Metagaming | Running the Game

everybody Matt Koval here I didn't uh I didn't want to do it intro for this video but you may you may have already noticed even only these first few seconds that there was something kind of weird about this video and it's specifically it's the audio quality because I recorded this whole video that you're about to watch which of the unedited footage is 50 minutes long I recorded the whole thing without using my quite nice Sennheiser MKH two-for-one six which is provides the delicious audio that we normally get and instead that why there's a backup because every time I record one of these videos I've got this going into my computer recording audio hand I've got the microphone on top of my Sony NEX V G 30 and so that's the audio you're hearing right now and it's super echoey it's getting a lot of what's called slap back off the walls and stuff like that it's a 5.1 it's not in 5.1 mode but it's a 5.1 you don't care it doesn't matter the audio sounds crappy and there really isn't a whole lot I can do about that so I apologize but I was so happy with the quality of this video that the having recorded it the not the quality of the audio but the quality of the discussion that I didn't want I knew if I rerecord the whole thing it wouldn't be the same I would suffer for it so I apologize I know it's crazy that we just raised a whole ridiculous amount of money and yet in spite of that the video quality just took a huge nosedive not only the number of videos which we talked about the end of this but also the quality of this audio both of those things will be fixed in the near future so without further ado here is the video on metagaming we were playing D&D night below and some of you may remember this from hey campaign diary and the players were faced with a branch in the dungeon the earth nibblin the deep gnomes had given them a map a map of the deep gnomes understanding of the Underdark and the map showed the players how to get to the city of the glasspoole which they knew was their goal they knew that the people that were looking for had been taken to the city of the Glasspool and so some of the players like Phil playing graves speaking I think for the majority thought well we have a quest we know what we're supposed to do and we know that this is the in which we can achieve our goals let's go there but some of the other players looked at this map and said well what's this what's this branch over here that leads to a dead-end and Mister people are like oh we actually we don't we don't know what goes on down there that's a super nasty place every time we send like scouts or anything down there they get beaten and they don't come back and so whatever's down there is bad juju this of course piqued the interest of some of the other players have specifically EJ and TJ both of them J's basically were very interested in what was down there and they made the argument that the they were not very high level they were aware and we're starting to sneak up on the topic of this video they were aware that because of some leniency on my part and some very clever planning on the playtest parts they had bypassed a whole big chunk of the dungeon which means they were thinking about what level their characters were and how nasty the stuff in the city of the Glasspool is going to be and EJ and TJ were worried that they were gonna get smoked if they went down there because they reasoned they were not high level enough and going down this branch and exploring what was down there might yield some it not only experienced points but also some treasure that would be very useful they were picturing this whole big drug our stronghold that they had effectively bypassed and all the treasure that was certainly within that now they didn't have and of course me being the dungeon master than I am as soon as the players out of character and this is another kind of minor lesson as soon as the players out of character mentioned that maybe there's pressure down there I had the deep gnomes respond in character and say oh absolutely there is because not only have we lost all our scouts going to try to find out what's going down there lots of adventuring companies have gone down that branch and never returned which means the players reasoned correctly that it would be full of all the magic items those adventures took down there with them eventually this split the party for almost a week we didn't actually play it was like Thursday night half the party was gonna go down to the city of the Glasspool and the other half was gonna go down to the dead end and see what was down there and I told them by all means I can run you know we're all co-workers just all the great things about running dungeons work is that they're all you see each other every day and it's like if we're gonna split up and split the party and some people go this way and some people go away that's fine I can run for you guys lunch and you guys on Thursday night or we can just coordinated time we're all here at 7 o'clock anyway so let's just stay for another couple of hours and play some games pending people's schedules but even though I was willing to do that and at the end of the game on Thursday night they had decided to go two different ways by the time they got back together the next Thursday they just said no let's not do that they were just all upset about the fact that they have all decided to split the party and they felt that it was being neo undemocratic and unn what's the word I'm looking for it wasn't wasn't proper teamwork but one of the criticisms that was leveled against the folks who wanted to go down to the dead end was they were metagaming the criticism leveled by the people who wanted to go further the quest against the people who want to go down the branch was that the people who wanted to go down to the dead end were metagame and this was a criticism