Not metagaming is harder than it seems, and harder for some than others.
I think if I were going to send out private messages like this, I’d send everyone their own picture. So everyone else gets normal dog picture, Craig gets skinwalker dog picture.
I have onky played with a handful of people who will go help the poor hurt doggo, knowing full well that Craig has seen something different but also knowing their character wouldn’t stop to listen to “that dog is secretly a eldritch horror from ages past and you don’t want to try and help it, your eyes are deceiving you!”
I remember one time when a woman in the player group went to make her move a bit early, then realized she skipped someone, we got the other turn out of the way, and because the person who went first saw something the others didn’t, she changed her move to suddenly being very curious about the thing he saw. Which he had no time to tell anyone about.
So you want to metagame with knowledge you literally can’t have yet that relies on perception? Enjoy your orbs of darkness, I guess.
Although I really like the Anti-Metagaming Dragon idea where it just pops into existence wherever metagaming occurs and devours everything in sight.
Two things:
As a DM, giving players false positives when they try to metagame is HILARIOUS.
Players are generally expected to act “in-character”. D&D isn’t a game about winning or losing, it’s about making a story.
Not metagaming is harder than it seems, and harder for some than others.
I think if I were going to send out private messages like this, I’d send everyone their own picture. So everyone else gets normal dog picture, Craig gets skinwalker dog picture.
I have onky played with a handful of people who will go help the poor hurt doggo, knowing full well that Craig has seen something different but also knowing their character wouldn’t stop to listen to “that dog is secretly a eldritch horror from ages past and you don’t want to try and help it, your eyes are deceiving you!”
I remember one time when a woman in the player group went to make her move a bit early, then realized she skipped someone, we got the other turn out of the way, and because the person who went first saw something the others didn’t, she changed her move to suddenly being very curious about the thing he saw. Which he had no time to tell anyone about.
So you want to metagame with knowledge you literally can’t have yet that relies on perception? Enjoy your orbs of darkness, I guess.
Although I really like the Anti-Metagaming Dragon idea where it just pops into existence wherever metagaming occurs and devours everything in sight.