Which is as succinct an explanation as I can think of for why metagaming is sometimes a very good thing.
Oh, I don't think meta-game is always a bad thing. In fact I see good meta-game far more often than I see bad meta-game. I just don't think 5ft-step is meta-gaming.
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Lemmy, I'll try to explain why I believe a five foot step is metagaming.
There is a rule for movement. If you "move" five feet and then attack, you will not be able to full attack. You have to explicitly state that you aren't JUST moving five feet, no, you are taking the special consideration of doing a "five foot step" to move that five feet.
Secondly, the ONLY REASON to choose "five foot step" instead of "I move five feet" is to retain the ability to full attack. This means the entire process of choosing a "five foot step" over a "I move five feet" is to exploit a specific game rule that the character is unaware of.
Frankly I cannot see how this is not obviously meta gaming.
But then again, as I have repeatedly said, it is probably not possible to get people to agree on a single definition of meta gaming.
Update, the other reason, of course, is to avoid attacks of opportunity, but the identical logic applies.
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My rule of thumb for these examples is... "If the creature is so famous that even people who don't play D&D would know what to expect (e.g.: a Red Dragon breathing fire, a Vampire being vulnerable to sunlight, etc), then your character knows it as well. I also include trolls and fire/acid damage because that's just too classic to "forget", IMHO.
Re: Vampires. Up until the 19th century when English poets popularized vampire myths, I'm not sure whether the average person would be aware of obscure elements of Hungarian myths..
English people may not, but the Hungarian commoners surely would know.
And would often bury corpses with stakes through them, to prevent them walking around, despite having zero ranks in the applicable Knowledge skills.I like to play that people know the traits of the different creature types since they seem universal. However sometimes the difficulty is in recognizing which type the creature is. Sometimes it can be hard to know whether that shadowy creature is a form of undead (shadows), fey (shaeling) or outsider (kyton).
Those are situations, in which knowledge checks certainly are justified.
Undead are very bad for this, since most can be described as 'dead body, walking around'.Do you try to defeat it with Chanelling, and fail to stop it?
Or blow your most powerful spell, just to find it was a skeleton in fancy clothes?
I avoid using common art, such as from a Bestiary, in those situations, because it would be too easy for a player to recognise. Or for them to make an educated guess, 'That's from the back half of the book, it must be a shadow, if it's from the front half, it must be a kyton...'.
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Lemmy, I'll try to explain why I believe a five foot step is metagaming.
There is a rule for movement. If you "move" five feet and then attack, you will not be able to full attack. You have to explicitly state that you aren't JUST moving five feet, no, you are taking the special consideration of doing a "five foot step" to move that five feet.
Secondly, the ONLY REASON to choose "five foot step" instead of "I move five feet" is to retain the ability to full attack. This means the entire process of choosing a "five foot step" over a "I move five feet" is to exploit a specific game rule that the character is unaware of.
Frankly I cannot see how this is not obviously meta gaming.
What if the player words their action differently?
Player: "I unleash a torrent of blows on the opponent, hitting him again and again, while trying to move around him, to block his exit."
GM: "You can do that. But since your attacks take up most of your time, the furthest you'll be able to move while doing that is five feet."
Player: "That's okay. I can live with that."
That's looking at the situation through your character's eyes, and trying to achieve something that a real person would want and try to do.
It's only filthy rule-speak if you want it to be.
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Yeah, I still don't buy the movement argument, or not fully at least. I understand where you are coming from, but that is not what most people usually mean by "metagaming".
Knowing that taking more than a 5-ft. step carries penalties, as it's required player knowledge in order to play the game. Knowing immunities, resistances, specific attacks is more akin to cheating.
Me and the people I've played with have always used it in this capacity. The former is simply to play the game effectively. The latter is simply to gain unfair advantage over the DM or whomever.
Also, the DM is not allowed to base the monster's attacks based on the target ("Ah-ha, I know that character is a rogue, therefore has a lower Will save, so I'm going to throw dominate at them").
Snorter, the whole issue could be resolved without invoking metagaming if the move rule simply said "if you move five feet or less you can do a full attack and don't take attacks of opportunity". Which is how I would have done it.
It's this awareness of the rules and the necessity to make an explicit choice of one rule over another based on the rules impact on the game that makes it metagaming.
And, again, it's not BAD metagaming to choose a five foot step. It's just making a choice based on an awareness of the rules impact on the game that makes it metagaming.
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Lemmy, I'll try to explain why I believe a five foot step is metagaming.