typically when we hear or use the term metagaming we use it pejoratively we use it in a negative sense we use it to criticize other players but was it metagaming that's a good question and that's the subject of this video the question of what is metagaming and isn't always bad I'm gonna give you another example got leave a cliffhanger I'm not gonna answer the questions I just asked about what was going on below I'm gonna raise another issue my friend sherry who is the live producer of our upcoming stream was running this is during the play test and he was running one of the play test adventures for fifth edition and he was describing we were on we were in a corridor and he was describing a hole in the floor and we were investigating this hole it was a regularly shaped hole and it appeared as though it went far down it was up a trap as far as we could tell and I dropped a torch down the hole and he described as I see the torch fall and then hit what appears to be ground about 30 feet down and I could see how the light of the torch was illuminated against two walls here but then it would just disappear along these I'm like oh it's a corridor we're in one corridor over another or and there is a hole that links the two of them that's very interesting we continue down our way and then we hit a dead end we backtrack we look down the hole again and Jerry says that the torch is gone this is very interesting there's been some activity down below so I you know because I've got plenty of perches like another torch and drop it down there and this time Jerry says the torch follows the certain distance and is extinguished and there is this this this shimmer for a second as though it has fallen into a pool of water actually I think you've just described it as being like a shimmer and then we concluded that it was like a pool of water like the torch had fallen into a pool of water and the players sitting around were like oh that's interesting but I sat there thinking to myself how is it possible that there wasn't a pool of water down there before and there is now it must have my teammates were thinking that that some water had been introduced into the environment but that seemed unlikely to me I was imagining something wet that moved but we couldn't see it and so I immediately exclaimed ah it's a gelatinous cube and Jerry I could tell I was right because Jerry deflated somewhat sitting behind the screen he this is probably one of the first times he had run Dungeons & Dragons ever I know he had played like a bourbon stuff like that back in the day and certainly this was the first time he'd run in a long time and the first time he'd run for us and I had just kind of you know I just had taken the wind out of his sails was I metagaming I asked on Twitter what many gaming was and asked for examples and over oh my god I got I don't know I got like hundreds of responses and overwhelmingly all the responses like an 80 to 90% of responses said some variation of metagaming is when your character act on information that you as a player have but that the character does not I think that is a good definition and regardless of whether it is or not it's the one we're stuck with because ultimately the usage is all that matters so this is how people use the term and as a criticism was I metagaming when I thought about what was that whole and correctly deduced that it was a gelatinous cube I don't think I was because my character did not act on that but it certainly it certainly wasn't fun for Jerry so this is an instance where I wasn't mitigating but I was using my out of character knowledge I was using my experience as a someone who's been playing this game for a long time I didn't act on that information but I definitely ruined some of Jerry's fun the criticism leveled against my friends playing knight below you J and TJ was that they were metagaming because they were thinking in terms of experience points and levels which their characters would not now this is true they were thinking in those terms and their characters do not think in those terms but I do not think they were metagaming and I had to explain that certainly all of you everyone at the table all the characters in the game have some understanding that they are better warlocks and druids and fighters now than they were before they set out on this grand adventure and they must be aware that there is some correlation between going out into the world and getting experience with a lowercase e fighting monsters learning stuff and becoming better as fighters and druids and oarlocks your characters aren't dumb they were aware that they can cast higher-level spells now even if they don't think in terms of spells so it seemed to me perfectly reasonable and not only reasonable traditional for the players to say hang on a minute we are not we're gonna go fight something really nasty down in the city of the glasspoole let's get better at being warlocks and druids and fighters and clerks let's go down and check out what is in this branch and certainly there will be treasure down there the gnomes just told us about that and that treasure would be useful so to me even though the characters don't think in terms of experience points or levels they are certainly aware of the reality of the world of Dungeons and Dragons and that they are getting better at what they do as a result of exploring and fighting monsters on the other hand I think there was a legitimate criticism because part of the accusation of metagaming was the awareness that they had missed out on experience points and treasures in the in average Suhel in the doís chronicle that i had stolen because that is the players thinking in terms of the structure of the adventure which characters are not aware of the characters don't know that they're in the middle of the story and so it is unreasonable for the characters to behave in a way