so much.

[@xerick5586]

I'm currently treading that "revealing other players' secret" right now. I'm playing a goblin in a Dragonlance game where another player is a Solamnic knight that was secretly reincarnated as a hobgoblin. The hobgoblin knight is covered in armor, so all the characters think it's a human. So far, it's just some light ribbing about goblin related topics, but I definitely want to leave it up to the player to reveal their secret to the other PC'sc when the time is right.

[@Lurklen]

I have one exception to the "Omnipresent Knowledge" metagaming. When a player whose character is not present in a scene, asks if a character that is present, can see/hear something they forgot to ask about, and/or the DM forgot to mention. The only reason I actually like this, is it gives the player information they should be given, and it assists/keeps honest the DM when they've failed to give details on the space, and it allows the players listening to better visualize the scene. When I'm the DM, I like it because it reminds me to give details I might have forgotten, and when I'm a player it keeps me engaged. It can of course be abused, and there are ways that the DM might be concealing information from the PC in order to get the jump on them (the player never mentioned looking up at the ceiling, and so fails to see the monster waiting in ambush there) but in most cases I'm opposed to that kind of design. Holding hostage what should be obvious information from a player because they didn't think to ask the key phrase, breaks the reality of the world to me. I should be told what my character should be able to see, hear, feel, and smell about the environment, without having to ask. Being suddenly told that there's a trap or ambush where it would have been obvious to my character, because I wasn't given enough information, feels like a cheat. I think a lot of meta-gaming is really just the game making up for the abstraction of the world. Knowing how many hit points someone has is the experience of being in battle, trained to fight in a group, and being able to look at someone and know how long they can keep fighting. It's something we can't really replicate, because we aren't those people, we just play them. This is why I don't mind a bit of cross talk at the table when it comes to strategizing in combat, there's a lot of communication that people who have been fighting along side each other can do without talking, and training which means that they'd actually already know what to do, instead of having to discuss it. But my players don't have that, they only fight monsters once a week.

[@RockLucena]

When it comes to monster stat, what me and my table do to avoid metagaming is ask the DM: "would my character know what this monster is weak to?" And let the DM decide. They might ask for a check or simply say, based on the character's background "yes, you would know that".

[@whytewolf2]

I have to agree about the player secrets one. one of my chars is a hallow one barbarian/fighter. I gave away the information to the players early on also letting them know this is not something they would just know. the char doesn't look like undead. and part of the reveal process was supposed to be things like detect good and evil detecting the undead in the party. etc. from day one all of the other players acted like it was normal and that everyone knew he was undead. It really hurt. as it was a fun idea for my char to slowly come to grips with his undead nature. as well as recover his memory from before he died. [basicly i play him that his barbarian levels are from after he came back and is the anger from being ripped from the grave. and his fighter levels are him regaining the knowledge he lost before he died.]

[@darkmystic7764]

I love when your dog barks or shows up in the video. Gives the video a home feeling, much approved.

[@SaturninePlaces]

That was a potent point, about metagaming being the abuse of knowledge rather than just the use of it. And to that end, "how does your DM feel about it" and "how does it affect the other players" are the most important questions to ask. I love that you mentioned HP totals as well.

[@Sulferlines]

About the Character Secret knowledge, I've once played a Mimic who was pretending to be a Warforge, at the first session as the character, the party leader realised I was a mimic because he told me to take care of an enemy and watched in horror as I ate the poor guard. A few sessions later the rest of the party found out one by one as I transformed in front of them allowing them to naturally find out I was a mimic, one day some new players joined, one of the players was a cleric who hated all bad people, by itself it was horrible because we were all playing chaotic neutral and evil characters, but when my turn came around I mentioned to the DM that I'll go to my characters room in the tavern to eat the moles I caught, that player realised something was wrong and asked to walk into the room, the DM told him that the door is locked (because he had no reason to walk into the room of someone he just met) and the next time we were in combat the cleric chose to attack me with some of his spells saying that he doesn't trust my character and saying his god will make him attack any monster, that resulted in most of the party being on edge because... We... Were all monsters disguised as humanoids or humanoids that were fused with monsters...

[@andrewshandle]

I ran a LMoP on Roll20 with a two friends and two people from the forums, and clearly one of the players I didn't know went out and bought the adventure in between the two sessions that took part in the Wave Echo Caverns. At the start of the second session they wanted their character to backtrack to the previous parts of the Caverns the players had been to the week before to do some _very_ specific things that they only could have known by reading the adventure. Not even asking for rolls to figure things out, just "I go back to that room and do this very specific thing like I've got completely knowledge about it". Crap like that drives me crazy, you don't get special internet points for reading ahead and "winning" the game.

[@Bogwedgle]

On the last kind of metagaming, I was running a game 3 or 4 years ago and a player character died or was petrified or something, so the player rolled up a new character. He sent me a homebrew class, I read it over and approved it which makes this partially my bad but whatever. One of its abilities allowed him to ask someone 3 questions in a dream state and they couldn't lie. He, playing someone the party had never met and who had no connection to them, tailored 3 questions to pry out that one of the PCs that they had been tasked with stealing a powerful orb capable of trapping any creature from another player, who was tasked with protecting it. Everyone knew it out of game because I had spent a long time setting it up, nobody knew it in character. At no point before the session did he even hint to me he was doing this. It destroyed an entire players arc that was meant to begin in like 2 sessions, dozens of hours of my work and lead to the eventual collapse of the game. I have never come closer to ending a friendship over something that happened in a dnd game. It was gutting, and incredibly disrespectful to me as the DM and everyone else at the table.

[@vine1313]

This is probably the most frustrating thing about DMing a game for my family. Trying to explain to a 10 year old the SHE knows what is going on, her character may not.

[@MorningDusk7734]

I'm not sure if this was metagaming or not, and I would love some insight. In my most recent session, my group spent 30 minutes debating if we should go by foot or by horse on a lengthy journey. Buying horses would take up almost all of our gold, and we weren't in a time crunch in-game, however our rogue felt strongly about going faster on horseback. I ended up putting in my opinion that we were burning game time, and that it wouldn't affect how long we as players experienced travel, just how long our characters were traveling. We ended up going on foot, but I'm not sure if that counts as metagaming or not, because I made a choice based on my knowledge as a player rather than my knowledge as a character. Sure, it was for the benefit of the table's fun, so it would probably be harmless, but it still bugs me that I did that.

[@misad6308]

30:11 This one is more for your pleasure, Mike, but in our current game, I play a Tome Warlock with good alignment, stealthy patron worship and half-decent INT and for the first two months of play, every other character just assumed my PC is a Wizard. "He's using arcane magic, he has a spell book, and he's really smart, OF COURSE he's a Wizard, what else would he be." "Wait, what do you mean 'You're not a Wizard.' Did you get kicked out of college? That's fine, we still think you're a Wiz-- Oh. Those powers aren't yours. Okay..." We also had a similar situation with our two backstory friends, a Cleric in full plate and a DEX based Paladin, where the two had swapped classes assigned to them. That was very fun.

