Metagaming: Rules should exist

[CaptainVanguard]

Again, another suggestion, and one im confident "most" will agree with me on infact all probably.

Meta-gaming, what is meta gaming?

It effectivly means using OOC information to magically know things ICly, for example:
Player 1: ooc: hey, my char is going to sneak up on yours
Player 2: ooc: oh cool
Player 2: Hah! thought you could sneak up on me did you?!
Player 1: ooc: dude wth?


This is a classic example of meta-gaming, player 2 knows this information oocly and with no reasonable explination, magically is able to protect themselves from a situation that requires common sense.
Now this might somewhat seem hypocritical given my other topic on HIPS but the point is, this scenerio is the opposite, a person using information provided to them oocly to abuse it and make use of it icly.

Roleplay, people, is your friend, and this is why my suggestion is that anyone caught doing this should be cautioned more than banned. Excessive use of this on the other hand is basically taking the piss so in my opinion, at that point id see alot less reason not to put a more harsher punishment on it.

I strongly believe this should be Absoleutly enforced because it is a growing problem especially amoung rpers playing villianous characters.

I needent tell others who play heroes or spies how much if a PITA this can be aswell when someone you've PMed or someone else has PMed about your character oocly, with no IC explination.

This, should, be, illegal.

Up to the DM's personally, but I strongly petition this to be made a rule.

[DrowChyld]

It is illegal. It is not cool. It is very VERY uncouth.

Whenever I encountered this activity I have always walked away from the RP. If you do this don't come around me. VERY crappy.

[Laurk]

The single biggest cause of metagaming is the passing of OCC information. Im going to suggest now what I always do. Tell everyone who sends you OOC info that you intend to meta game it to high hell if they tell you something your character wouldn't know. You will see the passing of OCC info drastically decrease, and therefore, the rate of meta gaming decrease as well.

[Sir_Carnifex]

Ishnak Ungduh has 6 INT!!!

Ha! I bet nobody would have known that had I not said it.


But seriously, it is EXTREMELY annoying when people metagame. Most of my experiences with it came from the DM side with seeing people doing murder right in front of guards, slaughtering all the townsfolks because they knew the NPCs wouldn't do a thing.

[franktheskank]

I think a step toward reducing a certain type of metagaming is to remove the name above the character for characters that wish to disguise themselves or allow some sort of limited name changing for a PC (once, twice per reset?).

I am a proponent of this because regardless of how good your disguise is somehow, someway, it ends up being metagamed. Either when you change back into your "normal" attire or when you are in a disguise. Countless times I have had to tell people "no. you dont know who this person is" or "no. you don't have enough evidence to link me to that disguised character". Not to mention a majority of these times my character was buffed with numerous spells that masks identity in addition to emoting voice changes. Despite all of this, once reverting to "normal" clothing people acted quite differently toward me, even people I have never encountered before.

Either consciously or not people will notice the name above your head and think to themselves "aha! so and so did this in a disguise" and begin acting differently toward you IG when you are undisguised. Even when they have no reason to be treating you differently. This is extremely unfair and makes it very difficult for one to RP a disguise. I know this from experience. If names could be changed when a player wishes to disguise themselves there would be a lot less metagaming of disguises.

An alternative to the name changing would be prior to making claims IG that so and so was the person in disguise you must present your evidence to a DM. This would be via screenshots. If the DM deems your evidence is legitimate then you know who the disguised person is.

The consequences are too great to allow "willy nilly" unveiling of disguises. This is doubly true for people who murder, steal, represent groups of ill repute, and the like. Because once someone links you IG to that disguise, even if it was in error, the damage is done. No amounts of "oh well just forget IC hes that disguised man" is going to revert what has already taken place. As it is now the disguise system is horrible for those who wish to disguise themselves.

[ragnarok1983]

Ishnak Ungduh has 6 INT!!!

Ha! I bet nobody would have known that had I not said it.