that is informed by the players of knowledge of for instance how many pages through this adventure are we or if you're not running a module how many sessions into it are we do we suspect that the big bad evil guy is on the other side of the store because we know how adventures are structured and that is dramatically appropriate so I think that in the discussion of what is and what is not metagaming it is unfair to accuse players of metagaming simply because they're trying to get experience points in get treasure before they go fight something they must have some awareness of how that stuff works in the world of Dungeons and Dragons of high-level characters are characters that are more powerful than low level characters and they got that way because they fought a lot of stuff there's a lot of rules in Dungeons & Dragons that your character your character is not aware of those rules but they are aware of the reality that those rules describe and so I think often when players are accused of metagaming it is unfair because even though correct the the characters don't know what rolling to plain side dice and taking the higher die is they certainly understand that if we are on opposite sides of this bad guy the bad guy cannot defend himself against both of us at once and that that situation is advantageous I'm using a lot of air quotes in this video it's not metagaming if the players are discussing resting before going on to the next encounter so that they get their abilities back because even though that is a purely game mechanical notion it is one that the characters experience every day they are aware that when they wake up in the morning they're refreshed and they have access to more and better spells than they did at the end of the previous day when they had used all their abilities something else that seems like many gaming and actually might technically fill the definition of metagaming but which doesn't bother me and I have not ever seen it bother a dungeon master is awareness of style my players often once they've gotten used to the way I run the game there they often key in to certain things I tend to do and to me that is actually a rewarding experience when the player is like I smell the patented coal bill screw right and they start wait hang on a minute let's rethink the decisions we've made thus far in the dungeon have we just used stealth and trickery to bypass like 90% of the dungeon and are we about to go fight the boss monster and he's gonna ring the dinner bell and the entire dungeon which we were supposed to fight and counter behind counter it would have been like you know six sessions and twenty battles the entire dungeon is now gonna come fight us all once in one big encounter and we're all doomed is that about to happen because I think that's about to happen let's stop for a minute that is purely medicating but when my players do that it delights me because it's sort of them rewarding me it's them saying we've paid attention we paid attention to the way you tend to run the game and the things you tend to like just like when my friends and I are exploring a dungeon my friend Joe's game and we noticed a lot of new masonry in the dungeon we go I smell a Murphy orc trap these works have have taken corridors or broken-down doors and they have hastily and poorly put up you know after a paris or whatever to turn a bunch of doorways into a corridor waiting for us to get to the end at which point they are going to come out and jump us and we're gonna be doomed and every door we open it's gonna have works behind it it just looks it when we notice these things because that is his style so it is purely metagaming is purely thinking about the rules of the game instead of thinking about the situation but in spite of that I don't think it's bad planning is fun teamwork is fun and so it is our responsibility as Dungeon Master's to encourage it and it's one of the great it's one of the great secrets of being a dungeon master is that you prep for all of this stuff that you think the players are gonna get done but then in point of fact they only get this far because they spent most of the sessions just sitting around either arguing with each other or role-playing with each other or planning and you actually didn't have to do anything you got to sit back and watch all of this like you were an audience member and it is fun it does it becomes metagaming I think and this again is not this is not according to the strict definition of metagaming but it definitely qualifies I think when the players start strategizing to an extent meaning they've done so much or to a level of skill that their characters obviously do not have there first of all the characters for instance but they're all playing like expert war gamers or they're going to spend twenty minutes talking about what this player is going to do on their turn and that's supposed to be like six seconds but we have to have some leniency there it can't be black or white because certainly the characters are living a life of danger I just realized how dramatic that 7 slows as I was halfway through it they are living the lives of action they are risking their lives all the time they're swinging weapons and casting spells of life and death is happening around them all the time and so they are developing a very fine sense for how to behave and act and interact tactically and they're learning each other's abilities of learning how they can rely on each rely on each other and so that will express itself in the characters becoming very quickly I think much more tactically savvy than the players at the table and that's it's reasonable to expect that to be represented by the players taking a long time to talk about what they're going to do so the time is frozen for a second the players spent a lot of time talking about to do and then their characters act in a very clever tactically