[@tomjordan1170]

Re character stat knowledge, I don't generally have an issue when players say "I'll roll as I have the best survival" as I view it as players vocalising something that would otherwise be unvoiced - ie a character simply scouring the ground for tracks or noticing broken branches because that is something they're tuned into, but I loved hearing a different take on these issues

[@pedrogarcia8706]

I think there are situations in which a person can react to someone else rolling low and not finding something in-character. like if someone rolls low on an investigation check to search a room, it could mean that their character did a visibly half-assed job looking around the room. Like, they just walked in, looked around, and left, and if another character was there to see that, they could reasonably go "hey idiot, you didn't search this room properly. you need to actually open drawers or look behind furniture." It probably doesn't work in every situation but I think a bad roll usually LOOKS like a bad attempt in character. EDIT: I do think perception is harder to justify because it's not like you can visibly "hear better" but I also can't think of a situation where one character is making a perception check and others aren't since usually they are in the same spot, potentially looking at and listening to the same things. But I think this is why passive perception exists, since perceiving passively is more likely than doing any other skill passively.

[@Esperologist]

Yeah, it can get complicated. My group has ranged from failed rolls being 'I got this' and just accepting the failure with confidence, to 'I'm not feeling well, can you check' to get someone else to make an attempt. We've also had times where each person made a check as they entered the room, because it makes sense... and other times where we didn't bother entering a room, even though we knew the other player rolled low. We've missed out on our magic item loot sometimes because of this. (I say, just move it to another location if they want us to have it, or put it in the shop and give us enough gold to afford it... but whatever.) Though, I'm fairly certain that a lot of times, we are given information that our rolls technically didn't get for us... because we technically can't advance the story of the module without that information. (Part of that is on the module's creators fault for not accounting for failing rolls. So the only source of the information is there, and the DC to find it is 12... but we all roll 3 or less, with our highest total being 10. Could have just made it available somewhere else, with less difficulty... just means it takes longer to find. Or had it a non-roll to find it.) I mean, imagine the location of the secret base is written on a note, in the back cover of the 12th book on the 4th shelf of the study... and it's DC 16 to find it if they investigate the room, or DC 12 if searching the bookshelves.... and no one rolls high enough. And that information can't be found anywhere else in the module... so do you give it to them anyway, or let them leave and have no way of finding the BBE's base before the deadline that results in failing the campaign?

[@ikaemos]

The problem with this is that, when running D&D, I prefer to assume that all the PCs are competent. It gels better with its heroic fantasy undertones. What kind of adventurer would handle something as grave as a murder investigation by half-assing the searching of the crime scene?! IMO, 5e characters are much more believable when you attribute their failures to the difficulty of the tasks, or to hostile circumstances (the clues are either tiny or very well hidden, or the struggle scattered them throughout the room).

[@pedrogarcia8706]

@@ikaemos the difficulty of the task is determined by the DC the DM sets, not what your players roll.

[@tadhgbarker4050]

I just realized that my D&D group instinctively doesn't talk about hit points the vast majority of the time. Definitely not in combat, then sometimes we say it once the tension drops, just to have a little break while acknowledging how crazy that combat was, or something. We never said anything about it in our session 0, it's just something that came about naturally (probably at least partially because we don't have healers, so it doesn't really come up).

[@reloadpsi]

I once got jumped on for metagaming when I said "I attack the people worm" so I changed it to "I attack the annelid with a violet hue" for the rest of the combat.

[@c.cooper2877]

If the designers wanted people to not recognize a giant purple worm as the monster Purple Worm, they should have given it a more original name.

[@mentalrebllion1270]

I recently got a compliment by my dm regarding meta knowledge. We had a technical glitch that allowed my screen to show the entire map for me to see. I immediately warned dm and they sighed and I apologized. They said it was fine and they weren’t worried because, as they told me in this moment, I am “very good at not using meta knowledge even if you know something.” I felt flattered by that since this is a very experienced and talented dm who I have a lot of respect for. It made me feel good to have that type of compliment because I genuinely do try very hard to remember what a particular thing a character of mine my actually know. This is because I can memorize things I see almost instantly. Considering how much research I did initially when I joined the dnd hobby, this means I know waaaay more than I should for not being on the dm side of the screen. So, because of that, I work hard to take notes and make it clear to myself what my character does and does not know and react with that knowledge, not my personal meta knowledge…well…not without good reason, like helping welcome a new player to the fold or other social aspects of the table that help everyone there having fun.

[@honoratagold]

There are a lot of benign or even good things that are technically metagaming. Finding a way for a character who wouldn't normally go on the adventure to go on the adventure is *technically* metagaming, but it's not bad. This is how I feel about tactical metagaming like "how many hit points does everyone have?" It's technically metagaming, but also it's fine and even good, depending on the style you're playing. The one thing about monster statblock metagaming that can be a hurdle is if I've homebrewed something and the person gets upset their metagaming was wrong. I don't do this necessarily to "get" metagamers, but to make things more opaque and interesting. I also run for a DM [my duet] or 2-3 DMs [when I run for a party], and I often change monsters because "trying not to metagame, but I actually know this exact statblock" can be less fun as a player instead of just not knowing what the monster's deal is in the first place. Hard agree that pcs metagaming to discover other pc's secrets is really annoying though.

[@Gerendiell]

Dice roll knowledge is something that bothered me a lot. But we are playing online via foundry and it has a neat option called "Blind GM Roll". With that the player still rolls himself (no responsibillity taken away from them by rolling behind the screen), but they don't know the result. With that I try to do all perception based tests (so mostly insight and perception, others might occur). That also leads to interesting situations on the table when on an insight check two players have wildly different results, yet both characters feel that their perception of the situation is right. And the players can't look on the dice to see which one is 'false'. So they actually argue if an NPC can be trusted. For the index cards in online gaming: We just add AC and PP to the character's name in the programm (when using roll20 we add it to the player's name).

[@BraveryBeyond]