There is a rule for movement. If you "move" five feet and then attack, you will not be able to full attack. You have to explicitly state that you aren't JUST moving five feet, no, you are taking the special consideration of doing a "five foot step" to move that five feet.
Yes, but from the character's PoV she's just moving 0,001~9,999ft without taking her eyes from her opponent, instead of turning away and running 5+ft in a random direction. And she knows this sidestep is short enough that won't prevent her from making as many attacks as she can. Turning away and running or preparing herself to run (instead of simply adjusting her positioning) distracts her long enough to stop her from making more than a single attack.
Secondly, the ONLY REASON to choose "five foot step" instead of "I move five feet" is to retain the ability to full attack. This means the entire process of choosing a "five foot step" over a "I move five feet" is to exploit a specific game rule that the character is unaware of.
Yeah, and the only reason to roll skill checks or use a feat (say Power Attack) is to exploit a specific game rule that the character is unaware of.
How does the character know the difference between Fight Defensively and Combat Expertise? She doesn't. She knows 2 different ways of fighting defensively (no capitals) and can decide which one is more effective without a single drop of player knowledge.I understand you point, AD. I just don't agree with it.
Lemmy, that's fine. I don't expect you to agree. I will just point out that the only working definition we have stated so far for "meta gaming" is "players making choices for their characters based on knowledge the player has but the character does not." Your examples are explicit examples of exactly that.
So you must have another definition that you are working from. Care to share it?
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Lemmy, that's fine. I don't expect you to agree. I will just point out that the only working definition we have stated so far for "meta gaming" is "players making choices for their characters based on knowledge the player has but the character does not." Your examples are explicit examples of exactly that.
So you must have another definition that you are working from. Care to share it?
I disagree.
The character is making those choices because she knows how the physics of her world works. She doesn't know the terms we, players, use for those physics, but she still knows what a "5ft-step" is, even if she doesn't call it a 5ft-step.
She knows she can give up accuracy to improve the damaging power of her strikes, she just doesn't call it Power Attack (unrelated issue... Why is Power Attack a feat? I'm pretty sure anyone can do the same thing without any sort of special training.)
Lemmy, your character does not know the existence of or the difference between "i move five feet" and "I take a five foot step." You, as the player, DO know and make a choice based on that knowledge.
How does this not meet the definition of "making character choices based on what the player knows that the character does not?"
I mean it's pretty explicitly doing so.
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What's the term for a player making their character take deliberately bone-headed decisions, ignoring blatant clues at the encounter scene, forgetting childhood background and setting information their character quite clearly has access to, to do things such a person would never realistically do, in an attempt to perform as ineffectively as possible, in order to win a pissing contest with the other players at the table, over who is the best role-player?
Because I believe that style of play deserves its own back-handed descriptor.
Snorter, I also think we have a lack of specificity in our terminology that causes most of the confusion.
That's why I asked for a definition of metagaming that fit Lemmy's expectations, because the working definition we have doesn't match how he's using it.
I think we need more options to use terms that address specific types of actions. "Metagaming" of the sort Lemmy and I are debating is completely different than "metagaming" in the sense of a character choosing battle tactics based on the player knowing the weaknesses of a monster that the character has never encountered. Calling one "good metagaming" and the other "bad metagaming" is not a very compelling means of discussing things.
Lemmy, your character does not know the existence of or the difference between "i move five feet" and "I take a five foot step." You, as the player, DO know and make a choice based on that knowledge.
How does this not meet the definition of "making character choices based on what the player knows that the character does not?"
I mean it's pretty explicitly doing so.
Then moving 5ft and taking 5ft-step are different actions. (I see 5ft-step as a simple reposition, like carefully circling around your enemy to better position yourself in combat, while moving 5ft would include turning to the direction you intend to go and running/walking that way.
The character knows the difference between those actions and can evaluate which one is the better choice.
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"Metagaming" of the sort Lemmy and I are debating is completely different than "metagaming" in the sense of a character choosing battle tactics based on the player knowing the weaknesses of a monster that the character has never encountered. Calling one "good metagaming" and the other "bad metagaming" is not a very compelling means of discussing things.
That's fine - but are people seriously complaining of the metagaming of taking a legal movement, or utilizing total defense?
I'd like to think (and hope) they're not.
"Metagaming" of the sort Lemmy and I are debating is completely different than "metagaming" in the sense of a character choosing battle tactics based on the player knowing the weaknesses of a monster that the character has never encountered. Calling one "good metagaming" and the other "bad metagaming" is not a very compelling means of discussing things.That's fine - but are people seriously complaining of the metagaming of taking a legal movement, or utilizing total defense?
