Blatant metagaming and its fallout

If you're asking how to apologize, I personally don't see any good face-saving techniques. Your explosion seems to have been based upon an non-rational personal preference with an unreasonable demand inherent. I think you just have to humble yourself. "Sorry, I was wrong and did a wrong thing. There's no good explanation or excuse"

Maybe buy them all a pizza.

Apologize for your emotional outburts and don't even mention the circumstances. It was a childish, stupid thing to do, you've realized what an idiot you were being, and it won't happen again. That's what you tell them, and I pray it's the truth.

by not sperging out over dumb shit. It's hard, I know.

Something else going on that's upsetting you, that you felt the need to go nukular over this?

I agree, I don't think the metagaming is necessarily a problem there. I'm just thinking the whole scenario might be on account of a player being bored

Not really. I just fundamentally don't see a difference between

>GM, please tell me what's up ahead so I can make my plans accordingly despite having no IC reason to know that

And someone trying to take a peek at my notes to get the same information, except that one attempt is pathetic and hilariously unlikely to succeed. They're both attempts to cheat, for lack of a better term.

Holy shit you're autistic. I've changed my mind. Don't apologize at the next session. Apologize as soon as you can, and give up DMing to someone who has his head on straight.

When a player does something that you don't want them to do or asks a questions you don't want answered, it is sometimes useful to give players a nudge on how there characters could find out.

When they ask, "How many fights do we have left?", say "You aren't sure. Perhaps some divination magic could help." or "You're nearing the top of the tower. In most cases that means there are few fights left, but powerful wizards are full of surprises."

You're the exact kind of person I refuse to have near a session.

It is the exact same thing. My DM is cut-throat when it comes to cheating, and somebody asking to have information their character hasn't come across so that they can "win" the session gets their ass handed to them.

In our group, it isn't about "beating the DM" or "winning the campaign" it's about doing what our characters would do, using only what our characters know and are capable of.

These guys yelling at you for having standards and knowing what you're doing are thankfully confined to Veeky Forums and not people I have to encounter in my life.
Did you lose your shit? Sure. Apologize and calm down a bit. But you had every right to be upset one of your players was cheating.

>"How many more of these fights are we going to have before we hit Kassand?"
what was so rage inducing about this question anyway?

Kassand is presumably the lich.

The player is asking a question to an answer that he shouldn't know in character, or out of character. And he's asking it solely for how he can best prepare himself for a fight that in character he should not be fully prepared for. He's trying to win, not enjoy the challenge or the story or whatever.

Play a board game instead. Because that's what he thinks he's playing.

>These guys yelling at you for having standards and knowing what you're doing are thankfully confined to Veeky Forums and not people I have to encounter in my life.

Other way around.

Alternatively, he's fucking bored and made a (admittedly mediocre) joke in an attempt to get a few chuckles. Really, at worst, his question should have garnered a disapproving stare.

Apologize.

I'm impressed. You've managed to fabricate a completely arbitrary set of standards that allow you to feel better about yourself, even if those standards don't have any real basis in reality. You're a true roleplayer.

Hey, I'm not OP, I don't have to apologize.

Considering he actually followed up his initial question with an expanded statement, I don't think he was joking.

This, full-stop.

The player is still trying to act in their character's best interests: the character doesn't want to die to the lich, and the character would probably be wondering how many spells they should save.

>You could try rolling insight to figure out the lich's tactics in arranging his troops.
>Or you could try rolling arcana to see if you know anything about typical wizard tower construction.
>My character doesn't know much about magic, so I'll try Insight.
>17
>You think you've probably clibed about 2/3rds of the way up the tower. Presumably, the lich is at the top. So far, you've fought 3 enemies of increasing strength, and encountered a few traps. So, you think that there may only be 1 or 2 more enemies, but they'll probably be stronger than the ones you've fought before.
>Of course, the lich could be luring you into a trap with some extremely strong foes. Or he might be pulling his forces back, and planning to stage an all-out assault when you finally reach the top.

It really doesn't seem like the player was trying to cheat or trick you into letting slip some metagame knowledge. Sounds like you kinda overreacted.

