Hi folks,

So I started actually playing tabletop RPGs for the first time last August, as a GM with my group of friends. Just recently, I've had the pleasure of playing in some other GMs' games. I have some thoughts on how I've seen GMs run their games and want to know what people think of them. I think that most GMs run Pathfinder in a way that increases metagaming, and I want to raise some suggestions that might avoid this, but also give more work to the GM...

I fondly remember reading the old Red Box over twenty years ago when I was about nine years old. The Dungeon Masters Rulebook has an introductory adventure that tells the DM:

If any of the carrion crawler's attacks hit, the character must make a Saving Throw vs. Paralysis (one per hit) or be paralyzed. If any Saving Throw is failed, tell the victim "You fall over." Tell the rest of the players that they see the victim fall, but do not say whether the character is alive or dead.

Ah, the exquisite fear and uncertainty of being a Level 1 player in early D&D! Not only was every player one or two hits away from death, but many game players at the time had little experience with RPGs outside of tabletop gaming, and so might not have known the relative power levels or special abilities of many of the monsters they were facing. This must have been a terrorizing moment for many players back then.

While I am glad that the game has evolved away from this level of "squishiness," I think that game players today have grown so familiar with fantasy monsters and RPG mechanics that GMs are now allowing a certain amount of metagaming that we don't even notice it. :)

Here are some thoughts and suggestions that can maintain immersion and players' fear for the well-being of their characters :)

HIT POINTS - Recently, I was a Level 1 Sorcerer who was knocked down with a single blow from full health down to negative hit points. I stabilized in the very next round, and since my foe was no distracted by other opponents, I was now relatively safe. Sighs of relief around the table - crisis averted!

Ahem. But would the characters have known that? I am sorry - I know that a certain measure of fairness is called for when running a game, I admit that I do derive pleasure from seeing panic in my players' faces. When it's warranted, of course. ;)

Sure, PCs can know how many HPs they have, BUT in the midst of battle when someone is knocked down to below 0, I plan on not telling them how much HP they have lost and give something descriptive only (e.g. "the kobold swings at Seoni and she falls", versus "the kobold opens a gashing wound, and she falls and starts bleeding heavily on the floor"). Other players can do a Heal check (rolled openly) to see how badly someone is wounded and whether they are stabilized. If they fail this check, I simply tell them "you can't tell anything about [him/her]."

This makes having a high Heal modifier and casting heal spells in the midst of battle more important.

As for monsters, I think more information about monsters' health should be given than I see GMs give sometimes. There should be constant feedback, when it makes sense, that shows how close the creature they're fighting is to being taken down - such as by telling them "you barely graze it" or "the wretched thing is now hobbling around while still snarling."

SAVING THROWS and SPECIAL DAMAGE - Let's say that some poisonous beastie uses a special attack against a PC, or tries to command someone's mind. All the PCs see is what the monster is doing. If the PCs wouldn't necessarily know the nature of an attack, or whether a special attack is even happening, don't let them know that. I won't tell people that the spider injected poison through their bite (though players should be figuring this out anyway!), but I will tell a player that the wight's blow makes them feel substantially weaker. I also won't tell players that they've just lost 2 strength points or 2 constitution points, but that they feel "weaker." (I'll tell them afterward) This might give the GM too much to track, so maybe I won't do this all the time.

SKILL ROLLS - By this, I mean skill checks where the PC would not necessarily know how well they succeeded. The GM rolls secretly behind his or her screen and gives the players/PCs get only limited feedback. For example:

Perception - Roll their check secretly behind the screen. If they sense nothing, simply tell them that. Let them wonder whether they rolled low, or whether there's nothing to detect to begin with. Let them wonder whether their rogue overlooked a deadly trap or whether the treasure chest actually is safe. Increased uncertainty around the table! (And more fun! :) )

Using Bluff to deceive someone - My feedback comes only in the form of what their PC notices (and perhaps "you feel you like you did a good/poor job"). So a successful Bluff check means they succeed at getting the guard to let the party past, and a failure means the guard doesn't let them in (or shrewdly deceives the party into thinking that they succeeded at tricking him, only to surround him with greater numbers later!)

Sense Motive - People must initiate their own check - never prompt one. Roll their check secretly behind the screen. If they succeed at their roll and the person they're speaking with is trustworthy, tell them "you sense that this person is trustworthy." If they roll too low, simply tell them they sense nothing.