advantageous way that is reasonable but then it stops being reasonable when you as a dungeon master sit back and go is really it's impossible for them for their characters at this level of skill to have come up with this plan in the space of six seconds this is not just instinct and experience anymore this they literally would have had to talk to each other about it and they didn't do that before the battle started this is in the middle of round three and that's when it's up to us as Dungeon Master's to start imposing some limits I bought a bunch of tigers I bought a bunch of little sand egg timers and I fact I never had to deploy them just the fact that I bought them set the signal to the players that they were going to be on the clock if this ever happened they started policing themselves I'm very lucky that almost I think every game I've played with friends not with the you know strangers of conventions but every game I've ever played with friends that I invited to the table sportsmanship was always something they were concerned about even if it wasn't over even if they weren't talking about it expressly once they saw that the timing how much time they were spending was something important to me they started policing themselves and I might sometimes just get one of those like playing codenames right I might just grab the same timer and without trying it over just put it in front of them saying it's like a threat I am getting ready to use this and they'll be like okay let's wrap this up and let's just decide another thing that I hate when I see the table or two things that I think are metagaming two things that I think are metagaming but I hate when I see of the table is when I can tell one player this is the tactician player right going all the way back to that video I did on the different types of players the tactician player wants all characters all players to behave as tactically advantageous ly as possible they get very frustrated when they see other players at the table behaving sub-optimally but in point of fact I think suboptimal behavior is core to role play I was playing in my friend marks game and I had rolled a character with like a seven or eight wisdoms and I just decided thinking about who this character was he was a soldier that was his background and also like he liked being a soldier that was his mindset and he was a soldier with a low wisdom I don't think that's common by the way this isn't a criticism of people to service this is my idea who this character was I thought you know I don't think he's gonna make any of his wisdom saves and the dungeon master didn't like that because he felt like I was I think he might have felt like I was making out of game decisions when it should be up to the dice but I thought it made sense for my character that this is his weakness and I would roll I would make a wisdom save to shake off an effect that I was suffering from because that seemed reasonable to me but anytime he said okay make a wisdom check to see if you noticed this or to see if this ability works on you I would always just say I failed because as I said I believe that sub-optimal behavior is core to the game and it's the antithesis of what the tactician player wants to do and have seen times and I this is our responsibility as Dungeon Master's and there's I think a very simple way to solve this problem when the tactician player is bullying another player and they're doing two things at the same time first of all they're saying no what you want to do is suboptimal you should do this instead they're trying to be controlling they're trying to control the other player but there's also an implicit criticism and that is you're dumb you're stupid if you were smart like the tactician player then you would know that if you went over here then you would the classic example is you would get flanking but there's all sorts of oh you some of you movement to get here attack and then use the rest of your movement to pull out so that that player can get over here and I watch this happen and tactician it's a tactical game if you play on a grid as a tactical game I think there is I of all people think there is definitely room for tactics and strategy and coordinating and planning and teamwork but when I see that other player frown because I mean I can I have a very finely developed sense for this and you will develop one too if you play long enough I want to see that player frown because they realize they're being accused of being dumb and not thinking tactically and they don't want to think tactically I can always tell when a player is like I actually don't care about any of this stuff the tactician is saying this isn't what my character would do and I'm not really interested in playing tactically that's when I step in that's when it's time for you to step in as a dungeon master and say either tell the tactician player let that player let I'm gonna pick a random name let Tom play their character right whose character is it's Tom's character let Tom play their character or if I'm feeling as though maybe confrontation with this player is not going to work I will turn to Tom and I will say Tom it's your character what are you gonna do it's your turn go and that's largely all it takes it's typically all it takes because that gives Tom permission to ignore the tactician player and go I'm just gonna do this that's part of being the dungeon master by the way and it's one of the reasons I think dungeon mastering is is virtuous to do I know that sounds incredibly pretentious but you it's hard to be a dungeon master for a long time and not start listening to not only to your players to the things they say but you start listening to the things they don't say and when one player challenges another and says you should do this this is a smart thing to do with that other player doesn't say anything that says a lot to