Is it metagaming to automatically trust another PC into joining your party?

>trusting your fellow players
Maybe it's just my campaigns but there is often quite a lot of backstabbing.

I have found if your fellow players aren't cunts and man children, backstabbing doesn't happen.

YES.

And I hate that shit.

I make the players decide.
Examples:
>We're all from the same military company, heading home
>We're 3 thieves who fled town together
etc.

It's occasionally necessary.

I once had a player who was very, very bad at making characters that would fit into the party, and the party itself was full of dickweeds (their characters were, the players were just dandy).

His first character failed to join the party in his very first session.

> Character is an itinerant inventor.
> Character happens upon party along the border of two lands.
> Party greets character, as travellers on it are uncommon.
> Party makes banter, are generally their dickish selves.
> Player says his character has no reason to join these guys. Fair enough.
> Party attempts to hire character. They were murky on details of pay, but it was an offer.
> Player says there is no reason his character has to join them, and that's it. He rolls a new character.

His SECOND attempt got his character killed in the first session.

> Player says he wants to be introduced as a bounty hunter, out the capture a member of the party, as they have a bounty on their head.
> I'm retarded, and think this will work out somehow, as does he.
> I wait for him to announce when he wants to ambush the party. He has plenty of opportunities, but chooses to ignore them.
> I learn that he's only willing to jump the player on the road, while they're completely alone, probably peeing in the woods or a bush or something.
> I forget to include a scene like this, ask if he would like a retcon. He refuses.
> Still bitches that he didn't get a chance to do his thing. Ask him again. Says its fine.
> Working with party, we introduce a scene where he gets to go up to the player.
> We make it super easy for him. Player is almost alone, travelling with party beefcake.
> Still no dice, wants the player with bounty completely alone, unarmored.
> Fine, she decides to wander off into the woods, without any armor or weapons or, while beefcake player gets distracted.
> FINALLY does his thing, attempts to kidnap player.

Cont.

It's player character glow. You sensed in-character that they were recruitable based on their level of detail.

> Player probably did not think far enough ahead to realize how he was going to ingratiate himself to party after attempting to kidnap one of them.
> I'm assuming he intended to talk to prisoner, learn of the corruption and evil going on, and swear to help them instead.
> He likely did not anticipate getting into combat with another player, which happened when the party beefcake find him (said beefcake had high sensory perception and speed).
> Two of them battle to the death, killing each other.

With his third character, I think he learned his lesson, making his character the husband of the former-beefcake's new character.

It was partially my fault for allowing it to get that retarded, but sometimes, your players are way too focused on looking cool and preserving their egos to work with a party with a little forceful intervention by the GM or players themselves.

I don't see why. I mean, in most campaigns, the PCs don't really need prior knowledge of each other to have heard of the same job opportunity and decided it's better to murderhobo with company than alone.

"Hey. Did you hear that Duke Fucknut is offering a bounty for the local kobold nest?"
"Yeah. I'm here to make some easy cash."
"Me, too. Let's work together."

> beefcake find him

found*

> with a little forceful intervention

*without

Scuse me, not doing so hot today.

It's a non-issue is what it is as only a group composed entirely of retards would be unable to say "yeah, you spend a few days together and realize that he's likely cool".

YES, but not always ( you generally trust someone who wants to fight alongside you, i mean what would he even be about to pull?).

Fortunately metagaming is not always a bad thing and this particular metagaming aspect does nothing bad for the game.

It's just common sense to make characters who already know each other and are willing to work together.

>> I'm retarded
Found the problem, the GM is dumb.

This, the mutual desire for treasure and the knowledge that two can accomplish the job better was good enough motivation for Conan to join with people, so it's good enough motivation for most adventuring parties.

Yes, but metagaming isn't necessarily bad. Agreeing to play a group that sticks together and doesn't get bogged down in shitty arguments is part of the metagame and vital to a good session.

generally i dont think that a little bit is that bad, but you should be working with the other players to make sure your character fits with the group. if you make a character who is a loner who dislikes working with others then what the fuck do you expect. my group has a little trouble with this; 3 of us work together and tie our characters interests together, and 2 of us seem to want to make independent characters who just happen to work as part of a team. its getting to the point where to include them in something we have to actually have our character say "why dont we invite X along for this?" for no reason at all

Is it metagaming? Yes. Is it okay? Also yes. Metagaming happens all the time with people making decisions to make things they want to see happen, or just to move the game along.

