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 modifier stack 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.

Two halves

One setting governs both:

• Who receives a card. Spell casting, resistance, skill, breakage and injury recovery cards are whispered to the GM and the owners of the actors involved.
• How much of a received card they read. Attack-family cards stay public, but their mechanical sections are hidden from viewers who have no business seeing them.

Attack cards are deliberately not whispered — the table should see that a blow landed. It is the numbers behind it that are withheld.

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 that actor's side in full. A sheet a player can already open has nothing left to hide on a card.
• Everyone else sees the public parts of the card, with hidden fields shown as --.

The options

Option	Effect
None	Nothing is hidden. Every card is public and complete.
Foes	Only sides 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	Both sides hide from viewers who cannot observe them, party actors included.
Max	As above, plus critical descriptions and effect icons are hidden from everyone except the defender's side, and skill results are hidden from everyone except the GM.

Foes is the usual choice. It removes the temptation to play against the monster manual while leaving the party's own numbers on the table where players discuss them anyway.

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 that side:

• 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

Where a name would give away who is fighting, 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 so the table can read it on the canvas anyway. Area-effect target lists follow the same rule, showing "Target 1", "Target 2" and so on — the caster may not know who 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. Use it when the fiction has caught up — the party has fought enough Trolls to know how tough they are.

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.