I think the most interesting piece not stated about these examples is that they're all problems of metagaming _in Dungeons & Dragons._ A lot of these aren't necessarily problems in other games because they're problems that develop from the mechanics of D&D's rules. Monsters are the primary resource a DM has to antagonize players so knowing all their tricks can be frustrating. Spells being used by NPCs leads to spells being pain points for the same reason knowing monster abilities. D&D being predominantly a war game derivative means that acting on knowledge of separated party members, queues from the DM, or just story structure in general will all be resources players are expected to latch onto. Classes have no attachment to the world and so it does get a little goofy when every Ranger is a ranger. Having varying difficulty classes for rolls leads to a general sense of when you've done poorly, and with a system that's a hard pass/fail with odds generally not in your favour (save for combat rolls), you're nearly expected to have the characters who are best at something be the ones to try, so keeping information from the party is frowned upon. These are all behaviours that are hard coded into the mechanics of D&D! Looking at other games, you can see some clear differences on how they approach these problems as TTRPGs first. The Fantasy Flight Star Wars games use a dice pool and symbols to have more nuanced roll outcomes to the point where failing can still push you forward towards success with advantage symbols. Ironsworn makes the difficulty of accomplishing a task part a die roll in and of itself by rolling 2d10 and judging the outcome on if the player's roll fails against both, rolls higher than both, or lands somewhere in the middle. Blades in the Dark makes success clear as day by having the same results mean similar outcomes with players choosing how many dice they're bringing to the task, while the game master lays out how effective success will be while also making the severity of failure just as clear. All of these systems skirt around the metagaming issue by making metagaming part of the conversation in a positive manner by incorporating discussion about dice rolls and making failure fun (and even putting in mechanisms to soften or avoid consequences). So how can we help D&D? By embracing its limitations. Assume the heroes are competent at their jobs and will have knowledge about the things they encounter. Try to avoid getting too deep into the brush (but it _is_ a wargame, so it might not be avoidable all the time) but let players share knowledge of monster abilities in character as though they've heard stories; dragons breathing ferocious fire, trolls regenerating unless cauterizing their wounds, and a banshee's wail killing those who have no sense of self are easily all folk legends heroes would hear from villagers and fellow adventurers alike. Establishing classes as organizations that form around like minded practices and having unique skills identify them are ways to ground mechanics in lore. When the bard colleges are actual gatherings of like minded travelers, Paladins are oath warriors who follow and project the morals of like minded codes, and Rangers collect in warrior lodges surrounding a particular foe or method of hunting, and suddenly these silly game names have weight in your world. Have players understand that selecting classes and skills will lead them to being _the_ person for certain task and make sure that's gameplay they're interested in. If you're playing a Ranger, you should want to engage in leading the party through the wildness whether its your favoured terrain or not, so play something else if you're not interested in the exploration mechanics. Offer knowledge that should be available to characters with proper proficiencies and class choices. Clerics shouldn't struggle with knowledge about their own religion, just like someone with cartography proficiency shouldn't stumble at reading or drawing a basic map. Only have players roll if they actively engage; don't ask players to make rolls unless their character is focusing on the task to avoid players looking for information they missed. Make sure to include anyone who does roll into the consequences of the action so that not participating means you're safe from any immediate danger failure presents. Lastly, D&D is a game about teams. Teams work best when they know who's strong at what and plying your advantages where possible is what you should be doing. But also embrace parties scrambling for solutions to a problem they aren't naturally equipped to solve and watch as those players find unique ways to use their skills in order to scrape by. TL;DR- These are D&D problems. Other games don't have these metagame problems. Embrace these as features and you'll probably have a better time. Or, y'know, play a game that has problems you can turn into features.

[@kameronkinsey4454]

A few things I've done to combat "dice piling" is having the players roll five or ten Perception checks, Will saves, etc, I write them down and just mark off those numbers once they would apply. As for Secret Knowledge/PVP, I always make sure both sides are okay with another player (or NPC) trying to discern if the player is lying, starting a fight between players, etc. In my mind, players are entitled to their character secrets and can deny a roll and simply tell the other player what they sense, and that's that!

[@f.a.santiago1053]

To prevent players from knowing something is wrong when they fail a roll, I ask players to give me from 3 to 5 d20 rolls in advance and write them in my notes. I then use those as Perception or Insight checks whenever they might come up without their knowledge. It's REALLY moved my games in a very favorable direction. We all like that.

[@kelvinrichardson5324]

I used to pre roll (this was easier playing RoleMaster and Traveller) pages and pages of dice. So not only did players not know the results of these kinds of rolls, they sometimes didn’t know a roll had occurred (passive perception checks and the like)

[@Peter_Cordes]

Another variation on that is Deborah Ann Woll's house-rule: player tells the DM their modifier, DM rolls. She used that for investigation and perception rolls in her relics & rarities mini-series (which is excellent BTW, kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJTEqY2Yis-Zl7s ). She often forgot about her own house-rule, and a player would ask her if she wanted to roll it. Especially Xander. This works well for a situations where there's no need to keep it hidden from a player that there was a roll, e.g. because they were investigating a room or looking for something.

[@tafua_a]

The secrets one reminds me of a recent game I've been playing. My character is a Shadar Kai Warlock who, up until some secrets about the Raven Queen were revealed, was very loyal to her cause. One of the things he adamantly believed in was that "the undead shouldn't exist in any form". The bard happened to be an undead (I forget which one, I never looked it up), and had revealed it to the Pally, but for obvious reasons never revealed it to my warlock until much later, after my PC abandoned the cause. It was so satisfying for me to finally have my character know about that in that moment, when I had known since almost the beginning as a player!

[@wesleykushner8028]

D&D needs to get a little better at naming their adventures because of this. If you tell your players "we're doing curse of strahd" well they know its Strahd because he's one of the more famous characters in DnD's history. The plot hook of "Tomb of Annihilation" doesn't reference any tomb at all. So dms basically have to tell players "You don't know the tomb/strahd exists"

[@samnault716]

On Specific DM knowledge, there is one instance of metagaming that I actively encourage in every one-shot I run: When I design a one-shot, I always add some way for the players to recover their HP, spell slots, abilities, what have you before the final boss encounter. I do this so players don’t feel like they have to “ration” their abilities throughout the adventure, so so I can design a tough boss fight without supposing that the party will be resource drained. Whether it’s a potion, an item, some form of divine or arcane intervention, my players know to be on the lookout for it, and they know that they can go all-out (just this once) during the other encounters. Is it metagaming? Yup, but it makes the one-shots much more fun in my opinion

[@starofaetherius]

I know a LOT of the monster mechanics that our DM throws at us because i often DM as well and know a lot of monster stats. Generally instead of exploiting any weaknesses or warning my party, i (as discreetly as i can) try to make myself vulnerable to whatever its strongest attack is to bait my DM so the other players will see it. Ive been hit by so many cone, line, and grapple moves its surprising ive only killed 1 of my characters by 9th level :D (RIP my Paladin, the black dragon was too much lol) My current character has the sage background so i mostly ask about my character knowledge now but it was fun playing the bait/tank

[@mr_jyggalag]

I run one of the official modules, OotA. One of my players has read all of R.A. Salvatore's books, so he is familiar with the main plot of the module. So, he acknowledged it to me, and I've told him not to worry because adventure differs from books. He not only doesn't spoil information for other players, but is actively helping me! Various neat details from books, descriptions, time lines, and other staff (for example, he provided me with info about Gauntlgrym and its reconstruction). Such a beautiful player. He's playing as a somewhat psionic sorcerer, so I'll gladly give him some lore-focused nightmares or other staff as a reward >:D

[@thehonk3899]

"The dumbest person in our world still knows the difference between a lion and a tiger" Speaking as a zookeeper who has had conversations with zoo guests where they INSIST that I am wrong and that the lion we are looking at is in a fact a tiger... sometimes there ARE in fact people that dumb 😂

[@raicantgame6634]

Aaaaah, I just commented but I have to again cause I just got to the part about character secrets. My BF tried to run Curse of Strahd, which happened to have been my first ever campaign which had ended horrifically for my character pretty early on, so I was excited to get a second chance at it with more experience. I made a character with personal ties to Strahd and Barovia: A dhampir, turned by Strahd himself as part of a cruel game, and seeking revenge. Also a swarmkeeper ranger with a swarm of bats because I went all in on the Aesthetic. So, the other characters found my character sheltering in the Death House for the night, and there was immediate distrust cause let's be honest, my character was pretty spooky. Now, the players knew I was playing a dhampir with ties to Strahd, cause I had said as much when we made them. But their characters didn't. And they basically spent the majority of the first and only session badgering my character to tell them "the truth" and insisting there should be no secrets in the party (of people who literally just met). The thing is, my character did answer all their questions, just not with the whole truth. But they wouldn't KNOW it wasn't the whole truth. It was so frustrating and disruptive. Though the funny part of that story is when I did tell the honest truth about the bats: They're my friends, they just like me lol. The main guy doing the hounding mistook them for a dhampir feature, so thought I was lying about them and kept pushing for "the truth". We don't play with him anymore for a myriad of reasons, one of which was frequent metagaming.

