Creative Director
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Metagaming isn't automatically a bad thing. It's easy to get so caught up in the story for some GMs that they can forget that the element of the game itself can be just as fun as the story. The game is at its best, in my opinion, when rules and flavor are in a good balance. And that more or less assumes a certain level of metagaming.
The problem is, if you exclude all that information, then the players (yes the players not the characters) have no idea what is going on untill the half way through the AP.
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Allow the players to put a few of the pieces together early and they will feel more a part of the story, and can better get into the meat of it. Keep them completely in the dark, and it feels superficial, and shallow, because they arent aware of all the depth that is going on behind the scenes.
I agree, it's better to give the players enough information so that they can create characters that are tied to the background of the campaign from the start. That way they are more likely to want to follow it to the end. Now, I'm not talking about giving away spoilers, but rather to give the players more information than their characters have. If the players understand what's going on, even though their characters may not, they are more involved in the campaign.
I wanted my players to have this information. They tend to be all over the board when designing their characters (which is fine) and I didn't want to get to the part where they learn they are going to be in charge and find out no one had a positive charisma score -- or that two of the players were playing the anti-social type and didn't want to run a kingdom -- or that one of the PCs was so devoted to his own power he would ruin the kingdom for everyone else trying to get to lichdom.
With the player's guide as it is, my players had some focus on what they wanted to create. They still went various ways on it but at least I know they'll be at minimum functional at running a kingdom -- which is what I want as a GM -- I want them to run the kingdom. As such they needed to know that so that their PCs could have some sort of position planned for.
I disagree with the OP here. I appreciate the players guide… well, giving guidance to the players for making characters for the campaign. It can be frustrating as a player to come up with a fun concept only to have it never play out or worse be counterproductive. Multiply that by the 3 to 5 other characters in a party and welcome to the clusterf***. The only other options for avoiding this are pregenerated characters or the ‘ask your GM’ approach. Pregens are just no fun. I do not prefer the ‘ask your GM’ approach because this requires the GM to shut down the player’s character concepts one after the other until the player randomly finds something that fits (again multiply that by the 3 to 5 other characters in a party). This is extra, unnecessary work for the GM and annoying for the players.
A little mystery is good, but when the important setting features, plot points and major NPCs are all secret, the players will make their own. That works great in a sandbox game, but can easily break an AP campaign.
The game is at its best, in my opinion, when rules and flavor are in a good balance. And that more or less assumes a certain level of metagaming.
I unquestionably agree to the former, to the extent that I'd argue the two are so inexorably intertwined. I'm somewhat confused as to the latter, and a bit more confused as to how it applies to this specific instance.
The game is at its best, in my opinion, when rules and flavor are in a good balance. And that more or less assumes a certain level of metagaming.I unquestionably agree to the former, to the extent that I'd argue the two are so inexorably intertwined. I'm somewhat confused as to the latter, and a bit more confused as to how it applies to this specific instance.
"This AP will focus on exploration and nation-building (rules and flavor). It will work best if characters are good with skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, various Knowledges (Geography, History, Local, Nature), Sense Motive, and Survival (metagaming)." If the players aren't metagaming their characters to suit the expected campaign, you could end up with a completely unsuitable party (i.e., optimized purely for dungeon crawls, no one takes ranks in social skills or has a Cha above 10, a group of demon hunters, etc.).
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Creative Director
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The game is at its best, in my opinion, when rules and flavor are in a good balance. And that more or less assumes a certain level of metagaming.I unquestionably agree to the former, to the extent that I'd argue the two are so inexorably intertwined. I'm somewhat confused as to the latter, and a bit more confused as to how it applies to this specific instance.
What Dragonchess Player said just above sums it up nicely.