Meta Gaming Reduction

Meta-Gaming Reduction

Chat cards carry the full mechanics of every roll. Read in the open, they tell a player things their character has no way to know — the Orc's DB and armour type, the exact modifiers behind an opponent's attack — and that knowledge is hard to set aside once seen. Meta-Gaming Reduction controls how much of a card each viewer reads.

The setting is world-scope, GM-configured, and defaults to None.

Private rolls, public fights

Some rolls are nobody else's business. A spell cast, a resistance roll, a skill check, a breakage test, a night's recovery from a wound — these go to the GM and the actor's owner and no further.

A fight is not private. Everyone watches the blow land, so attack cards stay in the open where they belong. What they stop showing is the arithmetic behind them: the OB, the DB, the armour type, the dice.

Who sees what

• GM (Gamemaster or Assistant) sees every card in full, always, including real token names.
• Observers — a user with Observer permission or better on an actor — see everything the card shows about that actor. A sheet a player can already open has nothing left to hide on a card.
• Everyone else sees the public parts of the card. A hidden field shows a crossed-out eye in place of its value; hovering it says why.

The options

Option	Effect
None	Nothing is hidden. Every card is public and complete.
Foes	Only actors no player can observe are hidden — in practice, the GM's creatures and NPCs. Party actors stay fully public to the whole table.
Foes + Players	Every actor is hidden from viewers who cannot observe it, party actors included.
Max	As above, plus critical descriptions and effect icons are hidden from everyone except the defender, and skill results are hidden from everyone except the GM.

Foes is the usual choice: a character knows their own capabilities and nothing of a stranger's, so the party's numbers stay on the table and the GM's creatures give nothing away.

Max is for a GM who wants to narrate outcomes. At this option the roller of a skill check does not see their own result — the card reads "GM will narrate the result" until the GM reveals it. Criticals still go to the character they landed on, so a player always knows what is happening to them.

On an attack card

Public at every option: the attack name, the attack table, hit or miss, hits delivered, severity code, hit location, and the critical header.

Hidden from viewers who cannot observe the actor:

• Attacker section — OB, chart, and the range row on ranged attacks.
• Defender section — DB and armour type.
• Roll line — the dice and the formula behind them.
• Critical description and effect icons — at Max only.

Token names

A name gives away what the party is facing. A player who reads "Troll" on a card knows what a Troll can do, whether or not their character has ever met one, and will fight it accordingly. So the card header reads "Attacker" or "Defender" instead.

A real name shows when any player can observe the actor, or when the token's Display Name is set to Hovered by Anyone or Always for Everyone. Those two modes put the name on the canvas for the whole table, so the card has nothing left to hide; the owner-only modes do not count.

Area-effect target lists follow the same rule, showing "Target 1", "Target 2" and so on — the caster may not know what is standing in the blast.

Revealing a section

Hidden sections carry a padlock in the GM's view. Clicking it reveals that section to the players and the lock opens; clicking again re-locks it. The state is stored on the message, so it survives a re-render and reaches players who join later.

A lock reveals its own section only. Reveal one once the characters would plausibly know what it holds.

Dice So Nice

3D dice follow the card. A viewer who cannot read a roll line sees a ghost die roll rather than the face, so the result is not spoiled by the animation.

Note

Hidden values are stored on the chat message and can be found by a player who goes looking through the developer console. This is a feature for tables that want to stay in character, not a defence against a determined cheat.

Game Settings

• Meta-Gaming Reduction: choose None, Foes, Foes + Players or Max. The default is None.