[@robofeeney]

This is completely subjective, but I think that PC secrets should be open among the table, unless the game is working with some paranoia-style mechanics. I play in a respectful group where folks dont try to push themselves in to anothers players reveal, but i've also had players obsessed with wanting to impress everyone at the table with their backstory, getting upset when I laid it bare that it needed to be shared. But it seems more rewarding if the entire group can celebrate the one pc with the twist background roleplaying well or keeping their secret a secret, rather than just that one player knowing whats going on, while the rest wonder the true context of the scene.

[@ninjadragongamer6861]

This video made me realize I've metagamed before without realizing it. Our GM (or as we refer to her, our god) was describing the final boss of the campaign, and although I don't remember what I said specifically, I said what it was (it was a lich, and I might've mentioned the philactory as well). Someone else in the group started reading out the statblock after this as well. Then our DM/god smited him, killing his homebrewed character with low health instantly. Then, she nerfed the strike to let him keep playing/

[@hethoran]

It's really the Dice roll knowledge that gets me. Most other kinds either don't bother me, or I find easy to deal with/avoid. But for some reason, every time someone, usually the one good at it, makes a check and gets below ten, suddenly two or three other players are also "Me too!" rolling. It really breaks the idea that we're telling a story, not just playing a game. Though hit points I like the happy medium of saying that players can speak "in quarters". So you can't tell your allies your exact HP, but you can say whether you're above or under full, 3/4, 1/2, and 1/4 remaining. I get that it can make healing a little more inefficient, but that's sort of the point to me. The idea that you don't always perform to the exact numerical best is part of the experience of being those people, and that it is okay for that to be the case. Having perfect numerical HP and players acting on that, in my experience, leads them to being more concerned with numerical or mechanical perfection in other aspects as well.

[@methmeth]

Hey, I know this video is a little old, but I had a question I wanted to ask the comment section. So, my friend group and I are pretty new to DND (level 3 in Lost Mines of Phandelver). I like to learn about the game systems I play with, so I have a lot more knowledge than the rest of my group, including the DM who technically has played more DND, but I like to watch a lot of videos and stuff, so I probably have more knowledge than him now. So the problem arose last week when the party met Venomfang the Green Dragon from the Lost Mines of Phandelver. So at this point I have some knowledge on dragons but haven't fought one yet. I kinda thought he was a Dragon Wyrmling, or he was weak somehow. Again, we are level 3. Also, on top of that, the Druid in Thunder Tree asked us to get rid of this dragon so that we could find the next location we wanted to go. Also, also my character is a Dragonborn that specifically has a backstory about hating evil dragons for their greed. So when we start talking to Venomfang and one of the characters asks "What are you going to do with all that gold" I just knew I had to initiate a fight with this guy... Not knowing he was a CR 8 Young dragon. So at this point I knew this was either going to be a very tough fight/ we were all going to die. But I didn't know how much of a gap there was. Yeah, this did not go well, especially because the other player characters didn't know my backstory and didn't trust my character and kinda didn't want to fight him. So at this point, should I have meta gamed and checked how strong a Young dragon was. I honestly don't know. The worst part is that, we very luckily got out, I told my backstory and WE WENT BACK. Suffice to say, it went worse than last time (the DM had rolled pretty poorly the first combat). So like is this my fault or my DMs naivete. Because technically the DM did give us signs, this was a very tough opponent. I just didn't think it would be THAT tough. I inadvertently lead to my team getting TPK'd twice...

[@mentalrebllion1270]

I do want to give two examples of me metagaming that I did for the sake of the party. (Yes I know I posted already but felt this needed to be said separately). The first one. I own the module for one of the games I play in. A family member bought it for me as a gift when I was early into the dnd hobby. I have read through it. While I make sure not to read through it as I play, I have a natural ability to memorize what I read so I do retain a decent amount of knowledge in the module. I choose to actively not use this, making a conscious effort to do so. However, during one session I did. This was for good reason though. I play in this module with a party of 3. During this session that day both I and another player had managed to highlight and pull off cool things during the events. However, for our third player, the dice were not in their favor. Realizing this I used my knowledge of the module to pull this player into center stage at a crucial moment. See, there is a crossroads in the module where you can allow this one npc to either be banished or, if you speak up for them, they can remain and be grateful towards your party despite you thwarting them. The other party member had already made it known they were going to allow the exile, so I spoke up. This led to a standstill on what to do with the npc. As a tie breaker the dm turns to our 3rd player and asks what their character wants. After being reassured that the party would support them either way, they decided to speak up for the npc and gain their gratitude. This allowed this player to have their cool moment in that session, no dice rolls needed. The dm even emphasized the impact of their decision which made the player feel good. Why did I do this though? Because that third player? They were new and this was their first campaign. I wanted them to have their moment. I simply realized this was a good way to do so and took my chance and used my meta knowledge to make it happen. It’s not like it was totally out of character for my own character anyway and the other player quickly realized what I was doing when the 3rd player was allowed center stage (and thanked me after because it had escaped their attention til that moment). That’s one time I had used meta knowledge. Another time I had used meta knowledge was to allow a smooth introduction to a new player. They had arrived in the presence of an npc my character had established distrust towards. My dm asked what I wanted to do. I said “well, technically my (character name) would probably have attacked because of (distrusted npc) but I won’t.” Instead I had my character cautiously greet the new character and npc and we roleplayed the tension but we kept it tame and made sure the new player was welcome by all. It was a fun game I will say, but I used meta knowledge in this class to smooth the way for the new player to integrate into the party. So basically when I use meta knowledge, especially actively, I’m usually trying to help give the other players a cool moment or allow more harmonious gameplay. My fun in dnd is the teamwork aspect and I get a lot of fulfillment from the collaboration there so it’s usually when I stretch my meta knowledge. Now, I don’t ever do any of this without dm approval and as you can see from my examples, the dm will play along with them so it isn’t a form of metagaming that steps on their toes.

[@randobeantv7712]

I kind of accidently meta gamed last session because I got personally SO EXCITED to see myconids and knew as long as I didn't hurt them, we'd be safe with them (or at least from what I knew.) I feel like it was something in character to a degree for my character who's curious and wants to help the world would want to go after this thing she's never seen before.

