#like i cannot remember the last time i've encountered a block of this kind. like I straight up cannot figure out

[bookwyrminspiration]

writing is hell it sucks so so bad this is awful i want to blowup the moon and eat dirt and abolish the concept of language. anyways. back to the doc

[utilitycaster]

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the importance that mechanics and external factors have in understanding actual play, but how it's also really important to understand that the instant one leaves actual play as a medium, even if you are adapting the same story, you need to leave that behind.

I think the easiest example would be Scanlan's 9th level Counterspell. In the context of D&D 5e, we understand the following simply from the word "Nine": it is his highest spell slot; he only has one per day; and he has just expended an incredibly valuable and powerful resource that means he cannot use any spells that require it.

In an eventual adaptation, however, this is meaningless. That doesn't mean you can't depict something with a similar emotional weight and meaning; it's just that it will need to be portrayed differently (perhaps as an expendable scroll). The idea of "this is both very necessary to do and very powerful, and also is an immense trade-off" is what's important but the mechanics of it will necessarily fall away when you're no longer bound by mechanics. If you're adapting actual play or writing fic about it? You do need to have some degree of treating magic as a limited resource per day and staying true to broad abilities, but the idea of spell slots is "how can we provide limits to this storytelling system so that it is also a fun game" and the idea is that if you are looking at the story, and not the game, no one is saying "I have no more spell slots"; they're saying "I'm drained and need to rest before I can do more magic other than the most basic things."

(Note - this is fine in-game though. Like, yeah, ideally, no one would shout INSIGHT CHECK and would instead bring it up narratively but also...this is a dumb hill to die on, and I will die on a lot of hills. It is in fact fine while playing the game to acknowledge that you have spell slots and would like to make an investigation check instead of saying "I can do...some magic but not a lot, and I look more closely at the carvings on the wall.")

I think what also trips people up is that DMs in combat are limited by the rules of combat, but outside of combat, they really aren't. To give an example here, Ludinus casts a spell on Kadija that isn't clearly Feeblemind - she clearly has been reverted to the mindset of a young child or similar, but mechanically doesn't act as though she is INT 1, CHA 1. It has similar vibes but isn't quite the same.

This is totally fine and only the most stick-up-their ass pedant would fuss about it. It's a homebrew spell. It's a magical effect for a monster stat block. It is completely okay that it's not exactly a match for a spell that exists. The point is that it fits the broad logic of how magical effects work in the world (a targeted save that she fails; curable) and furthers the story. (Another example is Caleb's backstory re: Vergesson, or Veth being turned into a goblin; ultimately, it doesn't matter exactly what happened as long as we get the gist, because they both fit into, for lack of a better term, the vibe of the magic).

One last related thing is that metagaming in the sense of like, actively trying to twist the scenario to your advantage based on information you as a player know and your character would not is bad (eg: if you know a certain monster is vulnerable to a certain damage type but your character has never encountered it, and you use something extremely atypical for you to leverage this? not great); but I also think fear of metagaming kind of goes too far at times, and stepping back and remembering this is a narrative and not just a rule set helps here. To give an example here: Fearne and FCG hadn't met Caleb and Beau, but as eventually was actually discussed at the table, they still do know that Ludinus and Otohan = bad guys and so it's valid to say "hmmm, freeing their prisoners is like, not a bad idea if only for the chaos." Your character might not know the characters in-game, and they certainly don't know them out of game, but I think a lot of people overcorrect and you don't need to.

This is tbh another case in which I would recommend D&D Court from NADDPod, because they do handle a lot of metagaming-related cases where people are getting far too obsessive. The fact is there is a lot of metagaming happening anyway. If your players seem upset you stop even if the characters wouldn't likely be upset. The famous Sam Smorkel joke works specifically because, on some level, no normal person would speak to Sam Smorkel first, and your players are doing it because they have medium awareness. Metagaming is constant, perfect immersion is rare, and keep an eye out for it but usually metagaming that does cross the line is pretty egregious and the rest is overly concerned.