HandofGod

From Exalted - Unofficial Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

It's a little known house rule where if the players PC's are just being ridiculous with OOC knowledge the ST gaks their Characters in an even more ridiculous manner; (ie.meteor falling straight on the characters head with 43 auto successes and base damage 85L;The daiklave the are holding was first age but had a flaw causing it to explode doing about the same thing etc.....)


Or as one of my old st's used to say when people were being Stupid, 'Rocks fall, everyone dies.' :) Gamlain

Luckily, Heavenly Guardian Defense will even parry the ST :)
not when they're sleeping or out of motes - issaru
Also, that's not so much a 'House Rule' as it is a 'Sign that you're playing with people whom you share incompatible views of play, and rather than directly solve the problem you're applying a Geek Social Falacy to shunt away direct confrontation.' The GM is Gawd schtick got old back in middle school. DS

Sometimes you gotta show you mean business, not that the ST is god, thats just crass. I'm talking about after you've done other things to try and help and the PC still wants to be funny, give em a little of their own medicine. This is never the first step, it's often the one I employ just before walking out of a game, but it serves the pupose of showing that i'm not going to sit and take even carefully hidden metagaming. - Issaru
Isn't that just making the problem worse? You'd be taking an out-of-game problem and pushing it downwards, into the game, which can only cause confusion and upset. - willows
No. I always think of metagaming as an in-game problem, because thats where it's causing the disruption. There is always a stern talking to first, I don't just sit dehind a screen and go "muhahahahaha". No, i present an argument first and if it doesn't work i evaluate to see if the player is worth keeping if so it's the hand of god. If they walk after so be it.

Sometimes...there just aren't enough rocks. - Forrest Gump
Seriously though, the GM is the reality maker in a given game...if theres a rampant metagaming problem that can't be solved with words, hit them where they'll notice... Dreaming Nymph

The ST is not the 'ultimate reality arbiter' in any meaningful way- this is a collaborative exercise. If one person tries to claim ultimate (not final, but ultimate) control of what is and isn't real, they'll rapidly find themselves alone in their own imaginary little world as their players stop playing.
However, without the GMs lil fantasy world, where would you be "collaborating"? Dreaming Nymph
If they won't notice words like 'Hey, guys, I'm getting pissed at the rampant meta-gaming; stop or I'm going to stop running the game and find a new group', then hitting them with the rocks won't help matters. And most 'the GM is Gawd' lines of thinking are used to circumvent actual confrontation- grudge monsters, spontanious death, improbable traps... things counter to both Exalted and the simple ideal of fun. DS
actually i love confrontation (means i'm doing something right. lol.).Taking control of the game is not my idea of fun i,and agree it is a collaboration.If i walked on every player i disagreed with i would never get to play, my point was sometimes you have to go over the top to show someone what they were doing is wrong and disruptive in a blatant manner.I have done this maybe a total of three times in my twenty years of running games but it's an optoin i choose to keep because sometimes Examples not words are what hit home. - Issaru
An 'example' is walking out and not running the game until the players / ST are willing to compromise. If they aren't, then you've likely got a total breakdown in styles of play, and using this kind of metagaming non-sense doesn't help a damn thing. DS
Not gonna punish myself or my other players who prolly have nothing to do with this just because of one foul-up player,and because the first time i had ever done it the player who's character i did this too looked at me and said ( after the why was explained)"never looked at it like that before"and never metagamed again.Like i said walking out is the last resort because you end up playing by yourself anyway which is what we were trying to prevent in the first place. -Issaru

So, what's the problem with "metagaming" anyway? I mean, clearly it's the player indicating, "I find the game more interesting if I behave in this manner", and I don't think that you can fault that. - willows

ooooook....so, i<as the player> have all of the Exalted books, and my lore 1, occult 0 character automatically knows everything i know from reading said books because I think its more fun that way. Right. Of course. Dreaming Nymph
Yeah, exactly. Duh. What limits that is that you can't do anything that requires Lore or Occult rolls...like knowing obscure stuff from the past. Where is the problem again? - w
no problem at all...but where did you get the information? Past life merit? No? Then how did you come about information that was lost to creation ages ago? Dreaming Nymph
I'm not sure that your question makes sense. - w
Lemme try it slower...Where Did You Get This Obscure Knowledge? Was It From The Past Life Merit? Perhaps a lost tome somewhere? What justifies a Solar character with no backgroud in occult, who has no general dealings with Abyssals, and has never been to a shadowland knowing any of the information in E:A simply because his player does?(we are clear that this is just an example, feel free to fill in the book/ability/type of exalt with anything your lil heart desires...) - dn

Enough with the colons. This place looks like a digestive system. The character can access the knowledge by succeeding at appropriate rolls, which, if the player didn't put a lot of dots in Lore or Occult, won't happen that often. That's how. - w

  • sigh* but you said that its "clearly it's the player indicating, "I find the game more interesting if I behave in this manner". I'll give you a prime example of how thinking like this as a player can destroy a game for the rest of the group. We played for about 7 or so months, trying to figure out how to stem the tide of impending disaster, as all good characters do, when we happened upon a VITAL clue. Now, just because we as players are all sitting in the same room does not mean that the characters are....some of the group received the information, some didn't. One of the ones who didn't took it upon himself to suggest a solution based on information he did not have. Which killed that lead for the rest of us, ooc information should never leave a pcs mouth. Ever. Hell, I basically live with our GM, he bounces game ideas off of me regularly, what would happen to the game if I decided "we shouldn't go that way, he has a death trap planned there", or even worse, gave the rest of the pcs the way to disarm said death trap just because i thought it wouldbe more interesting? What should be the punishment for those offences?

Hey, If you believe that they're offences, don't do them. That's all there is to it. And if someone breaks your etiquette, tell them to stop it or you'll excuse them, like mature people do im mature social situations. - w


The player who broke the social contract of 'this type of metagaming is bad' should be taken aside, given a stern talking to and, if unrepentent, removed from the group.

If the entire group is behaving like this, and everyone but you is having fun, then you should both bring up your concerns and desires and- if not reciprocated -remove yourself.

Note, in neither case, is the answer to use metagaming against metagaming. DS

Somehow, I think you missed the point. I believe they are offences and have never commited such. However, you argued on the side of the person who did, and who would, saying that there is no problem in this type of behavior if the player thinks it would be more interesting. It is a known fact that some people need to be burned by the stove before they believe that their mother was right, it is hot. If the warning is given and not heeded, the punishment should be simple, and well understood...not a childish "I'm taking my ball and going home". It's effective, gets the point across, and more often than not that person never metagames again. Which was the entire point of the exercise. Maybe I'm dealing with a different type of gamer, I like my group, and even though they do weird things<like blow 7 months of investigation>, I'd rather game with them than some of the rest of the ruffians out there. I've found personally that this method works...I would not be advocating it otherwise. -dn