Other skills are rolled secretly in situations where the PC wouldn't necessarily know whether they succeeded.

(And by the way, in addition to rolling dice randomly from behind the screen to increase player paranoia, I plan on having my iPhone set to silent and on top of the table behind my screen. I have an app which lets me roll a die of any type with a single tap. When I want to secretly roll and not let people know I'm doing so, I can use it!)

On the downside, these suggestions (particularly on negative HP and ability drain) might give a GM too much to track or think about. Still I want to add to the discussion.

So to finish: have you guys had experiences in your games that reflect what I see as a problem? And do you see these as problems to begin with? Thoughts, suggestions, and comments are welcome!

Although it makes perfect sense to have the GM roll the dice behind the screen when a character makes a perception check or a bluff check, etc. so that they can't use the metagame knowledge to their advantage, I never do it when I am running a game.

And the reason is simple-- gamers like to roll dice. It seems like nothing can turn around a crappy day quicker than rolling a natural 20, and none of the players I game with would want that taken away from them.

There are some ways to let the players roll their own rolls while keeping the metagaming to a minimum.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to just put a little time between the roll and the result. For example-- a character is walking through a forest. Ask her to roll a perception check when she first enters the forest, but regardless of the result, just tell her she doesn't see anything unusual at the moment. Then maybe she encounters a bridge that has been destroyed, and crossing the river takes a few minutes, and once she's across and travelling again, THEN the ambush occurs, and you apply her earlier perception roll to see if she saw it coming.

Supposing another character is trying to lie to an NPC and rolls a terrible bluff roll. Metagaming, he knows it didn't work, so you tell him "the guard doesn't seem convinced, but he's still listening. Do you want to try a different tactic?" Give him a chance to work on the guard some more and roll another check. If he rolls well the second time, the guard is convinced, but a half an hour later, he starts going over the story again and realizes he's been lied to (because of the first bad roll).

You can't do these things every time, or the players will come to expect them, but they can be effective from time to time.

It has been my personal experience as a GM and player that whether the GM or the player rolls perception checks, bluff checks, etc. has very little to do with the tendency to metagame beyond that specific check.

I guess I am old school. When the character is in a situation where a dice roll results in something the character would not know (like a perception or bluff check) I will roll those checks because it is a rare, rare player who can truly role play when they have that sort of metagame knowledge. So I just describe the results. Also natural 20s on skill checks are not automatic successes anyway, neither are natural 1s automatic fails.

Back to the overall theme of the OPs message though, the best way to reduce metagaming by the players is to tell a compelling and interesting story that the players buy into. It's never easy, and even the best GMs will have their bad days. And there are always players who never get into the role playing anyway. Still, focusing on the story has always been the best approach for me. Make the story interesting. Use the classic story-telling themes, foreshadow events, create conflict between the PCs and specific NPCs. Make the party hate an evil NPC. Make them want to protect an innocent NPC. Give them a reason to care about the story, and the metagaming will start to disappear.

Or that's been my experience anyway.

It has been my personal experience as a GM and player that whether the GM or the player rolls perception checks, bluff checks, etc. has very little to do with the tendency to metagame beyond that specific check.

I guess I am old school. When the character is in a situation where a dice roll results in something the character would not know (like a perception or bluff check) I will roll those checks because it is a rare, rare player who can truly role play when they have that sort of metagame knowledge. So I just describe the results. Also natural 20s on skill checks are not automatic successes anyway, neither are natural 1s automatic fails.

Back to the overall theme of the OPs message though, the best way to reduce metagaming by the players is to tell a compelling and interesting story that the players buy into. It's never easy, and even the best GMs will have their bad days. And there are always players who never get into the role playing anyway. Still, focusing on the story has always been the best approach for me. Make the story interesting. Use the classic story-telling themes, foreshadow events, create conflict between the PCs and specific NPCs. Make the party hate an evil NPC. Make them want to protect an innocent NPC. Give them a reason to care about the story, and the metagaming will start to disappear.

Or that's been my experience anyway.

Brassbaboon, I want to play in your games. I try to use literary techniques when GMing as well.

Ronaldsf, those are good starts. It's best to always make sure you have a line of text or two written out ahead of time for different descriptions. You can always elaborate if necessary.