If you're raging over a tabletop game, then chances are there's something more serious going on. You might want to consider why you reacted the way you did.

Those are two very different scenarios. A request for meta info is not a violation of trust between the player and DM. You should have just denied the request and moved on. The fact that you equate the two is, frankly, a pretty troubling sign.

> A request for meta info is not a violation of trust between the player and DM.

No, it's merely a rather weak request for the DM to do it himself. Yeah, I should have denied the request and kept my cool, but they are comparable, which is why I find the damn thing so infuriating. "Tell me the answer" is the most baby-tier of all possible responses to adversity, especially when it's phrased so baldly.

If they were successful, they'd lead to the exact same place, and the only difference is one involves sneaking behind the GM's back, and the second relies on the GM abnegating any sense of responsibility.

If you consider your games some kind of olympic level exercise in competition and sportsmanship, maybe.

If you're having fun with some goddamn friends, it's not even a fucking party foul. It's just asking a fucking question, for god's sake. When they ask when the next session is, or if they have time to use the restroom, do you throw a fit?

Maybe you should make some friends.

In whatever game you're in, next session, ask your GM to just give you the answer to whatever the central mystery that's going on, or to tell you the hidden weakness of the BBEG, or whatever would be appropriate for your game.

After all, it's just some friends having fun. He ought to tell you. It's just a question, for god's sake!

> When they ask when the next session is, or if they have time to use the restroom, do you throw a fit?

Are you retarded, or are you just attempting to play one? Of course not. But if you can't understand why someone would object to not only metagaming openly, but attempting to enlist the GM's help in doing so, then I don't see how we can possibly have a meaningful conversation.

>Yeah, I should have denied the request and kept my cool,

Nothing else needs to be said about this situation. It was either a momentary snapping point, maybe because you're stressed in some other area of life, I don't know; or if this is a normal thing for you, you really need to examine some things.

Like whether you're actually having fun with your group or campaign. Or whether you have a good handle on your emotions, if something that almost everyone here agrees was pretty innocuous set you off like that.

In either case, you should apologize.

Never said "he ought to tell you." But there's no grounds for throwing a fucking tantrum and acting all morally insulted.
And this isn't a central mystery, it's not a hidden weakness, it's not a big fucking deal.
It's just a guy asking, "I wonder how much more of this we're gonna have?" It's like playing tennis with a friend and asking how many times he's gonna serve the ball in that killer way that you have trouble with.
It might be a bad attitude or a bad question or a bad competitive instinct.
But you know what the wrong answer is?
A childish tantrum about the spirit of the game and the drive to improve and the blah blah blah
The right answer?
"haha! Until you start returning it!"
Or (in this specific case), "Haha, like I'd really tell you that!"

Fair enough.

>Never said "he ought to tell you."

No, you just said that it was only important "if you consider it some kind of olympic level exercise in competition and sportsmanship", which carries the implication that since it isn't, the question isn't that big of a deal, and ergo you ought to tell him, it's not that important.

>It's just a guy asking, "I wonder how much more of this we're gonna have?" It's like playing tennis with a friend and asking how many times he's gonna serve the ball in that killer way that you have trouble with.

Maybe I didn't do a good job of explaining it in the OP, but it didn't have that feel at all. It wasn't a gripe about the enemies they were facing and an exasperated "I wonder how many more of them we'll have to plow through". He was intent, and scribbling notes in the margin of his character sheet. It (or at least as far as I could tell) was very much "Tell me how many more enemies are left; I need that information so I can make the best plan"

Should I have snapped his head off like that? No. But this wasn't some innocuous mistake either, unless I've completely lost my ability to read faces.

>Asking isn't a big deal
=/=
>You have to say yes

And second: then he wasn't even complaining, and that makes it sound even less serious. Anyways, you're not his mother or his coach or something. Moral outrage and pep talks are just out of the question. Again, what you should have said was "Haha, like I'd really tell you that!"

Either way that's kind of the same thing. Just because he's trying to figure it out with a little more zeal and wondering if you'll give some sort of tip or whatever to let him crack it, doesn't mean he's blatantly trying to cheat.

Stop trying to seek justification for this or you'll just end up making an asshat out of yourself again next time this comes up, too.