I'd like to think (and hope) they're not.
I think everyone's agreed that it's necessary, just not on whether or not it counts as "metagaming" :)
Some level of metagaming is necessary because you would have to go to absurd levels to avoid it.
There is actually one thing I've always wanted to try, and that's to not tell the players what rules they're playing by, or to let them see character sheets, and to move the entire game into narrative speech. However, the amount of work involved (the GM would pretty much have to do everything) has always left me shelving the idea as unfeasible.
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Yeah, some level of metagaming is the price we pay for having a playable game.
Again, at the most basic level, you are always metagaming since you KNOW it's a game and the character (presumably) does not. That's why I challenge the oft-stated notion that metagaming=badwrongfun. Some metagaming is necessary and some metagaming is positive.
Back on topic, this is also why I challenged the notion that optimizers are somehow more likely to metagame or do metagaming in a more impactful way. There is nothing inherent in "optimizing" characters that drives a need or desire to metagame more or less than players who don't "optimize" their characters. And in my experience the more experienced a player is, the more they tend to be aware of these metagame pitfalls, and thus the better players tend to try to avoid the "bad metagaming" more than less experienced players.
I've used this example before. My brother (who introduced me to the game years and years ago) was one of the best "optimizers" I've ever played with. But he was also one of the best role players. Back in 2e days there was no specific indication in the rules that a character always "knew" when they had to make a saving throw. His character had a very special magic axe that he loved. In battle with a BBEG when he successfully hit the BBEG the GM told him to make a saving throw. He did, and passed. So he continued to fight the BBEG. The GM again told him to make a saving throw, and this time told him that if he failed the saving throw, his axe would be destroyed. He passed his saving throw again. Then he attacked the BBEG with his axe AGAIN. The GM said "Dude, I TOLD you your axe was going to get destroyed!" to which my brother replied "Yeah, I know that, but my character doesn't. Is there any indication other than me making a saving throw that his axe is in danger?" The GM admitted there was not. So on he went, eventually destroying his axe. I've always used that as a lesson in how to role play by character knowledge alone.
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A 5' step is NOT metagaming. AD why are you trying to muddle communication deliberately? A martial character knows from long hours of practice that if they move more than that far they will lose focus and only be able to attack once. OBVIOUSLY this is in character knowledge.
A 5' step is NOT metagaming. AD why are you trying to muddle communication deliberately? A martial character knows from long hours of practice that if they move more than that far they will lose focus and only be able to attack once. OBVIOUSLY this is in character knowledge.
You are really missing his point.
Making a mechanical decision to take a 5 ft step and maintain your full attack instead of moving just 5 ft for the turn to try to achieve something similar is metagaming. It is fully recognizing that there is a game system in place.
Exactly TOZ and gnomersy! It isn't metagaming because they WOULD know these things in character.
Sigh...
I believe my points are made well enough that I feel no need to clarify any further. This whole 5' step debate is doing nothing but prove my point that you can't get people to agree what is or is not metagaming, even when you have a firm definition in place, much less when the definition itself is not agreed upon.
I just don't feel the example fits your definition.
Exactly
I know that people who design modules believe that most characters enter a dungeon and stay to the right. I call this term 'natural right turning tendencies'
This is out of character knowledge.
I know that because of this i'm likely to be able to skip a lot of the roadblocks to my goal by instead being a player who always stays to the left. I call this 'natural left turning tendencies' It is a playstyle based on out of character knowledge and is therefore metagaming.
My character doesn't know anything about how other parties operate having a design effect on the things he encounters in his life but because I'm controlling him he's developed a habit of always staying to the left and he's never gotten lost. It would be aribtrary from his perspective to always stay to the right of course, but to him the decision is arbitrary. It's meta meta... He tells himself he explores 'clockwise' which makes more sense to him than going counterclockwise for no particular reason at all'.... Despite the truth being that I'm still entirely and diliberately metagaming that choice in my own head.
If our party has learned of his propensity to stay left as a 'not getting lost tool' and are, in character, theoretically unaware of player propensity and dungeon design based on those tendencies... their agreement to stick to left turning tendencies is not meta at all.. Simply the best way to guarantee that the party is on the same page about their dungeon navigating tactic.
So if the party went into a dungeon ahead of me and when I arrive late I make the decision to go left to find them... That decision is not meta because I know our party has agreed on a tactic so that we'll all be confident which direction we've gone and how to get out when we get lost.