If you're worried about people meta-gaming, you lack the trust necessary to run a good game.

Unless they're referencing shit that you wrote down in your DM notes or running off numerical values like how much HP or AC a creature has during play, you're better off assuming that their characters learned the information at some point in their lives prior to campaign than stopping game just to pull an impromptu quiz bowl just to see where someone learned that vampires were weak to sunlight or that undead are weak to holy magic.

Believe me, it's hard to enjoy a game when you have to pretend to know nothing, rather than being tested on what you know and still getting your ass kicked because the enemy is employing strategy to offset their weaknesses.

And I say this as someone whose favorite encounter was a troll who threw clumps of dirt at our party while hiding behind a tall hill to break our mage's line of sight.

a player's character should not get an advantage in combat just because the player has an encyclopedic knowledge of the weaknesses of whatever monster youre fighting this week. if your dumb as rocks rogue starts shouting out that the wizard should use mind effecting spells because he knows this monster has low will saves youre doing it wrong

This is integrated into some systems for a really good reason.
The meetup phase is really awkward. I prefer to merge maybe two GROUPS of player characters in the first session (or even a third loner who has significant connections to either aforementioned group and won't cause any weirdness when adhering to either).

At the same time though, if the challenge of the fight is taken away by the player(s) actually knowing what to do, it wasn't a well thought out encounter in the first place.

To be honest, I think a lot of people would benefit from playing vidya once in a while on this board, just to see how some RPGs balance their fights even when the game assumes that the player knows what they're doing.

alot of what video games do is limiting the amount of time you have to act. while this can be done in tabletop i find it to be a bit less immersive. as long as we dont go overboard i dont mind the character with 18 intelligence taking longer to plan out his moves

What I meant was that in some video games, they'll include a mode in the game where everything that the player learned will be relevant, but the game will throw some curve balls so that it's still challenging in spite of your player skill growing as a result.

A good example off the top of my head is title defense mode in Punch Out (Wii). In title defense mode, the weaknesses for each boxer is still mostly the same, but now each opponent has a gimmick that covers their weakness from the first part of the game. Glass Joe had head-gear, King Hippo covers his stomach with a manhole cover, Bald Bull can only be KO'd via star punches, etc.

In tabletop, the party can encounter a troll in the woods, but the troll is camouflaged into the marsh (which even animals are smart enough to do) and will either pop out if the party either gets too close or follow the party until they rest for the night before ambushing them.

Or at least, that's one example off the top of my head.

well of course noone is saying just have a straight hallway where the bad guys shout "IM COMING TO GET YOU IN 1 MINUTE, PREPARE YOURSELVES" i think a better example for you would be a troll who gets their hands on a magic item that gives resistance to fire damage or something.

Eh, I always feel that taking a monsters weakness and then nullifying it kind of misses the point. It might as well be a different monster.

well it sure combats metagaming, which is the whole point here

But then that raises questions like
>Where'd he get that item?
>How does it know how to use it?
>Why would it even be wearing it in the first place if it's too dumb to understand the concept of jewelry?
Etc. just to name a few. Besides that, it's a lazy means to offset their weakness and fight meta-gaming because it doesn't actually change the nature of the fight, it just means that the troll is going to take longer to beat and/or they'll need to dip into some acid attacks instead of fire attacks to kill it for good.

Now, if the troll acts like a predator, stalks the party, and then takes one of them during the night when the guy at watch isn't looking, that's going to be way more exciting because at that point, the party is in a horror movie with a nigh invulnerable creature whose hungry for their flesh and they may or may not even know what they're dealing with until it's too late.

let me make sure im on the same page. you said that people should take notes from video games, and specifically brought one up where the enemy has a specific weakness, but then they gain something that makes that weakness no longer effective. i propose doing literally the exact same thing, and thats not what youre looking for?

It's pretty rare that a monster just folds because you know its weakness. If you really want your players to get screwed over by a regenerating monster just make a donut steel one instead of using a troll.

