I’ll take a meta gamer over someone with “my guy” syndrome any day. At least they’ll progress the plot.

Tip for shy/annoying/cowardly/etc. characters is to make it a thing they overcome. My current character is just a lil’ guy who basically got possessed so he’s constantly scared shitless but he’s trying his best and I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to get him out of his shell or even just to feel like he has to say something whether he likes it or not.

Ok, I’ll throw my hat in the ring.

Metagaming is fine, actually.

Obviously, don’t read the module you’re a player in, but knowing to use fire on trolls is just basic game knowledge. It’s ok to be good at the game, because it is a game. If you’re playing dungeons and dragons, or pathfinder, or any other rpg that spends most of the pages on combat rules, then you’re playing a tactics game. I like tactics games (I’m not good at them, but that’s a separate conversation).

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come up with a brilliant plan to do a thing, and then be told that I’m not allowed to do it because me figuring out the puzzle is metaknowlede.

It is exclusively in the tabletop rpg space that being good at the game is considered a bad thing. It’s in a similar vein that I hate tutorials in video games, especially when I’m being prevented from doing things that I already know how to do (because I’ve been playing games for multiple decades now and I have some amount of media literacy) for no other reason than the game hasn’t taught me yet. So arbitrarily, I’m not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire? That’s asinine.

If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table.

My low wiz eldrich knight that keeps touching blatantly cursed shit and just rolling with it.

Great suggestion! Will try to work on it next time. I must admit my characters have very little character development usually. I should work on that!

Yes. It’s so annoying. A lot of good roleplaying is imagining a way your character would have/know something. Obviously you can take it too far, but it’s an important skills for keeping the game moving. Like, say one character is obviously falling for some sort of trap by a doppelganger. OOC you either know or are suspicious, but IC you don’t. You want to go with them so they aren’t alone. But you can’t just say that. Say something like, “I’ll tag along, I’m getting stir crazy and could go for a walk.” It’s technically metagaming but it’s a very different situation than doing something like telling that character not to go because the other person is suspicious when you genuinely have no reason to think they are.

Another good example of metagaming that so many people view as okay that they don’t even view it as metagaming is telling your party OOC how many hit points you have remaining the healer choosing who to heal and with what spells based on the information. Your character doesn’t know that number. A lot of times all you really know IC is if someone has less than half of their hit points remaining and a vague idea that barbarians can take more hits than wizards.

Obviously there are scenarios where this doesn’t hold but I find in general that metagaming which benefits everyone, doesn’t completely ruin encounters, and is done with an excuse that your character would actually reasonably do is typically okay.

Another example. I remember in one game we were trying to open a creaky rusty door quietly. Someone asked if anyone had oil. We all checked our inventory and nobody did. He explained that my character in heavy armor would likely have some because regular maintenance of it would require that. Which seemed fine. The DM agreed. So my character hands his character some oil.

I like the idea of some kind of fighter who fights with a variety of cursed weapons.

Not the only negative, “this blade is everdull and gives you bone-itis” type of curse. The “you can cut through anything but you need to bleed before you can sheath it” type curse.

Ok, I’ll throw my hat in the ring.

Metagaming is fine, actually.

Obviously, don’t read the module you’re a player in, but knowing to use fire on trolls is just basic game knowledge. It’s ok to be good at the game, because it is a game. If you’re playing dungeons and dragons, or pathfinder, or any other rpg that spends most of the pages on combat rules, then you’re playing a tactics game. I like tactics games (I’m not good at them, but that’s a separate conversation).

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come up with a brilliant plan to do a thing, and then be told that I’m not allowed to do it because me figuring out the puzzle is metaknowlede.

It is exclusively in the tabletop rpg space that being good at the game is considered a bad thing. It’s in a similar vein that I hate tutorials in video games, especially when I’m being prevented from doing things that I already know how to do (because I’ve been playing games for multiple decades now and I have some amount of media literacy) for no other reason than the game hasn’t taught me yet. So arbitrarily, I’m not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire? That’s asinine.

If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table.

if your headed to a place called troll canyon you should probably do some research on what trolls are weak to beforehand

if your headed to a place called troll canyon you should probably do some research on what trolls are weak to beforehand

So arbitrarily, I’m not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire?

You say arbitrarily but it’s not arbitrary. It is dependant on the situation. If trolls aren’t super common and your characters have never dealt with a troll? It makes zero sense that you would know that they’re weak to fire damage. Question. Do you know how to escape a car that’s upside down and submerged in water? Because if you don’t, there are a lot of things that are going to get you killed due to not being aware of what the issue is. Now, you might have learned it in the past due to some particular event or due to reading it in something or being aware due to work stuff or whatever else. But the point is that it’s a danger that not everyone on the earth is familiar with despite the fact that it is a hyper common vehicle and water covering the vast majority of the earth’s surface.

Now instead of cars and water being everywhere, it’s a specific monster in a specific location you’ve probably never visited and the internet doesn’t exist. Want to explain to me how it’s “arbitrary” that your character would know the vulnerabilities of a specific creature that is from an area you’re not from? That you’ve got no crossover with? That your character has no experience with?