[@DeeEll1]

Knowledge about vampires is common in my setting because 30 years before the campaign started, there was a really really bad vampire problem that was saved by the previous generation of Heroes. The exact details like what constitutes running water may not be well known but they do know running water is bad for vamps. I rule fresh water flowing naturally is is flowing. Salt water doesn't count and neither are water on worked stone

[@lennydotdotdot5580]

Re: Metagaming by knowing the gm is something you, as a gm, can use! You can use it to teach your players how to engage with your game. For example, my players know I reward them for paying attention to inconsistencies and often plant them on purpose (because NPCs are sometimes unreliable narrators). So now they key in to that kind of thing and call back to similar situations in previous sessions. I love it!

[@pelicanofpunishment6]

Oh that first one hits hard. I play in 3 campaigns by 3 DMs. We all play together. They KNOW their monster stats. And they do say "Oh. I know what this is!" And I do sometimes just browse monsters in the books when bored between sessions as I'm thinking about DMing something myself, so I'm often with them. That said, every single one of us has been known to say "I know what this is, but my character doesn't" We fail the "Do you know?" check? We often hit it with a common spell we use that it's either resistant or immune to (if it has them) to "figure out" said resistances/immunities IC. But then, we also look at common enough issues like trolls, vampires (Depending on setting), etc and are like "We live in a world where these DON'T exist and we know their weaknesses. These monsters would have enough rumour that you've heard how to beat them."

[@RobKinneySouthpaw]

27:29 i did this in character. Speaking to the ranger "you're the famous tracker; I'm an Archivist. I'll be right behind you, long as you stay out of the mud"

[@malkavinsoul]

So I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but one of the reasons I find Dungeon World really interesting is because the players are the world archetype for that class. Sure there are other priests and holy people in the world but your character is THE cleric. And I think that's a really interesting concept and gives the DM interesting ways to have the NPCs react to the players and how the PCs fit in the world.

[@jerryharris876]

3:44. As a DM, one thing I have done to stop monster statblock metagaming is to describe different parts of a white dragon & when the players spec for fire damage and cold resistance, the actual monster they encounter is an albino RED dragon. They are speced completely opposite from what they need to be for the battle. After the encounter I tell them that I purposely did that to stop them from doing metagaming (I only did this encounter after multiple times of telling them that YOU might know that, but YOUR CHARACTER doesn't because they haven't read about it or encountered it yet; aka, I only did this encounter after telling them multiple times to stop metagaming). 4:29. That's what I did as a player when we went into the Temple of Elemental Evil. We were in the area where there was a big glowy symbol on the floor and nearby was an alcove of dusty mirrors. I told the party and DM that I know that this is a horrible action because I know what will happen, but that my character wouldn't (I was playing a relatively dumb Barbarian/Monk/Rogue mix), because my character flaw was loving shiny things, he used Mage Hand [he had the Telekinesis feat] (he had enough common sense to not get too close) to clean off the mirrors, so that way the glyph could be EXTRA glowy & the mirrored alcove would be shiny. He made toxic mold go into the air & half the party needed to make CON saves (including him) or get a disease where they would die in 2 days if not treated... unfortunately, the other party members (I passed the CON save) got infected & had to use Greater Restoration and Remove Disease (spells they already had prepared) to cure themselves. As a player I did nervous, crying, laughter and said that I was sorry (while still laughing), which the players took as me being a dick purposefully (which was not the case). 30:00. For that same Barbarian/Monk/Rogue I showed the other players what I could do by describing my character's background, using one of the abilities against a random player (I used Telekinesis against them, they failed their saving throw, and got pushed back from me {no damage}), and when in my first fight with that group I almost singlehandedly took down a young dragon (evaded the aoe's, attacked twice and raged the first turn then did 5 attacks the second turn, while getting automatic sneak attack by myself (I did reckless rage [give myself Advantage on my attack rolls], and one way to trigger sneak attack is to have advantage on the attack roll).

[@ppunion]

My thoughts on the mentioned types of metagaming: Type 1 (Monster stat block knowledge): Don't ever use knowledge from that to act. Fx, when I hear that we are facing a dragon, I always ask the GM what my character already knows about dragons. I then expect my GM to tell me anything that is common knowledge even the things that aren't actually true but is commonly believed. Then I ask for a knowledge arcana roll (if I have the skill) and then I act on what my character knows. Type 2 (Spell knowledge): Oh man... This one... Ouch! I'm so guilty of metagaming here and I really need to stop. I don't direct others on how to play their characters. Fortunately, most of my characters are wizards with a shit ton of knowledge skills and spellcraft... But still. I need to dial it way down. Thanks for this video. Type 3 (Knowing what the other characters are up to): Again... I'm guilty of that one aswell. I didn't used to be, but I have slipped and slipped. Thanks for the reminder. I will be more aware of this. Type 4 (Metagaming what my GM usually does): Yeah no. I am not guilty of that one. I'm guilty of being way more paranoid than I need or should be, but other than that nope. Type 5 (Guessing the story twist): Not guilty of that one either. Not even subconciously. And it's not because I'm a saint. It's because I'm not clever enough :D Type 6 (dice roll knowledge): I'm probably guilty of that one a bit. More in a way of knowing that it was a bad roll so something bad might happen. I don't try to force an extra roll. Type 7 (knowledge of each others skills): Honestly, I do think this isn't that bad, especially for a party that has spent time together. Eventually, the party should be well aware of each others skill level. Discussing HP actually bothers me more. I tend to say that I split my HP pool into 5 levels and tell them that I'm either at full health, slightly wounded, wounded, badly wounded, unconcious. Type 8 (level knowledge): This doesn't bother me that much. In karate that have colored belts for each level of training. It would be reasonable that characters would say that they have trained to be at a certain training level. Type 9 (Acting on other players secrets): I actually agree with this. It is fine to act on triggers in game and dig a little, but digging more into someone you know have a secret is way off. Asking questions of interest is a good idea, because it allows the other players to reveal stuff about their characters they want out there, while asking questions of suspicion (without a reason) are trying to ferret out information they don't want to share, which sucks when it is being done for no reason other than out of game knowledge. Me asking the group fighter what is going on when I see that he can't hit the broad side of a barn with his weapon is cool enough because I have a reason to ask. Me asking deep questions about the fighters back story because out of game I know that it really is a mage in disguise sucks. (in d&d 3.5 I played with a mage that was hiding in full plate and tower shield using a weapon they weren't proficient with and with a low strength score. for a grand total of -16 to hit)

[@coffee1139]

Way late to this video, but the way i get around exact hp numbers while still maintaining information is by using terms like bloodied (under 50%) Ropey (under 25%), buggered (under 10%) and the last being a not so friendly term theat reflects "please for the love of your deity cleric heal me" (no set % but basically 1 or 2 hits) this works really well at my table as it's something you can describe your character as, without giving exact numbers. And since i gave the group these terms in a session 0, its worked fantastically for everyone involved

[@zappahcracker]

I think this is a good example of metagaming done right: Sparing the wall of text of details, essentially my character is an aspiring chef and working the kitchen at a party. My allies are enjoying the party, but are wary of a would be assassination against our lives. Someone brings them drinks, but my character isn't present, and thus can't check the drinks for poison. My solution was that my character was delivering another round of food to the table (something already done several times organically) and could subsequently be offered a drink and discover the poison. This allowed me to be useful with a feat I previously took, it moved along the story, and it let my party have a fun chase + interrogation while I got to be the 'hero.'