But seriously, it is EXTREMELY annoying when people metagame. Most of my experiences with it came from the DM side with seeing people doing murder right in front of guards, slaughtering all the townsfolks because they knew the NPCs wouldn't do a thing.

As does Nog/Dundurrt Ungduh! Oh noes! What if people treat him like an imbecile!? heheh.

[CrispyWalrus]

Luckily I don't find the sort of metagaming described by the OP to be very common. Perhaps it is because if I want to do something with my RP I just do it; I don't send a tell or make any OOC announcement that I am going to do something. To be honest I don't really understand the idea of doing such or see any reason why one ever would. I'm with Laurk in that if someone starts to tell me OOC information that frankly will wreck the enjoyment of RP for me, I ask them not to and simply say I prefer my RP to be impromptu.

My own biggest metagame peeve happens to be when players expound IC with their own player knowledge of the realms geography, inhabitants, creatures, or server locales that their other characters might know despite the fact that the character they are playing should know nothing of such things. I realize lore ranks might conceivably impart some knowledge but I still have never seen lore rolled when folks that like this sort of RP get going. I also wish that lore was broken out into the ten or so knowledge skills of PnP to make it more realistic. Knowledge (Everything) just doesn't really work for me.

@Frank-- A real disguise system that changed the floating name could really improve the RP of the server but we'd also need some way to make disguise a skill so that ranks could be allocated to it. I definitely agree it is metagame nightmare as things are now but it is also unrealistic to expect that just because someone changes clothes and stutters or affects an accent that their disguise is foolproof. Someone with no disguise skill trying such tactics would be recognized for a bumbling fool before anyone ever actually bought into such shenanigans.

[franktheskank]

Yes Crispy I do agree that a disguise skill would be needed.

[cwhit]

Just roll bluff vs spot for physical disguises
Just roll bluff vs listen for voice disguises.

And maybe it could be scripted that if you target a PC with ". ." Over their heads then you get their real ID in the log.

I would love this

[CrispyWalrus]

Just roll bluff vs spot for physical disguises
Just roll bluff vs listen for voice disguises.

And maybe it could be scripted that if you target a PC with ". ." Over their heads then you get their real ID in the log.

I would love this

I suppose Bluff is the closest skill we have to Disguise and Spot is used in PnP to counter Disguise. However, I don't really see Listen as any counter to a Disguise for two reasons. One being that Listen is used to listen for approaching enemies and to detect someone sneaking up on you. You would definitely hear someone's stutter or accent but it is not a skill that could tell you if what you were hearing was fake or not. The second reason is that you get only one Disguise check per use of the skill, even if several people are making Spot checks against it. So checking against Listen would constitute a second check. In PnP you are never sure if your disguise is working. Here everyone makes the assumption if they say that they are disguised then anyone not playing along must be metagaming. Sometimes they are, but sometimes it is the person in disguise who is metagaming in the sense of godmoding the extent of their disguise. I usually stay away from RPing any disguise for this reason. Until a complete system is put in place to accommodate and rule on disguises it is really a gray area.

[CaptainVanguard]

A disguise was simply an example, what I mean is in general, this should not be tolerated and a rule "should" exist to encourage people to remember that ooc details do "not" grant you permission to know them icly.

Disguises as I said, one example, others might be knowing a character is secretly evil or good, or is a tielfing when theres no obvious implications. These are more logical examples, one I will provide came from an incident with a friend which I will log as something like so:

Friend's character description clearly says his appearence is hidden from the other characters masking unusual features.
Other player reads character examine and uses this to mega-game knowing automatically that the mysterious voice basically seems out of place.

Again: You cannot know this, in laymans terms, the only way you'd be that good at detective work is as an absoleute dedicatee to it, and that basically means sacrificing everything else like personal security. Effectivly, if your going to be that good at finding things out you need a serious flaw to balance it.

It should be compleatly against the rules period but this is just a personal suggestion and opinion mind, though as I can see, im certainly not the only one who thinks this kind of behaviour is wrong.