me that is definitely metagaming the whole long spiel I just gave is definitely metagaming even though none of the characters have really acted on any knowledge the players had that they did the characters didn't have it's more that there should be and I think players typically understand this there should be moments of sub optimal behavior and trying to scrub that out of the party is metagaming something else that I hate YC so that's one of the things that I think of as mitigating that I hate when I see something else that I really really I hate it so much that what my players do it makes me want to stop running the game sometimes that night but sometimes forever so what dramatically is when the players start trying to guess what I as a Dungeon Master want them to do they are they're blocked in progress and typically this happens when the players have become obsessed with a side quest with a piece of dungeon dressing which stuck with something that isn't core to the plot because if it's core to the plot I am going to help them out if they are trying to get to the next plot cube on so they can collect them all and redeem them with the author to get the climax of the story I am gonna try and meet them halfway but if they are obsessed and hyper focused with something that isn't important to the plot I typically sit back and let them spin their wheels because I know that it doesn't matter whether or not they solve this puzzle and that's what I start hearing players say things like we have to figure out what Matt wants us to do and that is again it's this clash of expectations and so much of Dungeons & Dragons is setting expectations it's that notion that everything in the game is a problem to solve and sin if it's in since this is a problem solved and we can't solve it what we have to do is sit and think about how Matt Colville thinks how does the dungeon master think what does the dungeon master want us to do if we can figure that out then we will solve this problem and we will unlock you know whatever treasure is inside but I don't think that way as the dungeon master I think if you watch this series long enough and my players know this I don't think of the world that I'm presenting as a series of problems to solve sometimes life is a bunch of experiences to be had and you leave things behind unsolved and you spend the rest of the adventure and in some cases longer maybe the rest of the campaign wondering what was that thing what was that all about and that is an amazing part of what makes Dungeons & Dragons feel real it's not real it has the illusion of reality but the fact that we're often leaving things behind unresolved and just like we do in real life makes things feel real and having the players that they're trying to guess what I want is first of all its wrongheaded I don't want anything I want I want the situation to turn out in a way that is plausible and dramatically satisfying and those two things often find each other but sitting there thinking what does the Dungeon Master want us to do I think is pretty toxic I advise players don't think in those terms think purely as far as like what would our characters do and there are definitely times in your life where you just go you know what I have no idea what's going on I'm just gonna move on you have to remind yourself sometimes or maybe you have to remind your players sometimes that their characters do not view the world as a series of problems to solve they experience these things as a life to be led and that means sometimes they have to leave some things behind the players certainly are aware that this is a scenario and this and probably does have a solution but to you as a dungeon master they need to understand that you as a dungeon master are okay with some problems just remaining unsolved and some things staying a mystery obviously your characters using monster knowledge that the players have is metagaming but one of the things and this is they came up a lot on twitter people saying me getting up and going to get a cup of coffee and the players rifling through the monster manual to find out what these creatures weaknesses are that is many gaming obviously that is many gaming however I also think so there's we've we've we've described the actual mechanics of what counts as mitigating and sometimes it's it's terrible but sometimes it's it's not bad so I think what it breaks down to is not an issue of meta gaming or not metagaming there's there are two other terms that we use outside of D&D that I think we would be we would be better players and better Dungeon Master's if we use these terms inside of the indeed and that is sportsmanship right that is good sportsmanship and bad sportsmanship when I sat there trying to unravel what was happening in Jerry's game I think that was me being a poor sport it was something there was no guy I didn't affect how my character behaved so technically it's not many gaming but it was definitely me using my knowledge of the game my knowledge of my experience and it ruined Jerry's fun I often sit there this is a criticism of me as a player I often sit there and because I know I'm not gonna let it influence my character in the way I run my character I will often sit there trying to reverse engineer what is going on in the adventure but I will talk about it openly I will show off how much I know about the game and I've might only be right 50% of the time I might be no better at it than chance but that 50% of the time when I get it right even when I'm even just the act of me sitting there trying to reverse engineer what's going on the adventure is not much different then when players sit there in a situation in my game and there's thinking what are we what does Matt want us to do which I hate when they stop taking the world on its terms and start taking the game only on the game's terms I hate that and it's it's basically