This has happened at my table. I've created a hard rule for my group that we always go left and until I told them they had no idea why I strongly preferred left to right. To them it was simply an arbitrary rule I chose and they accepted as arbitrarily just peachy.
Though for me it was unarguably based on very real out of character knowledge. In this particular case there was a strongly meta tactic being used but it was being used in a way that not only did most of the characters in the paty not know why they did it that way, but the players controlling those characters didn't know about it either.
The term is not nearly as black and white as it is made out to be.
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That's a very good example, Vincent.
I've heard plenty of groups having a system for exploring, and have always considered it a means to ensure you can always retrace your steps, and/or eventually visit every location and make it back to where you started.
Real life orienteering instructors have similar systems for surviving in the wild, such as always heading downhill so you will find a water source, then following that source so you will come to a settlement.
I consider all of those to be in-character knowledge, held by anyone with Survival ranks.
It's also in-character for PCs who have no Survival ranks, but have ever travelled with someone with Survival ranks, in which case, they may not know why the rule exists, but it seemed very important to a person whose experience they respect, so they'll follow it.
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How about if I can move twice as fast as a normal person, I still can't move more than 5 feet without losing all my iteratives. Plus it still doesn't explain why you suddenly go from 7 attacks to 1 even if you move a little more than 5 ft. I can definitely understand losing some, but not all but one.
Have you checked out Kirth's houserules?
They have allowed for high-BAB characters to sacrifice some of their extra attacks, in exchange for movement between attacks, so you could take maybe half your attacks, while stepping through a room, bashing opponents as you go.Useful for times when Spring Attack or Great Cleave don't quite fit, because you want more than one attack, but the opponents aren't conveniently adjacent.
(Such as the scene in Edoras, where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas march up to Theoden's throne, bashing a selection of guards who attempt to intercept them.)
Though I don't currently use these variant rules, I am tempted to take time out to read them, because they would reduce the number of 'WTF' moments in a typical game. Suspension of disbelief would be less often broken by kludgy mechanics, which fail to model reality well.
Where rules are written well, where they more accurately simulate a realistic outcome, there is less dissociation between what the character wants to achieve and what game terms the player has to employ to describe it.
Therefore, there should be less occasions where the player is forced to justify his choice of actions, in character.
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Snorter, the whole issue could be resolved without invoking metagaming if the move rule simply said "if you move five feet or less you can do a full attack and don't take attacks of opportunity". Which is how I would have done it.
I will certainly allow that it would be simple, to describe all full round action as including an inherent repositioning, anywhere within five feet of your starting position, before, during, or after.
You're still running into issues, that the declaration of any such minor movement shouldn't stack with other movement, and is going to prohibit the carrying out of other move actions during the round, unless you specifically describe this free 'repositioning' move as explicitly not counting against drawing weapons, unfolding scrolls, standing up from prone, etc.
It has to be its own 'thing', with its own terminology.
Which is exactly how it has been written. So I don't see any dilemma.
It's this awareness of the rules and the necessity to make an explicit choice of one rule over another based on the rules impact on the game that makes it metagaming.
And, again, it's not BAD metagaming to choose a five foot step. It's just making a choice based on an awareness of the rules impact on the game that makes it metagaming.
This part I understand.
If I've been abrupt upthread, it's because 99% of the times metagaming is implied, it is as a pejorative term.
If someone in a thread states that 'using a character's class abilities, in an appropriate context' is metagaming, they can't be surprised if they get a robust response.
I see that you're effectively playing devil's advocate, to ask "What possible action can the player of a game, sat round a gaming table, with gaming books in front of him, ever take, that isn't metagaming?".
Which is a valid question.
I see that you're effectively playing devil's advocate, to ask "What possible action can the player of a game, sat round a gaming table, with gaming books in front of him, ever take, that isn't metagaming?".
Which is a valid question.
IMO (and it really is just that, as different people are going to think differently) the only way not to metagame is to put the rules out of your mind, and then make your decision on which actions to take next based purely on what sounds good narratively, without using your knowledge of the rules mechanics to influence that decision. As you mentioned - you're around a gaming table, with gaming books in front of you. The only way to prevent metagaming is not to have the books, and for the GM not to even tell you which rules set you're actually playing and to handle all of it behind the GM screen.
So imagine you're a playing a spellcaster for a moment. Your choice of spell can only be chosen using the flavor text for that spell, without looking at (or memorizing) the mechanics.
Or if you're in melee combat, you can describe your actions narratively but without using game terminology ("I'm moving forward at about walking speed and attacking the orc on the right") - again, without using your knowledge of the mechanics to influence your decisions and only deciding what you would do if you were that character in that scene.