>Where'd he get that item?
>How does it know how to use it?
>Why would it even be wearing it in the first place if it's too dumb to understand the concept of jewelry?
well straight out of the monster manual for 5e "They have no society to speak of, but they do serve as mercenaries to orcs, ogres, ettins, hags, and giants. As payment, trolls demand food and treasure."
trolls have an intelligence of 7, which is more than some people IRL. they obviously have the capacity to appreciate and wear jewelry, and i would say are smart enough to understand if they wear a specific amulet or ring fire hurts less

the point isnt to screw them with a regenerating monster, the point is giving a middle finger to meta-gamers

Most monsters have weaknesses to offset strengths though, so if you remove that you just have a stronger than normal monster.

In Punch Out (wii), the weaknesses are still an integral part of each boxer's fight, it's just that now there's something in the way, which prevents you from just using the same strategies you used in the previous circuit. Glass Joe still has a glass jaw, it's that now, you'll need to knock off his helmet before getting a few licks in for damage. King Hippo is still weak to gut punches, it's just that you'll need to take off the cover before you can exploit that weakness again.

Rather than making the enemy outright immune, the game gives them strategies that bolsters their strengths while covering their weaknesses, which is what I'm talking about.

Making the troll immune to fire doesn't make the fight any harder, it just means that the party will need to load up on acid attacks instead. However, having the troll take advantage of the environment so that the party isn't even aware of it until it's too late, that's going to make for a more interesting campaign.

i was referring to "resistance" from 5e which just halves damage.
yes giving a monster a magical item makes a stronger than normal monster

At the same time though, magic items in 5e are supposed to be rare and the bulk of the creatures that you've mentioned are either evil and/or stupid, so they wouldn't care about the troll's well being in the first place to give them the shiny magic trinket in the first place.

So now it's just a slog through a trolls HP.

it specifically states they work for treasure. magic items are treasure. it is possible, while maybe not likely, that they would work for magical items. a magical item that helps cover one of your weaknesses would be particularly valuable.
sure, but the issue at hand here is people specifically using fire attacks because they know trolls are weak to them. this combats that issue directly.

>i was referring to "resistance" from 5e which just halves damage.
Then it doesn't matter anyways because even if they're resistant to fire, they're still going to have their regeneration shut down just by taking at least one point of fire damage.

Also, again, people will just use acid instead once it becomes apparent that fire ain't cutting it for some reason, which means that the fight itself will play out the same, just with acid instead of fire.

look man i wasnt trying to make "uber troll king of trolls" alright i was responding to the problem of players using fire against a troll because they know trolls are vulnerable to fire. this isnt a difficult concept

So why not just use a monster that doesn't have a weakness.

>it specifically states they work for treasure. magic items are treasure. it is possible, while maybe not likely, that they would work for magical items. a magical item that helps cover one of your weaknesses would be particularly valuable.
Again, why would any of the creatures mentioned give the troll something that valuable in the off chance that it actually shows up? Considering how most of the creatures are either smarter, stronger, or more persuasive than the troll, they'd be more likely to say "take what you can get and call that payment enough" than to say "well here, take this ring so that you don't light up like a christmas tree senpai."

fuck if i know maybe the bitch rolled a 1 on diplomacy
are you serious it says right in that post
> the issue at hand here is people specifically using fire attacks because they know trolls are weak to them. this combats that issue directly.

I understand what you're trying to do, but you're going about it the wrong way.

>fuck if i know maybe the bitch rolled a 1 on diplomacy
That excuse isn't good enough and people are going to cry foul once it becomes apparent that the troll is resistant to fire for arbitrary reasons that have nothing to do with the in-game narrative. As I told another user, you're going about this the wrong way and you're just going to end up causing more problems than solutions in the long run.

Also, you can't crit fail on skill checks.

Depends on the party, depends on the setting, and depends on your other players.

In my experience, other players will conjure up a method of player validation without DM's input. It works.

well i would cry foul on a player using fire against a troll for no reason. of course if they encounter trolls regularly then of course thats a different matter. they can whine and bitch all they want about their meta gaming not working. also shit free fire resistance once you beat it.

also also, even if you cant crit fail skill checks rolling a 1 still puts you at a significant disadvantage. trolls only have a -2 cha mod

>Is it metagaming to automatically trust another PC into joining your party?
at it's worst it's contrived, however it's also un-sportsmen to just in-game tell a new player to effectively "piss-off", also, the GM likely wants to get to get the plot going and not waste time weighing the merits of letting (new PC) join the group.

