What was the worst example of meta gaming you've seen?

You didn't know? Player Characters all spend their formative years encased in one of those plastic sanitation bubbles, kept isolated from the rest of the campaign setting, their only link to the outside world a couple textbooks on whatever Knowledge skills they bought, otherwise they don't know a single thing about the wider world.

I sorta am struggling with a similar issue. Flying familiars seem very open for abuse but I don't want to punish him for doing what is arguable in character for him to do. Recently I've taken to ignoring it in descriptions and hoping he forgets (and he does sometimes, but I just want it to go away)

Reading my FUCKING GM NOTES JEFF!

If your campaign can be broken by a single familiar, that only speaks more to your incompetence as a DM, rather than any brokenness on the part of the player.

Just saying.

>Acting superior instead of giving those guys the help they were asking for
Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine

"Hey should we get the (guy who has the crafting feat) to make (magic item that the character would never know know even exists)"

Lol Tiberius is the worst. Well, Marisha is now. But he was.

What, you want me to sugercoat the truth for a few bitches who are too chickenshit to play around the fact that a player is acting smart both in and out of character?

If you really want advice for how to deal with a player who has a flying familiar, assume that they're going to send their familiar in first to check an area for whatever and then just give them the info that they'd see based off of what their familiar sees. If this upset whatever you had planned to the campaign, realize that surprises only work if they're not expected and killing the familiar to protect whatever surprise you had in store is like calling for a spot/perception check for an empty room, even if they don't know that something is there, they're still going to assume that something is there because why else would the DM call for a check or kill the familiar in the first place?

TL;DR: Balance around players being smart, not around them playing along with your railroad.

Give us a concrete example, friendo. Right now you're just throwing out weasel words that sound good but don't actually help the fuckers out.

Surely someone with your godlike DM skills has a few anecdotes to fall back on, right?

I would take advantage of the fact that familiars in my favorite edition specifically can't hold elaborate or detailed conversations with their masters. Ten angry orcs gearing up and two innocent children playing tag both get reported back as "there are some people over there".

Depending on the exact situation it could be that he has no real reason to suspect danger other than "this is a game and there will be bad guys" rather than any in character reason

Scouting ahead is fine, but constant scouting at all times even when danger would seem unlikely makes your character paranoid

>Player sends familiar to check a room.
>Described what he sees thanks to the familiar
>Players make a plan based off what they see
>The rest comes down to roleplay and whether or not they pass the necessary rolls.
It's not rocket science friend-o.

>I don't allow you to do that thing we talked about after the game last week, regarding the evil artifacts.
>That's already done. We did it while you guys were fucking around in the antimagic field.
>No we talked about it in character on the way home.
>No. We told you, out of character, about what we already did with the gm, out of the room, while you were fucking with a different part of the dungeon.
>She then suddenly proceeds to pick fights with us and stalk us suspiciously for the rest of the campaign.

Best would be to assume they will be using the familiar. Flying familiars aren't so good at things like locked doors, so that's an option. A better option would be to have the familiar be captured, rather than killed, and used as a bargaining chip against the player since losing a familiar has very real consequences. Even better is if you get rid of spellbooks and make everyones familiar function as their spellbook (a la witch or familiar adept archetype), so that danger is ramped up even more.

its 100% okay to have a paranoid character. if the GM has a problem with it, or if it is interfering with group play, then thats a different story. this situation, like almost all situations, can be resolved by talking through it like adults.

> Making homebrew setting using dnd
> Friends very supportive
> Start laying out the history of races, cultures ect.
> Get cut off by friend asking about race I've never heard of
> Tell him I didn't plan for them
> He gives a decently long argument trying to get me to add them in to the setting because of how perfect they fit his character
> Check the race out
> Nothing about flavor lines up with his character concept let alone the setting
> They're mechanics just happen to be perfect for a meme build that would take advantage of plot elements of my setting I had let him know about a few months back thinking he'd forget

Some editions it doesn't have consequences, I think that's probably what they're referring to. I know in AD&D it fucks you right up, but if 5th you can just dispel and resummon them in about an hour or so.

Depends what edition they're playing in, and what game, but some allow the master to watch through the eyes of his familiar, so he can literally see it himself.