[@theawkwardpotato1973]

29:15 - While technically metagaming, you could translate it to "This player is 'bloodied,' whereas this one is above half and probably hasn't taken as many hits, so I should heal them over this other one." Roleplayed well, this is a good balance between using mechanics and using flavor. It's sort of both in tandem. Technically, it's using mechanics to influence flavor which then influences mechanical decisions which then feeds back into the story. I might be overthinking this a bit, but I think you get the point. To build on that, maybe instead of tracking hit points, you can track what wounds the DM says the monster gave the player and where. Someone got a bite to the shoulder and another took a deep claw to an arm? That could be an interesting way to play a highly intelligent highly perceptive character that always has an eye on every ally in the battlefield.

[@nicholasromero238]

My poor dad was running pf 2e for the first time after I had been playtesting it and even had a campaign and a third under my belt, so I recognized nearly every monster he threw at us; perhaps worse was that my character was very smart, and from an RP pov, had justification to know things. That said, every time I recognized a monster, I kept my mouth shut, or geeked out at how cool and scary the monster is without actually revealing the abilities. My character; an alchemist gadgeteer; really helped with this because she'd still try to cycle through bomb types to find out weaknesses, and because she's a bit scared of melee, tends to run away (which played up and emphasized me saying that the monster was tough and scary). Sometimes, I'd even lob types that I knew would be resisted because it's what my character would do (experimental method and all), plus it showed off a strength of the monster. The only times I actually metagamed was in situations where my character WOULD know (ex; throw fire at the tallow monster, it should melt it; chuck sonic damage at the crystal monster, the harmonic frequency should shatter it; and other such things that a chemist actually would reasonably be able to sus out)

[@PrincessDerpy]

Ugh the part about outing player secrets reminds me of my group at the start of the campaign. I guess one guy super hated that we weren’t “communicating” well enough and made our characters all sit in a circle and ask each other any questions we wanted and if we didn’t want to answer we had to pay 15 gold to the person asking. It was fucking stupid, of course nobody told the truth and players who didn’t care of course didn’t ask any questions or didn’t have anything to say so it was only for the benefit of whoever got satisfaction from prying secrets out of people. Absolutely could have destroyed a lot of character narratives ESPECIALLY for the character I was playing at the time who was in the middle of having their secret unfold naturally. So of course I immediately looked suspicious cause this friendly, outgoing bard didn’t want to talk all the sudden :/ Don’t do this guys. Yeah people not telling you everything in game is frustrating but unless you have a very in game justifiable reason to be suspicious, just let their story play out

[@caseycoker1051]

I'm actually playing in a game where metagame knowledge isn't just allowed, it's encouraged. The game is basically about real-world people who got pulled into a crazy mega dungeon. The mega dungeon itself is created from a combination of fantasy tropes and pop culture references. As players, we are expected to use our own knowledge of these things to solve problems.

[@johnforgrave7125]

I had an experience once with something that I couldn't really decide if it would be metagaming or not, so I just messaged my DM on discord and asked him privately. It sort of comes down to me not knowing whether the DM was phrasing things a certain way on purpose or if he was accidentally tipping his hand, and I didn't want to take advantage if it was the latter. Basically there was a murder mystery situation (think Clue or Murder on the Orient Express) in a small village and our party members were the only people who weren't suspects since we had just arrived in town, so the chieftain tasked us with solving the case. We had narrowed our list of suspects down to two and were interviewing them separately. I noticed that one of the NPCs tended to talk about the victim in the present tense and the other tended to use the past tense. I (the player) know that this often indicates that the one who is speaking in the past tense has had time to process the information that this person is dead, and the person speaking in the present tense is still coming to terms with the fact. Grief counsellors can tell you when you lose somebody it can be difficult emotionally to make the transition to speaking of them in the past tense. On the other hand, police interrogators will say that a suspect already speaking of the recently deceased in the past tense is a big red-flag. Over Discord I let my DM know that I had picked up on this and asked if it was a clue or a slip-up. It turns out it was actually the latter, but my DM decided it was okay if my character picked up on it anyway since he has the Gambler background and expertise in Insight... so it makes sense that he would be really good at picking up subtle tells like that. Once the DM had given me the go-ahead I shared this observation in-character with the rest of the party. At that point our barbarian intimidated the suspect that we were now convinced was guilty until they finally spilled the beans (I know it wouldn't hold up in real court since we basically forced a confession, but hey... it's DnD).

[@williamgordon5443]

One extra viewpoint about the beginning of the video about everyone knows something about the creatures in their world is that there is one extra twist. In a d&d game, these are characters that are going out of their way to actively engage with the monsters in their world, it's closer to someone in the real world who is about to travel to a new area and look into the wild animals of a new area, like traveling to Australia and looking into the creatures living there, so the characters in the d&d world would probably of looked into the possible threats in there world before they started traveling and know something about the monsters of their world.

[@DarcOne13]

I actually just did a creature feature last week with an owlbear. I told the players "you've heard of owlbears, but this one doesn't look like the ones in stories. It's mangy and emaciated with viscera dripping from its beak." Then it spit acid on them.

[@heykak]

I have a very good memory for monsterblocks and what not. I also am the person in my group that spends the most time looking stuff up (for whatever reason). I have 2 ways of countering this. 1. I know that it can happen, so I am aware of it happening. 2. I almost always play either high int, or at least high knowledge characters, to have a higher opportunity to succeed on a roll. my group also enjoys my unspecified reactions (I will react to a monster based on descriptions, but I refuse to elaborate until given permission/the session is over)

[@EnderSpy007]

One of the instances of metagaming that I have done recently is a decent example of trying to garner information or move in a specific direction but in the context of my character. My character is a hexblade warlock, a sort of John Wick style assassin/muscle for an Illuminati type organization who is trying to control everything. In trying to take down his former cohorts / employers (for being evil douchebags) one of our players died in combat. My character only has like a 10 in intelligence, and I didnt think it made much sense for him to know much about resurrection magic. So, despite doing research on what spells we could use to bring him back IRL, my character carried his fallen companion's body and demanded that someone bring him back. When a knowledgable and important NPC was talking to us about what happened, I demanded that he explain more. "What do you mean? Explain. How do we bring him back!?" I knew full well that Reincarnate and Resurrection were our only options but I made that NPC explain it to my character because my character doesn't really understand all the facets of magic, especially the kinds he doesn't use. This gave a story reason for my character to learn about what kind of magic we could use, and what our options were. This is something we probably would have been told eventually anyways, but I felt my character would be extremely vigilant in trying to find the answers as soon as possible. He even acted as though time was of extreme importance until he was told that it was irrelevant. He knew time was limited but didn't know the specifics (like that revivify has to happen within a minute, and beyond that its days) and my character was much more used to talking / intimidating someone into giving him an answer, rather than doing research or something. He also couldn't understand why the wizards couldn't do anything (we were at a wizard college) and yelled at them demanding something be done ("Aren't you people wizards? Aren't you supposed to be able to DO something??"). This was one of my favorite moments as a player because I felt like I combined OOC knowledge and character personality to make a realistic interpretation of what my character would do, and it was really rewarding to see that I had gotten somewhere where we could practically influence the game effectively without sacrificing character development.