what I am doing what I'm trying to reverse engineer what's going on in an individual because even though technically not metagaming because it doesn't affect what my character does it is incredibly poor sportsmanship so I'm not trying to dissuade people from using the term metagaming I think it is a useful term and when we use all the time but I definitely think that there are two different kinds of meta behaviors one which I think is good sportsmanship like thinking in terms of here we high enough level to go after this do we have enough fix this thing we're gonna go go fight is really terrible about that stronger people of us have failed to defeat the city of the Glasspool maybe we should go do I think that is perfectly reasonable also understanding and Dungeon Master's style and responding to it and predicting it is completely mitigating but it's a lot of fun I think that's good sportsmanship and there are times when I'm using my my player knowledge but it's not affecting the character metagaming but it's still it's not fun I'm ruining people's fun that's poor sportsmanship I generally think we are too quick to accuse people of meta gaming because we underestimate the fact that the characters we are playing live in this world they feel they maybe they have never fought you know a an ogre before but they've certainly heard like we have heard of ogres we heard of ogres before any of us ever before our culture invented dungeons the Dragons we had heard of ogres so if we encountered something in the real world but I think that's an ogre we would draw some conclusions about it and our characters live in a world in which these things are real they're not just myths and so I think that it can we can expect our characters to be able to come to some conclusions about the monsters even if they've never fought those monsters or encountered those monsters I think a good rule of thumb is that things you can't find in the wilderness for instance and things that aren't famous legendary creatures like I think Dragons you know it's it's reasonable for your characters to have some knowledge of how to what dragons are and how they behave now powerful they are or tend to be and anything you might find in the wilderness like all the table noise and humanoid stuff I think it's reasonable for the characters to have some awareness of how these things work and of course you have skills it's reasonable for the player to say hey does my character I'm a wizard does my character know anything about golems it's like well you know I think might actually go ahead and make an arc cannon check I'm not sure if the fifth edition rules have robust language describing which skills can be used to learn about which monsters but third edition did and I ran that for many many years and so I still use those assumptions I still let druids make nature checks to find out what these things that are naturally occurring beasties like a Manticore for instance in the in the wilderness is this druid may have never fought a Manticore before but i bet they've heard of them speaking of skills one of the things that people brought up on twitter which i completely agree with is when the dungeon master calls for a skill check from a specific player because the dutch master has made an evaluation that either that character is in a unique position in the world to notice something or because of their background they're in a unique position to know something that character makes a role fails and then everyone else immediately wants to make a role that annoys the hell out of me because again it's there it's what even is making a skill role making a knowledge check for instance what even is that it's not something your character is necessarily trying to do it's something the dungeon master at a meta level is trying to analyze does your character know about this does something pop into their head sometimes obviously you do sit around thinking about what do I know about this subject that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do but your characters do not know that a given character just failed to notice something so you can't all sit around making roles to see if you notice it if the Dutch master has ruled that only an ax has a chance of knowing about this then we have to abide by that and one of the reasons that we as Dungeon Master's get frustrated players when you all start trying to make a skill check on something is it it pulls away from niche for technique protection the notion that this is a character and when I say niche in this case I'm not talking about your class I'm talking about typically your background and the skills you've taken I have made an evaluation that this character is in unique position to know something and if this other character who just rolled really well turns out to be the one that knows it then whatever was true about this character's background and the work they did making their character the allows me to say I think you might know something about this you just pulled the rug out from under them you just made them not special and ultimately that behavior means no one is special people just got lucky and I actually hate that so one of the things I've done and it's pure metagaming this is this tendency of players to all want to make a role when they see one player make a role is I will say you can only make a check against this if you're trained I would never do something like that for physical stunts like if a bunch of players want to climb a wall by all means knock yourself out and another thing is I have seen players accuse each other of metagaming based on making decisions regarding their skill levels like your character wouldn't do that your character doesn't know you've got you know plus 6 - your client check and you'll make it with these but I again I don't think that's many gaming I think that even though your character