This person has it right. Instead of saying "your character can't know that and you shouldn't be asking me questions", and/or just flatly losing your mind, and if you really wanted to stand your ground or something you could easily just say that there's no real way to gauge how far through you are due to a lack of windows or someshit.

>And second: then he wasn't even complaining, and that makes it sound even less serious.

Not to me. Complaining, venting, blowing off steam is a pretty understandable reaction to some difficulty. Trying to cheat is another matter entirely.

>Again, what you should have said was "Haha, like I'd really tell you that!"

Why? Because again, unless I have completely lost my ability to read cues, this was very much in the vein of

>Please show me your DM notes so I can make a plan based around that.

And that's not funny, that's not a lighthearted mistake. That's crossing a pretty serious line.

>Either way that's kind of the same thing.

How do you come to that conclusion?

>Just because he's trying to figure it out with a little more zeal and wondering if you'll give some sort of tip or whatever to let him crack it, doesn't mean he's blatantly trying to cheat.

He wasn't "trying to figure it out", he was asking me if I'd tell him the answer, which is blatantly trying to cheat.

>This person has it right.

But he didn't know that and he shouldn't have asked the question. I don't see why there's so much acceptance for this concept, it's quite honestly baffling to me. Again, if one of your players asked you to be able to see your dungeon notes, I very much doubt you'd be letting him make a roll to be able to see it/puzzle out information from it, or even remotely entertaining the possibility.

>Again, if one of your players asked you to be able to see your dungeon notes, I very much doubt you'd be letting him make a roll to be able to see it/puzzle out information from it, or even remotely entertaining the possibility.

Nobody throughout this entire thread has suggested that you should have just told him the answer of showed him your notes. What they have been saying is that it was a completely innocent question. Maybe he is new to rpgs and does not understand the concept of metagaming, or maybe he doesn't take them quite as seriously as you do. Maybe has a different idea of how rpgs should be played than you do. Or he could have simply had a careless moment and not considered the implications of the question. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, and the fact that you immediately went off the deep end suggests that maybe you have some issues. That is all anyone is trying to say here.

>plays Rogue Trader
>our psyker speaks of things his player wouldn't know
>other players suspect he's read the module
>priest points a finger. "DID YOUR DAEMONIC MASTERS TELL YOU THIS... PSYKEEERRR?!"
>captain calls for NPCs to throw the psyker into mega-jail.
>psyker spends rest of session going mad as the crew thinks he's in league with daemons.
>breaks out by actually becoming in league with daemons.

Why didn't you just tell him?

Seriously, if you can't not equate the following:
>Asking a question with meta elements that in no way requires a direct response, an OOC response, nor indicates any form of "cheating"
with
>Attempting to cheat by reviewing private materials, asking specifically for meta information, or trying to discern things that shouldn't be known through methods other than the GM,

then you probably shouldn't be the GM until you can handle this. The only time this reaction would be anywhere remotely feasible is if you had a rule in place that all players are to be IC at all times, which is already dipping into the level of absurdity.

Honestly at this point you're acting so thick I can't tell if you're a troll or just extremely unwilling to turn off the part of your brain that wants to justify the way you acted over this.

Found the meta-gamer.

But he WAS specifically asking for meta information. Did I not make this clear somewhere? That is literally what got this started and I thought I laid it out in the OP.

He asked how many more enemies were in between him and the big boss. He had no reliable information to that effect to base that on, as far as I can tell, he just wanted a DM freebie.

That's not a reason to go off at someone.

Which I acknowledge. But you, or at least whomever I've been responding to, has been extremely suggestive that his question was either some kind of innocent mistake, or at the very least not an attempt to cheat; a conclusion I have no idea how he's arriving at. That ANY negative reaction was wrong, and I should have just ignored it entirely.

>>"How many more of these fights are we going to have before we hit Kassand?"

This sounds like a bored player. Literally a variation on "are we there yet?"

>>"Yeah, I need to know how much of my spells to save for the big fight and how many I can expend here."