[@KnightsRealm98]

For the knowing about monsters sections, in my mind it depends on the monster. I think of the Witcher, most people know what a griffin or a drowner or a siren is, but something like a leshen or fiend or the distinction between wyvern, forktail, slyzard, basilisk, and dragon is only known by more educated folk, generally Witchers, Oxenfurt scholars, or groups like the Reavers. Plus, even creatures that are widely known like vampires or spectres are often misunderstood or mythologized while the truth is very different. So where a creature like an ogre or manticore will probably not be too surprising to your run-of-the-mill peasant in Krynn, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or your homebrew worlds, something like a djinn or sphinx might either be lesser known or what knowledge someone might have may be misinformation or only partially true. Of course, this is just my perspective

[@sparklefulpaladin]

With the survival example, I think an excellent example was Fjord rolling survival in c2 of Critical Role while they were on the ocean because he was a sailor, despite his super low wisdom score. With the caster thing, I keep thinking of Gilmore from c1... for the longest time, I was convinced that man was a wizard, not a sorcerer.

[@ernesthakey3396]

For my 3.5 games, there are some things pretty much everybody knows... Some examples: Trolls are vulnerable to acid and fire. Lycanthropes are vulnerable to silver weapons. Fey are vulnerable to cold iron weapons. Skeletons are vulnerable to being smashed. Zombies are vulnerable to being slashed. These things feature in bards' stories, but also, your local alchemist or weaponsmith may well advertise their wares as effective vs various common monsters that adventurers might face, in an effort to boost their sales. However, "everybody knows" knowledge is also sometimes incomplete, or even incorrect - for example crystalline trolls are immune to acid and vulnerable to sonic damage, and they are very rare, so not everybody knows about those trolls...

[@misad6308]

Just wanted to chime in about the "Playing your stats" kind of thing for anyone who might be unsure about how to handle it - here's how our group does it. Low INT can mean dumb, but it can also mean sheltered or just plain old uneducated. You choose how you play that, but whichever approach you choose, you'll be held to that standard. If you're playing a character notably smarter or notably dumber than you, you can regulate their knowledge or capacity to come up with ideas using "idea rolls" - I heard of it somewhere and have been using it since. You tell the DM your plan and ask for an idea roll, the DM makes up a DC, you roll an INT check, and if it beats the DC, your character can pitch the idea to the group. If not, you as a player have already shared it with the rest of the group, so if someone who didn't think of this with a high INT character also make an idea roll to pitch the same strategy. It effectively redistributes player knowledge between the characters as appropriate. We also call rolls for monster knowledge idea rolls, especially when your character doesn't know shit but you as a player do and want to know if your character would think of that approach by coincidence alone.

[@kevinbaird6705]

23:07 We generally just embrace the glorious failure. We all missed some roll to notice being "made" when undercover in a session, and it became a joke for several subsequent sessions: "This is completely safe, because we know for certain that we aren't being followed!", etc.

[@MrOdrzut]

Rolling int/knowledge/arcana/religion/history etc. for metagaming knowledge is good for monsters too. As a DM I have a default playstyle (usually pretty dumb monsters + some modifications to balance the encounter). Which makes the encounters feel very similar to each other. So I force myself to roll these checks for monsters and if they roll well they flank and switch targets and escape if they should. If they roll badly they are just hitting the first target they find over and over. Which is dangerous too (because death saves). That way smart monsters behave differently than dumb ones and players see that I'm not "making it easy for them" which increases the stakes and makes the encounter more dramatic. Some example rolls (players are encouraged to do them too): - perception to see who's the most hurt or rouchly how many "hits" it will take to finish some monster - arcana/detect magic to see what level enemy spellcasters are, what is their specialty, how many spell they have left - insight to see who the enemy wants to target, or how close they are to escaping - religion/arcana/history etc. for knowing skills/spells that a given enemy might have - int for monsters to see if they are smart enough to flank, switch targets after somebody falls unconscious or flee when the fight is decided

[@tafua_a]

Also, I think we can use fairy tales as the basis for what an average character might know about a monster. To me, a nat 1 on knowledge of, say, a wyvern, isn't "you have no clue what this is", but rather "this is a giant flying lizard. Dragons are giant flying lizards. This is a dragon, and if might breathe fire"

[@domenceuspriest]

Monster stat block metagaming: creates more work for GMs. Really frustrating when spend money on third party supplement (like Tome of Beasts) and players have already read it and recognize monsters by the token art I use. So to reduce the temptation to metagame, I have to put more work in to adjust the stat blocks if I want to throw a mysterious or really weird monster the party has never seen before. Players who metagame excessively in this style cause more work for their GMs by making it harder for them to use tools that are supposed to streamline things. It ends up making games harder to run for GMs, which will affect players. INT is an interesting thing - I like to use Soren from Dragon Prince as a great example of a fighter with low INT who still is effective in his specialty - fighting. He’s definitely not “book smart,” but he knows tactics, and he’ll remember details that are relevant to that activity - he’ll remember foes who are agile or armored, he’ll recognize when a monster has a blind spot or favors a limb. He probably won’t recall this knowledge from a book or hearing a story, but will probably have really solid retention from experiential learning. Great explanation of “desensitizing” players to low Perception rolls. And I also roll “tension dice” - sometimes for determining things but mostly to mess with them. :) I appreciate this video because you helped me reflect on metagaming - that it’s less the type of metagaming but more the effects it has on people at the table (players and GM). Great job!

[@TheSpoegefugl]

I can also recommend to watch Legal Kimchi's video on metagaming after you guys are done watching this one. He also talks about different forms of meta gaming, and that certain types are basically unavoidable and stuff like that.

[@Trethar512]

1) Whoa, you played with a Tre! Cool! 2) I've heard of what was called a 'helpful metagaming,' similar to what you were talking about in the 'Character Stat Knowledge' area where the players know each others' HP. It's figuring out, in combat, an opponents AC - not from the MM or stat block but just from the current encounter: Player - "I roll a 19 to hit, and I know that hits because an 18 hit in the last round. I'll roll for damage." Is this metagaming, or just gaming?