One thing I started doing recently with my group was keeping track of their damage and healing during combat. It really raises the tension when players don't know their exact HP! It also makes the players more deeply immersed in the game, as they are hanging on your description of "a terrible blow to your left shoulder" for their reference point.

Moox

Some of these suggestions are decent, a few quite good, if your characters have a tendency to abuse metagame knowledge

I dislike the secret ability damage, though. I wouldn't any more deny telling them STR or other ability damage or level drain than I would hp damage. Yeah, the character might not know exactly how much the venom took out of them, but no less than they know the precise amount the injecting bite hurt in terms of hp.

Some perception and sense motive make sense to roll behind the screen, though, sure...

...there's just one problem I have with your premise. You assume player misbehavior is a given. You assume your players will abuse metagame knowledge. Some players are good enough not to. I have the fortune to GM for a group who can face a monster they've seen dozens of times over their gaming careers, but if their current characters have not they play as if they have not. If they cannot identify what a creature is they use suboptimal tactics, if that's what their character would do, even if the player has read the monster's entry.

Your players are not necessarily children for whom the truth and numbers must be hidden, and sometimes to do so disrespects them greatly, especially taking it to this extreme.

There are games where you want that sense of dread you describe. Call of Cthulhu? Yeah, players should have no clue just what's happening to them, and death is a constant threat. 3.x is not the system its ADnD grandfather was, though. It's not necessarily a horror game, and you don't always want scared and confused players.

And that's I think my problem: you're confusing fear and uncertainty on the part of the player with that of the character. It's fair to want the latter in many instances, but it does not necessarily require the former.

Sometimes you might want that. You may wish to heighten tension with a hidden perception check so they're not sure what lies in the darkness as both players and characters. It is not necessary though.

The best way to avoid metagaming is to have good players. Assuming your players lack the skill to play their characters properly from the outset just sort of rubs me the wrong way.

I like to describe the monsters in ways that are accurate, but new. It gives them a hard time figuring out what they are. It's makes Dungoneering a real valid skill. :)

Some of these suggestions are decent, a few quite good, if your characters have a tendency to abuse metagame knowledge

I dislike the secret ability damage, though. I wouldn't any more deny telling them STR or other ability damage or level drain than I would hp damage. Yeah, the character might not know exactly how much the venom took out of them, but no less than they know the precise amount the injecting bite hurt in terms of hp.

Some perception and sense motive make sense to roll behind the screen, though, sure...

...there's just one problem I have with your premise. You assume player misbehavior is a given. You assume your players will abuse metagame knowledge. Some players are good enough not to. I have the fortune to GM for a group who can face a monster they've seen dozens of times over their gaming careers, but if their current characters have not they play as if they have not. If they cannot identify what a creature is they use suboptimal tactics, if that's what their character would do, even if the player has read the monster's entry.

Your players are not necessarily children for whom the truth and numbers must be hidden, and sometimes to do so disrespects them greatly, especially taking it to this extreme.

There are games where you want that sense of dread you describe. Call of Cthulhu? Yeah, players should have no clue just what's happening to them, and death is a constant threat. 3.x is not the system its ADnD grandfather was, though. It's not necessarily a horror game, and you don't always want scared and confused players.

And that's I think my problem: you're confusing fear and uncertainty on the part of the player with that of the character. It's fair to want the latter in many instances, but it does not necessarily require the former.

Sometimes you might want that. You may wish to heighten tension with a hidden perception check so they're not sure what lies in the darkness as both players and characters. It is not necessary though.

The best way to avoid...

I this is partly about personal preference. I DO want a certain degree of fear and uncertainty on the part of my players. :)

I see that hiding ability damage could be over-doing it. They are aware of their HP after all, and HP and ability scores, while abstractions, still reflect something that the characters would also know (i.e. "Yikes he's limping now - he must be not as agile anymore"). So yeah, I'll tell them their ability damage and negative levels.

My group and I are relatively new (about 5 sessions), and I haven't seen them grossly abuse metagame knowledge yet. Still, I feel that hiding some info that their characters wouldn't know enhances the experience when appropriately used. And, at least with my particular group, I don't think they'll be up in arms if I do this.

I'll try to get a feel and see how some of these ideas work in actual play and test them out.

Although it makes perfect sense to have the GM roll the dice behind the screen when a character makes a perception check or a bluff check, etc. so that they can't use the metagame knowledge to their advantage, I never do it when I am running a game.