Makes the game a little dull after a while, don't you think?
No surprises, no ambushes, no unexpected reinforcements shaking up a battle plan.
I get that this 'super pure let the players do anything' game has its appeal, but after a while I find the players just end up settling into a routine that works for every encounter and then you've got to find ways to shake it up the the campaign starts dying.

how about try throwing in something the familiar cant detect? hiding units, perhaps invisibility if it has a particularly good perception.

Have you tried not playing D&D?

I guess it all depends on the situation at this point. I don't know what the original guy's two exact issues were, but the things you've mentioned could definitely work.

>Have you tried replacing one flawed system with another flawed system?
That doesn't actually solve the problem, it just replaces it with a different one in a different system.

>Makes the game a little dull after a while, don't you think?
If the player being smart makes the encounter dull then the encounter wasn't all that exciting in the first place. Besides, stealth in D&D is so fucking simple to break depending on the edition that the only way you'll actually ambush anyone is if they manage to fail their individual perception checks.

Now, if the familiar reports back and says "oh, there's a dragon in the next room" and said dragon approaches their location, I can guarantee that it'll be more exciting that going "you're surprised, GOTCHA BITCH!"

If you tried not playing D&D you would realize that unlike D&D most systems don't have serious flaws of that nature.

As a GM you can always impose some sort of penalty, just as long as you state that upfront when before characters are made. Hell, you can even do it mid-game as long as it doesn't affect current characters. Example: in my games I started imposing a 20% XP increase for casting classes, and a 20% XP decrease for "support" classes as an incentive to have a more balanced party. I did this after my players had already made a character and let it applies to any future characters (past their first character) that enters the game.

Still, there's ways around familiars. Kill it every time, eventually the player will take the hint. Let it get captured. Put it in situation where it can't detect the threat. Make the location of the threat inaccessible for the familiar. I think there's even a charm familiar spell (at least in PF) where you can make a familiar abandon its master and work for you for a time.

I have
They do
By all means tell me some of these flawless systems, I'd be interested to hear them, they sound pretty good.

GURPS

so theres alot of people giving non-specific examples of stuff you can do to get around the familiar thing. lets give him a practical example.
your party is going through some ruins, theres some fancy magical item theyre going after and they heard the king of this long dead society had it around his neck. the party comes to a door, no idea whats on the other side. the rogue checks the door for traps, finds nothing. they listen at the door, hear nothing. they decide to send the familiar through the door to see whats on the other side. as soon as the door opens a little bit a skeleton rips it open and ambushes the party

...

Every system is going to have some serious flaw to it. It's pretty much unavoidable in a game where you mimic real life, but add in super-powers/magic. It's impossible to simulate every situation that may come up in such a game and produce a ruling for it in a book/FAQ, so it comes down to GM discretion, and GMs can, and often do, fuck everything up - no matter how good they are.

I mean that's a bit of a wonky example, because that shit was going to happen regardless of whether they used the familiar or not and there was really no disadvantage to trying (which is part of the problem, the lack of threat to the PCs).

This guy made a potentially better point, about the familiar alerting enemies. Harder to justify when you're not in a dungeon though, or the familiar is something that wouldn't arouse suspicion like a bat or a mouse or something.

Most games don't have issues like D&D where a stupid flying familiar can derail a campaign. I say this as a dude who used spirits in ShadowRun and a ghost in WoD to scout out ahead for recon and didn't derail the campaign because the system already accounted for that possibility and gave legitimate reasons for why it's good but not necessarily the optimal decision.

Maybe but for some reason whenever stupid gamebreaking shit like this has come up for me it's been in a D&D game.

Well, give them a challenge to make it obsolete or usless. Like for example mazes that are in a constant state of change. Or make them track an illusionist and see how good that tracking goes. For example the familiar says that the bridge is broken over a river canyon, but really the destroyed bridge is an illusion over the real bridge and the party goes miles out of the way looking for a ford.

I'm unfamiliar, whats this about?

sure its not a perfect example, but its an off the cuff example of how you can design an encounter that the familiar won't derail

This. There are three kinds of information in a game:

>info players need to know
>info players cannot know
>info players can obtain by interacting with keyed objects in the environment

None of which should call for rolls

Not sure about him, but I find the main problem is that the familiar makes mundane dangers obsolete (pretty bad for a first-level spell)
Of course you can circumvent it by throwing magic at it, but I feel like you just end up with magical powercreep if you head down that path.

