D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[Charlaquin]

For those who don't police metagaming...

I think I've had my cleric choose to intentionally not use much healing or not heal a PC that acted in a way the Cleric would have found particularly egregious. That isn't PvP conflict in the sense that needs an adjudication though, right?

Depends on how the players involved feel about it. If everyone is cool with it, there’s no problem, but if it’s harming someone’s enjoyment of the game we might need to talk about goals of play and if everyone is on the same page about them.

Having an alternate methods of resolution for PvP conflict (besides narration a skill checks and combat) is a table rule that should be discussed in session 0, right?

For sure. I’ve always made a point of addressing PvP in session 0. It’s just gotten easier since adopting the “target player adjudicates the hostile action” rule.

If you use the narration to resolve PvP conflict, what happens in the case where the thief chooses to pocket what was in the chest he just opened before the others see it resolved? (Which of the several other party members narrates it? Or is that not something you'd use that resolution for?)

In that case I would say the thief is taking a hostile action against each member of the party. Each player can decide individually whether the attempt to pocket the treasure without their character noticing succeeds, fails, or requires a check to resolve. If multiple players called for a check, I would recommend that the thief make a single check and those players each compare the result to whatever DC they felt was appropriate - perhaps their passive Wisdom (Perception) or the result of a Wisdom (Perception) check, but that’s up to the players to decide.

 

[Charlaquin]

As on topic in general, I'd still like to hear how people feel about a no-knowledge-skills, low int character knowing everything about the setting because the player read the setting manual. Because to me that absolutely is not fair towards players who actually gave their character knowledge skills and high intelligence.

A character with low Intelligence and no proficiencies in knowledge-related skills will be less likely to succeed at tasks that draw on memory or reasoning and have uncertain outcomes. A player who attempts to avoid having to make such checks by acting on assumptions based on their out of character knowledge risks those assumptions being wrong.

 

[iserith]

As on topic in general, I'd still like to hear how people feel about a no-knowledge-skills, low int character knowing everything about the setting because the player read the setting manual. Because to me that absolutely is not fair towards players who actually gave their character knowledge skills and high intelligence.

To understand how this works, it helps to keep this in mind: A player establishing what a character thinks is not the same as what the character knows.

To verify what the character thinks is true, the player must have the character take action to do so in the game setting. This may include recalling lore or making deductions and, if those tasks have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, the low-Int character is likely to fail more often on such checks as the high-Int character.

The game already deals with this problem, if it can even be called a problem. All you have to do is play the game.

 

[Fenris-77]

'Don't be a jerk' covers this whole issue for me. If I have a know-it-all who dumps INT and wants to constantly spout knowledge, I'll just make him wrong until he quits. There's no threat in player knowledge for me. YMMV.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The fun comes from roleplaying, assuming a role of a person in the setting who has different perspective and different amount of knowledge than the player.

I agree that the fun, or much of it, comes from roleplaying, but you are defining roleplaying very narrowly.

Let's pick an example: a party comes across a corridor that they all know from a previous run through the same module has a trap in it.

One form of roleplaying is, indeed, to act like those characters would act, and pretend to have no idea there is a trap, and to act accordingly.

The reason I find this form of roleplaying uninteresting is that it doesn't have anything to do with the unique personalities of those characters. Being oblivious to the trap is what any person would do in that circumstance. Saying, "I'll do what any other person would do in this situation" is just...how shall I say this...not why I tell stories with friends.

The kind of roleplaying I like is the sort that highlights what's unique about a character. It's not "What would your character do?" it's "What would your character do?" And while this is compatible with, in this example, pretending to be ignorant about the trap, it's in no way dependent upon it. You can just as easily do this while pretending to be ignorant as you can while using player knowledge.

In the case of our trapped hallway, the "valiant stalwart" could charge headfirst down the hallyway. The cowardly rogue could say, "Uh...my shoes are untied. You guys go ahead; I'll catch up." This is, ironically, metagaming in character. And I find it MUCH more entertaining than simply pretending to not know about the trap because "that's what your character would do."

Now, it's totally fair to ask, "Well why can't you do both? Do what any normal person would do, but with the unique flavor of your character?"