Personally, I'd love to play that way. Every time I've tried though, I've found it impractical within the first half hour due to the GM having to do all of the work mechanics-wise (updating character sheets, doing all of the rolls, and generally interpreting every bit of player narrative into rules and vice-versa.) It'd probably need multiple GMs to pull it off at an acceptable speed (or a very simple rules set)
So, metagame-free Pathfinder - an idealistic vision, but utterly impractical. Any enjoyment I might gain from it is easily outweighed by the extra complication involved.
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I reskin [my monsters] liberally, precisely to avoid this sort of metagaming by experienced players who have practically memorized the books.
My players know the Bestiary like the back of their hand as well and I am often forced to do such things myself.
I once pitted my players against a single erinyes (and her summoned minions) in the middle of their home village.
For three hours, they didn't realize it was an erinyes even when she used familiar abilities such as flaming arrows and her lasso.
Why? Because I creeped them out with unfamiliar flavor. None of them had Knowledge (planes) and so none could roll to reveal its secrets.
I started off by describing her as a giant flying cocoon made of twisted iron coils. Whenever they made attacks against it with weapon or spell, one or two coils would unwind and deflect the attack (via DR or SR).
Finally, when they did manage to deal damage to her, the coils unraveled to reveal a black-winged angel hidden inside (the coils being a kind of "hair." She would have been beautiful if it weren't for her ritual scarification making her look like a mockery of something otherwise holy. The most gruesome part though? Her eyes. Where her eyes should have been there were simply empty sockets, as if she had torn them out with her own claws. Nevertheless, she would look at the PCs through those empty sockets as though she could see into their minds, their souls.
Every time they failed to bypass her DR or SR (which was quite often) I would describe it as the iron coils from her scalp reacting reflexively to intercept the attack. She would also "lasso" them with the iron coils from time to time, flying high and then dropping them to great effect.
She never spoke to them in mere words, but instead filled their minds with disturbing images via telepathy. For example, rather than tell them she was going to kill a baby at the orphanage in hopes of luring them into a trap, she would simply force visions of her ripping an infant and its crib to shreds. Since the PCs lived in the town and knew it well, they immediately recognized the baby, crib, and nursery that they envisioned, and knew where to go when the erinyes teleported ahead of them to set up her trap.
I don't know that it was scary, but it certainly was nerve-wracking for them. The PCs, in game and out, couldn't begin to guess what it was they were fighting. Only that it was a horrible manifestation of evil that couldn't possibly be of this world.
Personally, I'd love to play that way. Every time I've tried though, I've found it impractical within the first half hour due to the GM having to do all of the work mechanics-wise (updating character sheets, doing all of the rolls, and generally interpreting every bit of player narrative into rules and vice-versa.)I've done it, to the absolute delight of my players (who felt free to try anything they liked), for campaigns back in 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D. I imagine it'd be a nightmare to attempt in Pathfinder, especially considering that I'm wholly incompetent as relates to this rules set.
Heh, yep I've done it a looong time ago with BECMI D&D. Sometimes I miss simpler combat rounds :)
Wow.
That sort of thing isn't uncommon with inexperienced GMs who are trying to go "by the book". I always try to remember to ask any player who says "I'll wait" if they want to go now in between each player's turn, and at the end I'll say "this is your last chance to act this round" before going to the next round.
I also move them in the initiative order.
I once had a group of players pitch a fit on me because 2 members of a group of soldiers "train their loaded crossbows on the party mage". Now, I understand that there is a debate about whether you can ready an action outside of initiative order, but they were mad because I didn't specifically use the word "ready" to describe the guards actions.
Have you looked at Numenera, Jeff? Could well scratch that itch for you. :)
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Personally, I'd love to play that way. Every time I've tried though, I've found it impractical within the first half hour due to the GM having to do all of the work mechanics-wise (updating character sheets, doing all of the rolls, and generally interpreting every bit of player narrative into rules and vice-versa.) It'd probably need multiple GMs to pull it off at an acceptable speed (or a very simple rules set)
I've done it before, albeit in World Of Darkness rather than pathfinder. The characters ended up in a strange other world and the players didn't know that I was using the dream-combat rules from the Changeling book so they were figuring out the rules at the same time as their characters were figuring out "the rules".
Works great for a one shot. Plus I had great rewards to offer the PCs in game. They went crazy for a book explaining dream combat and went on a massive subquest to go get it. When the PCs finally got it, I handed them the rules and said "this is what your characters find out".