This may be particularly unskillful backpedaling after realizing it's kind of rude to whine at the DM when other people seem to be having fun. Or it could be an attempt to fish for information they can't have. OR it could be an attempt to ask, "based on what I can tell, is there any way to get a vague idea IC?"

>"HOW DARE YOU ASK THAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YOU'RE PRETENDING TO BE AN ADVENTURER IN AN EVIL LICH'S LAIR YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BADLY YOU'VE RUINED THE ATMOSPHERE OF THIS EXPERIENCE I AM OFFENDED TO BE IN YOUR VERY PRESENCE YOU SCUM SUCKING FILTHY METAGAMER I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I'M RUNNING HERE"

vs

>"I dunno fampai, got any ways of seeing through walls or divination spells that could see stuff in your path?"

Thanks for being a walking example of why people who take the metagame too seriously are total spergs, OP

> I still maintain that idiot guy is at serious fault
>Should I apologize before then?

why would you apologize if you felt the idiot guy was at fault?

does a police officer say "sorry bro" after taking a criminal into custody?

He sounds like a vidyagamer. It's rough getting those people to adapt to RPGs, and it takes patience. For computer RPGs, you can google a guide or do an instance several times until you have a very efficient method for getting there.

Metagaming heats me up too. I would have responded to this by saying, "You don't know. How is your character feeling? Are they worried about the strength of this enemy? Does he think the party could handle the encounter without him?" and get a bunch of dialogue out about the characters' bonds, added some atmosphere about the dungeon, and moved *everyone* back into character.

No. Cops don't even apologize after brutalizing someone if they can get away with it. Presumably OP isn't a cop, since he seems to feel some remorse.

Asking a question is not cheating. Would you consider a poker player asking his opponent what cards he has in his hand cheating? Would you equate it to trying to peek at them? It would be silly for the player to expect an answer, but it wouldn't be cheating, and it wouldn't in any way justify the other player berating him.

I said it upthread, but I really think it was option #2 of yours. He was looking at his character sheet, and making some kind of note on it, tracking fatigue points maybe, although I didn't get a great look. It didn't have the right hallmarks (at least by my possibly flawed perceptions) of being bored or exasperated.

he was rude - you were a fucking child.

maintaining he was at fault, is maintaining that you are a fucking child.

> Would you consider a poker player asking his opponent what cards he has in his hand cheating?

It goes to intent. If he seriously thought this was a way of getting information on what his opponent was actually holding in his hand? Yes. A particularly hamfisted and ineffective way of cheating, but an attempt at cheating nonetheless.

>Would you equate it to trying to peek at them?

I wouldn't completely equate the two, but the difference (assuming that his question is an attempt to get knowledge of the cards to further his chances) is one of effectiveness, not intent.

>Cops don't even apologize after brutalizing someone if they can get away with it

why would anyone feel remorse if you believe you did nothing wrong?

>why would anyone feel remorse if you believe you did nothing wrong?

Because he thinks he's right but doesn't want to deal with the social fallout of being right.

Not that I think he's right, I think he's a retarded sperg. But I think you're one too because you don't seem to grasp how human interaction works.

>I'm sorry I went apeshit, but you were cheating and that set me off for some reason.

Drinks

> Should I apologize before then? In next session?
Yes, privately, and don't bring it up in-group. Just because yo apologize for over-reacting doesn't mean you have to facilitate his behavior if it happens again, just be an adult about it next time.

>Yes. A particularly hamfisted and ineffective way of cheating, but an attempt at cheating nonetheless.
It's not cheating if he tells you what's in his hand. It could be a bluff or you could just go with it.

I really think you made this thread hoping everyone would tell you that you're a cool guy and everything was OK. But you sperged and spergs gonna sperg.

"Look at me. Fuck you. How fucking dare you blaspheme The God of all reality -- me. I'm God. Suck my cock and beg for forgiveness, you cunt. MAYBE I'll let you play in my imaginary world with your imaginary character again. Bitch."

^ Your response. Good luck OP, stand your ground.

>Should I apologize before then? In next session?
Apologizing can't hurt. You know the people and the situation better than I do, but I'd prefer to do something like that in person and without having to go through the awkward process of setting up a meet or trying to "naturally" run into the person. That means that I'd probably do it at the beginning of the next session, assuming I was pretty sure the guy would actually show up.