And the reason is simple-- gamers like to roll dice. It seems like nothing can turn around a crappy day quicker than rolling a natural 20, and none of the players I game with would want that taken away from them.

There are some ways to let the players roll their own rolls while keeping the metagaming to a minimum.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to just put a little time between the roll and the result. For example-- a character is walking through a forest. Ask her to roll a perception check when she first enters the forest, but regardless of the result, just tell her she doesn't see anything unusual at the moment. Then maybe she encounters a bridge that has been destroyed, and crossing the river takes a few minutes, and once she's across and travelling again, THEN the ambush occurs, and you apply her earlier perception roll to see if she saw it coming.

Supposing another character is trying to lie to an NPC and rolls a terrible bluff roll. Metagaming, he knows it didn't work, so you tell him "the guard doesn't seem convinced, but he's still listening. Do you want to try a different tactic?" Give him a chance to work on the guard some more and roll another check. If he rolls well the second time, the guard is convinced, but a half an hour later, he starts going over the story again and realizes he's been lied to (because of the first bad roll).

Yes I agree - dice rolling is a fun part of the game, and my players like that. I would still have them do their own attack rolls, and many of their saving throws. For example, if everyone is being subjected to a Will attack, then in theory their characters would know that some magical force is trying to control their minds. In that case, then, sure - they can openly roll.

I like your examples of changing the timing of a roll, or varying the outcome. In the spider bite example I gave, yeah maybe I can call their attention to the bite beginning to swell up after the battle and call for a Fortitude roll - so that way they still get to do their own dice roll.

Limit information. I get the feeling a lot of groups nowadays share character sheets around the table, which I don't like. There is no reason other members of the party would or should know exactly what you have up your sleeve or down your boot, or what your alignment is, or how many hit points you have. Take wizards, for example. For the most part they are pretty jealous about their trade secrets. Your average wizard isn't going to blab to everyone about exactly what's in his spellbook. Your average rogue isn't going to go around issuing updated catalogs listing every ring, coin, gem, dagger, etc. that he has on his person. I find some uncertainty, even about other party members, heightens the game experience. I would also encourage players to roleplay their characters' possessiveness. It's easy for the rogue's player to let some else borrow one of his wondrous items to get something done, but is that realistic? Would a rogue really be a lending library with his rarest and most valuable acquisitions?

Limit information. I get the feeling a lot of groups nowadays share character sheets around the table, which I don't like. There is no reason other members of the party would or should know exactly what you have up your sleeve or down your boot, or what your alignment is, or how many hit points you have. Take wizards, for example. For the most part they are pretty jealous about their trade secrets. Your average wizard isn't going to blab to everyone about exactly what's in his spellbook. Your average rogue isn't going to go around issuing updated catalogs listing every ring, coin, gem, dagger, etc. that he has on his person. I find some uncertainty, even about other party members, heightens the game experience. I would also encourage players to roleplay their characters' possessiveness. It's easy for the rogue's player to let some else borrow one of his wondrous items to get something done, but is that realistic? Would a rogue really be a lending library with his rarest and most valuable acquisitions?

I think I disagree with this premise. If people are working together as a team, they are naturally going to share information about the capabilities they have. My sorceress will want to know if the cleric has any good individual attack spells prepared, because this may affect strategy.

However, I do try to put things in "emic" terms instead of "etic" terms. "Emic" terms are terms that the characters themselves might use, such as "Do you happen to have that spell prepared, that lets you hold people immobile?" "Etic terms are those outside the character's experience, like "How many hit points do you have left?"

So as a GM, you can try to encourage players to use emic talk. Maybe talk to them about these terms, which come from anthropologists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic I don't believe in punishing players who slip into etic talk, but point it out, and maybe give a little XP bonus for those players who manage to avoid it.

I don't know if we can get away from Etic talk, however. If this was really happening, the paladin could look at the bard and see whether the last attack left her staggered and bleeding, on her last legs, or whether it didn't even leave a superficial bruise. I've _never_ seen any game system that produces this level of detail in combat descriptions (and D&D/Pathfinder is very non-detailed), so I don't know how you can reasonable get around talking about hit points.

Perhaps you can formally define a "Battered" condition which means "The guy's about to keel over. Better get him some healing FAST!"

Another way you might keep things "emic", is to use a couple of house rules regarding ranges. By the book, if something is in range you can do something, and if out of range, you can't. For example, if you have a base move of 30 feet, then you can charge an opponent 60 feet away, but can't charge an opponent 65 feet away.