Your perspective comes from that of a player that is frustrated but not of someone who is looking at the world as a whole. Your whole comment talks about how angry you get from being prevented to do certain things but none of it reflects anything from how the world would work internally.

You call it asinine but it’s way more ridiculous to think that as a lower level character from the middle of nowhere that you’d have intimate adventuring knowledge of a creature that isn’t super common in most situations.

If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine.

I mean that is literally the game… Fun fact on the definition of metagaming.

Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like when a character in a movie knows it’s a movie and acts accordingly. For example, a player might say, “The DM wouldn’t throw such a powerful monster at us!” or you might hear, “The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door — let’s search it again!”

For a lot of us this isn’t a game first. It’s a Roleplaying Game first. The way that you want to play is rejecting a lot of the roleplay aspect of it in favor of mechanical benefit. Phrasing that as “play lets pretend with dice” just feels bizarrely tone deaf considering that is literally the entire core concept of the game.

The thing about your comment here that is frustrating to me as a DM is that it doesn’t factor in anyone else. It’s all about how your plan was ruined and about how things prevent you from doing various things but there’s no consideration or reference to anyone else in the party. How enjoyable do you think it is for other players if someone in the party is consistently saying “I would know the thing” and providing no reasonable explanation for why you’d know the thing?

Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I’d imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn’t know anything about them.

If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist’s fire at the ready seems a bit strange.

Ultimately I’d consider it to be on the GM’s shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.

Most people know about sucking venom from a snakebite, even if they’re not clear on details. They also know you probably don’t want to wave a red cape in front of a bull.

if your headed to a place called troll canyon you should probably do some research on what trolls are weak to beforehand

Most people know about sucking venom from a snakebite, even if they’re not clear on details. They also know you probably don’t want to wave a red cape in front of a bull.

So arbitrarily, I’m not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire?

You say arbitrarily but it’s not arbitrary. It is dependant on the situation. If trolls aren’t super common and your characters have never dealt with a troll? It makes zero sense that you would know that they’re weak to fire damage. Question. Do you know how to escape a car that’s upside down and submerged in water? Because if you don’t, there are a lot of things that are going to get you killed due to not being aware of what the issue is. Now, you might have learned it in the past due to some particular event or due to reading it in something or being aware due to work stuff or whatever else. But the point is that it’s a danger that not everyone on the earth is familiar with despite the fact that it is a hyper common vehicle and water covering the vast majority of the earth’s surface.

Now instead of cars and water being everywhere, it’s a specific monster in a specific location you’ve probably never visited and the internet doesn’t exist. Want to explain to me how it’s “arbitrary” that your character would know the vulnerabilities of a specific creature that is from an area you’re not from? That you’ve got no crossover with? That your character has no experience with?

Your perspective comes from that of a player that is frustrated but not of someone who is looking at the world as a whole. Your whole comment talks about how angry you get from being prevented to do certain things but none of it reflects anything from how the world would work internally.

You call it asinine but it’s way more ridiculous to think that as a lower level character from the middle of nowhere that you’d have intimate adventuring knowledge of a creature that isn’t super common in most situations.

If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine.

I mean that is literally the game… Fun fact on the definition of metagaming.

Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like when a character in a movie knows it’s a movie and acts accordingly. For example, a player might say, “The DM wouldn’t throw such a powerful monster at us!” or you might hear, “The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door — let’s search it again!”

For a lot of us this isn’t a game first. It’s a Roleplaying Game first. The way that you want to play is rejecting a lot of the roleplay aspect of it in favor of mechanical benefit. Phrasing that as “play lets pretend with dice” just feels bizarrely tone deaf considering that is literally the entire core concept of the game.

The thing about your comment here that is frustrating to me as a DM is that it doesn’t factor in anyone else. It’s all about how your plan was ruined and about how things prevent you from doing various things but there’s no consideration or reference to anyone else in the party. How enjoyable do you think it is for other players if someone in the party is consistently saying “I would know the thing” and providing no reasonable explanation for why you’d know the thing?

Forcing a whole table full of people to deliberately be ignorant and pretend to “discover” things that they already know isn’t fun, it’s tedious. Even most “roleplay over gaming” types are still there to roleplay being a heroic skilled figure, not a dribbling moron that knows nothing about their own world.

Pretending to be a moron can be fun for some players, if they’re freely choosing to do it themselves. Being forced into it, especially if it happens multiple times, isn’t fun for most people. The guy on the right in that meme does not look like someone who’s having fun, just someone who’s briefly tolerating some bullshit so he can get on with the rest of the game.

This is the DM being thin-skinned about the fact that they wanted the players to have a challenge, and when it turned out not to be, wanting them to pretend like it was anyway so that they can tell themselves it was a good game.

Question. Do you know how to escape a car that’s upside down and submerged in water? Because if you don’t, there are a lot of things that are going to get you killed due to not being aware of what the issue is. it’s a danger that not everyone on the earth is familiar with despite the fact that it is a hyper common vehicle

This is a bad example. The point of the fire thing is that all experienced RPG players or readers of common fantasy literature know “trolls -> fire”. You’ve picked a scenario that would also be obscure outside of a hypothetical game outside of the real world. I’m not questioning the possible existence of a world where professional mercenaries don’t know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but I do question its value as a fun game setting.