[@Cassapphic]

I've had a few weird instances of this lately, one is me changing the plans for how I introduce the next arc of my campaign after realising that I'd be pulling a similar trick for the third time in one campaign, of having evidence be found behind the back of some noble the party already met that implicates the noble in some crime they've been investigating, the two scenarios were fairly different, the first nobles were prime suspects in the case already and the nobles while being cross examined made a suggestion that just bought them some time before their next move fully exposed them. The others were a much more "the one time you weren't really suspicious was the one time you should've been" about nobles that offered to collaborate in finding the mcguffin because they needed it for their own tragic motivation. I wanted to have my next villain be an evil lich disguised as a noble and have the players find a pathway into his experimental laboratory beneath his manor, but that does feel too samey. The other type of metagaming that really annpys me is the videogamey "we should go do the sidequest before we do the main story" which often I'd be happy that my players want to do more of what I offer thrm, but if the current scenario I've already introduced as being non linear and also time pressured, I want the players to sometimes let those sidequest hooks simmer so they can actually get some character advancement, I don't wanna hold them at level 4 for months because they put off the milestones I mentioned pre emptively I'd feel mean.

[@jameswhitehead9697]

I don't have much of an issue with metagaming outside of when it ruins the fun of the other players at the table. When I played AD&D, we all new the Monster Manual backwards & forwards - all having read it over and over and over. And while we were good at not using this inside knowledge, we were never truly surprised or shocked at what creature was thrown at us. Which is why when the original Fiend Folio came out or DM asked us not to read too much of it. ;-) I've never found that talking about AC or HP or skills during combat or encounters somehow reduced my immersion. It is clunky but we aren't there - our players are there and this is the best approximation we can make. My long time DM was know for very detailed & long winded descriptions of the rooms our party wanted to enter if there was something there - "So the bas-relief remind you, Frodo, of the post-rococo early baroque period of the antediluvian empire...oh...and Demogorgon is in the room as well..." So we stopped listening to the details as we knew something was coming our party's way. Finally, as a 'forever player,' I do feel that one type of metagaming doesn't get discussed as much - DM metagaming. Very hard to keep in check, I know, but it always seems as if the party comes up against situations and creatures to fight that specifically counter all the neat and wonderful toys/skills/abilities/powers/spells that the character has. All the time. Pick up that Vorpal Blade? Huge uptick in the number of hydras faced. As I said, hard to keep in check but it is ok to let the players successfully try out those new features - at least once, then feel free to challenge them as needed. Kato

[@stevecarter8810]

30:13 i had fun with this. as my urchin wild magic sorcerer's magic started to show, he bought robes and looted a magical book (he is illiterate) thinking he must be a wizard, only later to discard it after being kidnapped by the fae and told he owes debts. Currently he thinks it's all directly from the fae and will be snatched away any minute.

[@hadesblackplays]

yesterday i had a session with my table and at the beginning, before the game started i told them: "look, i actually dont care if you share info between games about your backstories or powers, but the moment we start, the only way your character would know something if their were present and or/lived said moment, reunion, combat, etc, or if someone in the party shares that info with them. if not, your character doesnt know that specific detail. that's what i consider metagaming and if you do it, i will notice it, i'll roll a dice and something will happen, maybe not in that exact moment, but ill make a note about it

[@ecgrey]

Classes also have theme attached to them, and that's how NPCs perceive them most, in-game. You could also make the argument that this is offset by background as well, but there is theme written in each class, so people would be able to distinguish between a generic "Cleric" and a "Paladin".

[@Neophoia]

me and my co-dm has always done the "roll to see if you know the monster" and often let the player use a skill that feels fitting for the situation. So far non of our players have thought that this house rule is bad, they mostly seem to enjoy it (and none have voiced negative opinions relating to it). we do have it take an action to attempt, and the DC is something we have a table to decide on. It's also fun to be able to maybe tell them a small hint if the player has no idea, but the dice say that the character knows something about the monster. Like it's creature type, or if it has a special ability, or a resistance.

[@robttore2]

For the HP thing, a DM I watch does something. 'Bloody' for less than half and 'Mortal' for under 10% HP, and that's how the characters and such talk about things in character. So, someone saying 'I'm Bloodied' or 'I'm Mortal' for how low HP they are. And the DM will call that out for monsters that one can tell. So Beasts and Humanoids and things, but not Monstrosities or Constructs.

[@blahblahghost]

We play Pathfinder 2e primarily, and it defaults to secret checks for a lot of rolls. I *had* been using open rolls but switched to secret checks after a player rolled low on a check and tried to get other PCs to double check the work they did *only* because they knew they rolled low. The description I gave was befitting their critical failure, that they assumed they'd done a good job. They chose to ignore that in a way that really rubbed me the wrong way, and we switched to secret checks to entirely eliminate the potential for that kind of meta-gaming.

[@413Jesse]

The way I took care of the dog piling issue is to always have a penalty for failing a skill check. An easy example is if you fail you gain a level of exhaustion, or for perception/knowledge checks I will have every check yield SOMETHING but the fails are false information or unimportant red herrings.

[@Spartanunit5]

Recently I was in a game and the DM had us find this person that was trapped in a sarcophagus. It was made very clear to us that this had not been opened in a long time. We weren’t 100% sure if it was an elderly high elf or a lich. We asked the DM over the table if we could try to discern an heasked if our characters had any experience with liches. Luckily my character was a former Vecna Cultist. So I was able to warn the party that that a lich was inside due to familiarity with lichdom.

[@Esperologist]

I've played characters with secrets, and I've had three outcomes. Rarest : The secret naturally came out, either accidentally just in normal role play or the GM setting up to release some information. Moderate : The campaign didn't last long enough for it to matter. Just something cool only I and the GM knew about. Usually : One of the players got wind of the secret, then their character started digging for it. The first character I played in a proper campaign was in Dragon Age. She was a mage who didn't believe she was a mage. And straight away, with her barely doing any magic... everyone was pressing to convince her she was a mage. It was our groups first campaign, so we were learning things... but still, it ruined what could have been an interesting story. (Because of the lore of the setting, and character personality... if she accepted it straight away... I would have had to role a new character. Luckily, we dropped the campaign before I had to give in and make a new character.) I'm actually considering making another character like that... where they are convincing themselves they aren't something because of the stigma... and if the other players force it, then that character 'leaves' and I bring out another one.

[@DistortedSemance]

I hold the minority position that metagaming is not intrinsically harmful, and in fact often beneficial, and every instance of metagaming being negative is actually just problematic player behavior in general. The example of butting into a scene that your character doesn't know is happening can either be a convenient way to get a PC into a scene that they would otherwise miss or it can be obtrusive spotlight stealing. A player with good instincts for sharing the narrative will know the difference, and use "metagaming" only when it's helping the story, rather than just benefitting their own character. In the case of character secrets, I have almost always found that "metagaming" actually leads to more interesting narratives, because the players are free to push conflict on their own ("hey, you've been acting strange lately, is everything alright?") instead of being stuck with no way to escalate that conflict. As RPG players, we are both author and audience in one, and it's extremely hard to make interesting narrative decisions if you're not allowed to act on what's happening in the narrative! I have played characters with secrets where every odd quirk or hint that they were hiding something went completely ignored, and it sucked so much. Where is the fun in keeping a secret if it is never in danger of getting out?

[@hyenaedits3460]

re: level knowledge It makes sense for levels to be a thing in universe depending on context. I'm thinking of how ski slopes are labelled based on difficulty. We do have systems for categorizing risk or difficulty in real life.