There is one more kind of roleplaying: the sort where you experience what your character experiences. If the first two variants of roleplaying are about performance, this third sort is about empathy. It's not about what you do, it's about what you experience. For example, the first time you fought trolls and they started regeneration and you genuinely didn't know what to do. This is my favorite kind of roleplaying. And it's utterly incompatible with "pretending" to not know stuff. In fact, the pretending to be ignorant sort of roleplaying is the diametric opposite of this empathetic sort of roleplaying. When I'm pretending to not know to burn trolls, I'm not even remotely feeling what my character is (presumably) feeling.

And I just don't want to waste game time doing this. I want to kill the damned trolls...maybe finding some good moments for performance roleplaying while doing so...and move on to the next challenge.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, people should be held to their agreements. I'm questioning the basis for the agreement itself though. It has no rules support in this game, it pushes the group to operate more in the metagame by working out who knows what in order to figure out what action declarations won't break the agreement, and it gives more power to the DM over the players in order to fix something the DM is largely creating in the first place.

This is incorrect. The ability check rules support it by including knowledge and lore under ability checks. What is not supported anywhere is the idea that the player can just use any player knowledge he wants. Absence of denial does not equate to approval/support. After all, the rules also don't deny longswords the ability to explode in a nuclear explosion, but I doubt anyone thinks that the absence of that denial equates to approval.

It also does not at all push the group to figure out who knows what. I've played this way for decades and have seen 0 groups or parts of groups get together to figure out who knows what. It might happen somewhere, but it's an exceedingly small minority of players if it does happen.

 

[Maxperson]

I wonder what would happen if a player “had a talk after the game” with one of these DMs and explained that 5e doesn’t distinguish between player knowledge and character knowledge, and that if they wished to keep participating they should stop imposing an antiquated play style on others.

Or are only DMs allowed to be patronizing/condescending?

If I'm doing something my players don't like, they come to me as a group and tell me so. We then discuss it and figure out a solution. Everyone needs to be having fun.

Again, though, the absence of denial does not equate to approval. There is absolutely no support in 5e for character knowledge being equal to player knowledge, but there is support in the ability check system for knowledge/lore being separate by requiring rolls.

 

[Cadence]

There is one more kind of roleplaying: the sort where you experience what your character experiences. If the first two variants of roleplaying are about performance, this third sort is about empathy. It's not about what you do, it's about what you experience. For example, the first time you fought trolls and they started regeneration and you genuinely didn't know what to do. This is my favorite kind of roleplaying. And it's utterly incompatible with "pretending" to not know stuff.

Are the obvious solutions to helping RPGers experience things like this, and get that new experience, either (i) not have them play with folks who read the MM cover to cover or ran into trolls with another character, (ii) ask the experienced players not to let stuff out so the new guy can experience it, or (iii) the DM needs to change up monsters so they don't miss giving that experience? Should modules the MM and modules start having random weakness tables for monsters, for example? Is the forced variation and moving away from the MM just the price that needs to be paid?

 

[Guest 6801328]

This is incorrect. The ability check rules support it by including knowledge and lore under ability checks. What is not supported anywhere is the idea that the player can just use any player knowledge he wants. Absence of denial does not equate to approval/support. After all, the rules also don't deny longswords the ability to explode in a nuclear explosion, but I doubt anyone thinks that the absence of that denial equates to approval.

That logic puzzles me.

You're right that nothing explicitly supports the use of player knowledge, but nothing explicitly denies it either.

And even with player knowledge, knowledge skills...even the specific "recall lore" use of them...is plenty useful, because players will often not know something, either because they don't think they know, or because they think they do and they're wrong. So to conclude that the presence of knowledge skills suggests that player knowledge is verboten is just....well, that's just not a valid conclusion. The most you could say is that the presence of knowledge skills is not incompatible with a no-player-knowledge houserule.

(Then again, this has been stated pretty clearly a couple of times in this thread, so I won't hold my breath that this argument is accepted.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

Are the obvious solutions to helping RPGers experience things like this, and get that new experience, either (i) not have them play with folks who read the MM cover to cover or ran into trolls with another character, (ii) ask the experienced players not to let stuff out so the new guy can experience it, or (iii) the DM needs to change up monsters so they don't miss giving that experience? Should modules the MM and modules start having random weakness tables for monsters, for example? Is the forced variation and moving away from the MM just the price that needs to be paid?

I won't speak for the others, but (as I've said many times) the one place where I personally try to avoid using player knowledge is to preserve that experience for others.