Subconscious meta-gaming

[hyenaskate]

Greetings, I'm sure you've all noticed that as soon someone knows some OOC information, they suddenly seem to metagame so much faster. Especially with hidden names, or classes. They suddenly come with lame excuses how they 'knew'.

But it seems people don't do this on purpose. There is a cognitive bias, called Hindsight Bias or I-knew-it-all-along effect. And also another, named: Confirmation bias.

This also applies to RP. As soon you know OOC information about a character, you'll seek out information that conforms that you could also ICly know so.

So yes, watch out when sharing OOC information, and also try to keep questioning yourself if doing this to others.

Always ask yourself the exact opposite... My character thinks this character is a warlock, what would definitely falsify this belief? A null answer means that your belief does not constrain experience; it permits anything to happen to you. It floats, subconscious meta-gaming.

While it is true that even in real life people say things based on nothing, this is no excuse for knowing someones name or ulterior motives.

If you wish to know more about biases, click below :3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

[ImagenAshyun]

I cannot tell you how the confirmation bias is extremely annoying in RP, but most of these incidents are practiced among inexperienced RPers who don't know how to correctly RP out IC bias from their OOC. Nevertheless, keeping subconscious meta-gaming in check is always encouraged.

I should mention, though, that subtle metagaming can be okay, usually regarding plot and problem-solving in an event or story. However, this has to be justified with the level of experience the character would have. If I'm DMing an event where I have a trap laid out for the player characters, I expect the genre savvy players to RP out their character's cleverness rather than me whispering tips (which happens more often than not). On the other hand, a paladin knowing a person is a warlock and then RPing to make sure they can confirm their suspicion? As long as there is no IC justification and the player didn't do anything to provide the suspicion IC, then that is absolutely no excuse.