This leads to players counting squares to determine if they will or will not do something. This slows down the game, and it is rather etic: "I won't charge that guy now that I realize he is 65 feet away, so I'll shoot.

Maybe instead of a hard cut-off, you can use a die to determine whether the range can be extended by a few feet. If a wizard has a spell that normally has a range of 180 feet, perhaps it can reach 180 + (1d6 x 5) feet. That way, if someone is 190 feet away, nobody knows whether or not he can get hit with that spell.

That could change tactics a little bit, but in an emic way.

Another way you might keep things "emic", is to use a couple of house rules regarding ranges...

I read a idea from someone on these boards to use a roll to determine where area effect spells were centered. The player picked a square that he wanted it centered on, then rolled a d10.

1 = centered 1 square to the NW
2 = centered 1 square to the N
3 = centered 1 square to the NE
etc.

a 9 or 10 meant it centered in the square the player wanted it to.

The idea was to avoid these situations where a player counts squares for 5 minutes in order to place his fireball exactly where it will hit 6 orcs and miss 4 allies. You throw a fireball in the middle of the room, you'd better not do it right next to your friends because you might misjudge the explosion.

Utgardloki wrote:

Another way you might keep things "emic", is to use a couple of house rules regarding ranges...

I read a idea from someone on these boards to use a roll to determine where area effect spells were centered ... to avoid these situations where a player counts squares for 5 minutes in order to place his fireball exactly where it will hit 6 orcs and miss 4 allies

I wing this.

If the wizard is stressed or casting at a distance, then I have them make an Intelligence check (CL would work, too) with range modifiers to hit their target. A miss is a miss, but how much of a miss?

Occasionally I have simply told a wizard, "Sorry, you just can't place it that accurately." My Players get this, and the party has actually taken precautions for their front-line or mobile fighters to either have resistance, fantastic Reflex and evasion, or enough HP to take a hit from the wizard. There are some PCs who routinely call down fire-missions upon themselves, and others who give the Evoker dirty looks and say, "don't throw that anywhere near my neighborhood".

Once we had a wizard cast obscuring mist then try to hit a creature in the mist with a flame ray or something. Aside from miss-chance, she still had to make an attack roll and hit a nat-1 (we Fumble at our table). The Player couldn't understand why I made the head of the PC 10' in front of her more or less explode (um ... because he was inside the mist in a direct path between her and the target monster?)

Really, it comes down not to Rules but to the interests of the Players. I have people in my Group who like it that way. Ultimately, if your Players want to be square-counters then either let them, or find new Players. There is no Wrong-Bad-Fun, just what you like and what I like, and you can't force immersion upon meta-gamers who don't want it.

OTOH, many of your suggestions are good for those who do, but don't know how to get there.

FWIW,

Rez

P.S. First time back on the Boards in months.

One thing I've seen that is rather effective is to let players pre-roll for certain known effects. So at the start of the game you tell them you need three perception checks, three sense motive checks, and one of each save. When they are hit with an effect you don't have them roll a save at the time you just tell them what the effect was or if they avoided it.

Players still get to roll the dice but they aren't distracted by the roll. In the case of the perception checks they might not even know they didn't see something (which is a common gripe for me).

One thing I did years back was keep secret players health. I would roll damage behind a screen and describe hits. I think it was a great way to till about level 12.

I am not sure this is RAW or what not now a days.

The big problem with players not knowing hit points, is that they then do not know whether or not to use healing.

I've had that situation in my games, where I tend not to tell the players how many hit points the NPCs have left. As a result, some of the PCs' allies have died because they did not get any timely healing, despite my hints that "She looks like she is in really bad shape right now."

This is a great question that hits the heart of what a lot of people want out of their RPG; I know immersion is my chief goal and to me the main thing that makes roleplaying a a desirable hobby. I wished this thread had gotten more response, so I took the liberty of asking it and linking this post on RPG Stack Exchange to get some more (system neutral,mainly) thoughts on it from the community there; if you are interested in immersion go check it out.

It has been my personal experience as a GM and player that whether the GM or the player rolls perception checks, bluff checks, etc. has very little to do with the tendency to metagame beyond that specific check.