But playing fantasy Jackass is fun

True but the in any case the bird has to make perception checks to. The familiar gives some insight to lay out, but is no means fool proof. Just through a series of bad perception checks the familiar could give some misinformation. It could lead to a missed ambush spot putting the party at a disatvantage. Terrain features missed like a fault line covered by trees that makes a party go miles out of the way causing them to get lost in the forest. What I am saying is if you rely on a familiar too much you can become extremely inconvenienced, and if it happens a handful of times here and there the player will probably deploy less.

Random encounters are the entire purpose to discourage excessively cautious and time-consuming play

The party that meets up randomly just all happens to be perfectly balanced with all the bases covered.

The other replies mention Tiberius, so I assume it's Critical Role (I've only seen the first episode though)

Making a party together is not metagaming it's common sense.

> 1 5 0 0 m i r r o r s

If it's just a car, it's good
Because from then on you can have road trip adventures with the party

>Making a party together is not metagaming it's common sense.
Making a party together isn't metagaming, every one tailoring there character choices to fit the preconceptions of what a PC party is supposed to be like is, though it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a time of mategaming that is accepted and often times expected.

>mole people
>roll random encounter for hunters/aerial monsters/etc.
>takes days to leave and return
Just, make shit harder than "I send X and X tells me what's up"

>he familiar be captured
And how do you suggest they do that?

That's because PCs most of the time are specialists chosen for a task not some common fucks picked at random from the planet's entire population.

A natural predator sees it as lunch?

Are you retardedly suggesting that no one has the capability to catch a bird?

Can't have road trips if there is no roads.

Once our party had encountered a couple of regenerating creatures, we became accustomed to using acid or fire to ensure death.

Eventually, we pursued a bounty on a hydra, and I prepared flasks of acid during our time traveling to its lair. Is this metagaming, or just sensible character intuition at this point?

>This player is so risk averse that he meticulously scouts ahead for traps and ambushes
>To convince him not to do this, I go out of my way to maim or kill his scout whenever possible

I should add that this would be the first time ever encountering a hydra, however upon hearing from our employer that it could regrow its severed heads, I took that as the queue to prepare against regeneration.

Nah, that's pretty sensible. If someone sending you to kill the thing mentions it, then it's reasonable that you got the info from then.

When it's bad is when the DM describes a large, green humanoid covered in warts, and a player springs for torches before they even see that it's regenerating and isn't just an ugly ogre.

I've played with multiple groups in 2e, HackMasters, 3.5 and Pathfinder with several different DM and find the opposite is usually true.

I'd be hard-pressed to remember the absolute worst, since there have been a few. One that sticks out to me right now is one from a ThatGuy in a session I GMed.

"You, [ThatGuy], and only you, hear a voice in your head, telling you in a faint, whispy voice..."

ThatGuy fucking repeats everything I say as I'm saying it, in character, to relay it to the others. Of course, his character is usually an blithering fool, but on just this occasion, he tries to be obnoxious in a way that is out of character. ThatGuy's since gone, so no need to advise me on that front, anyhow.

>Depending on the exact situation it could be that he has no real reason to suspect danger

nigger what

You send scouts when you don't know if there's danger. That's what they're FOR.

A player abusing the weight limit of telekinesis spell and way how magic was organised in the game we were playing, so he was basically sending entire cluster of iron nails at high speed toward enemies. Since each nail was under light weapon, it was dealing 1+STR damage and STR for telekinesis was 2. So a bucket of nails was dealing roughtly 150 damage to unarmored enemy in a system where average human has 26 HP. And due to the way how telekinesis was described, he could easily just direct those nails as he felt pleased, because the total difficulty penalty for doing so was neutraliesed completely by his skill and combination of perks.

All of it was based entirely on meta knowledge, since by in-game definitions, such feat of telekinesis would be an absolutely legendary deed and not a standard combat action, opening each encounter.

We ended up dropping the game and changing the system just to prevent this shit, as the guy just couldn't help himself (not to mention building entire character for this trick).

Don't leave them lying around on the table while you go the toilet Kyle. Hide that shit

That's the peril of hidden information, unless there's a compelling reason not to it's common sense to share it.

I used to believe the stuff about GURPS just being a meme, but it turns out that its fans really are deluded enough to really believe those memes.