Yeah if you don't want players to exploit weaknesses, don't use monsters with weaknesses.

>well i would cry foul on a player using fire against a troll for no reason.
Explain why you WOULDN'T want to set something on fire when a) most things will burn to death and b) it's trying to kill you.

I hate to repeat myself, but giving trolls resistance to fire would not only not work for the purposes of off-setting player knowledge since their regeneration would still get shut down but it also wouldn't significantly change the fight one way or the other anyways.

You'd be better off just playing the troll like a predator and attacks using guerilla warfare than just slapping on fire resistance and calling it a day like a game designer who changes goblins from green to red to represent how they're "fire goblins."

>playing a rogue
>work with an underground church that's been targeted by evil ruler
>steal and murder rulers men
>join party of adventures
>'oh, you're a rogue, well, not trusting you'
>8 sessions later, they still don't trust me even though I've given no reason not to an my characters neutral good.
>even the church has told them I'm a good person

>one of the characters is a kind of beastman shaman wearing a skull, and generally being pretty spooky and shamanic in appearance
>magic isn't that widespread in the setting, and the rest of the party is suspicious of magic
>our NPC commander introduces him as a friend, so we don't object to his presence

>in our first or second combat encounter with some sub-humans, the shaman summons a blood-demon
>blood-demon gorges on a wounded enemy, sucking it dry
>entire party is absolutely horrified
>half-beastman barbarian rushes to mercy-kill our remaining opponents before the summon can feed on them
>party yells at shaman for what kind of twisted dark arts he is meddling with

>works out perfectly because, unknown to anyone at the time, the player has to drop out of the campaign because of schedule conflicts next session
>his PC's retirement goes over extremely smoothly since we just continue to act out that we shun the shaman, who thus decides that it's better if we went separate ways, and leaves

I think extreme paranoia is more metagaming than trusting someone who wants to fight beside you for a common goal. But ultimately it depends.

Yes, but you don't have to completely trust someone to work with them. Just because I don't trust a random nigger at work doesn't mean we can't cooperate to some degree.

Is it metametagaming to accuse someone of metagaming by accusing someone of metagaming?

Yes. That's why I think people who make a big deal about metagaming are idiots.

Yes, and it's fitting for some games. Every genre has its spots to stretch plausibility and use shorthand to make fun things happen--if that's players being sure too early that they're not backstabbing each other, hey, that seems pretty conducive to fun for campaigns that aren't built around that.

I mean, you trust the plumber to fix your sink despite never having met him when you move to a new town.

Could someone explain the logic behind this? Why is backstabbing or having a PC that is secretly against the party "cunty" or "manchild-y"?

That would be an extremely refreshing twist if the group can handle it.

Yeah, but long winded introductions or one player going the opposite direction and making the new player or character feel very unwelcome is a thousand times worse. I speak from experience of being in a group where the GM had his batshit crazy girlfriend in the group and was a massive asshole to my character from day 1, and carried that attitude towards anyone who joined. All new players myself included left because that was not fun.

Because it's cunty.

These are generally cooperative games and are not built for player vs. player. If you're going to add in betrayal elements to your game that's something you should make all players aware of before hand instead of one day letting that guy go "lol I do a thing to fuck over the party". If a character is turning evil it might be fun if people are openly aware if your group isn't the meta sort and that player wants to run a new character after.

Because 99% of the time it's shit, just like IRL. It doesn't add anything to the story and makes most of the group salty that you felt it would be fun to dick them over. Hint: it is not.

>well i would cry foul on a player using fire against a troll for no reason.
That's because you're an incompetent DM.

I think it comes down to how common trolls are in the setting. If they're fairly rare, and players immediately know then it's likely metagaming. On the other hand, if they're more common then it can be considered common knowledge by most characters. Again, it all depends on how common they are.

The fire susceptibility of trolls is so well known outside of the game, that it's rather silly to try to make the players act dumb. Create a new monster or switch shit around if you want to do that.