doesn't know that you have plus 6 your character knows you're really good at it and part of that I know I'm really good this is the fact that some characters have backgrounds that mean they have experience with this skill and others don't you might have just a high wisdom and so you're getting +4 to this but you've never exercised that you have no experience with it so it's I think the dungeon master is prerogative to be able to say you can only make this check if you are proficient with it if you were trained in it or whatever the languages for fifth edition it's a tricky it's a fine line to walk when you start thinking about denying players the ability to make skill tests but it's up to you to think is it reasonable for everyone to try this is it reasonable for everyone to try jumping over this chasm sure if you as a player think it's reasonable for your character to give this a shot we look at your skill check and you're like actually I'm gonna give it a shot by all means that's the kind of thing real people in the real world do all the time but once you start reacting to other people failing and decided to make your own intellectual do I remember something do I have a flash of insight well that's not something your character can just manifest you can't decide your character can't decide to have a flash of insight so I think in those instances it's unreasonable to expect the players to be rolling it's another reason why I'm in favor of when we may do this on the stream I haven't done this in a long time I am they start doing more of those kinds of skill tests for my players it's one of the reasons I love fantasy grounds because fantasy grounds has a thing called the party sheet which the players can't see but it is basically a spreadsheet info floating window and fancy grounds that allows you it shows you all the character stats and skills and stuff like that and in each each row is a different character and you can pick a skill and pick a DC and you can roll and it goes push it and it rolls for all the characters and you get to see who made it who didn't and then you get to curate who knows what and who Fame the players are aware they see the dice of rolling they just don't know what the results are the dice of a little shadow dice when the DM does this and I love that I love being able to say let's see who notices this because it stops that kind of that kind of cascade effect of one person trying it and then everyone else going for it this is something that was true in the original version of the game I think it is reasonable for the dungeon master to make some skill tests for the players because the you don't necessarily want to let the players know that there is something to notice in this area because then they start metagaming and that was the subject of this video that was the medicating video is metagaming always bad no I think we've demonstrated that it's not always bad is it always bad to use out of character knowledge no I think often Dungeon Master's like it when their players start responding as though we know how Matt Koval or Jim Murphy runs the game that's often fun and is all meta is all bad to play a result of metagaming no it can definitely be just unsportsmanlike to try to second-guess the dungeon master to try to second reverse-engineer the adventure it's you know you have to you have to develop the the the muscles to not do that we have to learn restraint sometimes I am more guilty of that than I think most people might guess is it metagaming to think hey we're not high enough level to go fight this monster we should go get some more experience points know your characters don't use those terms but they're certainly aware that they're better warlocks then they used to be is it many gaming to say hey we just bypassed a big chunk of the adventure which means we are under level before we're about to fight yes because your characters don't think in terms of adventures with the plot structure is it many gaming for your players to spend five minutes sitting around planning for six seconds worth of combat I it may be many but I don't think it's bad because certainly your characters are much better at fighting monsters than the players actually are and that needs to be represented somehow is it many gaming for them to spend twenty minutes sitting around arguing about something I think so where is that line drawn that's up to you hopefully this video was useful and there's some negative information in here that you can take away and will make your game better but even if not I think just thinking about this stuff just talking about it and some of the discussions you're gonna see in the comments below and not Reddit and on Twitter I think those will be very interesting and very useful this is the first hour running the game video we've done I think since we wrapped the Kickstarter and it's been a while I think it's been almost two weeks since the last time we've done any video really and I think it may have been three or four weeks since we did the run in the game video and I'll be honest with you I don't I which I think I generally am I don't think you're gonna see a whole lot of running game videos between now and when we get an office I'm always aware that I haven't done one for a while I'm also aware that the running game videos I want to do like this one tend to require a lot of thought and research and I really want to get the strongholds book written or at least I want to get the writing to a stage where so much of its done and I have so much time left that I'm comfortable and I don't have to worry but also I am conscious of the fact that we're gonna have our own office we've looked at some great spaces you know what's gonna happen I assume I hope and I'm gonna find an editor who can come in and work with us to to edit these things and it's just I think it'll be a lot more fun for me to be