What system was this

Witcher TTRPG

It's infamous for having few spells completely broken due to the way they are described and making the game unfun the very moment someone notices.
But even ignoring the "bucket of nails" problem, the telekinesis is perfectly capable of grabbing most of humanoid monsters (those not above roughtly 200 kg of weight) and turn them into piniata for rest of the party.

But that makes sense. Sorcerers in Witcher are basically superweapons that kingdoms have gone to war over, they're incredibly powerful and dangerous, anything dumb enough to get caught by telekinesis deserves to get slaughtered.

Sorcerers, dragons, high vampires, powerful spirits and seasoned witchers (read:Geralt and like 3 other people alive) are absurdly fucking strong. Witchers and sorceresses have a bit of a batman complex where they need time to prepare to be truly effective, an ambushed spellcaster can still get caught by an arrow through the eye and a Witcher without his blade oils, potions, bombs, or other tricks is just a crafty man.

In this instance, the player who controls Tiberius (named Orion) admitted in Q&A session sometime afterwards that he thought the show had gone to his DM's head. He believed his DM was trying to flex his muscles and was deliberately engineering a full on TPK by throwing a beholder at their party. Orion was convinced that there was no way for their party to defeat it by the book so he had his character avoid the fight and ditch his party.

In another instance when it was alluded to that the party would be going up against vampires his character suddenly became immediately and intimately knowledgeable about them (to be fair their table doesn't roll knowledge checks for monsters that often so idk). Tiberius sought out a priest to bless his container of infinite water which I assume is sometimes used as a component for spells. He made the assumption that once blessed any spell he used with the water generated from the container would become 'blessed' and give him bonuses against vampires forever. He didn't think to run this by his DM at all beforehand.

Last one I can think of is where out of the blue he commissioned a blacksmith to weld 5 or do daggers together splayed out on a metal ring to make a sort of throwing glaive. He argued that using a telekinesis spell it would allow him to make thrown attack (with spell bonuses) that attacked five times. Also didn't run that by his DM before going to the trouble of making it and being thoroughly evasive and obtuse over it.

Then there is the mirror thing mentions, and I'm not going into it because it is too fucking stupid.

Saying memes in character.

That would be myself, yesterday. Our lvl 6 party just got done killing a couple of minotaurs, two gargoyles and a barbed devil (not all at once, mind) and as we try to have a short rest, the GM has a cloaker try to eat the face of our warlock. Our cleric was absent for the game so I botted him and said, well he should cast beacon of hope. After we succeeded our wis save against the fear, the cloaker disengaged the fighter who had saved our warlock and went for my half health character. I had just healed myself with a potion for max because of BoH and then I had the cleric PC cast daylight, because I knew that would dispell the three illusions of the cloaker who was gunning for me. It also gave the monster disadvantage on every throw because of light sensitivity so it couldn't hit shit.

We mopped it up quickly after that.

But you see, I wouldn't mind if he made an actual "battle mage", since everyone knows how powerful the magic in the setting AND the game itself is.

Thing is - he instead played on meta-bullshit. In the same time I was running game with separate group and the only chick in it made a sorceress and played her straight - vain, spending tonnes of money on luxurious life and dragging rest of the party as her mercs, but also incredibly powerful as a magic user, with no meta bullshit and just having a powerful character by point distribution.

Meanwhile the TK-bullshit was entirely based on meta-knowledge of how penalties against mass-TK are counted, the weight ratio limit, the power of specific perks and how to lower penalties for complex spells. So on paper the character was a fucking joke college dropout, but in practice it was a one-trick pony min-maxing for absurdly powerful TK, entirely based on loopholes and description of the spell allowing this bullshit.

>a Witcher without his blade oils, potions, bombs, or other tricks is just a crafty man.
Not him, but this doesn't apply to the TTRPG in question. Witcher in it is always prepared and always perfectly capable of wiping out few humanoids in single turn if made by half-competent character and/or having a "high point" start for specific campaign.
Plus there are no bombs and oils outside vidya

I'm honestly really curious about the mirror thing now. I can't find anything on it and frankly I don't want to bother watching the series for this meme of a man.

If you're fighting an enemy your character hasn't fought before, and you know from out-of-game experience that it's vulnerable to fire, and your attack options are spells that do fire damage, acid damage, or necrotic damage, is it metagaming to choose the fire?