One of the reasons they changed the class name from thief to rogue was to try and combat that very reaction, but people are still dumb about it. It sucks since rogues are usually sort of a game staple and useful to have around, but some players either go 'thieves durrr' IC, or OOC just assume that it's a class only assholes who want to literally dick over the party play.

It's even sillier since it's a good class for representing any number of less-scummy non-thief archetypes from scouts to fencers to basically being Pelor's Batman.

I used Rogue as a class when I played a medieval Leon Scott Kennedy expy once.

This. It only pisses everyone off and ruins the flow of the game.

Everytime someone deliberately goes against the party all I see is "look how awesome I am everyone" instead of a cool betrayal roleplay.

A little, but it beats the shit out of the alternative, and there's about a billion greentext stories from threads long before this one that highlight why.

I might have lucked out as for most of my groups and games, there was usually at least some kind of hook or nudge that made the party coming together less of 'random assholes having to asspull a reason to wander together'.

To be honest, most games went so far as to basically have some baked-in reason for the party to come together, like being a specifically recruited team in some kind of agency or company, and/or having had crossed paths before or had some overlapping social links at the very least.

You guys are stupid. What if instead of having a troll with some items that give fire resistance, instead they had a troll shaman, and troll scouts? They've seen adventurers before. They know fire is their weakness. Before expecting combat, their troll shaman casts fire protections on them.
Combine this with with enforcing knowledge checks, but letting them be taken as free actions. Enforce this separation of in character knowledge and OOC knowledge by informing your players that they will get slightly less exp for not being able to justify their character's actions in general, not just combat.

Hey, that cleric is saying things that seem to imply he follows x specific evil god instead of y good god. No one in the party is able to detect alignment and no one has any ranks in any skills relevant to history or religion checks, but we're going to attack him anyways even though my character hasn't ever interacted with anyone of either faith enough to have caught this detail to begin with. That's fine right?

You have to know the players and the game well enough to pull it off. If you're playing a heroic dungeon crawl where everyone's supposed to be 100% on the same side and questing to kill some dragon or lich or ogre and his donkey, you probably shouldn't start backstabbing everyone. If you're playing a bunch of more human nobodies, disagreements are more believable. What if the half orc ranger has some kind of PTSD and hates mages, then finds out the rogue is actually just a witch pretending to be a rogue? He's probably not gonna be thrilled.

It also depends on the other players, if they're the sort that would have the game ruined by it then doing it just marks you as an awful shitter. If they aren't, a few open disagreements or a little backstabbing can make for a way better story later.

Also, if you're playing Shadowrun you should probably be expecting anyone with log/int of less than 3 to try to sell out the party for a few bucks and a pizza.

>Why is backstabbing or having a PC that is secretly against the party "cunty"
It's inherently unfair. A backstabbing character can usually kill another character if he wants to, because he can choose when and how to strike. So other people get invested in their characters and the adventure and then you fuck all that over. And the only way people could possibly guard against this is by being super uptight and paranoid all the time, which makes it hard to cooperate with each other or successfully adventure. So now your heroic adventure has become a bunch of people warily eyeing each other with their backs against different walls, and the game becomes stressful instead of a fun campaign.

If they did not survive the backstab, they were weak and not meant to be part of the final state of the universe.

[sword logic intensifies]

agreed, our part-time GM goes full autistic screeching if a character shows almost any knowledge without making a skill check but then again he's almost obsessed with the idea that a medieval fantasy world means absolute shithole where no one travels and everyone is either an ignorant dirt farmer or a rich asshole and as a level one adventurer you're going to be spit on by every merchant and hassled by every guard.

Now i'm not saying every random fighter is a monster expert but it does't take a great genus to figure out to smash skeletons with blunt weapons or pack ice spells and burn protection against something called Flame Spider or such and things like Vampires hate sunlight or silver vs werewolves i'd think would be common knowage.

It is Meta, in the sense that you've all come together to play a game, a social contract, with your friends/acquaintances/internet strangers.

There is the unspoken agreement that you are here to have fun, and follow a story in a nature best suited to a team of companions, even if they exhibit some lone-wolf tendencies.

It is not Meta-Gaming though, as it offers no unfair advantages.

I just give a vague reason like "I like the cut of his jib" so that we don't spend 2hrs on proving him to the party