recording videos in the new space and so that sort of weirdly disincentivizes me from doing it here but we are gonna do lots more videos we're do a lot of stuff in the studio volley live more certainly more than just playing dean d once a week you know my friendship is gonna he was just showing off his old original copy of Warhammer Quest and I was like we should play this you know I'm screwed we'll probably have a lunchtime stream because my friends and I used to play games at lunch gentle rock all the time now we can do it in our office and invite some of our friends from Iraq over and just do it and play stuff like codenames or play Warhammer Quest so you're gonna get a lot of video content I just ask that you folks be patient I'll try to get one running a game video done a week I'm trying to think of what else I want to make sure that these updates I do at the end our videos don't turn into Kickstarter updates because I've got a whole other venue for doing Kickstarter updates and I don't a clogged up the YouTube channel with them we didn't do a live stream last night because I'm sort of reevaluating the live stream stone we did a couple of really successful live streams but then I think the the audience for the live stream is largely the same from one week to the other and as a result I don't I think all the good questions have already been asked and topic wise sitting around and talking about something like that below or tolis I think it's a very poor use of the live stream because those products deserve a video like this which is focused and goes in-depth and as a result of doing on the live stream we don't go into as much detail that it takes way longer so that ends up I think being a poor subject for a live stream but it's Sunday you this should that's video should go up today i''m a stream tonight Sunday night I've got an idea which TV slash Matt Cola there's a link in the doobly-doo and it may just be something stupid and we tried and it doesn't work but who knows maybe no I'm gonna go to WonderCon after I'm done uploading this video and I'm gonna spend some money in the exhibit hall because I like supporting local merchants and the people who came out to WonderCon to show their wares and so I may get back work on it just kind of be wiped out and not feel like screaming no promises but we will continue live streaming the kind of casual not I don't mean you know live stream art we're definitely analyze to party to you but this kind of casual just sit around and talk on Saturday night so we're definitely going to continue doing that I just need to think more about the format also someone I don't know who sent me this look at this thing this is a quite good water bottle from elementals elemental people's and I like it I've gotten water some places I worked before but they don't tend to have this bow ring this ring is nice so it seals tight when you close it and you just get this feeling of oh it's it's close but also if they put the turmeric logo on it it made me kind of wonder if this was like a going-away present from life co-workers and it says level 13 Dragonborn writer on here which has got my name on it which I thought was awesome so whoever sent this to work thank you very much we're gonna get a p o-- box once we got our own office and then we'll let you folks know what the peel boxes so that people want to send stuff to us which i don't encourage we know even though i love this i would certainly never gotten something like this with myself but people that people want to send me products and stuff like that now i'm like you know don't don't worry about it i I don't review things people send me to be give their manufacturers because I didn't discover it on my own that's kind of my standard and and generally speaking stuff the nerd stuff that people send me you know even before the Kickstarter I was doing okay you've seen the typewriter right I you know like that that wasn't she I was doing alright and there was some nerd stuff I wanted I would just go buy it so I generally well I appreciate the sentiment and people's trying to give back to the channel I think that you know something like this is pretty cool but I always feel weird getting gifts from people but we will definitely just so that we don't clog up Turtle Rock Studios anymore I think those people getting pretty exasperated with my nonsense we will have our own P o box that people can send stuff to that's it folks that was the metagaming video or videos to come like I said I'm hoping to do at least one running the game video a week but if a week goes by and haven't seen a running game video from me take solace in the fact that it's because I'm busting my butt on the strongholds book and we're looking for office space and we're you know hiring people and getting health insurance and doing all sorts all the stuff you do when you have a actually medium size company like you know the money we raise in the Kickstarter is no joke and so we can do things like you know get trademarks filed and stuff like that and just be a responsible company and all that takes time and not to me driving all over the place so once that settle down once the office is in place and once we're running butts I'm running DMV again remember that to me running the game is largely every run in the game video is a result of something that happen in my table and so since I haven't been running d for the past like I don't know since last August I think we there haven't been a whole lot of I think really good writing the game video so once we have a studio space you'll see more videos once I'm running the Indian you'll see a lot more videos until that happens peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 532,766

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Id: 1IyWfaMmhrM

Length: 42min 5sec (2525 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 26 2018