I guess I am old school. When the character is in a situation where a dice roll results in something the character would not know (like a perception or bluff check) I will roll those checks because it is a rare, rare player who can truly role play when they have that sort of metagame knowledge. So I just describe the results. Also natural 20s on skill checks are not automatic successes anyway, neither are natural 1s automatic fails.

Back to the overall theme of the OPs message though, the best way to reduce metagaming by the players is to tell a compelling and interesting story that the players buy into. It's never easy, and even the best GMs will have their bad days. And there are always players who never get into the role playing anyway. Still, focusing on the story has always been the best approach for me. Make the story interesting. Use the classic story-telling themes, foreshadow events, create conflict between the PCs and specific NPCs. Make the party hate an evil NPC. Make them want to protect an innocent NPC. Give them a reason to care about the story, and the metagaming will start to disappear.

Or that's been my experience anyway.

I think you nailed it. It all starts with the GM. If the GM describes the game in metagame terms, then the players will respond in metagame terms. And even if you do describe every action, it can get difficult not to use game terms.

Some times in past games i've run and played in, our game description degenerates, usually when the tension is high and we all want the game to move quickly, like in the middle of fighting the BBEG. At that point, I think it becomes easier to communicate in the shortest way possible to keep the speed of the game going, and not break the immersion. Everyone wants their turn to effect the outcome and they are chomping at the bit. The description from players at these times goes from "I hew the orc with a mighty blow! pulling my blood splattered axe from my fallen enemy." to "I HIT! 20 damage, take that, BIATCH!". I think its just human nature and the nature of the game, that we all become spectators at certain points when we don't know what the next roll is going to mean for the drama ensuing.

So although as GM you are the example of what level of storytelling the players will engage with, don't get down on them too hard if they are so involved that they can only speak in stats and attack actions. It means you did a good job, and they are enthralled with the moment.

However when the tension is low, the speed of the game is slower, like when the PCs are investigation a mystery or interacting with important NPCs, that is when GM description really paints the pictures and the suggested methods by the OP really, really help.

For myself as I GM I try very hard to avoid using as little game mechanics, meta-game language as possible.

I always look at it as trying to make sure the "curtain is drawn" as much as possible, as in "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

In terms of players, I just make it clear at the table that metagame chatter is to be avoided, particularly in combat.

The classic example is the endless instinct for at least one person at the table to eagerly alert anyone else that they might be provoking an attack of opportunity. I try to swat that away as much as possible, explaining, "that's metagame tactics, the character's aren't mind melded together and so you can't read each other's intentions. Let them make their moves and let them LEARN from their own mistakes. If you get critted by a AoO then you'll know from then on out what is at stake."

With one table that was filled with too many gamists who wanted to have a council meeting on tactics for each player's next move I just instituted a "chess piece" move. Once the player touched their piece then whatever they did after that was etched in stone. I still had to smack down all the meta-tactics chatter, but that one rule helped to lock the idea in place that when it was a player's turn they needed to act and those actions had consequences.

Lastly, simply asking all the time the questions "What do YOU do?" helps a lot with immersion. If people start debating what is to be done then I assume it is in character talk, with time elapsing. That's really the blur that needs to be cleared up. In-character and out-of-character. If someone wants a time-out for a rules clarification then that's fine, but the state of the game needs to be clear at all times.

The best way that I've seen is to use monsters you create yourself once the party starts interfering in the plans of others. When no Knowledge checks can tell players what to do, players will follow their instinct instead of thinking.

The problem with this is that it's a lot of work on the DM.

The other method is to tell players their skills won't reveal as much info as PF Core books say they will, but certain players might balk at this.

One thing I've seen that is rather effective is to let players pre-roll for certain known effects. So at the start of the game you tell them you need three perception checks, three sense motive checks, and one of each save. When they are hit with an effect you don't have them roll a save at the time you just tell them what the effect was or if they avoided it.

Players still get to roll the dice but they aren't distracted by the roll. In the case of the perception checks they might not even know they didn't see something (which is a common gripe for me).

Another problem that is even more for the metagame is someone could try to make a pointless skill check knowing their rolls are bad. if they can remember that roll is bad. i.e. my first roll was a natural one for example let me look for birds in the sky. If a player does that I would make them roll not let them dump a bad first roll.

The best way that I've seen is to use monsters you create yourself once the party starts interfering in the plans of others. When no Knowledge checks can tell players what to do, players will follow their instinct instead of thinking.

The problem with this is that it's a lot of work on the DM.