And I just say something like "Dude, I'm really sorry about last session. I guess I was a little on edge or something and I let things get away from me. So, you know: sorry. I'll try to do a better job of keeping myself in check in the future."

I wouldn't mention the parameters of the situation or how you thought he was wrong or anything. You already expressed that last time and it would undercut your apology.

>And I still maintain that idiot guy is at serious fault for openly metagaming like that.
Different people play games differently. I don't know what kind of experiences he's had before, but it's not outside the range of possibility that he was in a game where they did shit like that. But even if he was being a bit ridiculous, I don't there's any cause to get riled up about it. The most you have to say is, "Dude, come on. That's part of the adventure. Your character doesn't know that, so neither should you. Trying to ration your spells without knowing for certain what lies ahead is part of the game."

As a fellow GM, I know it can be easy to get invested in your game and take things too seriously, but you need to take a step back and take a deep breath. He wasn't being difficult, or pugnacious, or sabotaging the adventure or anything; he was just approaching the game in a way you disapprove of. And don't get me wrong, I disapprove of it to, but nothing beyond a bit of irritation is warranted. You overreacted, plain and simple. Don't sweat it though; it comes with the territory. Just apologize to the guy and move on.

To be fair, his character would have seen how tall the fortress is from the outside, right? So he would have eyeballed how many flights of stairs it would take to climb to the top. Makes sense for the character to be thinking about that as he climbs up. Knowing how much more he needs to climb isn't necessarily meta-gaming, its probably something the character would know, at least roughly.

But asking how many more fights is clearly metagaming, but its information that could have been given in a lot of different ways with a more in character question, so I don't see why you went full autism like that. He didn't put the RPG fluff around his question, and he should have, but that's no excuse to act that way. Its like when the characters meet trolls for the first time. If the player says "Oh they're trolls, they're weak to fire" we call that metagaming but if a player asks "can I see moss growing on the troll" or fucking whatever question they ask that gives them an excuse to use fire attacks, we generally let that slide because they did it the 'right way' and we don't want the players to have to pretend to not know what they're doing because it gets old and boring fast.

Your player did it the wrong way and you threw a shitfit over it. Honestly it sounds kind of like you knew your players weren't engaged, which is why they asked in that way. I think you know that if they were engaged with what is presumably the "epic" finale of your campaign, the idea that they weren't as fully enthralled as you hoped they were is what you set you off.

You shouldn't apologize. Once a player of mine had the audacity to speak to the player beside him about combat tactics out of character. I looked him right in the eyes and reached for my katana (I always keep it handy for situations like this) and chased him out of my mothers basement. That campaign ended shortly afterward for unrelated reasons but I know I did the right thing. Give metagamers an inch and they'll take a mile. If you apologize to this scumbag motherfucker the next thing he'll do is ask you something like "so how injured does the lich look" or some kind of metagaming bullshit like that.

>If you apologize to this scumbag motherfucker the next thing he'll do is ask you something like "so how injured does the lich look" or some kind of metagaming bullshit like that.
I once had a player do something like that and I made his character spend 2d4 rounds performing a medical examination on the monster to determine the severity of its wounds. He had to start all over when the monster was wounded by an arrow on round 3.

>spends 2d4 rounds just to notice the monsters jugular sliced wide open

nice meme

Nah. For a wound that bad, I'd probably shorten the exam time by 1d2 rounds.

Sometimes, not metagaming can be hard.

For example if your playing WHFRP and you come across another Riverboat that's got two deck hands laid low from small puncture wounds in the neck after transporting a mysterious box to a town upriver for a lot of gold, no questions asked. It becomes very difficult for us as players not to metagame BECAUSE IT'S OBVIOUSLY VAMPIRES.

Except our characters wouldn't know because Vampire lore isn't that well known in the setting. So, it becomes kind of difficult.

Honest question: Why do they use vampires instead of making their own vampires that play off the same basic, underlying horror of vampires, but don't attack in the same way and aren't vulnerable in the same way? Isn't it just asking for bored/frustrated players because they can clearly see the end in sight? There's no mystery there.