Assume all three are equally chosen in other combat. Is the only fair way to approach it to do a three-way equivalent of flipping a coin?

As a Gurpsfag, I still only do GURPS meming because its fun, and because I need something to take the pain of forever-GM'ing away. I try to keep it to the GURPS-general, and I'm sorry if my fellow GURPS-fags doesn't.

Delusion and Insanity can be the result not just of excessive meming, but also as a result of a GURPS-gm unable to limit himself and focus. I speak from personal experience.

Me, I'd personally pick based on the environment.

If I was in a forest, I wouldn't pick fire because I wouldn't want it to spread. (Unless it's an evil forest and we're supposed to be getting rid of it or something, in which case fire away.)

If I was in a building or dungeon, I wouldn't use acid because I wouldn't want to damage up the floor in case any of the acid spills.

When in doubt I guess I'd pick necrotic, since there seems to be little room for unintended splash damage; I'm only specifically targeting the one (presumably living) thing.

Entirely depends on what you qualify as "GURPS is a meme" and "GURPS memes". I'm in similar situation as - I'm GMing GURPS for so many years with so little chances to actually play it. And I still say "GURPS" when people ask about game for running X, precisely because for how many years I've been running GURPS-based games and I know how flexible and easy to apply the game is.

Unless you mean the "GURPS is too complex" meme, then I can't help you, since I can't understand from where that meme even came from. For me the only complex part is the game running on imperial rather than metric and the fact it's in English, so it requires from me some serious effort to get players for non-translated game operating in non-familiar units.

>fire damage, acid damage, or necrotic damage
I avoid conundrums like these by having literally all my spells be fire damage spells. Because of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire!

kek, was thinking this myself. I play cautiously also, I prefer strategy and story over run of the mill combat so a scout doesn't seem at all broken.

> Have a mage in the employ of your BBEG / be the BBEG.
> "Some mysterious force prevents your familiar from functioning normally (memory loss / wings don't work / whatever the fuck)."

Then just add some 5 minute encounter right before the end where they destroy an obelisk or some shit that has been siphoning magic (also neat battle mechanic for that encounter) and preventing familiars from working right.

That's just off the top of my dome, i'm sure i could come up with a better, specific to this universe way to nip this in the bud.

Can you seriously not think of a way to handwave this shit away?

Do you have like a ferret or something in your pocket you send into your house, car, place of work every morning before stepping foot inside?

I mean, you don't KNOW if there's no danger there right? That's what scouts are for!

This happened in my party playing the phandelver campaign. My gf hosts and I play, first time for both of us by the way aking this more bullshit.

fighting venom fang, 2 players estimate the health of a young green dragon from experience and from monster manual. Everyone but me and the monk player literally counts the amount of damage everyone does each turn, preventing people from going next before recording the damage. It was a fucking joke and I really wish my gf just sent down an adult green to tpk us for that bullshit.

every fucking situation prior to roll a dice the cleric goes "WAIT, I CAST GUIDANCE"

...

Basically, he was trying to pull the "Archimedes and the Burning Mirror" thing (despite it not being in character for him to be knowledgeable about such things), using a bunch of mirrors and one of the light spells, to instagib a bunch of vampires. Just like all the other times, it was something he didn't talk through with the GM or the rest of the group and got assblasted when Mercer tried to call him on his bullshit.

If that's a problem for you, then you're a shit DM.

Actually, let's be a little more general. If you have a problem with your players knowing monsters' statistics, you're a shit DM.

Yes, it's metagaming to choose the fire. It's also metagaming to choose anything but the fire. Or to decide you're going to do it at random. As soon as you have that information, you're making a decision based on the fact that you know the creature's weakness. So you might as well just pick the fire.

>All these people complaining about players knowing monster stats.
>Not just adjusting stats, abilities and giving them funny hats to wear that makes them act and look different.

It's funny, because that's literally gm advice in the bestiary of my go to system. Hey, bump up some numbers if its an exceptional/older thing, bump them down if its wounded or young.

I personally like giving things abilities they normally wouldn't have, while making that information that could be gained in character to reward legwork.

I generally just make up bullshit like 'the kobold hucks acid' or 'the zombie pukes up a swarm of bugs'

A big pillar of salt with a druid in it, steals the brains out of familiars to have and hold them all forever. needs exorcism.