The other method is to tell players their skills won't reveal as much info as PF Core books say they will, but certain players might balk at this.

Hmmm... I am one of those DMs who routinely creates my own monsters. I also reskin existing monsters so that players can't choose tactics based on their own (as opposed to their character's) knowledge.

However, the character is still entitled to a knowledge check, and successful checks will reveal information about the monster.

Back to immersion... I have to honestly say that I have never been a player in one of my campaigns due to the fact that I am the GM, so I can't discribe how immersive my own campaigns are except as players have commented. So I can't say "hey here is how I achieve my awesome immersiveness!" All I can do is describe the times when people react in ways that seems to indicate an emotional investment in the campaign.

Interestingly, in my experience, it is not usually the combat encounters that tend to produce that emotional interaction. It is usually when I am deep into some critical plot point, either as the omniscient GM voice, or when I am in character as an NPC. As someone else mentioned, it is actually very difficult to avoid metagaming once battle starts. I used to try to circumvent this with colorful descriptions, but that seemed to actually create more confusion and out of game dialog than it avoided. "What do you mean the orc is 'staring vacantly' is he stunned or what?"

So now I let the combat proceed however the group is comfortable. If that means counting squares and discussing hit points and attack bonuses, I let it slide. I have decided that combat is sort of a special case and the more naturally I let the action flow, the more the players seem to enjoy and get into the fight. It also does not seem to affect the immersiveness before and after the encounter. Most players seem to naturally transittion from metagaming monsters during battle into in game character personas as soon as the battle is over, with no awareness at all of the apparent contradiction.

And since they seem to enjoy it that way, I just go with the flow..

One of the simplest ways to do this is to just put a little time between the roll and the result. For example-- a character is walking through a forest. Ask her to roll a perception check when she first enters the forest, but regardless of the result, just tell her she doesn't see anything unusual at the moment. Then maybe she encounters a bridge that has been destroyed, and crossing the river takes a few minutes, and once she's across and travelling again, THEN the ambush occurs, and you apply her earlier perception roll to see if she saw it coming.

One experienced DM I had the pleasure to game with would hand around a sheet of paper at the beginning. Each player was to roll ten perception checks and record them, as well as indicate what bonuses they had. He would then secretly roll a d10 for each PC and asterix that amount down (so the "list" of numbers began at a random point for each PC -- i.e.; so the player who remembers rolling a 1 and a 20 as his first two numbers won't be assuring of failing and then succeeding).

Result: all the annoying Perception checks were gotten out of the way early.

SKILL ROLLS - By this, I mean skill checks where the PC would not necessarily know how well they succeeded. The GM rolls secretly behind his or her screen and gives the players/PCs get only limited feedback. For example:

Perception - Roll their check secretly behind the screen. If they sense nothing, simply tell them that. Let them wonder whether they rolled low, or whether there's nothing to detect to begin with. Let them wonder whether their rogue overlooked a deadly trap or whether the treasure chest actually is safe. Increased uncertainty around the table! (And more fun! :) )

Using Bluff to deceive someone - My feedback comes only in the form of what their PC notices (and perhaps "you feel you like you did a good/poor job"). So a successful Bluff check means they succeed at getting the guard to let the party past, and a failure means the guard doesn't let them in (or shrewdly deceives the party into thinking that they succeeded at tricking him, only to surround him with greater numbers later!)

Sense Motive - People must initiate their own check - never prompt one. Roll their check secretly behind the screen. If they succeed at their roll and the person they're speaking with is trustworthy, tell them "you sense that this person is trustworthy." If they roll too low, simply tell them they sense nothing.

The way I like to make "failed" rolls more interesting is to add a twist. This often relies on a more fluid style of storytelling by the GM, you can't have a concrete list of events written down, you have to highly adapt your story depending on whats going on.

For example, on a failed Perception check to find a secret door, they find the secret door... but something goes wrong, like a wandering monster/guard enters the room, the tunnel behind is collapsed, the door locked/stuck/magically warded, etc.

This also has the added benefit of instead of stopping the game because of a failed roll, the game just takes a new turn. It can keep the action flowing more too, because instead of making the PC's come up with an new plan, they have to react to the new situation in front of them. It also reduces their instinct to reroll or have another player roll.

and here i thought this thread was going to be about role playing while using sensory deprivation tanks.

disappointed.... sorely disappointed.