[07paul87]

I'm all for a disguise/sense motive skill additions.

As far as metagaming, it'd be pretty hard to enforce. How would one prevent it from the DM side? If DMs start watching tells IG, they could get the wrong idea. I frequently relate moments of hilarity/interestingness to my *player* friends. Then again, I'm confident that they are mature RPers and won't act on the information.

I think the only real way to prevent metagaming would be to disable tells or by "upright" players who refuse to partake in it. I would hate to see tells go, and it would wreck a lot of player-generated events. The only solution to me would be for the player base to crack down on it by refusing to RP with people who metagame.

[sinsemilla]

Here is the best suggestion for all who do it, quit Metagaming.
Don't send people a tell telling them what your going to do.
Stop looking at peoples names and thinking because you can see it you know who they are. There are plenty of rules in place about metagaming, it is illegal and we don't ban for doing it unless it is extreme.
The best policy is police yourself, nothing worse than someone acting like they know you because they see your name. Two days in a row I was recognized and someone screamed out who I was regardless of the fact I changed clothes, hoods, wearing mask whatever, so it is sickening when someone does it, and the person metagamed usually suffers the most, such as having to get name changed or having to drop rp they spent weeks building because it is broke by metagaming.

Next, anything you don't wish to be known publically don't put it in the forums. The forums are by far one of the worst uses of metagaming, however if you put it in there expect people to use it.

If we all try to RP a situation according to what your specific char knows and not what you know as a player, things will be better yet.
If I took all I knew OOC and used it with every char I would know everyone and all their business. This is strictly on the player and no rule will make it better or change the metagaming, this is on a player level. You know what your character knows, so if it is something you have not learned on that char, leave it alone.

I personally black list any player who does metagame, they are not worth playing with, if they cannot separate characters as a player. And once they metagame something blatantly, then I can never trust they won't do it again. Accidents happen, however it is easy to tell when it is an accident or just stupidity.

[CrispyWalrus]

Friend's character description clearly says his appearence is hidden from the other characters masking unusual features.
Other player reads character examine and uses this to mega-game knowing automatically that the mysterious voice basically seems out of place.

Well it certainly may be wrong, but I doubt that you'll ever see a specified rule about metagaming description information like you describe. If you scope out the rules we already have in place the first thing you'll read is that "Here at Baldur's Gate: TSCC's we don't plan on being rule heavy. We have just a few simple guidelines to follow..."

Things like what you describe fall under rule #1 most likely, but you also have to understand that not everyone might get it immediately and some gentle OOC information sharing on your part might be needed to educate the offender to make a better future RPer rather than implement draconian rules that drive newbies away. In the server message to new players it is noted that "the overall goal of BG:TSCC is to provide a PW that everyone can play on and enjoy. From the hardened role-player to the hardened monster slayer, we welcome everyone."

Your RP might be hardened, but not everyone's that plays here is so hard. I guess the biggest question I have is why even put something in a description that elicits a metagaming response? If something is hidden then why note it in the appearance description? This description is for information we can see about a character. If something is hidden then it should only come out in RP and not be announced in a physical description. Imo that just seems to be asking for a response...

[CaptainVanguard]

Ignorance is no excuse though, putting it bluntly, if the description says something is hidden, sense motive or not, its hidden, stop nitpicking that one.

As Lenara says, people who consiously look over your name tag and recognise you despite being disguised can be forgiven once or twice, ill give you that Gomok.

But...

Doing this repeatedly, can be intentional, some players just dont "learn" not to do it and thats the problem, thats why there should be a more clear rule there to encourage others to take note that what they see isnt what they automatically know, learning things ICly is far more fruitful than spoiling a well concieved plot with ooc meta-gaming.

This isnt really a matter I think needs to be debated, its very clear there are rules already in place, my only thought was to make them more evident for players joining the server and for players on the forum to make it clear that meta-gaming is a no-no. Without a tag, people "will" assume and asking everyone to police themselves is ignorance, society abides to social laws, they need to be there for a reason.